Vikings' Brides Box Set

by Jessica Knight

  The light of desire burns in his eyes as he begins thrusting his fingers in and out of me, building faster and faster. I gasp, my mouth dangling open from an explosion of pleasure. But I need his cock. His thick, mighty cock. I feel empty without it.

  Trident lets out a low grunt and removes his hand from me, using my juices to lubricate his rod, and then in a single quick motion, slides himself into me.

  Tremors overtake my body as he fills me up.

  “Yes, Trident, yes!” I squeal, moving against him. He arches forward, his muscles glistening in sweat, as he plants kisses on my chest and ribcage.

  “Goddess, you feel so good. You’re mine, Sylvie. I don’t care what anyone says. We belong together. You. Are. Mine.”

  He wraps his hands around my back and lifts me up until I’m straddling his thighs. My gown covers our connection as we grind together. Every inch of him spears me. My fingernails dig into his neck as his tongue licks over the tops of my breasts.

  I still wonder if this is real. I know it feels real and good—oh, so good, but to have him here so suddenly is a dream come true. My happiness is just as intense as the orgasm threatening to take me back to dreamland.

  “I’m going to come,” I whimper, riding his cock faster. I’m so wet, and the sounds of our skin slapping together proves just how soaked he makes me.

  “Give it to me. Come all over me, darling.” He holds my hips in place and pistons his hips as fast as he can, his cock pummelling me. “Come with me. Come with me,” he grunts.

  Trident’s eyes roll back as he thrusts a few more times, planting himself inside me while he shoots his seed into me.

  Once I feel the warm splash of come, I follow him. I cry out his name, clinging onto him for dear life as my orgasm brings me to the edge of ecstasy and back. I moan and whine for what seems like forever as the tremors from my explosion still rock me. I never want it to end. I’m afraid he will vanish into thin air when I open my eyes again.

  Even though his softening cock is still inside me, and my fingers touch the hair falling down his back, and our foreheads touch, slick with sweat, I do not dare open my eyes. Every sense in the world is telling me he is here, but my fear is rooted deep. I never want to be without him again.

  So I do what a girl is never supposed to do after a coupling with the man she loves—cry. My head falls to his shoulders, and my entire body shakes from the force of the emotions wailing from my mouth.

  “Shh, darling.” He kisses the top of my head. “It’s alright, I’m here. I know. I know,” he whispers in that roughened voice I love so much.

  I pull back and try to calm myself with deep inhales, but my words are broken and hard to understand. “I though—I—you—we—my father put me—and his warrior wanted−−−”

  A prolonged grunt leaves my mouth when the thought of the warrior with the clouded eye talking to me the way he had crosses my mind. When I imagine what could have happened to me in that dungeon.

  “Sylvie, open your eyes. Look at me.” He cups my face.

  I do not want to. What if he is gone? What if this is a dream?

  But I trust Trident.

  “Look at me, Sylvie. I got you.”

  When I open them, I see his handsome face through the blurriness of tears and hold onto him tight, still afraid he will drift away, and I’ll be alone again in the hands of my father.

  “Match my breaths, darling. Will you do that for me? Put your hand on my chest, feel my heart. Feel how it beats for you.”

  He grabs my hand and lays it above his strong, warrior heart, pumping fierce and loyal blood through his body. I watch his chest rise and fall, and I inhale through my nose and out my mouth. “There you go. A few more times. Come on.”

  I do as he says. His voice rumbles in his chest, and the reverberations tingle my palm. For some reason, that calms me more than watching the wide expanse of his chest fall.

  I let out the haunted breath that’s been choking me and start to calm.

  “There’s my darling,” he rubs his thumb over my cheek, and the callus that hardens the pad of his finger gives my skin a slight scratch. It’s comforting. I’ve missed him so much. “Tell me again. I couldn’t understand you the first time.” His lips curve in a teasing smile.

  “Nothing. It isn’t important. I’m so glad you’re here. How did you find me?”

