Even though Melissa knew there were probably countless creatures out there that could kill her, she had never felt safer in his arms.
8.
The embers burned low on the fire, and when Melissa woke, Saber was already up, stoking it and adding more wood.
She approached him from behind, wrapped her arms around him and kissed his neck. She had never felt more like a woman around him. She had never felt sexier.
“A kiss,” she whispered as he turned to her and her lips met his. He ran his hand through her hair and slipped his tongue against hers.
It was all so perfect. She wished it never had to end.
But she knew she couldn’t stay there.
When they broke apart, his eyes looked sad, as if he knew it was all over, too.
“I need to go,” she said. “Can you take me back to the cave?”
Saber looked out at the fire and ignored her for a moment. She could tell he didn’t want her to leave.
Her heart ached as she was torn between her decision and the man in front of her… Could she leave him now they had met? Their connection was so pure and fierce. Could she walk away from him?
Tears stung her eyes and she wiped them away. Saber shook his head and held onto her chin. He looked at her deep in the eyes and said, “No.”
Melissa smiled and nodded.
“Come with me?” she said as a stroke of genius flooded through her. “You don’t have to stay here… Come back with me?”
She knew it was a crazy concept, but she also knew it was the only answer. She didn’t want to leave him; there was no life for him there. But she didn’t think he would let her go. If she managed to get him back to the cave and they found a way to reopen the vortex, maybe they could be back in 2015 and live happily ever after.
Saber was looking at her as if he didn’t understand anything she was saying. It was the first time he had looked confused since he found her. Melissa took his hand and smiled.
“Trust me,” she said.
He smiled back and nodded.
***
The journey back to the Neanderthals’ cave was short and frightening. Saber threw her up over his shoulder and ran with her back down the incline, past the rocks and cliff face and over a small rise. The opening was there and Saber sniffed the air. He nodded and moved forward, happy that the coast was clear.
Inside the cave, the carcass of the tiger was lying limply on the floor and the Neanderthals had already removed its tusks. Melissa shivered as she opened her mind to suggestion and hoped the rocks would call to her again.
Saber watched her as she held onto his hand and looked around. Her heart was pounding and she was about to panic when suddenly a light shone on the corner of the room and two points from two rocks, one above and one below, were almost touching.
“That’s it,” she smiled as she led him over to them.
Saber held her hand and with their other hands, they both took hold of the rock points. Just as before, Melissa felt a surge of power run through her and Saber roared like a lion as the pain hit them and the earth began to move.
The world went black, but she could still feel his hand.
And then… nothing.
***
A big arm cradled her, and as she opened her eyes, they met his.
“Melissa,” he said with a smile as he brushed the hair out of her face and kissed her gently on the lips.
She sat up and looked around in panic.
Were they back? Had she brought him back to the present?
They were in the cave and it looked similar to when she had been there with Quattro, but there was still something different.
She looked down and they were both still wearing the fur pelts and their skin was dirty.
“Dr. Quattro?” she called out, but her voice echoed around the cave. She knew there was no one there.
“If this were 2015, this cave would be crawling with archaeologists after yesterday,” she said. “Something’s changed.”
She could see the shaft they needed to climb in order to get back to the surface, and Saber led the way. He put her on his back and climbed it with his bare hands and feet with such incredible strength Melissa couldn’t believe he was actually capable of doing it.
He had lived a long time in a savage land with only himself to rely on, but now he had found her and he wanted to protect her. When he reached the top of the small cave opening, he heaved himself up and out with Melissa still clinging to him. As they rolled back onto the grass in the French field, Melissa looked around and was surprised that there was still no one there.
“Looks like we’ll have to walk,” she said.
Saber put her over his shoulder again and headed east.
They reached a road after about two hours and the first car that pulled over held an old couple who looked intrigued and confused by what they were seeing. Saber’s eyes were like saucers as he watched the car as if it were a predator. Melissa assured him it was all fine, and as they made their way back to Bordeaux, she asked the couple in basic French what the date was.
“April 10th, 1973,” the woman said as she turned to smile at her.
Melissa’s heart pounded and she didn’t know where to look. Saber wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.
She wasn’t even born until 1990… She couldn’t help but laugh.
She thought back to her life in 2015 and of all she was lacking. She may have had a great career, but she could still do that in 1973. Her family were long gone and she didn’t have a boyfriend or husband to speak of. The explorer in her wanted to stay where she was, to never tell anyone what had happened to her and to integrate Saber into society without anyone being any wiser.
She looked at him, and when he looked back at her with his beautiful and innocent eyes, she knew they could make it work. They could stay in France and build a life. Now that they had each other, anything was possible.
Neither of them were from that time and that made it all the more real. It made it so much more exciting for them to be experiencing the journey together.
“Let’s do this,” she smiled and she squeezed Saber’s hand.
