Besieged (3 page)

Peggy’s only consolation was that she
hadn’t been raped—yet. She had no idea what the two men had in store for her,
beyond the fact that they planned to sell her “on the block”. The situation
felt as though it was growing grimmer by the moment. Namely because she hadn’t
yet figured out a way to escape her captors.

Pulling the polar bear furs she’d been
given tightly around her body, Peggy glanced toward the other female captive in
the party and noted the terrified quality of the woman’s wide-eyed, unblinking
gaze. She’d been looking that way the entire trek, she thought, her blue eyes
bulging above the gag in her mouth that prohibited screaming. Peggy closed her
eyes briefly, fearing that the woman’s mind might have snapped.

That was the last thing she wanted for the
other captive. If the woman was out of it, it would make it harder for the two
of them to communicate so they could escape together. And Peggy was determined
that they
would
escape together. Lord only knows whether or not she’d be
able to direct the authorities as to where to find this other woman if she
managed to escape without her, so it was vital that the other captive went with
her.

The two females and their two captors had
been riding across the tundra on dogsled for what felt like three days, but
realistically had probably been but three hours. The climate seemed to be
growing harsher, the snowfall more brisk and chilling.

Peggy shivered from beneath the furs she
was swaddled in.
Can I escape with nothing but polar bear furs and
secondhand shoes to clothe me?
she warily asked herself.
Does it matter?

She knew it didn’t matter because she would
try to escape regardless to how bad the circumstances surrounding any attempt
might be. She didn’t plan to be around long enough to find out what these two
horrid men had in store for her and the other woman. She especially had no
desire to hang around long enough to find out what “the block” was. She had her
guesses, none of them pretty.

Peggy’s gaze flicked toward the two captors
at the front of the dogsled. She immediately noted that they were embroiled in
a fairly heated discussion in that odd tongue they spoke in.
Now is the
time…

Nibbling on her lower lip, she quickly
glanced back toward the other female captive seated beside her, thinking now
was as good a time as any to try and establish communication with her. She
discreetly reached toward the other woman, then placed a hand gently over hers—

She snatched her hand back, her eyes wide.
The other woman’s hand was as cold as a block of ice. Peggy’s breathing stilled
as she narrowed her gaze at the woman’s wide blue eyes—eyes, she recalled, that
hadn’t blinked in hours…

Peggy screamed as she poked the other
captive in the chest. The woman’s icy body slumped over, the sound of one of
her frozen vertebrae snapping as easily as a chicken bone chilling Peggy to the
bone. “Oh my god!” she hysterically wailed, feeling as though she might vomit.
“She’s dead! Oh my god—she’s dead!”

A stinging backhand across her face
instantly quieted Peggy. She whimpered, her hand instinctively flying up to the
cheek that had been slapped brutally enough to bust teeth. She was lucky, she thought
as tears welled up in her eyes and the metallic taste of blood filled her
mouth, that she had only garnered a cut to the inside of her mouth and that her
teeth hadn’t been busted by the impact.

“Shut up, woman!” Rolf spat in his Old
World accent. “Or you will be gagged!” He glanced toward the dead captive, his
expression irritated. “Throw her off the sled if you can’t stand the sight of
her, otherwise wait until we stop and I’ll remove her. But do not,” he seethed
through clenched teeth, “cry out like that again.”

Peggy’s eyes widened at his callous
disregard for human life. A woman had died—died!—and he was no more concerned
about it than she imagined he would have been had one of the dogs of the sled
team died. Actually, she thought bitterly, he’d probably be more upset if it
had been one of the dogs instead of this nameless, faceless woman who was
nothing but lost chattel to him.

Her nostrils flared as she locked eyes with
the disgusting excuse for a man. She had never hated anyone or anything more
than she hated this man in this moment. She said nothing, just showed him her
hatred through her narrowed, aqua gaze.

When he broke her stare, she turned her
head to the right and spat out a gob of blood that had accrued in her mouth.
She watched the mingled blood and saliva land in the snow, staining the
pristine white a crimson red. She idly wondered how much more of her blood
would be spilled before she was free again.

“Don’t try anything stupid,” Rolf murmured
without looking back at her. “The last one who tried something stupid was your
friend there.”

Peggy’s eyes widened. She thought back to
an incident that had occurred before the party of four had taken off by
dogsled. The other woman, hysterical, had tried to run. It had been Rolf who
had tracked her down, Rolf who had found her, Rolf who had put her on the sled
so that she was already docily sitting there before Peggy had been brought out…

He had
known
the other captive was
dead, she thought, her breathing stilled. Oh god—he was the one who had made
her that way!

