Besieged Read online

  Peggy blinked a few times in rapid succession, determined to shake the arousal off. She expelled a shaky breath, uncertain as to what she should do.

  But, of course, there was nothing to be done. She had no choice in the matter, and her captor didn’t seem inclined to stop fondling her anytime soon.

  He played with her breasts throughout the remainder of the trip, a journey that was beginning to feel endless. She could feel his steel-hard erection poking against her back, could hear the arousal in his thickly murmured words as he bent his head to her ear. “All will be well, Peggy Brannigan—” She stilled, surprised that he knew her name—”I vow that no harm will come to you by my people’s hands.” She swallowed, but nodded, grateful for at least that much revelation of what was to become of her.

  He didn’t speak to her again after that, but his hands continued kneading her breasts and massaging her stiff nipples. After several minutes of this attention, she found it harder and harder to fight the arousal, and eventually gave up altogether.

  Breathing deeply, Peggy’s heavy eyelids closed as she leaned her coppery-gold head back on his knees. Her captor seemed pleased by that, for his mouth lowered to her neck and placed tantalizing kisses at her pulse while his hands continued to toy with her breasts.

  Peggy sighed softly. With her erogenous zones being manipulated as they were, she began having small orgasms that couldn’t be stopped. By the time the dogsleds came to a halt that night and her captor removed his hands from her breasts, he had given her four small orgasms. A fact that she could tell pleased him immensely.

  This intimate play went on for the next three days and nights. When they would camp for the night, her captor Geirwolf—Wolf to his comrades—would sleep beside her in the makeshift tent, fondling her body into orgasm, but never making a move to penetrate her or to force her to touch him. She knew he was hard the entire time, and yet not once did he lose control. He brought her to peak more times than she could count, his hands always roaming about and caressing her nude body.

  From both an anthropological and personal standpoint, Peggy knew that the man’s methods were getting to her. Psychologically speaking, it was difficult at best to fear a man who brought you endless pleasure and asked for nothing for himself in return. At worst, it was impossible…even if that man was holding you captive against your will.

  During the days when they were riding by dogsled, her captor would stroke and fondle her breasts the entire time, giving her mini-orgasms. Sometimes he would even stroke her pussy, though he never permitted her to have big climaxes this way.

  This method of conditioning served to work her up, making her body so aroused that by the time nighttime came and they were alone in the tent together once again, she was less and less resistant to his touch. He would fondle her in earnest then, not stopping until she came violently at least twice, whereupon she would fall asleep in his arms, feeling safe and unnervingly secure.

  By the third night, Peggy found herself willingly spreading her legs for Geirwolf, so he could play in her cunt. His icy blue eyes raked over her naked body, over her puffed up pussy, watching intently as she used her fingers to spread her labial lips for him.

  It was unnerving—knowing that she was being conditioned as easily, if not more easily, than Pavlov’s Dog.

  “Very beautiful,” he murmured, his hot, sweet breath close to her cunt. It was one of the few things he had ever said to her, for he almost never spoke. “Would you like me to kiss you down here?”

  Peggy wetted her lips. “Yes.” He’d never done that to her before. Until this night he had used only his hands. Her breasts heaved as she expelled a shaky breath, her nipples jutting upward. “Yes, please kiss me down there,” she whispered.

  Her captor lowered his face between her legs, wasting no time as his mouth latched around her clit and vigorously suckled it. She groaned, arching her hips, grinding her cunt into his face. “Yes,” she whispered, her head rolling back and her eyes closing. “That feels so good.”

  He sucked on her clit harder, growling low in his throat. It was the first time she’d ever heard him express an out-of-control emotion and she found that it only fueled her own fire. She shouldn’t want this, her mind rebelled. And yet her back arched as a breathy moan rushed from her lips, her legs simultaneously wrapping around his neck as if to draw his face in closer and closer to her aroused flesh.

