By K D Grace (Guest Blogger)
One
of the best holidays I ever had was a fourteen-day192 mile walk
across England on the Wainwright Coast to Coast Path. The path begins
at St. Bee’s Head, on the Irish Sea. It crosses the entire Lake
District, then the Yorkshire Dales and finally the North York Moors,
finishing at Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea. It was one of the
hardest, most inspiring, most spectacular things I’d ever done. I
don’t mind saying there were times I wasn’t sure I could finish
it and there were times when I was a little bit scared, but I would
do it again in a heartbeat.
Doing
it again is exactly what I did when I wrote Toys for Boys.
While Doc and Will’s adventure unfolded in my imagination, I got to
live the whole experience of that wonderful walk over again while at
the same time adding a few challenges and unexpected surprises for my
boys.
Alpha nerd Will Charles
teams up with Caridoc ‘Doc’ Jones in a coast to coast walk across
England reviewing outdoor gift suggestions for the Christmas edition
of Toys for Boys—an online magazine dedicated to the latest gadgets
to tickle a man’s fancy. Will is recording their adventures with
the latest smart phone technology. Doc is reviewing the latest
outdoor gear. The two quickly discover the great outdoors provides
even better toys for boys, toys best shared al fresco, toys that, in
spite of Will’s great camera work, will never be reviewed in Toys
for Boys.
Note: Toys for Boys
has been previously published as part of the Brit Boys: With Toys
boxed set.
Buy
Toys for Boys Here:
Universal Amazon link:
http://mybook.to/toysforboys
Barnes & Noble:
http://bit.ly/2jPjrN2
iBooks:
http://apple.co/2jpYvxK
Kobo:
http://bit.ly/2kbYbQa
Smashwords:
http://bit.ly/2kmFbRg
Excerpt
“We’re not going to
make Ennerdale tonight,” Doc yelled into the wind.
Will’s answer was
incoherent, an incoherence that wasn’t entirely because the wind
was interfering with Doc’s hearing. They’d already got lost once
and had fought their way back to the trail. Doc was fucking freezing,
but he had spent enough time outdoors in bad weather to push his body
way further than most people could. No matter how fit Will was, Doc
recognised the signs of hypothermia when he saw them. They had to get
out of the weather and get warm.
They lost the trail
twice more before Doc made the executive decision to set up a tent in
the first spot halfway flat. To his surprise it had been the damn
urBrain that had saved the day. Will had downloaded detailed,
interactive OS maps, but in his condition, Doc doubted if he could
read his own name in bold letters, let alone the contours of a map.
He’d pried the device, safe from the weather in its own little
waterproof sheath, from Will’s icy hands and, with the light from
the screen, he was able to find a wooded area relatively flat and as
shielded from the weather as they were likely to get. The rain turned
to hail and the Arctic wind made it feel like bird shot against all
bits of exposed skin as Doc struggled to set up the tent. He’d
shoved another energy bar at Will, and when he’d only stood there
looking at it, Doc had opened it and half crammed it down his throat
before he went back to work on shelter, desperate to get Will out of
the weather.
Once the tent was
secure, he chucked the bags inside, then grabbed Will by the collar
and dragged him into the tight little space.
The energy bar must
have helped. Will seemed coherent enough. “I can’t feel my
hands,” he said, battling to get his sleeping bag out of its
waterproof sack.
“Give me that,” Doc
said through chattering teeth. “Let me do it. My hands aren’t all
delicate and dainty like yours.”
“Would you look at
that?” Will said as Doc grabbed the bag. “Amazingly, my middle
finger works just fine.” He flipped him off.
“So does your smart
mouth.” Without thinking, Doc zipped the two bags together.
“What are you doing?”
Will was suddenly serious.
“You’re
hypothermic. Get your wet clothes off and get into the bag.”
“Oh. Right.” But
Will could no more manage the buttons and zippers on his clothing
than he could his sleeping bag.