Her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Rolf,
probably not wanting to leave a trail behind, had loaded the woman’s dead body
onto the sled so he could dispose of her later, when they were further out onto
the desolate tundra.

Nausea churned in Peggy’s stomach,
threatening to expel itself. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath,
forcing herself to calm down in the process. The last thing she wanted to do
was vomit. She knew it would gain her nothing but another slap, or worse.

Help me, God!
she mentally screamed.
Please help me!

“What the…?”

Peggy’s head shot up at the sound of Rolf’s
perplexed voice. Her eyes narrowed at the back of his head as she tried to
discern what the matter was.

“Damn it!” the other captor bellowed. “Damn
Valkraads!”

“How many?” Rolf calmly asked, his hands
reaching toward and picking up a crossbow.

“One, two maybe.”

“Then we can take them.”

Their speech reverted to the foreign tongue
after that, ensuring that Peggy was kept in the dark. She had no idea what a
Valkraad was, nor could she see any other people or animals in the immediate
vicinity to clue her in as to what was going on.

Peggy teeth sank into her bottom lip, her
heartbeat accelerating. It occurred to her that now, while the two men were
distracted, might be her only chance at escape…

A deafening war cry startled her, causing
her to gasp. The snowbanks seemed to come alive then as four men camouflaged by
polar bear skins seemingly exploded from out of the tundra itself. Her eyes
widened as she watched the armed men stampede toward the dogsled on foot,
preparing to cut it off at the pass by any means necessary.

Oh god, Peggy thought, her eyes wide and
breathing labored. Who were these men? Her salvation or the bringers of an even
worse fate?

A tall, heavily muscled male threw off his
polar bear fur as he gave his war cry, simultaneously revealing that he wore
nothing beneath it save tight buckskin trousers that looked almost Native
American in origin and a pair of tough leather boots. His tanned, muscular chest
was completely bare, his sunny blonde hair flying against the wind as his icy
blue eyes narrowed at her captors.

Peggy froze, her mind in complete shock.
How could the man’s body withstand such frigid temperatures? How could—
forget
it, Peggy, just run! Run! Run! Run!

Her muscles corded, her body in
fight-or-flight mode, Peggy jumped from the ongoing dogsled and landed on her
face, simultaneously knocking the wind from her gut.

Fight it, Peggy! Get up and run!

Under ordinary circumstances she doubted
she would have been able to rebound so quickly, but then these circumstances
were hardly ordinary. She shot up to her feet, gasping for air even as she took
off, fleeing under the dark skies of the cold tundra.

She ignored her banged up knee, ignored the
cheek that had been slapped so hard it felt like it was on fire, ignored the
icy snow that coated her face from when she’d fallen. She instead concentrated
all of her energy on running while scanning the snowbanks for a den or a burrow
she could hide in.

She heard shouting behind her, heard too
the whizzing sound the arrows made before they found purchase in the flesh of
men—which men she hadn’t a clue. She ignored it all as she ran faster and
faster, panting for air, desperate to escape.

Peggy’s eyes widened when she heard
footfalls gaining on her.
Oh no!
she thought in bubbling hysteria.
Oh
God, please let me get away!

But the sound grew alarmingly closer—the
sound of packed snow crunching under the weight of leather boots…

She braved a quick glance over her shoulder.
She cried out when she saw that it was
that
man chasing her down—the
grim looking blonde with the wolf-blue eyes, the heavily muscled body, and the
hellish war cry.

The grim looking blonde man who was even
taller and broader up close than he’d been at a distance.

Her eyes wide and breathing labored, Peggy
whipped her coppery-gold head back around and ran faster still, discarding the
polar bear furs as she made a mad dash across the tundra, not wanting the skins
to weigh her down. She wore nothing but the white shift and secondhand leather
shoes now, yet her body was perspiring as though she was overheated instead of
freezing.

Run!
she
mentally screamed.
Run! Run! Run! Run!

She cried out when his big body collided
with hers from behind, then screamed as she began to topple forward to the
ground, knowing as she did that if he fell on top of her he’d probably break a
few of her ribs. His hand shot out at the last possible second, his arm
simultaneously snaking around her belly, preventing both of them from falling.

“Please!” Peggy cried out desperately, her
arms and legs flailing as he plucked her off of the ground. “Please let me go!”