  Peggy gasped as her orgasm approached. Her breathing grew labored and her hips flared up. She was going to come hard, she knew. She was going to—

  “Wolf!” a man’s voice called out from the other side of the tent. Peggy sighed, feeling an odd sense of disappointment when her captor kissed her clit, then raised his face from between her legs.

  “Ja?” He drew up to his knees and opened the tent flap for the other man to poke his head through.

  Peggy recoiled, her eyes wide when Aevar’s head emerged into the tent. Aevar, a grim looking but handsome dark-haired man, had been quite kind to her these past few days, but she was embarrassed at the thought of yet another male seeing her naked. Already three had—her original captors and Geirwolf.

  She tried to close her thighs so Aevar couldn’t see her nudity, but her captor wouldn’t let her. Geirwolf’s large hand fell to her still-aroused cunt, playing in it as if marking his territory. She blushed when Aevar’s gaze fell to her exposed pussy.

  Neither male paid her any more attention as they conversed with each other in their preferred tongue. Geirwolf continued to stroke her pussy in a possessive, branding fashion, but otherwise had his attention focused on what was being said to him.

  She felt calmed once again when it became apparent that her body was not the focal point of attention. She climaxed with Aevar’s face still poking through the tent, unable to stop her body’s reaction. Geirwolf ceased playing with her clit after that, his fingers absently stroking through her soft pubic hair instead as if petting her for a job well done.

  A few minutes later, rather than resuming the sexual play after Aevar left as she’d assumed he would, her captor fell tiredly onto his back, his callused hands running through his sunny blonde hair on a sigh that coming from any other man would have sounded weary. Since his eyes were closed, she allowed herself to study him for the first time since she’d been captured.

  He was a handsome man, she had to admit. Very harsh looking with his never-smiling expression, chiseled features, and icy blue eyes, yet handsome nonetheless. His body was pure muscle—the hardest and biggest musculature she’d ever seen on a male up close and personal. And he was tall, very tall. Probably closer to seven feet than six. She was certain that if he stretched out completely, his legs would poke through the tent flap.

  Peggy’s gaze fell to his exposed, and highly erect, manhood. Geirwolf always slept naked, the same as he made her sleep, but he never did anything about it. She found herself wondering why. She supposed he just wanted her to get accustomed to his nudity, accustomed too to how big his swollen penis was, before he upped the proverbial ante.

  She glanced away. Her gaze trailed back up to his grim, exhausted face. He looked weary and troubled, yet she knew he’d never tell her why.

  She supposed she shouldn’t care why.

  Peggy bit her lip, briefly contemplating the insane thought of lowering her mouth to his stiff cock and latching her lips around it. To comfort him? To give him pleasure? She hadn’t a clue.

  Sighing at her troubled thoughts and equally disturbing compulsions, she flipped over onto her side, her back to him, and released a ragged breath. This was ridiculous. What she had contemplated doing to him was downright obscene given the circumstances.

  Peggy’s nostrils flared, anger coursing through her. She would not succumb to that man ever again, she vowed. If he meant to rape her, then he would have to do just that. Never again would she willingly spread her thighs for him. Never again would she allow him to fondle her without a fight. This was her life, damn it! She wasn’t going to give it up, wasn’t goin
g to forget who she was, just because it seemed more expedient at the moment.

  Stay focused, Peggy. Stay focused…

  “You belong to me now.”

  Peggy’s breathing stilled at the sound of those softly spoken, matter-of-fact words. She bit her lip, comprehending the fact that he’d never let her go easily. For whatever reason—breeding, sex, whatever—this man wanted her. And he meant to keep her.

  Geirwolf rolled onto his side, his muscular, dragon-tattooed arm draping over her body. She swallowed roughly when his fingers found the soft coppery curls between her thighs and began to idly sift through them.

  “I hope you accept this soon,” he murmured in that Old World accent. He placed a kiss on her shoulder. “I would not have you unhappy.”

  Peggy said nothing, though she felt like crying. How would she ever escape him? she wondered. How could she ever hope to elude a man who never left her side?