  “I had no idea you’d be out here. I was coming to get you. I disobeyed Lord Grimkael. I couldn’t wait another day. I followed the path I usually do, and I saw a figure against the tree. I didn’t know it was you. I stopped to check, and then I saw the glow of the fire against your face, and my heart stopped. For a minute I thought—” he swallows, and the bulge in his throat bobs. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I’m not,” I tease him.

  “Apparently,” he smiles, bending low to kiss the back of my hand softly.

  “So what do we do now?” I lift myself off his lap, and my legs shake. I can barely hold myself up.

  “We are going back home. And we are finally going to get married no matter what—”

  He is interrupted by a whoosh, followed by a hard thud. Trident grunts deeply, his eyes suddenly wide with panic.

  “Trident!” I scream.

  There is an arrow in the middle of his back.

  He doesn’t answer.

  So I do the only thing I can do.

  I scream.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Trident

  “Idiot. You stupid fool.”

  I fight to open my eyes. Pain radiates from the middle of my back, and I grunt. The sheets bunch under me and scratch my palms. Damn things feel like straw. I’ll have to tell Lord Grimkael about the beds in the medical wing again.

  Wait a minute.

  Why I am in the castle? I’d know these damn beds anywhere. I snap my eyes open and see Wulf and Leiva staring down at me. “Why am I here?”

  “You,” Leiva slaps my chest, “are,” she slaps me again, “an idiot.” Leiva reaches back to slap my chest again, but I grab her hand just in time, before she makes the pain travel to the wound in my back, which I have no idea how I even got.

  “Don’t hurt an already hurt man, you mad woman,” I groan, trying to push myself up, but my arms give out when the pain becomes too much. “What happened? Why am I here? Where is Sylvie? I remember being with Sylvie, and then everything went black.”

  My eyes widen with panic. “Is she hurt? Where is she?” I grab Wulf by the shirt and yank him toward me. “Where the fuck is she?”

  “Trident, I need you to calm down and let go of me,” he answers in a flat tone, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. “We don’t know about Sylvie.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? I was with her.”

  “And you had an arrow in your back, slumped over Snow as she ran full speed for who knows how long. We don’t know what happened.”

  I shake my head, and my brows furrow when I think. Think, Trident. Think. “No. Wulf, you’re wrong. I was there. I was there with her. We had just made love. We were happy. We were going to be fine. I don’t understand. We were fine. Wulf, everything was fine. Where is she?”

  “We don’t know.”

  I clench my teeth together and push Wulf back. He smooths his hand over his shirt.

  “Don’t tell me that Wulf, please.” We were so close to being happy. What happened? I think back to the last thing I remember. I was with her. She had just stood up. She looked beautiful with her flushed cheeks and swollen lips. I remember a quick sharp pain in my back, and then everything went black.

  “I can’t remember. Wulf, I can’t remember.”

  “We will find her. Aye? We are going to bring her back. We will get her back. I promise on this blood.” He lifts up his scarred hand with a meaningful look in his eye.

  “It had to be them. It had to be her father. It’s the only thing that makes sense. She’s back there.” I slam my fist against the bed. “She’s back there. How long?” I shift my eyes
to Leiva.

  “How long, what?” she asks, turning me to my side to check the wound on my back.

  “How long have I been here? How long has she been back with her father?”

  She rolls me onto my back and shares a look with Wulf. The silence is much longer than I like.

  “How long?” I ask, impatient.

  “This is the first time you woke up. It’s been eighteen days.”

  “Eighteen days! Eighteen!” I yell and sit up, not giving a damn about the pain. “Why the hell have I been asleep for eighteen days? That makes no sense for a damn arrow in the back.”

  “You had a large lump on your head. You must have fallen. You were healing. I was getting nervous you may never wake up,” Alaric, Leiva’s assistant, chimes in, a little too peppy for my liking. “Here you are. Alive. How great is that?”

  “Shut up,” I grumble. “It isn’t great. It means it has been eighteen days since I saw Sylvie. Let us not forget it had been four weeks before that. So two months. Nearly two entire months without her. It’s unacceptable. I’ve failed her.”