The man said nothing, merely held her body
out and away from his body, her back to his front, while she kicked and
screamed. Pretty soon she had an audience, for three of his men were in the
process of surrounding her, all of them chuckling as they watched her arms and
legs flail about like a panicked fish. “Let me go!” she screamed, anger quickly
replacing terror. “Damn you, let me go!”

And still he said nothing. He continued to
stand there, stoic and resolved. He held her away from his body until she’d
kicked and screamed to the point of fatigue, only then lowering her to the
ground and setting her on her feet.

Mentally drained and physically exhausted,
her coppery-gold curls plastered to her head with perspiration, Peggy offered
the giant no resistance as he bodily turned her around and gently wrapped
animal furs all over her body. She couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact,
didn’t have the wherewithal to so much as glance up at him.

His large callused fingers ran through her
soaked hair, stroking it away from her forehead before he tucked it up into a
furred hat that came down far enough to cover her ears. One of his hands roamed
down her head and over her face, stopped at the bruise she’d garnered on her
cheek from being slapped by Rolf, and rested there.

Confused, Peggy glanced up. Her brow
wrinkled, not sure what to make of the unnamable emotion she saw emanating from
those icy blue eyes in an otherwise stoic face. Was he sorry that Rolf had hit
her? Or, she thought wide-eyed, did he feel that was something only he himself
should be allowed to do to her?

She swallowed a bit roughly when his harsh
gaze found hers, realizing at once that this man would be a formidable enemy.
As his rough, callused hand gently probed her cheek, she had no remaining
doubts as to what had become of her former captors.

Now, she thought warily, her eyes wide as
her teeth sank into her lower lip, she had to wonder what would become of her
at the hands of this new, and far more dangerous, captor.

Geirwolf Valkraad loaded his captive onto
the dogsled, the adrenaline of first the attack and then Peggy Brannigan’s
capture, still coursing through his blood. He felt dangerously out of control
still, a state of mind and body he’d been entertaining ever since his brother
Aevar had spotted the woman in the hands of the Hallfreor clan’s resident
vultures.

The Hallfreors, Geirwolf knew, condoned selling
females to men desperate for breeders, as though the women meant no more than,
and were just as barterable as, whale blubber. The Valkraad clan was the only
one out of four settlements in total that practiced the old ways and did not
approve of this method for obtaining wives. The general feeling being that
there was no honor in buying a wife, only in displaying the cunning and bravery
inherent in stealing one.

Outsiders, he realized, would disapprove of
their ways. Not that he particularly cared. This was how he had been raised,
how his father had been raised, how his father’s father had been raised, and so
on.

The custom of stealing breedable women was
as old as their people, and one Geirwolf couldn’t fathom ever coming to an end.
When his ancestors had sailed to this side of the globe around 950 A.D. in
their longboats, they had brought their values with them. Where those values
had long since been lost in Old Norway, they had stayed the same, untainted by
time, in New Norway. A fact their people were proud of.

Geirwolf took the seat behind Peggy on the
dogsled, nestling her between his muscled thighs to keep her warm. He could
feel her trembling, knew that she was scared of him. He gently rested a palm on
her shoulder, letting her know by his actions that he meant her no harm. He
called out to Aevar then, telling him to get the dogs moving.

Peggy Brannigan, he thought, his cock
stiffening against her back. He had been hunting her for weeks. His body had
been aching from the need of her for weeks. It seemed too good to be true that
she was sitting at his feet even now. She was his for the taking, her
voluptuous body soon his to plunge into at whim.

The dogsled took off, leaving Geirwolf free
to consider the woman sitting before him. In his culture, he knew, she would be
considered a rare beauty. Hair the color of autumn at sunset, eyes like the
ocean, and her body…

His people coveted full, hippy,
belly-dancer physiques in women, finding the fleshy look as erotic and earthly
sensual as his ancestors once had. Perhaps it made females appear more fertile
and capable of birthing strong babies—whatever the reason her figure was
perfect to him.

His hands trailed down her sides, then into
and under the polar bear burs. She gasped, startled, when his palms cupped her
breasts, his thumbs running over the swollen nipples. They were so firm and
ripe—he wanted to turn her around and suck on them here and now.

“Brother,” Aevar called out in their
tongue, breaking him from his thoughts. “I spotted some wild animals up on the
right. We best keep an eye out for them.”

“I’m watching.” Geirwolf released Peggy’s
breasts, an action that seemed to calm her. He took no offense, for he realized
it was her preference that he didn’t touch her at all.

But, he thought as he gave her full breasts
one more gentle squeeze, that was only her preference for now.