The archaeologist had her very own caveman, and they were about to embark on the wildest ride either of them would ever have thought possible.
“Time doesn’t exist when you’ve got love,” she whispered to him. And even though he was still learning, she was pretty sure he understood.
THE END
Mated to the Caveman
Samantha Leal
Copyright ©2016 by Samantha Leal. 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.
Samantha’s Caveman series:
In the Time of the Caveman
Mated to the Caveman
1.
At the front of the room, the professor droned on and Tamar let her eyes close gently for a moment, wishing that she was back in the warm comfort of her bed. She had been awake late the night before, partying with Carla and some of the guys from the fraternity a couple of houses down, and she hadn’t experienced a hangover like this the whole time she had been in college.
She felt her body relax back into the seat and a wave of calm rolled over her. She could easily drift off into a blissful sleep as Dr. Blake continued his lecture on the Mesolithic Age. She could hear him talking about spearheads, and of how the men and women of the time would have built themselves shelter, and although this is one of the things Tamar had most been looking forward to about her degree, she felt as if she had heard it all before. And she was certainly in no mood to concentrate. She let her head fall back slightly and felt the protective jab in her side from Chris.
“You’re sleeping dummy,” he whispered to her, and she opened her eyes and smiled at him before she adjusted herself in the seat
and rubbed her eyes.
The clock told her she still had half an hour to go. Thirty more minutes of hearing about cavemen and Neanderthals. But Tamar just wanted to get herself back to her dorm room, to close the curtains, switch off the lights and crawl into bed. She imagined the silver swirl of the pattern on her duvet cover, and the soft plush of her pillow. It was calling her and her body ached to be cocooned within it, safely away from the rest of the world, and safe to sleep and revive.
The night before had been a messy haze of kegs and shots. Her and Carla had gotten dressed last minute after deciding to forgo studying and made their way over to Theta Kappa where things were already out of control. Tamara and Carla had bounced through the door and been met immediately by a host of hunky guys, all with their tops removed, ushering them forward into the house to the kitchen, where they lined them up to be the next to do body shots. The ides of tequila, as she sat there in the lecture theatre, made her want to vomit. Tamara had never been one for partying, but with the end of the semester fast approaching and a long summer in Europe ahead, she wanted to enjoy her last couple of weeks on campus and make sure that she was truly getting the real college experience, rather than just tying herself to her books and missing out on all the much anticipated and raved about socializing.
“You look terrible,” Chris whispered. “Are you even taking any of this in?” he smirked.
“No,” Tamara hissed as she shook her head.
“I thought you’d be glued to this stuff, especially with your trip coming up…” He looked at her disapprovingly.
“Please,” Tamara winced. “Don’t you start lecturing me too. I’m not well.”
She pouted and hoped he would take the hint.
“No sympathy,” he grinned. “Self-inflicted illness doesn’t count.” He patted her patronizingly on the arm and Tamara rolled her eyes. Chris was one of her best friends, but he knew exactly how to rub her the wrong way. She wished she had been as savvy and forward thinking as Carla and just admitted that getting up, dressed and to their morning lecture was a no go. She wished she had just stayed put in bed.
She straightened up and looked down to Dr. Blake, who was now running through a timeline of key events in the prehistoric period, and was relating them to paintings that had been discovered inside caves across a region of France. Even though she knew that it was important to her studies, today, there was no way in hell Tamara was going to pay attention and take anything in. Besides, she would get plenty of experience and information first hand when she and Carla travelled to Europe in a couple of weeks.
She closed her notebook and reached into her bag for her sunglasses. As she slipped them down over her eyes, she flashed Chris a cheeky grin and raised her eyebrows. She was sure that, in the remaining thirty minutes, she could have a powernap and make sure she was a lot more awake for her next class. But as she yawned and began to doze, she promised herself one thing… No more partying on school nights.
2.
“I can’t believe you’re alive,” Carla croaked as Tamara walked through the doorway of their shared dorm at the end of the day.
“Neither can I…” she sighed as she flopped down onto her bed and rubbed her temples. The room smelled of stale alcohol, and Tamara leaned up on her elbows and pushed the window open.
“Have you moved at all today?” she asked Carla.
“Not once,” she laughed. “And I don’t feel guilty… Not one bit.”
“Well, you should. Just think of me powering through and getting to all of our classes. You owe me, big-time.”
“Oh, come off it, I can’t imagine anything you took in today will be of any use to either of us…” Carla grabbed a cushion and threw it lamely in Tamara’s direction.
“Yeah,” Tamara admitted. “You’re probably right there…”
She slumped back on the bed and rolled onto her side. This was what she had been looking forward to and dreaming of all day, her comfy bed, but now that she had it in front of her, she wasn’t tired. Her mind was racing with possibilities and flashed back to the broken memories of the night before.
