Viking's Orders

Viking’s Orders

Anne Marsh

Copyright © 2013 Anne Marsh

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

Contents

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Excerpt - Tempted by the Pack
Booklist
About the Author

Chapter One

Las Vegas

Present day

Everyone in the pit was dead except for the berserker.

That was the point.

Hidden deep beneath Sin City, the paranormal gladiators forced into the pit’s arena fought until there was only one being left standing. Tonight, Vikar the Black was well on his way to being named champion. Roars of approval hailed his latest kill from the rows of stadium seating stretching away above the underground arena. The spectators had an awesome view of the berserker’s handiwork, along with a bona fide firsthand story for friends and family as no one could recall the last time a berserker had fought in the pit. So far, a half dozen of Fenrir’s offspring had perished in the bloody slaughter, the lupine shapeshifters no match for the warrior.

The iron bars of the cage bit into Pure’s fingers. She was next into the pit, unless the handlers actually intended to set the berserker’s comrades-in-arms loose to fight their leader.

Showtime
.

The crowd roared again, a wolf head hit the bloody sand, and time ran out.

Two gates cut off the pit’s only access tunnel, a little extra insurance of iron and steel between the handlers and the paranormals they tortured. No way those gates would contain a berserker in full battle rage.

Vikar turned. He was unadulterated violence, seven feet of heavy muscle. Shaggy black hair spilled around his shoulders, half covering the harsh bones of his face as he spun and brought his axe down on his last opponent. Effortlessly he drove the blade through the bone and muscle of the shapeshifter cowering at his feet. He looked every inch the cold, ruthless killer he was, that barbaric face feral in its intensity. The handlers had stripped him down to a leather loincloth for the fight, so the crowd could enjoy the hard body and the cut muscles of his abdomen. Blood splattered his arms and legs and streaked the side of his jaw. None of it was his.

The handlers had underestimated the berserker.

One minute, he pulled his axe free. The next, his heavy stride ate up the ground. As the handlers scrambled to contain him with their tasers, he knocked them away, making straight for the cage holding his companions. That massive axe rose and fell, cutting the locks free. The pit handlers had dismissed the berserker as an animal, a killing machine they could rile up and set loose for the amusement of the crowds who paid to see the gladiators fight.

Mistake number one.

Mistake number two was their hesitation to engage him.

He snarled, lips pulled back from his teeth. He was a killer, but that wasn’t why she’d been sent here.

The Norse gods had no issue with the killing.

Not if the berserker could control himself.

Since the test hadn’t started yet, she should probably warn him that one of the pit guards—a warg well-known as a particularly ruthless Midgard creature—was sneaking up on him, using the steel cages as cover. She leaned forward, but the berserker was already on it. His axe rose, fell, and the warg’s head rolled across the floor. When she blew him a kiss, he frowned but kept right on killing.
Good man
.

Tapping her finger against her teeth, she considered her options. She needed his attention on her—and since he was rapidly running out of opponents, that seemed likelier by the minute. She couldn’t stop looking at him, at those big hands handling the axe so competently. She had a feeling that if she hadn’t been an ice maiden, she’d have been aroused as hell. Her berserker was
talented
. He knew his way around a weapon. Her Valkyrie sisters would have amused themselves by wondering if his skilled hands were equally as good in the bedroom.

She planned on finding out.

Ordinarily, the berserkers wouldn’t have been on Odin’s radar, even though Loki's berserkers certainly offered a good time on a battlefield, and Odin loved a good fight. In this case, good meaning
bloodthirsty
and
to the death
. One of Odin’s in-house seers had warned him, however, that the Norse end times and the final battle for control of the world was right around the corner. Ragnarök foretold the death of gods, assorted natural disasters and the complete flooding of the human world, so suddenly Odin was rethinking his hands-off policy. He wanted his troops lined up, and he definitely wanted to know who was on his side.

That made the berserkers an unacceptable wild card, so Odin had sent her here to feel out this big, angry fighter.
She
would determine if he contained anything beside rage and anger. Could he pull himself back from that lethal edge? Was he open to reason? Luring the male into her bed was simply the bonus question on the test.
Extra credit for me.

Really, she didn't care what happened to the berserkers. They were Loki's little pets, but more importantly, she was
Odin's
. He owned her every bit as much as Loki owned his matched set of killers. She'd thought about this while Odin stormed around Valhalla, and realized that, really, he'd done her a
favor
when he'd fucked her ice-giant mother. Twice. Because, in addition to acquiring a baby sister out of the deal, Pure was an ice maiden, and that meant she was a cold bitch. She didn't
feel
. No messy emotions for her. Lopping off the head of a misbehaving berserker was just fine with her. No, what she wanted was the opportunity said beheading presented.

An opportunity to negotiate with Odin and shake his immortal, all-knowing, irritating hold on her.

Up until now, he’d given the orders. Testing the berserker was a chance to shake Odin’s control that she couldn’t pass up. It was also her best and only shot at rescuing Eira.
Not going there
. She pushed the unhappy memories of her baby sister’s fate back into their cage and leaned forward.

The berserker ripped the first gate off its hinges. His men shot up the tunnel with lethal intent. Out. Towards freedom.

And then he turned towards her.

