BREAKER (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 14)

by Samantha Leal

  She leaned forward and pulled his shirt up. Beneath it were his perfect abs. His muscles were tight and solid from hours of fighting, swinging a sword and jousting on his powerful horse.

  “I’m so glad I found you,” he whispered into her neck as he kissed her once more and pressed himself against her. Miranda bit her lip with ecstasy when she felt the stiffness in his trousers. She ran her hands through his hair and pulled him closer to her, needing to see into his large brown eyes. She saw everything when she looked into them; it was as if he were a mirror reflecting her own soul, and when he kissed her, he seemed to breathe life back into her. Ryan had taken so much of that away.

  Caine pinned her arms back high above her head with one hand and with the other he began to pull down her robes, exposing her breasts. He sucked on them hungrily and reached between her legs to find her underwear. He pulled them down in one swift movement and plunged a finger inside of her. She moaned and thrust her hips up to meet him. She was soaking wet and desperate for him. She had missed his touch, which remembered so well now and couldn’t get enough.

  I’m the luckiest woman alive, she thought. I’m getting a second chance at my perfect life.

  Caine released her hands and kissed down her throat, her chest and her stomach before reaching between her legs. He pulled her to the edge of the bed and spread her as wide as he could before lightly flicking his tongue up and down her sex. Miranda screamed in ecstasy and Caine grunted as he crawled back on top of her with his rock solid manhood in his hand. He parted her legs again with his knees and positioned his helmet at her opening.

  “I love you, Miranda,” he whispered before sliding himself slowly inside her. He grunted and put all of his weight on her. “And I am never going to let you go again.”

  Caine thrust in and out of her slowly and pinned her back into the bed. He held her wrists against the bedframe and slammed her against it. Miranda could barely breathe as he took her, and before long, she was on the verge of the most intense release.

  “Caine,” she panted, “I’ve missed you so much.”

  He drove himself into her, hot and hard and hitting her spot so perfectly that her whole body shook and seemed to open to him, allowing him to penetrate her deeper than ever before.

  His thighs tensed and with each stroke Miranda knew she wasn’t going to be able to hold on any longer. She unraveled beneath him in a wave of pleasure and screamed up to the ceiling as she held onto his neck. Caine wasn’t far behind her, and at nearly the exact same moment, he began to cum, shooting his hot, fierce load right up inside her. He groaned as he buried his face into her neck and shuddered on top of her. Miranda was split open and full of his love… and she never wanted to let it go.

  ***

  They lay side by side in Caine’s huge four-poster bed, and he cradled her and kissed her head.

  “This is just the beginning,” he whispered, “We have so much to look forward to.”

  Miranda trailed her fingertips up the side of his arm and breathed him in. Even the scent of him was familiar. He really was the other half of her soul…

  Maybe this is why nothing ever seemed to work out for me, she thought, I was always supposed to be here, with him.

  She had only been back in the past for twenty-four hours, but she was already losing sight of her current life. She wasn’t leaving anything behind that she would crave as much as Caine. She no longer had to worry about Ryan… about her shitty boss who was so quick to throw her under the bus the very second something went wrong… She would miss her parents, but she knew that they would want her to be happy. And she hadn’t been in 2015. She smiled as she looked up at her amazing man. Her one and only love that after hundreds of years, she had been given another chance with. Her knight. Her savior.

  Caine ran his hand through her hair and kissed her.

  “You are even more beautiful than I remember,” he smiled. “But you have to tell me… Where were you all of these years?”

  Miranda looked into his eyes and wished that she could have told him the truth. She wished she could have told him all about how the world is in the future, but she knew it would blow his mind… and not only that, he would probably think she was a witch, wielding black magic with her crazy talk.

  She could try and explain television, the internet, electricity and cell phones, but she had realized the second that she had woken up in 1076, it was a lot more enjoyable without them. Instead of wasting time watching brain dead TV shows or surfing the web, she could cuddle up in the arms of this amazing man and let him make love to her all night. No distractions and one hundred percent dedication. She was excited for their future. Just as long as it stayed well in the past.

  THE END

  Through the Viking Gateway

  Leena Archer

  Copyright ©2016 by Leena Archer. 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.

  Chapter 1

  Puririri

  Puririri

  Natalie blinked. Her phone was ringing. It was three AM, and her phone was ringing. Rolling over, she snatched the phone from the floor and looked at the number.

  It was Cedric.

  Groaning, she flicked her thumb over the accept call button.

  “Cedric, do you know what time it is right now in Ireland?” she growled.

  “That’s what I called to talk about.”

  The chill, serious tone of his voice cut through Natalie’s sleepy haze. Cedric only sounded like that when something was wrong.

  “Natalie… I can’t do this anymore.”

  Natalie’s mouth opened and closed, and she choked out, “Can’t do what?”

  “This. This field work. Your career. If you’re going to be spending half of your time digging in pits on the other side of the world, I’m done. Either get a job in the US, or we end this.”

  Natalie’s throat seemed to be closing like a clenched fist. She had to force herself to speak.

