I'm just a tad excited that Ronan and Tina are here for you to meet them. There's still a chance to win those $10 Strand Bucks. Just pop on over the The Nuthouse Scribblers
. I'll pick a winner at midnight tonight UK time, because no doubt I'll still be bouncing around in excitement then.
You can read an exclusive hot excerpt on The Nuthouse Scribblers, and the official excerpts are
As it's release day, and if you're still undecided about whether you want to read this, I thought I'd share the entire first chapter right here on my blog.
Bear Shifter Ronan recognises his mate the minute he scents her. Having her clean for him means he can watch over her from afar, because to claim her as his mate and sub is out of the question. As the village protector he has responsibilities he can’t ignore—duties that will place Tina in grave danger—even if she were able to accept not only his bear, but also his darker desires. The morning she finds him injured, his bear takes over…
*****
HER
BEAR PROTECTOR
The Protectors 1
DORIS O’CONNOR
Copyright © 2014
Chapter One
Normally
speaking, Tina loved the twisty, narrow, country roads that made up the
Cumbrian countryside, but not this morning. Late already, thanks to old Mrs.
Hastings’s insistence that Tina tried her scones—delicious as they had been—she
now rounded a blind corner and slammed on the emergency brakes. Cleaning
supplies went flying around the inside of her little, beat-up Mini, and the
handle of the mop narrowly missed the side of her head.
“Jesus.”
The expletive hung in the air, and Tina said a silent prayer to any possible
deity she might have offended. Not that Tina believed in any of that stuff, per
se, but better to be safe than sorry.
The
lone sheep, and the sole reason for her almost being knocked out by her work
equipment, blinked and stared at her in disgust, as though it owned the one-track
road, and Tina swore and stood on her horn. A forlorn baaa was her
answer. Said sheep shook its matted fur and after another longer toot from Tina’s
car horn, finally trotted out of the way and onto the grass verge.
Tina
rolled her eyes, and drove off more slowly, mindful of the other sheep traipsing
along the side of the road. Clearly there was a break in the fence somewhere.
By
the time she finally pulled up outside Ronan Bernhard’s cottage, neatly tucked
away at the side of the forest, she was over an hour late, which would have
been a good thing, because he shouldn’t be at home now. His Harley, however,
sat outside the quaint thatched roof cottage, next to an expensive-looking car,
that definitely did not belong to a local.
Great,
just great.
Tina knew it was going to be one of those days from the minute the sheep in the
field across the lane from her house, had woken her up with their loud bleating
before the sky had even had a chance to turn orange. Come to think of it she
was sick to death of sheep. They were blooming everywhere. Tina turned her
engine off and listened to it run on for a good few minutes, before it finally
stopped. Another thing to add to her to-do list. She really needed to take it
to the local garage. If only the mechanic didn’t make her feel as though he was
undressing her with her eyes, and offered to do it cheaply for her, if she was nice
to him. Somehow Tina didn’t think he meant nice as in bringing him some home
baked cookies.
A shiver went down Tina’s spine, and not one of the good
sort. She supposed she could have asked Ronan. After all he maintained his
Harley entirely by himself, and more than once she had turned up to clean his
cottage to find him elbow deep in grease, working on the old truck he kept in
his garage.
Tina shook her head and groaned. Oh no, don’t go
there. Images of a sweaty, greasy Ronan Bernhard were the last thing she
needed right now. Not after the erotic dreams she had the previous night which
had been filled with none other than the volunteer mountain rescuer. Dreams in
which he’d been buried deep inside her body, his muscular, tattooed arms
straining with the effort to hold his weight off of her, while his piercing
blue eyes had stared right into her soul. Tina had woken up, wrapped in her
sheets, sweaty and horny, and even after several sessions with her BOB she’d
had trouble going back to sleep.
The fact that Ronan might even now be doing that sort of
horizontal action with some lucky woman inside his cottage, made her
simultaneously wet and green with envy.
Ever since Ronan Bernhard had roared into the little
village Tina had called her home for the last two years, no other man had even
come close to getting her interest. In fact, Tina was sure the knickers of the
entire female population from teenage girl upward had melted in an instant,
when he’d taken his helmet off, strolled into the local café, grinned, and
asked for direction to the old cottage three miles up the road.
Stood at well over six and a half feet, with his messy
short brown hair, stubbly masculine jaw, and harsh features, Ronan Bernhard was
drool-worthy hunk personified. The bike and the inked sleeves he sported gave
him that whole bad boy look, which was so at odds with his profession as a
nursery teacher. The fact he was good with kids added to the whole drop your
knickers in an instant appeal he had. Couple that with a voice that dripped
into a woman’s consciousness like molten chocolate, especially when he put that
edge of steel into it. It meant anyone snapped to his attention. A smile to
charm the hardest of hearts, and the entire village had eaten out of his hand
in minutes.
Even old Mrs. Hastings had sighed into her chamomile tea
with a dreamy expression, right before she had pushed Tina forward and offered
her cleaning services to the newcomer.
