Suncoast Society
Almost Gothic
Rusty’s childhood is far darker than it looks on the surface. When he falls in love with Eliza on the day they meet in high school, he knows he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, no matter how long he has to wait. Even if it means waiting forever.
Eliza has no plans to get married—her education comes first. She’s happy to play hard with Rusty, whether at D&D or LARP combat, even if Rusty has one pointless and annoying line he won’t cross in their personal life.
But the night he finally confesses his worst secret, he becomes hers for life. She’ll risk everything to make things right for her beloved barbarian. Sometimes, the darkest and most twisted fairy tales are also the most perfect. Now, nearly thirty years later, the past has returned to haunt him. Can the Lady once again rescue her faithful Knight from his own personal hell?
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary
Length: 43,562 words
ALMOST GOTHIC
Suncoast Society
Tymber Dalton

Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
ALMOST GOTHIC
Copyright © 2018 by Tymber Dalton
ISBN: 978-1-64010-907-0
First Publication: January 2018
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2018 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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DEDICATION
For Sir, and the shadows.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tymber Dalton is the wild-child alter-ego of author Lesli Richardson. She lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida with her husband (aka “The World’s Best Husband™”) and too many pets. Active in the BDSM lifestyle, the two-time EPIC award winner is also the bestselling author of over one hundred and twenty-five books, including The Reluctant Dom, The Denim Dom, Cardinal’s Rule, the Suncoast Society series, the Love Slave for Two series, the Triple Trouble series, the Coffeeshop Coven series, the Good Will Ghost Hunting series, the Drunk Monkeys series, and many more.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
The title comes from the Steely Dan song Almost Gothic.
Some of what happened in Friends in Common leads into this book. I strongly recommend reading that one first.
Rusty and Eliza have made appearances in many of the Suncoast Society books. Their most notable ones are A Roll of the Dice, A Turn of the Screwed, Chains, Broken Arrow, Initiative, See You Sometime, Happy Valenkink’s Day, Happy Spanksgiving, and Friends in Common.
Niall’s story is told in Empty-Handed Heart (Suncoast Society 66) the start of which overlaps a little chronologically with the end of this book.
While the books in the Suncoast Society series are standalone works which may be read independently of each other, the recommended reading order to avoid spoilers and to not miss any backstory information is as follows:
1. Safe Harbor
2. Domme by Default
3. Cardinal’s Rule
4. The Reluctant Dom
5. The Denim Dom
6. Pinch Me
7. Broken Toy
8. A Clean Sweep
9. A Roll of the Dice
10. His Canvas
11. A Lovely Shade of Ouch
12. Crafty Bastards
13. A Merry Little Kinkmas
14. Sapiosexual
15. A Very Kinky Valentine’s Day
16. Things Made Right
17. Click
18. Spank or Treat
19. A Turn of the Screwed
20. Chains
21. Kinko de Mayo
22. Broken Arrow
23. Out of the Spotlight
24. Friends Like These
25. Vicious Carousel
26. Hot Sauce
27. Open Doors
28. One Ring
29. Vulnerable
30. The Strength of the Pack
31. Initiative
32. Impact
33. Liability
34. Switchy
35. Rhymes With Orange
36. Beware Falling Ice
37. Beware Falling Rocks
38. Dangerous Curves Ahead
39. Two Against Nature
40. Home at Last
41. A Kinkmas Carol
42. Ask DNA
43. Time Out of Mind
44. Happy Valenkink’s Day
45. Splendid Isolation
46. Similar to Rain
47. Happy Spank Patrick’s Day
48. Fire in the Hole
49. Pretzel Logic
50. This Moody Bastard
51. Walk Between the Raindrops
52. Rub Me Raw
53. Any World That I’m Welcome To
54. Heartache Spoken Here
55. Roll With the Punches
56. See You Sometime
57. Borderline
58. A Case of You
59. Reconsider Me
60. Never Too Late for Love
61. Blues Beach
62. Happy Spanksgiving
63. Our Gravity
64. Friends in Common
65. Almost Gothic
Some of the characters in this book appear in or are featured in previous books in the Suncoast Society series. All titles available from Siren-BookStrand.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
About the Author
Author's Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
&
nbsp; Landmarks
Cover
ALMOST GOTHIC
Suncoast Society
TYMBER DALTON
Copyright © 2018
Chapter One
Rusty McElroy fell in love with Eliza when he was sixteen years old, on the day they met.