  “Cedric, we talked about this. You knew I was going to be traveling.”

  “I thought you were going to get this field work shit out of your head and settle down at a museum job, or at some university, not spend half your life galloping across oceans. I didn’t sign up for this.”

  “But what about the wedding? We already sent the invitations.” Natalie said desperately, searching for a straw to grasp at. “We put a deposit on the venue.”

  “We cancel it. I’m not going to shackle myself to a woman who’s not there half the time. That’s not a marriage, Natalie. It’s me or the job. Choose.”

  Natalie sat on her bed in silence, just holding the phone to her ear. Her blood was roaring so loudly in her ears it sounded like she was going over a waterfall.

  “Natalie?”

  “The job.”

  “…What?”

  Natalie took a deep breath, and an explosion of words burst out of her. “Cedric, you’ve never supported me. When I went into the archaeology program, you told me to buy lottery tickets instead, because I was more likely to make money that way. Every time I get awarded a grant, or find something interesting, you act like I’m trying to read you an encyclopedia about encyclopedias. You have zero respect for me, or for anything I do, and this has been my dream since I was five. So yes, Cedric, I will choose my job over you, because dead Vikings, who’ve been underground for a thousand years, still treat me better than you do!”

  Ending the call, Natalie dropped the phone on her bed. Then she very slowly fell over.

  Well. That was a thing that had happened.

  It had been building for a long time. Sometimes, Natalie didn’t know why she’d even said yes. She’d just been so caught up in the moment, she supposed. The whole scene seemed to sparkle at the time: the fancy dinner, Cedric going down on one knee, everyone in the room c
lapping—and then it had all just fallen apart. They argued about everything, whether it was wedding planning or career plans or what to have for dinner, invariably ending with Cedric making passive aggressive comments about every single thing she did. Natalie had actually been glad to cross the Atlantic Ocean and get away from him.

  Taking a deep breath, she sighed loudly, trying not to cry. One of the other women in the hostel room sat up, glaring at her.

  “Will you be quiet? The rest of us are trying to sleep, here.”

  Natalie resisted the urge to throw a boot at her. Instead, she got out of bed and started dressing herself, using her phone as a flashlight. T-shirt, khaki pants, a quilted polyester vest for warmth, and boots. Throwing her phone into her bag, she pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and stormed out the door.

  The hostel she was staying in was only a short walk from the excavation site. A farmer had been digging the foundation for a barn in a disused field, and found a barrow, an ancient grave site. Reaching the dig, Natalie turned on a floodlight. Maybe she could clear her mind a little by trying to find something in this giant, mostly empty pit.

  Natalie surveyed the hole without actually expecting to see anything— only the dark brown of fertile soil— but a glint caught her eye. Something golden peeked at her from a corner of the hole. Hopping down, she picked it up and put a rock in its place, so she could mark its location later. T

  It was a necklace made of thin discs of gold and inscribed with words; it was too dirty to read. There was a large pendant in the center, easily twice as large as the discs surrounding it. Natalie set it down in front of the floodlight and rummaged around the supplies until she found a clean-ish cloth. Then she began gently rubbing away the soil. As she cleaned, the world began to spin.

  Natalie paused.

  That was odd. She felt fine, now. With a shrug, she went back to her cleaning, and when she revealed the face of the central pendant, the world went black.

  Chapter 2

  Natalie found herself in that uncomfortable position where her eyes were closed but the world kept spinning, like she’d just gotten off the tilt-a-whirl at the county fair. She must have had a dizzy spell and fallen into the pit. Probably a delayed reaction from her fight with Cedric. The reality of it had just hit her all at once.

  Natalie forced her eyes open, expecting to find herself surrounded by earthen walls and covered in dirt. Instead, she was lying on soft grass, with nothing in sight but a canopy of trees and an incredibly handsome man leaning over her suspiciously.

  Very few men could pull off sideburns, but he did it admirably, his thick brown hair framing a square jaw and broad cheekbones. More than that, though, Natalie was caught by his eyes. They were dark and piercing, and fiercely intelligent. If this was an EMT come to rescue her, she was ready to be rescued.

  Then she noticed that the extremely handsome man was holding a sword.

  Sitting up with a yelp, Natalie looked around. It wasn’t just one man—she was completely surrounded. More than a dozen strangers stood around her, all of them armed, in some cases with farm tools. Not only that, the dig site was nowhere to be seen. These strange men must have picked her up and taken her somewhere.

  This night just kept getting worse and worse.

  ***

  It was the end of the day. The sun was starting to set. The men were heading for the main hall, ready for dinner after a long day’s work. Alrek himself was about to enter when there was a blinding flash and a crack of thunder. While everyone looked around in confusion, for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, Alrek saw smoke rising from a field just outside the settlement. Whistling to gather everyone’s attention, he headed in that direction.

  The field did not have so much as a blade of grass blown out of place, but it had sprouted a woman. She was lying flat on her back, apparently unconscious, with her mouth hanging open. She was so unnaturally pale that Alrek wondered if she was dead, until he saw her chest rise and fall with her breath.

