Besieged Read online

  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 t
hat 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.

  Chapter Six

  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.

  Chapter Seven

  Peggy chewed on her lower lip as she glanced to the right, absently taking note of the dogsled racing neck-to-neck with the one she was seated in. Two men were riding in that one, while Peggy, her captor, and a fourth man she took to be named Aevar were all riding over the tundra in another one.

  All of the men, Peggy noted, had that same lost-in-time look about them that her original captors had possessed. They were tall men—veritable giants in terms of their extreme height and brawn. She accurately guessed that all of them were somewhere in the range of six and a half feet or better, weighing in at two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds of solid muscle mass.

  Stranger still was the way they were dressed. They reminded her of Vikings from old with their long manes of hair, their intricate arm bangles, and their buckskin clothing and leather boots.

  Even the tattoos they sported appeared like ritualistic markings rather than mere decoration. The man who had captured her, for instance, the one whose legs she was currently sitting between, was heavily tattooed on both his back and his left arm. His back, she had noticed before he’d wrapped himself into an animal skin, was completely covered with intricate and mysterious markings, the bluish-green pigment expertly woven into his skin. His bulging left arm carried the design of a dragon, the long serpentine body snaking up from the wrist, the head making its appearance at the bicep.

  It was as if all of these men had been catapulted from the year 850 in Norway and then thrust into modern day Alaska, never realizing along the way that the heyday of their people had long since passed. She wondered how such a noticeably different culture of men could have gone on so long without being found out by what they would deem to be outlanders. From an anthropological standpoint, Peggy was fascinated. From a personal
standpoint, she was terrified.

  Peggy’s body stiffened as her captor’s large, callused hands reached under the polar bear furs she was swaddled in and palmed her breasts from behind. He had done this once before during the trip, but she had thought he was going to leave her alone when he’d abruptly ended the contact in order to speak with Aevar in that odd tongue they spoke in.

  This captor, Peggy thought warily, was nobody’s fool. He wasn’t even giving her a chance at thinking she might escape him, for rather than sitting at the front of the sled with his comrade, he had chosen to sit at the back with Peggy kneeling before him, her back to his front.

  “I want you to send word to their people,” her captor said in heavily accented English to Aevar, the man guiding the dogsled. His hands gently kneaded her breasts, “that they need to collect their dead.” He paused. “And I want them to know why,” he said in a soft but commanding tone.

  She assumed he was conversing in English only because he’d wanted her to understand what he was saying, assumed too that he had been speaking about her original captors, the ones they’d killed out on the tundra. She swallowed roughly, the memory a portent reminder of what could happen to her if she tried to escape.

  “It’s done, Wolf,” the other man said. “I’ll take care of it as soon as we return to the village.”

  Peggy’s eyes widened slightly. Wolf…

  The man the original captors had spoken of? The man who had been hunting her out on the tundra that day Benjamin had gotten scared?

  Shit.

  Her breathing stilled when her new captor’s thumbs rubbed over her distended nipples. She breathed in raggedly, fright and arousal at war in her body. He seemed to sense her tumultuous reactions for his forefingers got into the action then, his thumbs and index fingers plucking at her stiff nipples with expert precision, massaging them again and again from root to tip.