Strictly Taboo, page 3
A dark eyebrow quirked. “Yours? If your brother is abed still alive, this keep is not yours but his.”
“It’s my home,” she said calmly, but with a sense of love and loyalty that could not be mistaken. She rose to her feet and straightened her spine. “I defend what’s mine.”
Admiration. There it was again. He squelched the traitorous feeling, recalling the maimed brother who lay abed.
“It’s no longer yours,” Ivar murmured, making her eyes round once again. “This keep and all of Chippenham are now mine.”
She visibly shivered, yet her pride would not allow her to betray further fear. Ivar supposed she was wondering just how the keep had been seized when no battling had transpired.
This time the Vikings had besieged the stronghold from the inside out rather than from the outside in. It took but one well-aimed arrow through the heart to kill the lookout atop the parapet, and the rest had been like child’s play. Scaling the walls had taken even less effort than Ivar had supposed it would. The walls were made of stone, but as he predicted, their weakness was in their lack of smoothness.
Her face pinched with fear, the witch backed away from Ivar and returned to her brother’s bedside. “Kill us then and be done with it,” she spat, the hatred and determination he’d witnessed in her atop the wall at last rearing its head. “Lothar would rather die than be subjugated to barbarians and your heathen gods—as would I!”
Ivar’s black eyes gleamed. “You do not decide your fate, slave,” he said softly. “Your Master decides it.”
Her lips worked up and down but no words came out as Ivar’s intentions at last dawned on her and took hold. She gasped.
“B-But I am a lady,” she breathed out. “Lady Elen of Godeuart. Surely not even a savage would mean to—”
“I mean to,” he murmured. His jaw tightened as he glanced around the bedchamber before returning his gaze to his captive. “You best take a long, hard look at that pretty gown you are wearing, slave. It’ll be the last time you see a garment for a long time—if ever again.”
Silence.
The witch’s eyes rolled back into her head precisely one second before she swooned. Olaf chuckled as he watched Ivar sweep her limp form up into his arms.
Ivar glared at him. “There is something amusing?”
“Nay,” Olaf snorted. “There is nothing amusing at all about watching a wench faint dead away at the thought of you mounting her.”
The other three warriors had a laugh at that. Ivar didn’t smile, but he was well humored. “Mayhap she was overcome with gratitude,” he quipped back.
Olaf wiped tears of humor from his eyes. “Aye,” Olaf laughed. “Mayhap so.”
’Twould take five days journey to reach the enemy’s stronghold. Thankfully, Elen had been given leave to care for her sorely injured brother during the trek. Due to Lothar’s shoulder wound, and unlike the other men and women taken as slaves by the barbarians, Elen and Lothar were permitted to ride in the wagon instead of having to walk beside it.
The barbarian warlord, whom Elen had since learned was called Ivar Hrolf, had gratefully kept his distance from her so far. The first eve they made camp, Elen was left to sleep beside Lothar in the wagon, though Viking guards slept around it, ensuring that she wouldn’t escape.
As if she could leave her brother behind. Nay, she would rather die with him than leave him to savages.
Elen suspected the barbarian, Ivar, realized that to be true. She couldn’t fathom another reason that he would be troubled to bring an injured and mayhap dying Saxon lord with him. It only made the journey that much slower and longer. Unless, of course, he meant to barter Lothar for more Danegeld from King Alfred. Lothar was, after all, one of the king’s most trusted nobles.
The Viking had left her alone thus far, yet occasionally Elen had caught him stealing glances at her. She didn’t know if he did so to keep a watchful eye over his captive or because he was contemplating all the godless things he meant to do to her.
He meant to make her a whore. The whore of a dog.
She hated him. Her stomach fair expelled itself just thinking of the giant taking her as a bed slave. Elen hadn’t much knowledge—any knowledge really—of what a bed slave did, but she was certain she wouldn’t have a care for it. She was worldly enough and had been possessed of brothers long enough to realize that whatever it was men did with bed slaves it would put an illegitimate babe in her belly.