That also happened to be the first time she thoroughly kicked his ass.
It was the first weekend of their sophomore year of high school, and the first weekend their medieval LARP group had gotten together since school let out for summer break late last May. He’d never seen Eliza before that day, but she’d been invited by one of his friends who shared Biology with her during second period.
Brown eyes and short, reddish-brown hair, slim, she was dressed in a men’s costume—a blue tunic, grey leggings, authentic-looking leather boots, and black leather bracers on both arms.
Not cheap-ass, Costumes-R-Us bracers, either. Custom-made, embossed leather, and considering how small she was, they must have been fitted to her.
The green thread of envy over kids being better equipped than him had never extended to women before, but this girl looked like she’d just walked out of the 1600s and was ready to battle somebody.
Some of their group, comprised of kids and adults, was either in SCA, involved in BARF or the Sarasota Medieval Fair, or other local Ren Fair groups, or all of the above.
The rest of them just liked to dress up, run around, and beat the crap out of each other with fake weaponry while pretending to talk in very bad British, Scottish, and other accents.
What Rusty hadn’t realized at that time, however, was that Eliza was a weapon.
And there was not a damn thing fake about her.
He was about to learn that.
Painfully.
Apparently his friends thought it’d be funny to pair him with her to spar, since she was new to the group, he didn’t have a girlfriend, and they knew he hated fighting women—unless he knew they could hold their own against him—because he was terrified he’d accidentally hurt them.
Well, that was one of the reasons. The other reason he kept to himself, because no one else needed to know that. And based on his size and behavior, everyone assumed the first reason.
That meant there were only two women he’d willingly fight in their group, both of them in their twenties, but neither was there today. One was a karate black belt and the other a kickboxing teacher who’d spent eight years as an MP in the Marines over in the Middle East.
Already six two, despite being gangly, he’d grown into his limbs and was fast and sure. Two years of judo hadn’t hurt any.
Except the local rec center, where he’d been taking the classes for free, lost their instructor and that meant an end to his lessons. No way could his mom afford to pay for private lessons.
Another reason he wasn’t in SCA or active in the local ren fairs yet, because it just wasn’t in their budget.
So he kept in shape by running, usually late at night when it was cooler and there was nobody around. He couldn’t afford to be on the cross-country team at school, but he knew he needed a way to keep burning off the darkness in his brain. Between running and the combat, it helped.
Gave him a way to zone out.
Run to exhaustion, step into a dark and wooded area to jerk off and get rid of the boner the pain of running caused him, and get himself home to collapse.
This group was free to all comers. Since they met at a county park, it didn’t cost them anything for the facility. There were people there dressed in everything from shorts and T-shirts, all the way up to full plate armor.
Rusty had cobbled together his tunic with clearance fabric for a buck a yard and a sewing machine he’d checked out from the library for two weeks after the librarian spent ten minutes showing him how to thread it and change out the needle in case he broke one.
His mom had found the black, plus-sized women’s stirrup pants that he used as leggings at a thrift shop, and he’d taken them in at the waist so they’d fit him and cut the elastic stirrups off the bottom. They hit him about six inches above his ankles, which was fine, because he wore second-hand leather hiking boots and black socks.
In other words, he’d put in some effort despite his lack of funds.
His wasters, a short sword and a broadsword, both wooden, he’d bought used from another kid after mowing lawns for neighbors to earn the money. And the same friend’s dad had just set up a garage forge and was going to start teaching them how to make better, more realistic weapons this fall, once the weather cooled a little. Rusty had made a wooden shield that looked like crap but had saved him a few bumps and bruises over the years.
Of course Duke, one of the guys running the combat today, ordered Rusty and Eliza into a combat area first. They used an elimination process with three chalk circles in the grass, but made sure everyone got to fight at least once per session. Sometimes the older kids and adults would spar with the younger, less experienced ones, not giving them an easy win but letting them get some time in, at least.
