GUNNER: MC ROMANCE (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 4)
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“Your parents will return safely,” he reassured her as they walked hand in hand, “News will reach them soon enough that their castle is intact and their family waits for them.”
“But then what?” Muriel asked. “We all just live here together?”
The thought was so ridiculous she almost couldn’t keep a straight face.
“Well that all depends on you,” John smiled.
Muriel wanted to ask him what he meant but she was distracted by a shooting star overhead and she stopped to look up into the sky.
“This is so incredible,” she gasped.
“It’s because it’s meant to be,” John pulled her closer to him and she felt his warmth.
They continued on past the loch and towards the forest. The moonlight glinted down on the water and lit the path ahead. It was the first time that Muriel had noticed it was a full moon and as they continued she felt a change in John’s demeanor, as if he was trying to restrain himself from saying something and holding back with each step they took.
He finally stopped on the edge of the loch and sat down on a rock. He motioned for Muriel to follow him and she sat down at his side as they looked up at the beautiful night’s sky and all of the splendor that was being opened up to them.
“Clan Campbell are very different indeed,” he continued their conversation from back in her bed chamber, “We have many secrets. Some of which have become legend and some that are just wild whispers around the highlands.”
“What sort of legends?” she asked, although she had the feeling that she already knew what he was going to answer.
“Wolves,” John said sternly, “Clan Campbell are half men… and half beast.”
Muriel felt a twinge of excitement. Even though she was confused, she had known the instant they had burst into the Great Hall that there was something distinctly different about them. The men and wolves were far too big to be anything short of supernatural.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she stammered.
John reached up and took hold of her face before he kissed her passionately and deeply on the lips. She allowed her body to submit to him and for him to take her roughly in his arms as he lay her back against the rock. She was as timid as a virgin should be, and although she had never felt or known passion like it, her wedding night nerves still thumped through her and held her back from truly letting go.
“John,” she panted as she broke his kiss and looked deep into his eyes.
He was the most amazing man she had ever met… and yet there was something so otherworldly about him… and it frightened her. As his passion grew and stirred deep within him, she saw the beast rising to the surface.
His eyes turned icy blue and his whole frame seemed to vibrate with power and lust, as the intense heat raged within him.
“My Lady,” he panted before he looked up at the moon. His face cracked into something primal and wild, and Muriel finally let herself go. She rode along with him, spurred on by his intensity and the power raging within him.
As he shifted from human into wolf form, he took her breath away. The power that radiated from him was so incredible and frightening she was sure he was about to rip her limb from limb. The wolf growled and ran a hot, wet tongue up the side of her neck and cheek. His claws pawed at her and ripped at the wedding dress and he looked up and howled at the moon.
Muriel was so turned on, she couldn’t believe what was happening to her. Her body was a mess of want and need and as John shifted back into his human form, the clothes torn from his body and revealing his nakedness, he pressed down hard on her and spread her legs with his thighs.
As he slid the tip of his manhood into her dripping wet sex and claimed her properly, Muriel squealed with delight and pleasure that reverberated throughout the highlands.
As John powered himself into her, he got harder with each stroke and built up to his powerful release.
Muriel had waited for this moment her entire life and it couldn’t have been more perfect. Her husband was like nothing she had ever known or could even have dreamed of, and as he thrust into her one last time and spilled his red hot seed, she unraveled around him. As she experienced her first orgasm, it was so intense she thought that it may tear her in half.
Afterwards she lay in his arms, nuzzled into his burning hot chest and traced lines with her fingertips up his naked torso.
“You are amazing John Campbell,” she whispered. “You have no idea what you’ve just done to me…” she giggled.
“Oh I do,” he kissed her on the forehead as he pulled her closer. “I’ve deflowered you… and hopefully impregnated you with a cub.”
Muriel felt a twinge in her belly.
A cub…
A baby for them both…?
“This is the beginning,” he whispered, “This is the start of the rest of the world. Together we are going to change Scotland forever…”
Muriel looked deep into his eyes and smiled. She knew he was right and hoped that she did have a baby growing inside of her.
“The stars,” she whispered as she looked up again, “Do you really believe this was written there?”
“Most certainly,” John smiled.
The ground began to freeze around them, but Muriel barely noticed. The heat coming from her wolf husband was keeping her warm and she could still feel it pulsing throughout her.
Less than forty-eight hours earlier she had just been a normal highland lassie waiting for her life to begin… and out of nowhere she had been thrown into an almost unbearable situation with the evil Lord Rose… rescued by the handsome John Campbell and married with the possibility of a baby on the way. It had certainly been an unbelievable day, but one she wouldn’t change for a moment. She had found something with John… even if it was just the beginning, she knew it was a journey she wanted to be on.