Verily, she knew of at least two babes the bed slave Hilda had bore her brother Lothar. Hilda had been a slave from birth to when she died bearing Lothar’s second daughter. Lothar had not been permitted by their father to take Hilda to wife, yet he had made it known to their sire and throughout Chippenham that his daughters were not slaves and hence were not to be treated thusly. Papa had respected Lothar’s wishes.
Hate was not a strong enough word for her captor, Elen decided. The Vikings were responsible for the death of her father, the death of her brother Louis, and quite possibly the death of Lothar. Now the giant savage meant to enslave her, too.
Elen had trouble sleeping that first eve even though her brother slept quietly beside her. The still of the night gave her too much time to think, too much time to remember that the grim Ivar Hrolf planned to make a bed slave out of her.
It was humiliation. Sheer, unadulterated humiliation. Her cheeks fair flamed with embarrassment at knowing her fate. No man save a savage would make a slave out of a lady.
Elen stared at nothing, her eyes unblinking. She would be no man’s slave.
Not now. Not ever.
By the second day of their journey, Lothar was swimming in and out of pained consciousness. The small moans made Elen wince for her brother, yet she was glad to hear them for it meant he was on the mend. At least, that’s what she hoped.
“Elen,” Lothar weakly rasped. “Elen.”
“Shhh, I am here,” she whispered, keeping her voice a hush as she bent her neck and kissed him. She didn’t want the Vikings to know her brother had awakened. She feared they might purposely injure him further, torture him in the name of Lord Hrolf’s maimed brother, Agnar.
“Elen,” Lothar muttered.
Sweat slicked his forehead. She feared the icy wind hitting him there would give him a fever he would never recover from, so she quickly wrapped a fresh wool blanket around him.
“Shhh! I am here, brother. I beg you to rest.”
“Elen,” he mumbled, ignoring her. “You must find the king.”
Her eyes widened. Lothar’s voice was so weak as to be barely audible, yet she’d heard his command without trouble.
“Escape?” she whispered. Elen stilled. “I cannot leave you, Lothar. I cannot—”
“Elen, please,” Lothar rasped. “I’m already dead. They will kill me do I not die from my affliction. This you know.”
She closed her eyes against his words. Pain clawed at her gut. Hatred seethed through her blood.
“B-But my daughters. And Wessex . . .”
His unfinished sentence hung there between them. If Elen didn’t escape and warn the king, Alfred might not know Chippenham had fallen until it was too late, until the savages had wreaked havoc on the king’s own stronghold deep in Wessex.
The entire kingdom could fall. Every gently bred lady stood to be reduced to the status of a barbarian’s bed slave, every nobleman put to his death. And her nieces—
Sweet saints, she could not let that happen to them.
“I love you, Lothar,” Elen quietly gasped. “I love you so much it fair hurts.”
It took every bit of strength her brother had to smile up to his sister, but he did. “I know, Elen. As I love you. Flee this eve as the Vikings slumber. Find William Lenore. He will take you to the king does he live.” He winced, the pain jarring. “Flee knowing I will always love you.” He grabbed for the sleeve of her cloak, though his grasp was weak. “Swear to me now you will go, Elen. Swear it by Wessex and Alfred.”
Most noblemen didn’t place merit in the sworn word of a wench. Lothar did. Yet one more reason to love him as she did.
She was quiet for a long moment, and then, “I swear it.” Elen took a deep breath and slowly expelled it. “By King Alfred and mighty Wessex I swear to escape do I die in the trying.”
“No dying,” Lothar murmured, his eyes closing to rest. “Just escape.”
Chapter 4
Elen’s eyes widened in shock as she watched four naked Viking warriors emerge from a nearby—and icy cold—body of water. She wasn’t certain if she was more taken aback by the fact they’d bathed in such freezing weather or that they weren’t even trying to conceal their manparts from her.
Elen knew there were differences between males and females that went beyond height and muscles. She just hadn’t known that certain parts on a man got so long, and so swoon-inducingly thick.