  “You couldn’t have known.” Wulf tries to make me feel better.

  “I should have known. We were in Aland territory. She had escaped. I let my love and lust take over and blind me. Because of that, I’m injured, and once again, away from her. I let—”

  “—Your emotions blind you. Aye, we warriors have a hell of a time with that.”

  “Fuck. Fuck!” I curse, turning red-faced as the pain spreads through my veins like a wildfire. “Just how deep was that damn arrow?” I grunt.

  “Deep enough for me to worry,” Leiva says. “I need you to relax, aye?”

  “No. I must go get Sylvie.”

  “You’ll risk injuring yourself further,” Alaric states, obviously.

  “I don’t care!” I go to get up, but Wulf’s hand presses against my shoulder, shoving me back on the bed.

  “I care,” Lord Grimkael storms through the doors. Alaric lets out a high-pitched squeak before turning on his heels and running away toward another patient.

  He must not like authority.

  When Lord Grimkael gets to my bed, the cold stare he gives me makes me freeze. “You want to explain to me why you left and how? You knew the plan. You knew it! And now that plan is blown. Goddess, it’s going to be war, and it isn’t going to be because of Lady Sylvie. It’s going to be because of your stupidity.”

  He puts his hand on his hips and spins around. The fur on his shoulders sways, hitting me across the face. “I should have your fucking rank. I should not make you a warrior any longer, bloodline or not.”

  “Lord Grimkael—”

  “Shut up. I don’t want to hear it. I do not want to hear it from you. I hate that you’re a good warrior. You aren’t allowed to leave. Do you understand? I’ll lock you in the tunnels until your beard turns gray and can’t get your dick up anymore. Do you understand me, warrior?” he snarls.

  Everyone is silent. It’s so quiet I can hear the horses in the stable chewing hay. I know what I’m about to say might get me killed, but I have to say it.

  “I’m not going to stay. When I get back and have Sylvie in my arms, you may do what you find necessary, but I’m not resting until I have her back.”

  “Trident. You’re a fool.” Lord Grimkael glowers.

  “You’d do the same for Lady Sassa. You can say what you want. You can threaten what you want. It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to listen.”

  Lord Grimkael just stares at me, waiting for me to say something other than a clear disrespect to what he ordered, but I keep my mouth shut. Wulf shakes his head. Leiva scurries away where Alaric is, helping him change the bandage on another warrior’s shoulder, leaving me in awkward silence with Wulf and Lord Grimkael.

  “When this is over, you’ll receive twenty lashings with a silver tip whip. Do you understand? I can’t have one of my warriors disobeying me without consequence. Wulf, you’ll do it.”

  “What? No, Lord Grimkael, he is my—”

  Lord Grimkael wraps his hand around Wulf’s throat and shoves him against the wall.

  “I do not care what he is to you. I do not care if you are brothers, best friends, or fucking in the damn stables. You’ll do as I say, do you understand?” he growls, the words flying off his tongue so fast he sprays spit in Wulf’s face. “You’ll give him the lashings. And if you say anything else about it, I’ll turn around and have him give you ten for insubordination. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal, my Lord,” Wulf chokes and Lord Grimkael’s hold around his neck makes his face turn an ugly shade of purple.

  The Lord releases Wulf, and my friend gasps for air, holding his throat at the same time.

  “I swear to goddess, my people are going to be the death of me,” Lord Grimkael turns around and rushes out the door, leaving us in silence once again.

  “I think we made him mad,” I say, throwing my legs over the edge of the bed. I groan in frustration and agony as my back sends a shooting pain down my spine. I can’t let it stop me. I have a beautiful woman waiting for me to rescue her.

  “No, what gave that away?” he continues to gasp. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m leaving. I’m taking a boat, and I’m going to sail across the sea to get her, just like I did before.”

  “You are willing to get twenty lashings? With a silver tip? It will scar, Trident. You can’t be serious. You’re going to make me do it, aren’t you?”