This time when Doc
shoved his hands away and pushed the waterproof jacket off his
shoulders, Will only watched, eyes focused on the process as though
it were something totally new to him. Doc cursed the fiddly buttons
on the man’s shirt, his own hands none too agile from the cold and
wet and the fact that he was undressing Will fucking Charles, about
whom he’d been having less than pristine thoughts since his first
view of the man’s arse. Will fucking Charles with whom he was about
to cuddle down into a sleeping bag butt naked, never mind that it was
with good reason.
Will sucked in a harsh
breath. “Your damned hands are like ice cubes, Woodsy.”
“Oh shut it, William,
or I’ll kick your arse outside and make you sleep in the rain.”
“Fucking like to see
you try.” Will’s teeth were chattering hard, and his whole body
trembling from the cold as Doc worried the shorts down over his
commando bum and found himself face to cock, which made the blighter
burst into hysterical laughter. “Have we ulterior motives, Mr
Jones? Where the hell’s urBrain? I have to get this on camera.”
“Want a selfie of
your cock, do you, you shivering bastard?” Doc turned his attention
to the walking boots, which had stopped all progress of getting the
man naked. Focussing on something other than the naked, very
vulnerable body of Will fucking Charles helped clear his mind. He was
too cold, too tired to get hard over what was essentially a matter of
life and death, he told himself. Surely!
Once the boots were
dispensed with, he shoved the man into the sleeping bag and went
about the awkward business of stripping himself.
“Where the hell is
the urBrain when I need it?” Will chuckled between chattering
teeth.
“You point that thing
at me, and I’ll shove it up your arse.” Doc’s own teeth sounded
like a couple of spastic tap dancers had been turned loose in his
mouth.
“Now that’s a
function I didn’t find in the instruction manual,” Will replied.
What started out as
ribald comments on the shrivelling effect of the cold on male tender
bits dwindled to nothing more than the sound of convulsive shivering.
By the time Doc had shed the last of his clothes and shoved his way
down next to Will, he was seriously worried. It took all his
strength, which wasn’t a helluva lot at that moment, to pull the
bloke into his arms and hold him close enough to share body heat,
what little there was of it. The worry subsided a bit when Will threw
his arms around his neck and gave a harsh chuckle against his throat.
“This was seriously worth getting hypothermic for. Pity I’m too
fucking tired to appreciate it.”
Though Doc agreed
wholeheartedly with the sentiment, his focus was on getting Will
warm. Then he’d get out the backpacking stove and fix them
something hot. That was the last thing he remembered, that and the
feel of Will’s body shivering against him, in the tent redolent
with the male scent of core heat and wet gear, all overlaid by the
icy metal smell of the fells in a storm.
About K D Grace/Grace Marshall
About K D Grace/Grace Marshall
Voted
ETO Best Erotic Author of 2014, and a proud member of The Brit Babes,
K D Grace believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all
about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than
she is, otherwise, what would she write about?
When
she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening. When she’s not
gardening, she’s walking. She walks her stories, and she’s
serious about it. She and her husband have walked Coast to Coast
across England, along with several other long-distance routes. For
her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears
out a pair of walking boots. She loves mythology. She enjoys spending
time in the gym – right now she’s having a mad affair with a pair
of kettle bells. She loves to read, watch birds and do anything that
gets her outdoors.
KD
has erotica published with Totally Bound, SourceBooks, Xcite Books,
Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace,
Sweetmeats Press and others.
K
D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The
Initiation of Ms Holly,
Fulfilling
the Contract,
To
Rome with Lust,
and The
Pet Shop.
Her paranormal erotic novel, Body
Temperature and Rising,
the first book of her Lakeland Witches trilogy, was listed as
honorable mention on Violet
Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011.
Books two and three, Riding
the Ether,
and Elemental
Fire,
are now also available.
K
D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace
Marshall.
An
Executive Decision,
Identity
Crisis,
The
Exhibition,
Interviewing
Wade
are all available.
Find
K D Here:
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/KD_Grace
Pinterest:
http://www.pinterest.com/kdgraceauthor/
1 comment:
Hi, KD!
Welcome back to Beyond Romance. You are obviously a far more robust person than I am. Reading your excerpts left me with no question about whether *I* would be up to that trek.
Sounds like a fun book, though!
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