She pulled her quilt around her shoulders and closed her eyes. One of the things she could definitely remember was talking to one of the frat guys. He was tall, blonde and handsome, and he had flashed her a perfectly white smile and tried all of his best lines on her. But Tamara had left him out in the cold. Even though there was a part of her that wanted to open herself up to love, she was still too badly burned from her last boyfriend. Stephen had meant so much to her, and yet, he had torn her heart in two and run off with another girl. Every time Tamara thought of the scene in front of her, when she had discovered his infidelity, she found herself wiping tears away from her eyes. But in the past few weeks, she had started to become stronger. She was determined that his mistake wouldn’t be the end of her love life.
Even though she was still burned, still hurt and raw inside from the betrayal, she knew that surely somewhere out there in the big wide world there would be a man for her. Somewhere, she would find someone who would love her like she needed to be loved.
She had briefly let it cross her mind the previous evening, that maybe she should throw caution to the wind and hook up the guy with the perfect teeth and the cheesy chat-up lines, but in the end, she knew she would only be doing herself a disservice. She didn’t want to rebound with just anyone. She wanted to take her time, to grow as a person, and to move on properly when the time was right. She didn’t need a fling to get her over Stephen, she needed to be the strong woman that she was, to embrace her own company and to move forward, one step at a time. No matter how long it took.
She thought again of the image of Stephen kissing the other girl. The way his hand was twisted up in her hair and the way he held her passionately, as if she was the most precious thing in the world. The way he was kissing her, he had never kissed Tamara like that, and it would haunt her for a long time to come. She had turned and ran, not wanting either of them to see the look of shock or horror on her face, and she had locked herself in the nearest girls’ restroom whilst she looked at her shaking hands and steadied her breathing. It was the first time she had been cheated on, and she was determined that it would be the last.
Carla began to breathe deeply in the bed across the room and Tamara could tell that she was asleep. The girls only had two weeks before the semester would be over and they would both be packing up their things and setting off on their adventures to another continent. The idea of them both being let loose in Europe was as exciting as it was daunting. Carla had a wild side that appealed to Tamara, but she knew that she had to be the sensible one and not let her friend get too out of control or to lead either of them astray.
They were going to an area of France first, not far from Bordeaux. They had arranged it all through their college, for a chance for them to join in with an expedition to study some of the crumbling prehistoric paintings that were present in the Lascaux Caves in the Dordogne Region. Tamara had always been fascinated with early human life, and she had been long looking forward to being in the presence of something so ancient and historical. She had heard many tales of what the caves were like, but now that access was limited, due to a fungus that was threatening to destroy the paintings, her and Carla were truly lucky to be accepted into the fold and be allowed access.
She had planned to write her thesis on the subject and she had already started a blog to document her findings and experiences of her travels on her first trip outside of the USA, but as the end of the semester had started approaching, she had found herself feeling slightly apprehensive.
She had never travelled far and she was beginning to get nervous. Even though she had arranged the trip via her college, she still had the feeling that anything could happen to them, and she felt a great amount of uncertainty all around her.
Carla began to snore softly and Tamara pulled her pillow over her head and pushed it down around her ears. With the headache that was still pulsing away behind her eyes,
the last thing she needed was noise like that.
She just hoped that once they both got to France and joined the archeological expedition for a week, Carla would be much easier to be around. Because, after their studying in the Dordogne, they had another six weeks ahead of them to explore the countries of Europe and experience as much culture as they could.
As Tamara closed her eyes again and listened to the chatter and sounds of life from down on the quad, she smiled to herself, she really shouldn’t be so nervous. The summer ahead was sure to be an exciting one and now she was on the countdown.
In two weeks, she would be free.
3.
She hauled her suitcase up onto the bed then stood back and put her hands on her hips. It had only taken three hours, three re-packs and a lot of tantrums, but it was finally closed and ready to go.
Tamara’s mother had stopped at the college the day before and taken away all of her belongings, leaving only the small amount of clothes and essentials that Tamara needed for her travels. It was almost surreal saying goodbye to her mother. She felt as if she was on the verge of something important and life-changing, but she didn’t want to get ahead of herself.
“Be careful,” her mother had sobbed as she pulled her close and hugged her hard. “You have to take care of each other out there… I’ve seen that movie where the girls go missing.”
“Mom,” she’d laughed. “Just relax, we’re going to be fine.”
“Sold to rich men and forced into trafficking…” her mother shuddered.
“Mom!” Tamara shook her head as she smiled, “Seriously, we’re not going partying in Paris, we’re going to explore caves in Southern France with a group of archaeologists and experts. I think it’s going to be pretty tame…”
SCAR (LOST CREEK SHIFTERS NOVELLAS Book 2) Page 16