  There was a long silence and then, “If you would not have me unhappy,” she whispered to him, “you would free me.”

  His fingers stilled in her pussy hair. “I will make you happier than you thought possible, Peggy Brannigan.” The words would have sounded arrogant coming from anyone else, but from him they sounded like a mere statement of fact. His fingers resumed their lazy exploration of her intimate curls. “This is a promise.”

  Peggy bit her lip. She thought back on the customs of the ancient Vikings, particularly about their method for acquiring brides. Panic bubbled up inside, constricting her throat.

  Way back when if a Viking marauder coveted a woman he simply stole her away, keeping her as a captive until she’d fallen in love with him and no longer desired to leave him. Only then, when he was certain of her devotion, was she allowed to roam about unattended, her freedom semi-restored.

  Peggy took a deep breath and expelled it. She prayed to God the custom had been lost in antiquity to the stone-dwellers.

  * * * * *

  Who were these people that had taken her captive? Peggy wondered for what felt to be the millionth time as Geirwolf helped her from the dogsled. Their journey, she had been told, was over now, yet she couldn’t make out the beginnings of a village anywhere within viewing distance.

  She took a thorough look around, noting that the climate had grown harsher, snowier, than the climate she’d been stolen from. What was going to happen to her now? she asked herself. Had she been brought here as a breeder, as Sara had indicated, or as something else entirely?

  “Let’s move,” Geirwolf barked to his men. “I want us out of sight as quickly as possible.”

  Peggy’s eyebrows rose. She offered her captor no resistance when he took her by the arm and guided her toward what appeared to be an empty snowbank, but wasn’t. Her brow furrowed as she watched the heavily muscled Aevar grit his teeth, his muscles bulging, while he manipulated a snowbank that was no snowbank. Instead it was a well-concealed, ice-coated stone door leading to only who knows where. The door eventually gave, and Aevar quit gritting his teeth.

  She was intrigued despite herself. Peggy estimated that they were deep into the belly of the Arctic by now—perhaps still in Alaska, perhaps not. Wherever they were, it was in a climate so harsh, so remote and seemingly uninhabitable, that nobody ever bothered to venture here let alone build villages in so rough an atmosphere.

  She swallowed over the lump in her throat. Apparently the stone-dwellers lived in villages that went below the ground or were carved out of caves. She couldn’t imagine what else the stone door could possibly lead to.

  Peggy took a deep breath, realizing at once that nobody would ever think to look for her here.

  She chewed on her bottom lip. They wouldn’t even know that here existed.

  Chapter Eight

  Gawking at her surroundings, Peggy couldn’t seem to close her gaping jaw as they walked through the ice-coated stone door and into another world, a world that looked as though it had been frozen in time a thousand and some odd years ago, never to be touched by the hands of progress. Or what outsiders would consider to be progress at any rate.

  The narrow passage they had been walking through abruptly widened, and an entire civilization previously unknown to her was revealed. Throughout the mammoth underground cave, which was lit by lanterns, smaller caverns had been dug out of the walls. To the left were a series of small merchant dens where citizens were even now bartering for goods, and to the right there were about six grocer dens, all of them specializing in the selling of different foods.

  All of these fascinating bartering dens were sealed off from the corridor she was walking through by doors, the doors actually being no more than black iron bars that were lifted up and out of the way during hours of commerce.

  Peggy’s brow furrowed as an odd awareness went through her. Something, she thought anxiously, was troubling about this scene. Something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. She was tired, she realized, so maybe it would take a while before she figured it—

  She gulped. Her eyes widened.

  Oh. My. God.

  Peggy’s jaw about unglued when it dawned on her that every woman in the vicinity—every woman!—was either totally naked or, at minimum, topless. No way! she thought angrily. No way am I walking around like this!

  “Is this,” she hissed, her nostrils flaring, “some kind of a sick joke?”

