Her Steamy Viking: A Paranormal Romance E-Book

AJ Tipton

• Herausgeber: AJ Tipton
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

ATTENTION READERS: This is a sexy SHORT novella. Bite sized for your reading pleasure. A cursed Viking trapped in a watery prison. A modern-day witch digging into her past. What they discover could bring them together…or tear them apart. Over a thousand years ago, Bram and his brothers were cursed. The Viking has spent centuries trapped in a Scottish loch as an invisible water wraith, despairing of ever breaking free. But when a gorgeous woman splashes into his world, Bram finally has a chance to make things right. Audrey is a tenacious witch exploring the grounds of her grandmother’s secret Scottish cabin. When she feels drawn to the beautiful waters of a nearby loch, she discovers she is not alone. Will her magic be enough to free her aqueous lover?Her Steamy Viking is a hot paranormal romance novella. If you like smoldering love stories, magical adventures, and fun in the water, then you’ll love this standalone installment from the Her Viking's Desire series. Buy Her Steamy Viking to start the wet and wild romance today!

Leseprobe

Her Steamy Viking

A Paranormal Romance

AJ Tipton

Copyright © AJ Tipton 2015-2017 The right of AJ Tipton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (or other similar law, depending on your country). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author, except in cases of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. It may not be edited, amended, lent, resold, hired out, distributed or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s written permission. Permission can be obtained from [email protected]

This book is for sale to adult audiences only. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and incidents appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is purely coincidental.

All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.

Cover art photos provided by BigStock.com, Morgue Files, Flickr.com, and Upsplash.com. Graphic Design by Chameleonstudio74.

As Audrey MacTaggert pulled up to the cabin in her sad, dented rental car, she swore for the fiftieth time that day. Stupid damn airplane with broken Wi-Fi. Stupid damn car with no radio. Stupid damn country with folks driving on the wrong side of the damn road. Stupid damn lamp pole for not getting out of the way fast enough. Stupid damn ex-boyfriend for cheating on her with his damn ex-wife. And, finally…

"Stupid damn Grams for dying and making me pack up and sell her stupid damn cabin."

A tiny bolt of lightning struck the ground in front of her leaving a smoking spiral on the dirt.

“Sorry Grams, didn’t mean it,” Audrey muttered. Grams always said she saw the finality of death as more of a suggestion than an inevitability, but that didn't make Audrey miss her any less.

Audrey struggled her dented car door open and caressed the vehicle’s side with a sparkling finger until the dents popped back out into a smooth finish. What the rental insurance company didn't know wouldn't hurt them. She hoisted her bag over her shoulder and wrestled the rest of her luggage from the car’s trunk, whistling as she walked up the winding path.

Audrey made her way through the last turn and got her first look at the cabin. Her jaw dropped as she took it all in. Her grandmother’s home looked like it belonged in a fairy tale: a two-story stone haven with vines creeping up a picturesque wrought iron balcony on one side. “The cabin,” as Grams always called it, hardly matched the tiny and ramshackle image the word conjured.

"Damn, Grams, you should have told me you lived in a fucking castle." The 'cabin', as Audrey had recently discovered upon the reading of the will, also included vast acreage of land with (now-empty) stables, several pastures and even a private lake.

All hers.

Audrey fiddled with Gram's silver locket as she took a wandering lap of the stone structure. In the three weeks since her grandmother died, there hadn't been a chance to process. As the last surviving MacTaggert, Audrey always knew there was a possibility Grams would leave her the much talked about family cabin. But as she walked around the stone structure, Audrey felt like she was in some kind of dream. Stuff like this didn't happen to small town bar owners-slash-witches. Her life mostly consisted of arranging supply orders, hiring plumbers to fix broken urinals, and scrambling to find a second waitress last minute on a Friday night. The nonstop demands had forced her to postpone this trip so often she had started automatically moving "buy tickets to Scotland" to tomorrow's "To Do" list.

As little as she wanted to admit it, Audrey had to thank her ex, the no good, lying-as-fuck Chad for being such an asshole. If he hadn't cheated on her, she wouldn't have hopped on a plane to remove herself from the temptation of turning him into bright pink dung beetle. She took a deep breath, smelling the lush scent of grass and a deeper, murky smell of the lake coming from around the hill.

Yeesss, coming here was a very good idea, she thought to herself.

She rummaged in her purse for the key the lawyer sent, but her hand stopped before it reached the door. Something about the unseen lake on the other side of the hill made her pause; its rich smell gave her shivers and made her nipples harden under her camisole.

Her grandmother’s words rang in her ears from those long nights of playing Flip Cup. “Auds, you have got to pay the fuck attention," she'd say, a large cocktail in hand that never seemed to drain despite her enthusiastic attention. "Kids these days with your mobile phones and your youtubes, might as well be walking around with their ears in their asses. We are MacTaggert women. We see things, feel things others can’t. Believe in that and maybe you won't end up werewolf kibble like all the rest.” Grams's tangents when sauced tended to get a little strange, but she still made a good point and won every round.

"Well, maybe a little more exploring couldn't hurt," Audrey said to Gram's ghost.

She dropped off her luggage inside the cabin and tightened the laces on her boots. Earlier at a rest stop she had changed from stale airplane clothes into her favorite aqua colored skirt and a breezy camisole with a crisscrossing pattern of cartoon whiskey bottles. She started down the first path she saw, jumping over puddles to get to the lake.

For Audrey, not knowing what was literally around the bend was an unfamiliar feeling. The mystery sent a chill down her spine. Usually, when she was sensing something, the message was much clearer, but this sensation felt distant, almost diluted, somehow. Audrey stretched her long legs and took a moment to remember some of the more effective defensive incantations Grams taught her. She cracked her knuckles and retied the laces of her boots. She was as prepared as she could be for any sort of conflict.

Striding into the clearing surrounding the lake, she tried to sort out exactly what drove her here. This didn't feel like the time years ago when her father's truck was t-boned by a drunk driver, or the cocktail of dread and certainty in her stomach last week before Chad lied to her face about where he'd been the night before. Whatever waited for her down at the lake didn't feel like a threat, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn't alone.

Deep beneath the waves, Bram watched sunlight dance as it reflected off the top of the water. For nearly a thousand years, this sight was the most exciting part of his life, trapped at the bottom of the loch. In the early years of his curse, the light was a perpetual torment; an incessant reminder of life above the water that he could no longer touch, no longer feel. Had the witch known his torture would last over a thousand years? The banks of the loch swelled and ebbed in the natural patterns of erosion and time, but he was left unchanged, an insubstantial floating presence both in this world and not.

A tiny fish swam toward Bram; its puckered face quested back and forth like it might nibble at the small hairs on Bram's translucent bare chest. Or perhaps it wanted to taste the edges of the black wolf tattoo stretching from his rounded shoulder and wrapping around his chiseled shoulders. The fish passed through Bram like he wasn't there.

"Up yer' arse too, you puny wretch," he told the fish. The fish flipped a fin in response and Bram felt a second of satisfaction, followed quickly by an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Am I really talking to fish now? Am I finally losing my mind?

Bram ran his ghostlike fingers through his sandy blond hair. It hadn't grown an inch in all the years of the curse; it still hung in the same waves along the top of his broad shoulders. His mother always wanted him to cut it, shave it close to his head like the southern clans his father had stolen her from, but Bram had a bad habit of not listening to her advice. Perhaps if he had listened more closely to her tales of witches and magic, he wouldn't have ended up trapped in this eternal torment.