She looked over at Cawdor Castle and smiled. She had never wanted to leave before John had burst into the Great Hall, but now she had a husband of her own, one that she wanted to be with, she knew what Elizabeth and her mother had meant. Her destiny was being fulfilled… she had been chosen by a shifter clan and together they were going to begin something legendary. John said that it would depend on her… and she wanted to go. Together they could find their own home and start their own clan… The Campbell-Calder’s would be the most powerful family in the whole of the highlands.
She nuzzled into John’s shoulder and looked up at the stars. Above them trails of silver shot across the sky and Muriel took it as a sign from the Gods that she was on the right path. She was where she was meant to be and destiny had finally found her.
“I love you John Campbell,” she whispered as she locked her fingers with his, “And I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.”
John turned to her and kissed her deeply for one last time before they feel asleep together under the stars as wild wolves howled beneath the moon.
THE END
Dragon Shifter Romance
A Dragon to Watch Over Me
Leela Ash
Copyright © 2016 by Leela Ash. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Table of Contents
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 ONE
“Krista, come over here and dance!” Marcia called to her best friend, who was doing the same thing she usually did, sitting in the corner with a bored look on her face.
&n
bsp; Krista sighed. She wasn’t in the mood for being out at the bar; she had only gone to offer her best friend some moral support. A man Marcia had a crush on was celebrating his birthday and she had been invited, but she had been too afraid to go alone and so she had begged Krista to come along. Krista wasn’t sure why she should be there anyway; not when Marcia would simply end up hanging all over the guy and leaving to give him a private gift.
“I’ve really got to be going,” Krista called back, shaking her head and pointing toward the door in case Marcia didn’t get the hint. Marcia gave her an exaggerated frown but disappeared back into the crowd, and Krista sighed in relief. She was free.
Or so she thought.
“Hey baby,” a drunk man said with a slur, blocking her way to the exit. She’d been heading toward the back door where she could sneak through the alleyway and toward the parking lot without running into any more of her friends. She didn’t recognize the drunk man and tried to push her way past him. “Feel like getting lucky tonight? I love that ass!”
She rolled her eyes in disgust and finally made her way past him. Despite being a virgin, Krista was used to men leering at her, and although she would have loved to go a night without being pestered, it appeared that tonight just wasn’t going to be her lucky night.
“Hey!” he protested as he was shoved aside and the people around him tittered with laughter. Fortunately, there were enough people between them that it didn’t matter what he said. She was able to get safely past.
Krista finally made it out into the dark, cool night and inhaled a deep breath of delicious fresh air. Sneaking out through the alley had been a good idea.
Suddenly, she felt a searing pain on her head and saw a flash of white in front of her eyes.
“Got her, tie up her hands!”
“What the hell?” she mumbled, trying to push herself to her feet. But before she was able to regain her balance, another searing flash of pain brought spots before her eyes and she collapsed again.
“Don’t move!” an angry man shouted down to her. She was surrounded and terrified, but decided not to move. They had her outnumbered.
“Finally, we’ve been waiting so long for this!”
“What…” Krista brought her hand to her head, wincing in pain and confusion.
Suddenly, she heard a growl, unlike anything she had ever heard before, and cowered into the crook of her arm.
“Don’t touch her!” a man’s voice boomed. She tried to open her eyes, but what she saw just made her want to faint. A giant black dragon was standing at the end of the alleyway. At that point, she passed out cold.
CHAPTER TWO
Clayton scowled down at the woman passed out on the ground and cast a challenging glare to the group of men who had been trying to kidnap her. He knew exactly who they were, and the knowledge infuriated him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he growled, furious that they had the nerve to come anywhere near the woman most sacred to his clan.
But Clayton knew exactly what they were doing. Krista had been the main focus of both the self-proclaimed Guardians and the Kersh clan – and for good reason. She was extremely valuable, and the last living heir young enough to guarantee the continuance of the Kersh dragon clan.
“The girl is ours!” the small group’s leader hissed, leaping at Clayton and drawing a weapon from his side. Clayton flinched and jumped away, slapping the large gun out of his hand. Only Clayton knew it wasn’t just any gun – it was fully loaded with ammunition that would bind his powers and make it impossible to shift into his dragon form. From there, he could be killed as easily as any other mortal human.
“I don’t think so,” he growled, allowing himself to shift all the way into his dragon form. He normally restrained himself when he was in human areas, only shifting enough to take advantage of his powers while unleashing his fury on his enemy. But when he was protecting the one woman alive who was capable of ensuring the continuation of his race, he couldn’t take any chances.
The men’s eyes grew large and they all fumbled for their guns as Clayton let out a mighty roar. It shook the ground they were walking on and made everybody cower in terror. The heat from his breath was enough to singe off their eyebrows and they scrambled away, worried they would not be able to survive his malice, as he began to inhale and a burst of flames flickered from his mouth.
