“Enter,” the voice came from inside. It was him, she could tell, even after only seeing him once.
One of the guards opened the door for her, and Miranda stepped inside. The room was fabulous, like something out of a fantasy. Ahead of her were open doors leading out onto a balcony and long, flowing curtains were being blown in by a gentle breeze. The sunlight that shone in made the stone floor look gold and it matched the luxurious fabrics and paintings that adorned the room. Big velvet chairs flanked either side of the fireplace and gilded mirrors hung above it. She stepped further inside and jumped as she realized Sir Caine was out on the balcony and looking back in at her.
“Good morning,” he said quietly, “You look ravishing.”
Miranda felt herself blushing and she moved forward and took a seat. She hoped he would come and join her but he stayed still, silently watching her with a little amused smile.
“Sir Caine…” she began, “What year is this?”
He bit his bottom lip and studied her.
“I know,” he said, “I can’t believe it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other either. What, it must be, ten years?” He moved closer.
“Must be…” she played, “What year was the last time?”
“I believe it was 1066, I remember because it was before the great battle,” he said as he shook his head, “I don’t know how I’ve lived without you for so long.”
Her skin began to tingle… that made the year 1076…
“Tell me what happened,” she said, “When you found me in the woods?”
He shook his head and came inside, crossing the room and sitting down opposite her.
“You were just lying there… strange clothes… unconscious… as if you had just dropped from the sky,” he looked off into space. “It was… fate… for me to be there, I mean.”
“Where are those clothes?” she asked.
“My men burned them,” he said. “They feared witchcraft. Strange happenings go on in those woods, and I was scared for you.”
Miranda looked down at her feet, remembering studying something in college about how fucked up medieval times were when it came to witches. The last thing she wanted was them to accuse her of that.
“Did you think about me often?” he asked her as he stared up and looked longingly into her eyes.
“Always,” she said. And to her disbelief she realized that was true. Each second she was spending with him was making her feel like she had known him forever and he was a part of her that had been missing. She didn’t know how, but she knew that their souls had been connected before.
“I still remember the last time,” he smiled, “You were on the back of that big black horse, and your father ordered you to follow them as they left,” he looked down. “I knew you didn’t want to go and it broke my heart.” He reached out and touched her hand. “I always vowed that I would find you… And now here you are.”
Miranda smiled at him. Somewhere, there was a loose memory of what he had told her. She asked him to recall more details and with each little story he told her, a picture built up in her mind…
She had been Lady Miranda once and Sir Caine was the man she was supposed to marry. The more he spoke, the more she knew it to be true. They were madly in love and had been together since childhood, meeting secretly, planning their wedding, growing up together and being inseparable… until their families’ quarreled and Miranda’s was forced to leave York. She had been broken hearted, as had Sir Caine, torn apart by a feud over money and their fathers’ stubbornness. Caine always said he would wait… And he did…
The memories flooded back to her: In her mind’s eye, she could see herself as a child, running along the wild desolate fields with her horses and clinging onto a young Caine. She saw the townspeople in the square putting criminals into the stocks, she saw people being stoned and burned alive and the terror it had instilled in her. She saw her father putting her on that horse and telling her that they were leaving before they suffered the same fate at the hand of the king’s men. Caine’s father was an ally of the king and Miranda’s knew they wouldn’t have a future in York unless he made amends, which he wasn’t prepared to do… She saw her parents slain in front of her while they were in the forest, making their way south. And she remembered the brute with the biggest sword she had ever seen coming at her and swiping. She had been killed in the forest back then, and that was where she had returned. She had stepped through the door and fallen back into a past life, one she had lived hundreds of years ago. And she was now reunited with the love of her life… Caine.
As the feelings filled her, she found herself jumping up to embrace him. She had never felt feelings in all of her lives since than the ones she had for Caine back in the Middle Ages. She knew it all seemed too crazy to believe, but she could feel it in her bones. Something had aligned and made it possible for her to return. She was being given a second chance at the happiest life she had ever had. She was fulfilling a destiny that had been cut short. She had escaped from Ryan and her shitty life in 2015 and she was back where she could be who she was meant to be… Lady Miranda of York.
Caine looked into her eyes and pulled her to him. Her heart raced in her ribcage and as he held her tight and kissed her, it was if nothing had ever changed.
7.
Caine lay Miranda down on the four-poster bed and began to unlace the front of her dress robes. They were heavy, the fabric layered and soft against her skin. He ran his hand up the side of her leg and parted them so he could slip between them. Miranda gasped as he nipped the side of her neck with his teeth and pinned her back against the bed. With each touch, she remembered him even more, and she knew that they had made love before, when they were in their late teens and full of hormones and lust for one another.
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 penetr
ate 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 clapping—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 rea
ction 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.
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