Lord Hrolf walked over to stand in front of the wagon, his dark eyes never leaving Elen. She gulped as her worried gaze flicked up and down the length of his steel-hard body, simultaneously praying this eve would not be the night the savage decided to make bedsport out of her. She expelled a breath of tentative relief when he made no motion to manhandle her.
Sweet saints but Elen was suddenly glad Lothar had commanded her to flee! Knowing what she did now about barbarian manparts, she vowed she would never become a bed slave to this one. She would die first. Then again, she thought, her jaw dropping as she watched Lord Hrolf’s manpart grow impossibly longer and thicker, she would mayhap die anyway.
“Why does it do that?” Elen asked without thinking as the Viking dried himself off using a fresh blanket. She was too stunned to consider the impropriety of her words—or her gawking.
The savage smiled—an event as noteworthy as that manpart of his that could grow of its own volition. His smile served to shake the cobwebs from Elen’s mind, forcing her to recall the fact that she was asking questions about something she didn’t want to know the answers to now or ever. Forcing her, too, to remember that she hated him and the whole of his kind. Her eyes narrowed.
“Never mind,” she said haughtily, glancing away. She pulled the blankets tighter around her before looking back to her captor. “ ’Tis no concern nor care of mine.”
His voice was thick, his eyes hooded. “He grows because he wants you,” Lord Hrolf murmured.
The smile was mayhap gone, but Elen warily noted she still held his rapt interest. “He?” she asked. Her lips pursed. “What mean you that he—” She stilled, then cleared her throat. “Oh,” she said dumbly, her cheeks suffused with heat.
That bedamned smile again. This time Elen noted a small dimple denting one cheek. She quickly looked away.
He was a handsome man, she begrudgingly admitted to herself. Had her captor been a Saxon noble who had peacefully ridden into Chippenham to request her hand in marriage from Lothar, she would like as not have swooned with giddy happiness at her good fortune. But Lord Ivar Hrolf was no Saxon nobleman held in high esteem by King Alfred and Wessex. He was a godless heathen, a savage who meant to enslave her and her people.
“Come here,” Lord Hrolf instructed.
His voice was hoarse, the tone of his words foreign enough to Elen that she glanced up to see what ailed him. Her eyes bulged in fright when she saw that his manpart had swelled nigh unto the size of a child’s arm. A plump child at that.
“By the saints,” she muttered, her words tripping out one after the other, “just kill me now rather than split me asunder.”
He grinned. She gulped.
“I take care of my chattel,” Lord Hrolf murmured. “I won’t hurt you.”
Elen’s teeth gritted at his use of the word chattel, a not so subtle reminder as to her new and unwanted status. His black gaze saw everything, she was certain. She doubted she’d managed to school her features before the savage realized he’d gotten to her. She supposed her clenched jaw and venomous expression could give her feelings away to any imbecile. And an imbecile he was not.
“Shouldn’t you retrieve your garments before that thing of yours freezes up and falls off?” she bit out. Her nostrils flared as she glanced away. “Not that I’d care if it did, mind you.”
His eyebrows shot up as he otherwise ignored her words. “Come here,” he said again, holding out his hand. “Now.”
Elen hesitated as her heart began to pound in her chest.
“Now, Elen,” the warlord said in a harder, louder voice. “Do not make me ask again.”
She wet her parched lips and glanced down to Lothar. If the Viking’s words grew louder he would like as not wake up her brother. And Lothar, maimed or not, would try to defend his sister from their captor’s assault.
Lothar could not possibly survive. Not now. Not in his weakened state.
She ignored her hastily beating heart, ignored too the lightheadedness that threatened to make her swoon, and scooted off the wagon that she might stand before the warlord. Her gaze downcast, she said nothing, only stood there and, seething with fury, waited his next instruction.
Taking her by the hand, Lord Hrolf led his frightened captive into a nearby tent. After barking at a grinning Olaf to get out, he shooed Elen inside and let the flap fall shut.
“I will not be mounting you this eve,” her captor remarked as he turned away from her and lit a beeswax candle inside the animal hide tent. “So calm yourself.”
