Besieged

by Jaid Black

  She turned to Michelle, who looked pale as a sheet. There was nothing she could say to comfort her and they both knew it.

  Peggy took a deep breath. It was either succumb to the training or end up here. She would definitely not end up here. Nor would Michelle. A situation like this would break the young girl’s mind.

  “Well now that you have all had a taste of the Commons,” Ivara called out, “it’s time to see what happens to the females who are given no more chances after receiving their punishment.” Her eyebrows rose. “The next stop is the Dungeon of Shame.”

  Peggy and Michelle glanced at each other. They both implicitly understood what the other was thinking without saying it aloud:

  They found the Commons deplorable enough. By the time they left the Dungeon of Shame, they both knew that Ivara would have won and they would succumb to whatever fate lay ahead.

  * * * * *

  “I’m going to faint,” Peggy said weakly, muttering to herself. “I’m going to fucking faint.”

  Her eyes wide, nausea churning in her belly, Peggy stared surrealistically at the caged women, the jails they had been locked into dangling a few feet above the ground. The women inside of the cages had been blindfolded and chained down on all fours, depriving them of movement and visual stimuli.

  The caged women were all naked, of course, their legs obscenely tied apart so that the bald, awaiting flesh between their thighs was exposed to any man who entered the dungeon. Viking men walked by and fondled the display of cunts in any manner of their choosing. If a man took a fancy to one, he asked the warden for the skeleton key to the cage, opened the iron door, grabbed the female prisoner by the flesh of her hips, and sank into her pussy from behind. If the woman came during the sex session, then the male would throw food bits into her cage when he was finished fucking her, treating her like an animal at a petting zoo.

  Peggy’s hand flew up to cover her mouth, horror lancing through her. She leaned against an equally terrified Michelle, feeling as though she might faint. This is not happening, she thought. For all of his faults, I can’t believe Geirwolf would condone a society that would do this to women.

  By the time Ivara called an end to the twisted field trip, Peggy was resolved to see the marriage to her captor through. She wouldn’t try to run, or help Michelle escape, until she was fairly certain they could make it without being recaptured.

  Because one thing was for certain: there was no way in hell either she or Michelle would end up dangling from the ceiling in suspended cages, their bodies splayed out for any man to take.

  Peggy closed her eyes briefly and took a steadying breath, her body shaking slightly from nerves and ice-cold fear. There was no way in hell.

  Chapter Ten

  On the eve he was to trade vows with Peggy, Geirwolf prowled towards the thing—the meeting place of the leaders of New Norway—with another of the groomsman. Anticipation of wedding and then breeding his future wife making his cock stiffen and his stomach muscles clench. The ceremony, he hoped, would be the easy part. It was the ritualistic bedding to take place after the binding ceremony that had him worried. He hoped Peggy would prove agreeable to it…or at least tolerant of it.

  Geirwolf had no idea how much resistance she would give him when first he tried to mount her, though he had often heard it said that Ivara was an accomplished trainer capable of breaking down a woman’s reticence in mere hours. He took comfort in the knowledge that already three days of training had gone by, and more importantly, already Peggy had agreed to speak the ritualistic words that would bind them together for all time.

  He had no idea of the methods Ivara had used to train the captive brides, yet found himself hoping that the rumors were true and Peggy would prove amenable to not only his troth but also his lust. After all, the sooner he impregnated her, the sooner she could be moved from the stalls and into his own cavern.

  “Which of the females is yours, Wolf?” his cousin Ragnar asked, breaking Geirwolf from his thoughts.

  Ragnar, only twenty-three years old, had set aside his bachelorhood in lieu of marriage the moment he’d clapped eyes on the eighteen-year-old Michelle, an exotic beauty he was to wed with this eve. It had taken Ragnar a solid month of planning, but the young and handsome blonde Viking who had been named for the mutual grandfather their ancestry shared from over a thousand years ago, had managed to snag his captive bride on the third attempt. Not bad for a warrior of twenty-three.