  She clearly wasn’t a Gael. Even if she was a Gael, Gael’s didn’t usually travel by means of lightning. She was unlike any woman he’d ever seen before, her clothes completely foreign. His men stared at her suspiciously. Even Banki looked like he wanted nothing to do with her. Still, Alrek thought, women didn’t just come out of nowhere. We’ll have to do something with her.

  He was about to drop his sword and see if he could wake her when she woke up on her own. Their eyes met, for just a moment— and then she saw his sword and panicked. She jumped away with a shrill yelp, setting everyone even more on edge.

  Alrek knew his men were looking to him for an order, but he stood silent as he watched the strange woman scramble about, a smile teasing the side of his mouth. She looked like a frightened chicken. Finally, she lurched to her feet, staring at them in terror.

  Grabbing the bag slung over her shoulder, she held it out in front of her, saying something completely unintelligible. Even if she was speaking a language he knew, she was so upset Alrek wouldn’t have understood her anyway.

  The men were beginning to shift, but Alrek held up a hand and they maintained their position. This woman seemed completely harmless. There was no need to kill her.

  Yet.

  The woman had noticed his motion, and turned to Alrek. He was stunned by the expression on her face—pleading desperation. They didn’t need to speak the same language for him to understand she was begging him for mercy.

  Her expression wasn’t the only thing he was stunned by. He’d seen many blue eyes in his life, but none that were quite the same shade as a calm ocean on a clear day. They would have been beautiful if they weren’t filled with fear, and the fact that they were, barely made a difference.

  While Alrek stared, she continued to speak, babbling in that strange foreign tongue of hers. She began taking things out of her bag, dropping them on the ground in front of her— a small white tube, a metal ring with jangling keys on it, some pieces of paper held together with a coiled wire. Finally, she found whatever she was looking for and yanked it out, thrusting it toward Alrek.

  Everyone jumped, Alrek himself included. Banki growled at his side, ready to thrust his spear forward, but Alrek flung an arm in front of him. The woman was standing there with her eyes clenched shut, shaking like a newborn foal. She clearly expected him to take the object she was holding.

  Cautiously, Alrek leaned forward and took the object from her hand. It was rectangular, carved from some smooth white material Alrek had never seen before and decorated with metal edges and studs. Banki leaned over curiously, though he didn’t lower his axe an inch.

  Alrek turned the device over, examining it closely, and to his shock, it vibrated and lit up like a torch. No, not like a torch. Not like anything Alrek had ever seen. The flat front of the object was glowing with some uncanny light, colorful symbols drifting across it. He couldn’t even have begun to guess the source of this light, or even what it was for.

  Banki glanced suspiciously from the rectangle to the woman.

  “What magic is this?” he muttered, glaring at her suspiciously. Giving him a frightened look, the woman started digging in her bag again, this time coming out with a folded leather pouch. This, she gave to Alrek as well.

  There didn’t seem to be anything usual about it at first— it was just a folded leather pouch, stitched neatly at the sides. Then Alrek flipped it open. A tiny picture of the woman herself, more accurate than any drawing could ever be, stared out at him. She’s smiling. Quite unlike the face she was making now, he thought, glancing up at her. More of those strange runes surrounded the picture, and it gleamed with iridescence in the evening light.

  Fiddling with the pouch in his hands, Alrek discovered it was like a book—several leaves of leather stitched together, containing small chips of a strange rigid material. A central pouch held foreign coins and some pieces of paper.

  She must think we’re here to rob her, Alrek thought. She’s trying to give me her valuables.

 
“I’d put that down, if I were you,” Banki said. “It’s unnatural. It must be some object meant to cast a spell on you.”

  Alrek frowned, looking up at the stranger. Women attempting to lay curses usually didn’t look that terrified. She was still searching her bag, dropping objects on the ground as she went.

  The next thing she produced was a small, thick tube made of dark metal. Evidently, she didn’t think this was important enough to offer as a gift, because she dropped it to the grass along with everything else. It landed on one end with a loud click, and an impossibly bright light began to pour out of it. The men jumped, yelling as the beam of white fire cut across them.

  “Alrek, you can’t tell me that hasn’t got some dark trick about it,” Banki said angrily. “No man can make a light like that.”

  Everyone else seemed to agree. Growls went up around the circle, and more than a few men started to inch forward, axes and spears at the ready. Alrek’s eyes went from his angered men to the frightened woman. She was frozen in place, not seeming to understand what they were so angry about. The look on her face chilled him to the bone.

  That was the look of a woman who thought she was about to die.

  They were all inching forward now, closing in on her. If Alrek didn’t do something soon, they’d run her through. To his confusion, the idea made him uncomfortable. He’d seen many women die. Some of them, he’d even killed himself. This woman, he did not want to die. He wanted to see what her eyes looked like when she wasn’t scared for her life.

  Stepping forward, Alrek began to speak.

  Chapter 3

  Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.