Krista was lying on the ground between his massive legs, totally limp, and now that they were alone, Clayton returned to his human form. He put on his cape to conceal his nakedness and picked Krista up, jumping into the air and flying her back to her apartment a few blocks away. He couldn’t let anybody see them, and his cloak helped to hide them from the people who might be glancing up at the night sky. It was imbued with the powers of his own world, a place he missed dearly.
Kaldernon, his home planet, was deeply missed by everybody in the clan, in fact, but they had been unable to find their way back to their own world. After a life-altering earthquake, the world seemed to open up and several of the dragon-born members of the Kersh clan had toppled through an invisible portal, landing in a world full of commotion.
They were concealed by a growth of trees near a ravine, and were able to see Kaldernon glimmering above their heads, haunting them with their inability to find a way through the portal. If they shifted into their dragon forms and tried to fly through, but they were knocked back violently and forced to recover for days from a blow unlike any other they had ever experienced.
Kaldernon had shimmered in the sky above their heads for hundreds of years as they perfected their underground settlement to protect themselves from the humans, and the Kersh clan watched as pioneers began to settle in the wilderness and construct a civilization of their own right next door. People were always drawn to the area for some inexplicable reason. It was as if they were seeking the immense power they sensed coming from Kaldernon and the group of dragon shifters that had made their home there.
CHAPTER THREE
One day, a distant relative of Clayton’s had an encounter with one of the village girls. Her eyes were a shimmering, smoky blue, and he hadn’t been able to resist her. They had been so powerfully drawn to each other that they had ravished each other right then and there, the woman’s legs splayed out with her back against a mighty oak.
When he brought her back to the clan, the others were astounded. It was clear that she was from Kaldernon, whether by some strange twist of fate or pure chance. The Kersh clan suddenly knew that other rips in the dimensional fabric separating Earth and Kaldernon must have opened up, letting in a group of people from their world who were renowned for their ability to carry the dragon-born children; the Lonis. They were exceptionally intelligent and artistic, and had created a civilization in Kaldernon that brought great joy and culture to those who lived there.
The young maiden was completely oblivious to the importance of her bloodline, but when she looked to the sky and saw Kaldernon for the first time, her eyes widened in disbelief and they knew it must be true. Nobody but descendants of Kaldernon were able to see it shimmering in the sky, taunting them from above, almost like a vision from a dream.
But when asked what she knew of her relatives, she had grown quiet and unhappy.
“It is only my sister and I,” she had said woefully. “Everybody else died onboard the ship.”
This meant that nobody had told them about Kaldernon. She quickly became infatuated with the dragon shifter and bore many of his children. The bloodline stayed strong with her descendants after that, but then, they had begun to die out. Now, it was only her sister’s heirs who lived on, oblivious to the dragon-born, living their lives and doing their part to ensure the prosperity and culture of Earth’s civilization.
The Kersh clan was thinning out, though, and everybody had turned to Clayton for answers. He had been the descendent of the original leader of the Kersh clan, and his bloodline was not crossed with the Lonis. However, it was only a Loni that would be able to help them to
ensure the continuation of their race, and he was terrified that if he couldn’t find the last woman of Loni descent, everything they had worked for would be lost. There would be no dragon-born left to ensure the survival of their beautiful lore, and all the progress they had made in researching the rift of time and space that kept them from Kaldernon was useless. Everyone who had lived before him would have died in vain.
And so the dragon-born had become extremely determined to protect the Loni descendants. They had tracked them through the ages, but had never needed their aid until now, when there was only one woman left who was capable of doing what needed to be done. But how could they approach her and ask the impossible of her? It was unfair, and odd, to approach a woman simply to ask her to be the unwitting carrier of a dragon-born child. She was coveted and precious to the Kersh clan, and had been secretly protected ever since she was a child.
Clayton had gotten his first glance of her when they were both around ten years old. She was walking down the sidewalk, secretly singing a quiet song that gave him a wistful feeling. It reminded him of the musical stories that had been shared with the Kersh clan before they had been spit out of Kaldernon. The imaginative Lonis had created many beautiful songs that still survived in his clan, and they were blessed with so many musical gifts that her little song immediately struck him as the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.
She didn’t see him and continued walking, but she dropped a little piece of paper out of her backpack. Clayton saw it and gasped. Should he retrieve it for her or should he run away and pretend he hadn’t seen anything? But what if it was important? He wasn’t supposed to interact with any of the humans, and most especially not the Lonis, just in case he roused suspicion. He was dressed in loose black pants and a red vest, but it was his eyes that would give him away. They were a true sign of the dragon-born, illuminated by green and gold specks. Sometimes his pupils would contract into slits, giving them an abnormally reptilian look that made the humans uneasy. What if she screamed?