  “Peggy,” Geirwolf absently replied, his thoughts focused on the night ahead. He and his cousin turned left when the earthen corridor narrowed and followed the dimly lit path to the Hall of Ceremony, the officious meeting place of the thing. Geirwolf’s father, the jarl, would be performing the binding ceremony for himself and Peggy, as well as for four other couples, Ragnar and Michelle included.

  “Ah! She’s quite a beauty!” Ragnar grinned. “But then so is my Michelle.” He sighed, sounding every bit a young man in the throes of his first true passion.

  A semi-smile tugged at the corners of Geirwolf’s lips. He knew precisely how his cousin felt.

  * * * * *

  Wide-eyed, Peggy gulped as she watched Geirwolf stride into the large, cool cavern with a younger man at his side. Her intelligent gaze raked over the giant she was to marry this evening, noting at once how finely he was dressed.

  He wore a long tunic made of black silk with tight, form-fitting black braies underneath it. His tanned, not to mention massively muscled arms were bulging from around the gold arm bracelets he wore at either bicep, the dragon tattoo on his left arm ending just above the bangle.

  She glanced down at his hands and felt desire flicker in her belly. She blinked, shaking the feeling off, realizing as she did that he had conditioned her body to respond to them during the long dogsled ride to New Norway. Apparently, she thought grimly, he had conditioned her so well that her body responded to the mere sight of his masculine, callused hands.

  Well, she sniffed, her chin going up defensively, she could hardly be blamed for her reaction.

  Geirwolf smiled at Peggy, throwing her completely off guard. She hadn’t been expecting that. The man was not big on smiling. The small gesture made his grim features appear less threatening, laugh lines making his already handsome face that much more appealing.

  Oh damn, she thought as she nibbled on her lower lip, he’s already getting to me. Some martyr you make, Peggy! Stop it. Stop it. Stop---

  Geirwolf’s icy blue eyes flicked over her naked body, then narrowed in desire. Peggy squeezed her thighs together, her body’s embarrassing reaction to his intense perusal causing her to momentarily forget how much she hated him, how much she loathed the man for making her his captive bride. She glanced away, clearing her throat and blinking.

  “There he is,” Michelle whispered from beside her. “Oh Peggy, I’m so scared!”

  Peggy’s gaze followed Michelle’s line of vision directly toward…Geirwolf? Her heartbeat accelerated as the adrenaline kicked in. Oh damn, she thought. Are we both to be his brides? Her nostrils flared. Bastard! She decided to ignore the fact that jealousy was knotting in her belly.

  As Geirwolf drew closer, she realized that Michelle had been speaking of the young man at his side—a very nervous, and she had to admit quite handsome, young man who was staring at Michelle like a lovesick puppy.

  Peggy let out a breath of relief, then hesitated, wondering why she’d cared to begin with. Wouldn’t a bride who wants nothing at all to do with the groom actually prefer a polygamous marriage? After all, she conceded, it meant that he’d be less likely to bother her for sex all the time.

  Her eyes drifted up to the six-pack belly rippling beneath his tunic. Yeah, she frowned, sex would be a real bother.

  “Remember the cage,” Peggy absently said to Michelle. “This won’t seem so bad if you think about that horrible cage.”

  Michelle’s body stilled. “Right,” she whispered. “How could I forget that.”

  Geirwolf came to a halt i
n front of Peggy, his possessive gaze raking over her breasts and then her trimmed coppery-colored mons. She instinctively sucked in a breath, unwittingly causing her breasts to heave.

  “Hello Peggy,” Geirwolf murmured. “I’ve been waiting for this night for weeks.”

  Which meant he’d been watching her long before she’d been abducted. Her eyes widened.

  Long, callused finger threaded through her own. She glanced down to where their hands were joined and took a deep breath.

  “You have nothing to fear from me,” Geirwolf said softly, but firmly. “I will treasure you and your body always. Before long, you will come to me of your own doing, eagerly seeking out my arms.”