Elen’s expression was at once angry and more than a bit nervous. Her gaze trailed from his chiseled buttocks to the wide and scarred expanse of his massive back. She licked her dry lips. “Then why bring me in here?”
He turned around on his knees, giving Elen her first look at his front in fairly good lighting. Her jaw took to dropping again as she couldn’t help but to stare.
His rod was long and thick, and jutted up to his navel from a nest of curls as black as the hair atop his head. A thin line of dark hair trailed up from his navel and toward a chest as huge, defined, and battle-scarred as his back.
Her gaze drifted upward to a masculinely elegant neck, then farther up to a face that was as chiseled and rugged as it was primal and beautiful. Or it would have been, Elen forced herself to recall as she coughed into her hand and glanced away, had it not belonged to a barbarian savage.
“I brought you in here to feed you,” Lord Hrolf told her. One eyebrow rose. “Olaf informed me that you have not eaten since this morn.”
“I wasn’t hungry,” she said quietly, her gaze still turned away. “And I’m still not. May I return to my brother?” she asked in a small, hopeful voice.
“Nay.”
Her heart sank. She had known before asking that would be his answer, yet she’d permitted herself one last hope at being able to escape before the warlord split her asunder with that wicked beast of a thing.
Elen folded her hands in her lap with what she hoped looked like gentle patience, her gaze cast toward the ground. “May I leave after I eat?”
“Aye.”
Hope surged anew.
“Take your dress off.”
Hope plummeted anew.
“I thought you didn’t mean to mount me this eve,” she breathed out.
“I do not.”
Her forehead wrinkled as she at last glanced up. “Savages eat naked?” she asked incredulously.
He didn’t so much as crack a smile, yet she saw amusement there in his eyes. “Of course,” he drawled. “Don’t the savage Saxons eat naked?”
She gasped at the slight. “Nay! And we are not the savages!”
“You’ve lesser weapons, lesser armies, and lesser ways. Savages, I daresay.”
Elen had no rejoinder to that. The Vikings had, in fact, bested the Saxon armies on more occasions than she felt comfortable recalling. “Well,” she snapped, “at least we’ve the sense to wear clothing in the dead of winter. And not to eat naked!”
That bedamned smile again, she noted. Followed by that bedamned dimple.
“Eating naked is far superior to eating clothed.”
She frowned. “I somehow doubt that.”
A dark eyebrow quirked. “Then you have eaten naked before to know this?”
“Well, not precisely, yet am I certain—”
“Take your clothes off,” Lord Hrolf murmured. His voice grew thick again, his gaze once more taking on that drugged look. “Now.”
Elen hesitated. She worried her bottom lip. Thoughts of hatred and escape momentarily fled as she concentrated on the frightening aspects of the present.
“Now,” he softly but firmly repeated. “Do as I tell you, Elen.”
She took a deep breath and shakily blew it out. She wanted to run—to scream and refuse his order—yet also did she see the wisdom in letting the brute think she was quick to demure.
’Twould be that much more the shock when she ran.
And oh how she would enjoy besting the savage! She hated his murdering kind—and him in particular. Mayhap Louis and Papa would smile down upon her from the heavens when the Viking marauder was bested by her.
Mentally conceding that she didn’t have much of a choice, Elen prepared to obey Lord Hrolf’s command. Refusing to look at her captor, her jaw tightened as she removed her outer cloak and tossed it behind her.
“Now the boots.”
The boots were next discarded. They were her best pair so she was careful to set them down with care, though the thought of hurling them at the grim-faced beast was fair tempting.
“And your gown,” he said hoarsely.
Elen closed her eyes briefly, willing herself not to blush. She would show no weakness to this Viking.
Reaching for the skirt of her green dress, her eyelids drifted open. She pulled the hem up above her head and struggled with the garment. Her breasts were on the large side, and so got caught up in the wool a disgruntling moment, but finally they sprang free.
Her will not to blush lasted until the moment she heard the Viking’s breath suck in. She couldn’t be certain what such a sound signified—disgust or desire—yet both possible results disheartened her.