“Tina here, runs the local cleaning firm, so once you’re
settled in that old cottage, she’ll keep it nice and tidy for you. We all know
what you bachelors are like, after all.” Mrs. Hastings had giggled like a
schoolgirl and given Tina another shove toward the table Ronan had sat at,
sipping his coffee.
Tina had wanted the ground to swallow her up, when Ronan
had looked up at her. Something undecipherable had crossed his harsh features
and in her befuddled, lust-filled brain, Tina could have sworn his intense blue
eyes had flashed to a glowing amber, before he blinked and the moment had been
lost.
He’d nodded toward
Mrs. Hastings with a smile that had turned the old lady’s cheeks a nice shade
of crimson, and he’d extended his hand toward Tina.
A jolt of electricity had shot up Tina’s arm at the
innocent contact and her gasp of surprise had been drowned out by an
animalistic growl coming from his massive chest that meant she’d felt the
vibrations right through the soles of her feet. As curious as that had been, no
one else in the small café seemed to have noticed that odd reaction, and Tina
had later wondered if she had imagined the whole thing. Ronan had certainly
acted as though nothing unusual had occurred.
“Have you got a business card I can reach you under?” he’d
said and Tina had simply nodded, rummaged in her oversized bag for one of the
flyers she had printed off yonks ago, when she’d first come to the village. She’d
dropped it in his outstretched hand, and high tailed it out of there with a
muttered excuse.
Tina had been convinced she’d never hear from him again,
but a week later her phone had rung, and he’d offered her an outrageous amount
of money to come clean for him. The only stipulation had been that she would
let him know beforehand when she turned up.
Tina had found out to her cost that it wasn’t wise to
forget that. More than once when she’d first started working for him, she’d
walked in on him fresh out of the shower. One morning he seemed to have only
just come home, if the smell of sex and booze that came off him was anything to
go by, which had been curious, because Ronan never drank or smoke, or indeed
took out any local women. Then again there were always the tourists, weren’t
there.
Again, Tina glanced toward the strange car and debated
what to do. She had texted him last night to make sure she was okay to come
round today, even though it wasn’t her appointed cleaning day. The village fete
happened tomorrow and she had been roped in to help with that, and wouldn’t
have time to swing by Ronan’s house that day.
His reply had been curt and to the point.
Yes, no problem. Not at home, myself, so do your thing.
Lord only knew what the man did do in his spare time, or
why he needed a cleaner. Ronan was tidy to the point of obsession, and apart
from the dusting, and the occasional round of laundry there never was much for
her to do. Mind you, there were the curious scratches that appeared in the wood
work on a regular basis, and meant she spent hours of elbow grease getting rid
of.
If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he kept
animals in the cottage, but there was no trace of them. The occasional torn bed
sheets notwithstanding—testimony to either insomnia or rough sex, the thought
of which made her groan out loud—there was nothing unusual about him. Well,
nothing other than her completely unreasonable obsession with him, that was,
and the fact that he rescued people off mountains in his free time, and made
her wet with one look from under his hooded lids.
Again she glanced at the cottage and wondered. The
earlier breeze kicked up a notch and swirled some of the old hedge cuttings
piled in a corner of his driveway and scattered them across the gravel. Much to
her surprise the front door creaked open and then shut again, in an unusual
seesaw motion. Ronan never left his front door unlocked.
Before she could change her mind, Tina exited the car,
and strode across to the creaking front door. One of the hinges was busted and
there were scratch marks all over the frame that meant the hair on her neck
stood on end. Another gust of wind whipped the hem of her maxi summer dress up
in Marilyn Monroe style, and she made a grab for it, while trying to stop the
door from slamming into her face.
A groan carried through from the inside of the cottage,
and heat rose in her cheeks. That almost sounded as though he was… Another,
louder grunt this time, and the thump of something hitting the floor hard made
up her mind for her. Maybe he was only having wild monkey sex with whoever
owned that car outside, in which case Tina would be mortally embarrassed and
make her excuses forthwith, or he was in some sort of trouble. The thought that
it might be the latter, galvanized her into action and she pushed the door open
fully to walk inside, and promptly froze.
Ronan’s orderly cottage seemed to have been turned upside
down by some unseen force. Smashed glass crunched under her sandaled feet,
pictures hung askew and the big comfy armchair from the living room lay on its
side in the hallway with all the stuffing torn out of it. Tina stuffed her fist
in her mouth to stop herself from screaming, when she spotted the trail of
blood that led from the wrecked living room up the stairs. The French windows
leading into the back garden of the cottage had been smashed through, and the
blood started there. It covered the shredded curtain and a spray of fine drops
had hit the opposite wall. To top it all everything was covered in curious grey
dust.
Tina turned round, half expecting to see the mangled body
of someone, and please god, don’t let it be Ronan, but the scene of
devastation was all there was.
“Fuck.”
The distinct exclamation uttered in Ronan’s deep voice
meant that Tina flew up the stairs, flung open his bedroom door, and screamed.
****
Available now at a 10% discount at Bookstrand
Add it to your shelf on Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23278085-her-bear-protector
Now excuse me while I go back to annoying everyone by grinning and jumping about!
Stay naughty, folks.
D xxx
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