  Peggy blew out a breath as he guided her toward the center of the cavern. That, she thought resignedly, was precisely what she was afraid of.

  Chapter Eleven

  The well-lit cavern was grandly decorated for the ceremony taking place, gold and bejeweled dragon statues peeking out of the earthen walls, a large tapestry of Viking longboats hanging over the double doors. Natives began to pour in by droves, packing in to watch four of their warriors take four women as wives in a tradition as old as their people.

  Peggy would have been fascinated by the pomp and circumstance had it not been directly affecting her life. And, she thought through seething teeth, had she not been forced down to her knees, naked, and made to sit deferentially at Geirwolf’s feet as if paying homage to him.

  Naked and on her knees aside, Peggy hesitantly admitted, she was still fascinated by it all. She felt as though she’d stepped through a portal and been transported into another time and place—Norway in the ninth century instead of the Arctic Circle in the twenty-first. Even this business of sitting submissively on her knees before the bridegroom she knew to be a distinctly medieval tradition. Such had been a common gesture peculiar to certain regions of Europe in marriage ceremonies back then, though the modern romanticization of ancient days gone by never told you that much.

  She could feel the gaze of the men in the cavern looking her over, checking out her nude body. The realization that she was being assessed and evaluated, not to mention ogled, made goosebumps break out on her skin and her nipples harden.

  Peggy blew out a calming breath, then looked back up to Geirwolf who was listening intently to whatever ritualistic words were being said in that foreign tongue they shared. She didn’t move a muscle throughout the entire ceremony, just stared meekly at Geirwolf as though there was nobody else in the entire cavern except for him…just as she’d been instructed beforehand by Ivara to do.

  When she was prodded to say yes, she blew out a breath and answered yes. Ten minutes later when the gregarious officiator said some words that caused the natives inside the cavern to cheer, she rightly assumed she had well and truly been wed.

  Peggy nibbled on her lower lip. Good lord, she was married to the man who had kidnapped her.

  * * * * *

  Geirwolf watched Peggy’s eyes widen in alarm when two of his father’s men plucked her off of the ground from where she’d been kneeling at his feet and tied her down, naked and spread eagle, onto one of the three ornate beds that had been brought into the thing. Michelle, because she was a virgin and her husband would have bloodstained sheets to show the assembled crowd, was squirreled away into the breeding stalls to be breeched by Ragnar in private.

  Because Peggy was no virgin, she was forced to endure being publicly mounted that no warrior might make a future claim stating that her marriage to Geirwolf had not been truly consummated. If a warrior could make such a claim, it made Peggy fair game. And Peggy, he thought tensely, was definitely not in the game.

  He disrobed before the ornate consummation bed, his gaze never straying from Peggy’s. He could tell she was embarrassed at being splayed out like this in front of so many, so the faster he covered her the better.

  He could not blame her. Until this very moment, he had not given much thought to how callous it was for the men to gather around and watch a new, and presumably terrified, bride be mounted. His wolf-blue gaze narrowed at his younger brother Bjorn whom he noted was staring a bit too intently at his wife’s exposed cunt. Bjorn merely chuckled as a reply, his eyes so like Geirwolf’s twinkling at his anger.

  Geirwolf’s jaw clenched. He had heard that an inebriated Bjorn had pulled Peggy down onto his lap when she’d been taken to the Commons by Ivara and the other trainers. That had been insulting enough, but this—

  “Relax, Wolf,” Bjorn teased in their native tongue. “I am but looking at the wench.”

  Geirwolf said nothing, though he continued to stare challengingly at his brother. He knew it was ridiculous to behave so jealously, yet he couldn’t seem to help himself. Always, the ladies had found Bjorn pleasing to be with. He was handsome with his black hair and wolf-blue eyes and his personality wasn’t so stark as Geirwolf’s. Bjorn didn’t carry the responsibility of knowing he would be leader to their people one day so he could afford to be less rigid in his thoughts and conduct.