###

Rage pounded through Vikar the Black, the red haze washing over his vision and reducing his world to a killing field.
Kill
. His shock troop had cut a deadly path, first through the Viking world and then through North America, leading the fight on hundreds of battlefields. With the Norse kings long dead, becoming mercenaries had seemed logical. The berserkers’ loyalty was to each other and—temporarily—to whatever they’d pledged themselves to. Losing was unthinkable, and yet he’d been taken—
drugged
—coming off that last killing field.

That day, the bloodlust had ridden him hard, the berserk rage painting the world around him a deadly crimson. The shift had come closer and closer, the point of no return barreling towards him. Then, just as he’d felt his bear form break through his skin—nothing. One minute, the lights and sounds and undeniable scents of the battlefield surrounded him, and the next, he was falling forward, everything black instead of red.

Until he’d woken up chained in the pit.

The drugs had to explain what he was seeing now as he turned away from the pit.

An angel sat there, square in the middle of hell.

She was the prettiest creature he’d ever seen. Delicate. Sitting on the floor of the cage, legs curled beneath her, like she was waiting for him to come on over and do a little hi-how-are-ya. A long sheet of hair so blonde it was almost white fell in a delicious curtain around her face and bare shoulders. The pit’s handlers had dressed her in some sort of leather corslet and pants that cupped her breasts and ass. Despite her pale skin, however, she didn’t smell like a vamp. No, when Vikar inhaled, he caught the scent of something fresh and cool, rather than dirt and the copper stink of old blood. Her lashes swept up, and damned if her eyes weren’t the color of chocolate and whiskey, wickedly sweet and potent.

“Vikar.” She said his name like she wanted to drink him up. “Take me with you.” Her hands wrapped around the steel bars, soft and clean.

He could count the empty cages between his angel and the entrance.

She’d been next into the arena.

Where he would have killed her.

Pausing now was a mistake. He needed to reach the surface and put these hellish pits behind him. The handlers were dead, but there would be more to kill. There were
always
more.
Rage
.
Kill
. He looked at his angel, though, and his anger drained away from him as if she’d reached out her pretty hands and simply pulled the plug on his emotions. For some completely inexplicable reason, he didn’t want to hurt
her
.

He stopped.

“Who are you?” he asked, when he should have asked
what
.

He wanted her. He’d spent a lifetime secreting treasure in his tower back in his Norse homeland. He’d collected beautiful things. Delicate, gold chains and ornaments because they were fragile and he wasn’t and he’d wanted them. He wanted
her
, but she wasn’t a brooch or a necklace or even a dagger. The berserker rage pushed at him. He could take her.

And he’d break her. She wasn’t something you
took
.

Adrenaline pounded through him, lighting his senses on fire. The fighting rumbling behind him in the pit and the hiss of weapons being drawn was a familiar rush. Red beat at his vision, and he had blood on his hands, so his angel had to know he was a killer.

She didn’t flinch from him. Instead, she gave him answers. “My name is Pure.”

“Pure.” Her name fit the cool perfection of her beautiful face, but her eyes promised something else. Something sensually, wickedly naughty. At the tunnel’s entrance, Var’s head snapped around. Vikar had stopped when he should have been covering his second’s back.

She licked her lips and, by the gods, he was a dirty bastard, because he couldn’t stop imagining those pink lips wrapped around his cock. She tilted her head back for a better look at him, exposing her throat to his attack. The female didn’t know the first thing about keeping herself safe, and that bothered him. That was a new sensation, so he filed it away. He’d consider these
feelings
later. After he knew what she wanted from him. Because, Loki’s balls, it was a cold, cold day in hell when a female who looked like a bona fide princess wanted something to do with someone as rough as
him
.

Of course, there was always the possibility she simply enjoyed slumming.

Princess shifted inside the cage, one slim thigh pressed against the other, her fingers stroking the bars as she eyed him up and down.

He waited.

Her gaze settled unerringly on his leather-wrapped forearms.

“Berserker?” She demanded his attention, her fingers tap-tapping against the bars of her cage.

Definitely a princess. He gave her a slow, masculine smile. Baby was impatient, which made him wonder what she’d be like in bed. His bed. She wouldn’t like orders—the question was, would she take them? How far would she let a man push?

“Yeah,” he acknowledged. “I would be the berserker.” Since he wanted to see her reaction, he gave her a glimpse of his claws. Just one of Loki’s little gifts, the ursine claws slid smoothly out of his skin below his knuckles, eight inches of lethal nasty.  In the heat of battle, he’d shift until he was half bear, half man—and all killer. “I come with a few enhancements. You want to get to the point here?”

“I want to hire you.” She examined his face and, shockingly, must have liked what she saw because she propositioned him as if she wasn’t the one locked up tight in a cage. As if she was in a position to give him orders. “You’re perfect.”

He stilled, instincts clamoring. He wasn’t perfect. At all. “Baby, you can’t afford me.”

She looked put out.
Too damn bad
. “Don’t you want to hear the job first?” she asked.

No. He didn’t need to. Her voice was low and husky with nerves, but that didn’t surprise him. He made everyone nervous.

He gave her his trademark smile, a hard, mean grimace that made grown mercenaries back the hell down. “Rescue doesn’t come cheap and neither do I. I spring your cage, what’s in it for me? With a dozen mercenaries between you and the door, you don’t leave without an escort, and the way I see this play out, most of the males here would just fuck you first and then sell you back to the pit keepers.”