Rusty swallowed hard as he stared down at the girl, who was maybe five three. Instead of a sword she wore a long leather pouch slung crossways on her back, the strap to the front.
A challenging gaze atop a confident smirk beat its way into his heart and almost made him take a step away from her.
“Don’t hold back, dude,” she softly said.
He forgot to use his accent. “You’re a girl.”
Her smirk widened. “Thanks for noticing.”
Rusty’s heart did a weird little shimmy he’d never felt before. “Rusty.”
“Eliza. We gonna talk or fight?”
“Come on, Rusty!” Duke yelled from outside the circle in his fake Scottish brogue. “Move yer bloody arse. Time’s a-wastin’, boyo.”
Rusty drew his waster from his belt, the short sword this time, and readied his shield.
She didn’t even have a shield, and her hands were still empty.
Duke blew his whistle and Rusty found himself circling as Eliza pivoted in place, looking all too confident for her stature and unarmed status when compared to him.
Fuck. Goddammit, Duke. He knew this was a setup, that Duke and the others were eagerly anticipating this fight because Rusty would basically let her take swats at him until she wore herself out and he could finally go in for a non-assholish kill.
He hadn’t been able to get a good look at what was in her pouch either, because she kept her back to him as he circled.
“You need to draw your weapon, M’lady,” he said in character. This week his British accent was more Tom Baker’s Doctor than Cockney accent. He was still trying to decide on one, but after someone telling him he sounded like the cereal commercial leprechaun last year, he’d leave the Irish accents to someone else to mangle.
Her gaze narrowed. “I shall,” she said so quietly that he knew only he could hear her and he couldn’t tell if she was using an accent or not. “Once you quit acting like a puss.”
Something inside him snapped. Yes, it was wrong to fight a woman. But he suddenly wanted to kick this woman’s ass for accidentally stepping on that emotional landmine she didn’t even know was there.
He was never really sure what happened next, despite everyone else going quiet as they watched the demolition take place. He’d lunged, shield up and sword ready to take a strike at her thigh, which would be counted as a disabling landed hit and end the match.
Except…next thing he knew, he was on his back, the air driven from his lungs by the impact of her somehow sweeping his legs out from under him and him hitting the ground. Now she had two foam-covered sticks in her hands and he desperately used his shield and his sword to deflect her hits, which fell fast, hard, and heavy.
He could tell from the light in her eyes and the grin on her face that even though she could easily go for a disabling hit, she wanted this fight to continue.
She was toying with him.
The way he’d pretty much expected to toy with her.
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Reinforced when she landed a staccato series of blows on his shield that painfully jarred him all the way to his shoulder before she stepped back so he could scramble to his feet.
Now everyone was cheering, for her, for him, he wasn’t sure. Around him, the world faded as he met her gaze and recognized a darkness there that spoke to him.
This time, he didn’t hold back when he charged, letting out a roar as he did.
“There you go, barbarian,” she softly said as she feinted and dodged and deflected his blows with her sticks. “Let’s do this right, aye?” She moved like she knew exactly what she was doing, and it finally hit him squarely between the eyes that she’d had martial arts training of some sort.
He stepped back to reevaluate his attack, circling each other now, and he felt like the prey instead of the hunter. He wasn’t used to this. His judo training had all been unarmed combat. But whatever she’d had, she used her sticks like they were extensions of her, not just blindly swinging at him like some kids did when they watched too much Robin Hood on TV.
That funny little shimmy his heart had made earlier returned and now pounded in his skull, and it wasn’t just the thrill of combat, the exertion under a hot Florida August afternoon sun, or old nightmares accidentally dredged close to the surface by her words.
Their joust started in earnest, him unable to land any hits on her as she fought two-handed as easily as he did with one, no fumbles in coordination, no hesitation. It was almost like she anticipated every move he made and countered it before his brain could even send the signals to his limbs to take action.
A step behind her the entire round.
No doubt about it.
About ten minutes in, he was sweating his balls off and she looked like she’d just stepped out of a deep freeze. Part of him wanted to blindly charge her again to force her to make the kill and end this, because he sensed she was enjoying their sparring too much to do that on her own.