  Aevar chuckled, immediately recognizing the source of Peggy’s distress.

  She came to an abrupt halt and spun around. She took a moment to glare Aevar into silence, then turned her narrowed gaze to her captor. “I’m not kidding!” she said in a venomous whisper. “I refuse to walk around like that!”

  Geirwolf frowned. “It’s the accepted dress for females amongst our people.”

  “What dress? They are naked!” Peggy’s eyes widened in horror as she quickly glanced around, her anxiety-ridden gaze drinking in the sight of so many nude women. She turned back to Geirwolf, her aqua eyes pleading. “I feel like I’m going to be sick. I can’t do this. I absolutely cannot walk around like that.”

  His eyes softened a bit. “All will be well.”

  “All will be well?” Her nostrils flared to wicked proportions. “All will not be well!” she spat. “I am a scientist, not a…a…stripper!”

  His gaze hardened, telling her without words that, insofar as he was concerned, the subject was not up for negotiation. “You will learn to accept this.”

  “Why did you take me?” she breathed out, her voice desperate. Her breathing grew labored as acute panic settled in. Her hand balled into a fist. “Why don’t you let me go?”

  “Peggy…”

  But she had no interest in whatever it was her captor had been about to say. “Go away!” she screeched, batting at the hand that was trying to rest on her shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. “Go away!”

  In an instinctive action born of fear and self-preservation, Peggy dashed around Geirwolf before he could catch her and ran toward the stone door leading back to the outside. Her heart felt as though it was going to beat out of her chest as her arms and legs pumped like mad, trying to outrun him.

  “Help me!” she screamed, not for the benefit of those inside who she knew would offer no assistance, but in the futile hope that somebody on the outside world would hear her. It was a small chance at best, but the only real one she had. “Please help me! I was stolen by a crazy man!” she wailed as she ran toward the door. “Please somebody help me!”

  Peggy ran smack into a male she didn’t recognize, knocking the wind out of her as she tumbled backward to the ground. She gasped for air, panic enveloping her again when Geirwolf and Aevar plucked her off of the ground.

  The other two men who had rode with them out on the tundra were there too, men whose names she didn’t know—men whose names she had no desire to know. They spoke to Geirwolf in their common tongue, so she had no idea what they were saying to him.

  Peggy screamed as loudly as she could, her arms and legs flailing madly as the men picked her up and c
arried her away. “Please somebody help me!” she cried, tears welling up in her eyes. “Oh god—please!”

  It took all four of them to restrain her, a testament to the adrenaline coursing through her blood. She’d never felt so panicked and out of control as she felt at this moment.

  For the first time since this surreal situation had begun, it dawned on Peggy that these men would never let her go alive…

  Unless outsiders came in and forced them to release her.

  * * * * *

  Geirwolf ran a hand over his stubbly jaw, then wearily plopped down onto the tavern bench. He thanked Hilda, the tavern master’s wife, when she set a mug of hot tea and whiskey before him. He threw a silencing look at his brother Aevar, who was still busy chuckling over Peggy’s screaming and kicking episode.

  “‘Twas amusing,” Aevar sniffed, his tone defensive.

  Geirwolf frowned. “Mayhap to you, but not to me. She called me a crazy man. Did you hear her speak thusly of me?”

  The two brothers continued their conversation in Old Norwegian, the untainted version of it that was centuries old and more familiar to them than English. Old Norwegian was a tongue so different from modern Norwegian that nobody in the motherland would even recognize it in the present day.

  The English spoken by their people, on the other hand, was of the modern variety, taught to them by captured American brides. Hence, when males of the Valkraad clan spoke in English, it tended to be through a romanticized, feminine view of the world. A fact their mother often had a laugh about.

  Aevar snorted. “She is distraught. She will come to accept you in time. You know this, Wolf.”

  Geirwolf said nothing to that, merely frowned at his hot tea and whiskey. “I just hope the trainers aren’t too tough on her. I don’t want her spirit broken, only amenable.”