  “I’d take a thousand lashings if it meant she was here waiting for me. Don’t act so superior, Wulf. You’d do the same for Lady Lilith.”

  He sighs, knowing that I’m right. “I’m coming with you.”

  I push myself out of bed with a grunt. The day isn’t going to wait.

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “And with your injury, how do you expect to save the day? I’m curious.” Wulf crosses his arms, the veins in his arms bulging.

  “I’ll figure it out.” I shrug. When I finally stand, my back doesn’t seem to hurt as much, but my stomach growls in need of food. Damn, Wulf may be right. I’m weak. I can feel it in my muscles and bones.

  “Maybe a good meal wouldn’t hurt. Just how in the hell did you guys make me stay alive all this time if I couldn’t eat on my own?”

  “Leiva may or may not have poured broth down your throat, forcefully.”

  I lift my hand to my neck and rub it. No wonder it’s sore. “Alright. Well, I must head up to my room. I’m going to bathe, change, and eat. Then pack, be at the dock before the sun sets. I’ll be sailing through the night. I’ll leave without you.”

  “Both of us are going to be getting lashes. I hope you know that.” Wulf rubs his temples, either deep in thought or about to have a headache coming on. “I’ll go ask Leiva for supplies. You’ll need that secret green paste of hers for your wound. I swear if it gets infected and you die, that’s on you. I won’t be getting blamed for it.”

  Wulf strides to where Leiva and Alaric are. Leiva’s lips purse, and her hands fly to her hips. Oh, she’s mad. She brings her finger up and shakes it in front of Wulf’s face.

  I take that moment and slip out of the room. I have my head turned over my shoulder to make sure Leiva or Alaric don’t see me and run right into someone. I don’t fall, but damn I feel the contact through my body and the center of my wound.

  “Sir Alexie,” I greet with a half bow, holding in a painful groan as my stitches pinch.

  “None of that, friend. We don’t do the ‘sir’ thing in Keivan Rus’. It’s usually just Prince Alexie, but you can call me Alexie.”

  “Right. Thank you, Alexie,” I sound out his name, unsure of what else to say. I notice a plate of food in his hand full of fruits, meats, and vegetables. “Who is that for?”

  My stomach makes itself known with a loud growl.

  “Oh, it’s for Leiva. She works all the time, you know. She doesn’t take proper care of herself. She needs to eat.”

 
“You’re interested in Leiva?”

  “She is my friend,” he shrugs, shuffling his weight on his feet. I’m a warrior. I’m trained to know when people are lying. He averts his eyes from mine and walks around me. “Excuse me, Sir Trident. I must be going. Leiva is hungry,” he reminds me.

  “Prince?” I call after him.

  He stops and turns around.

  “You’re going to have some competition. Warrior Erik is head over heels in love with that woman.” I end the conversation there and make my way upstairs.

  I have my own woman waiting for me.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sylvie

  I find myself staring out the window of my tower again. At least I’m not down below like I was before, but my father did lock me in my room. They even replaced the window with the thickest glass I could imagine. He brings me breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but other than that, I live life in silence now. I’m alone. I don’t have Aya here or Trident. I have no one to confide in. No one to tell my worries to.

  And I am worried.

  I lay my hand on my stomach and intake a shuttered breath. I missed my monthly a couple of weeks ago, and I know what that means. I want to be happy. I want to be excited, because if I am pregnant, then this baby is a part of Trident, and it may be the only way I can ever be close to him again. I miss him so much.

  Tears well in my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. Crying isn’t going to get me anywhere. It isn’t going to bring me closer to Trident. It isn’t going to fix my situation. It isn’t going to make my father change his mind. It is only going to make my time locked in my bedroom that much more miserable.

  I lean my head against the stone wall and look out toward the sea. There’s no moon. No stars. It’s pitch black. The water blends with the sky. I can’t tell it apart, which is a shame because I love it when the sea reflects the moon, glistening. I love it when the stars are out and twinkling, but tonight everything seems to reflect the mood I’m in.