  The brothers stared each other down until, inevitably, Bjorn’s smile broke. He nodded respectfully at Geirwolf, the unspoken promise to respect Peggy there in his gaze.

  Geirwolf grunted, appeased. He continued disrobing, throwing his finery to the wayside and stepping before his bride fully nude and fully aroused. He saw her nibble on her lower lip a bit as he grabbed his thick cock by the root and walked toward the consummation bed. Her stare grew wider as he came to stand before her and he found himself wondering not for the first time what it was she was thinking.

  Geirwolf took a deep, steadying breath as he crawled onto the bed and settled himself between Peggy’s splayed legs. He had been waiting to plunge inside of his wife for what felt like years. He had spent the better part of every day these past few weeks fantasizing about what her warm cunt would feel like wrapped around his erect cock.

  He didn’t want to rut on top of her like an animal, yet he deeply suspected that was precisely what he was about to do. For weeks he had hunted her. For days he had endured the knowledge that she was in New Norway, yet inaccessible to him…

  His gaze flicked down to his manhood then back up to a nervous Peggy. His cock was so erect that the engorged ruby head was painful, his balls so tight he knew this first time wouldn’t last long.

  Geirwolf’s gaze clashed with Peggy’s. Now, he thought possessively, his muscles clenching, she was all his.

  * * * * *

  Peggy’s teeth sank down into her lower lip as she watched Geirwolf settle himself between her legs. Cheers and jests were filling the cavern as males clamored closer and closer to watch the new husband fuck the new bride. Thankfully the cheers and jests were being spoken in their native tongue rather than in English, so she didn’t have to suffer from embarrassment at knowing what was being said about her.

  Still, she had her ideas. All of them mortifiying.

  Peggy could feel how intensely her nude body was being stared at by the men in attendance. And perversely, or perhaps inevitably, her body reacted to the knowledge. Her nipples were so stiff that it was painful, her cunt wet. When all she could do was lay there, splayed out and tied down, there wasn’t much reaction she could give other than the seemingly innate ones her body was eliciting.

  Being stared at through hooded eyes by so many handsome men was more arousing than it should have been. Being coveted by so many handsome men while confident in Ivara’s promises that no man but Geirwolf was permitted to touch her was more arousing than she wanted it to be. And then there was Geirwolf himself…

  He had conditioned her body well, she thought nervously. The moment he had started disrobing, that steel-hard, muscular body of his visible, she had become wet. By the time his long, thick cock sprang free from his braies and pointed eagerly upward against his navel, her breathing had become increasingly labored, as if she was panting.

  He grabbed his penis by the base, the swollen organ looking even more impossibly virile juxtaposed against the back
drop of his heavily muscled arm with the menacing tattoo of a dragon snaking up it. Her breasts heaved once, the nipples aching.

  Geirwolf settled himself atop her and Peggy realized that, bizarre or not, she wanted him inside of her. For the past three days she had been mentally trained for this moment by Ivara, and for the three days prior to that she had been bodily conditioned by Geirwolf himself to respond to him.

  He placed the thick head of his penis at her wet opening, then gazed down at her, his icy blue eyes narrowed in desire. The large, callused palm of his left hand cupped her right breast and gently kneaded it even as he settled his big body between her thighs.

  The fact that he had decided to arouse her using her right breast, the breast not visible to the onlookers crammed against the bed on her left, further warmed her to the man. She rightly suspected he was trying to keep her aroused so the impending sex wasn’t at all painful, while simultaneously shielding the intimate act from intruding eyes.

  She blinked, finding such an act from Geirwolf incongruously sweet with the hard, relentless image of him she’d formed in her mind. And he was right—touching her was much more intimate than the actual process of fucking her. Any animal could fuck. It took meaningful caresses and touches to make the act something more, something infinitely deeper.

  “All will be well, Peggy,” Geirwolf murmured, his voice husky with arousal. “We need to do this but once in front of the others. After that, our lovemaking will always be private.”

  Lovemaking—he thought of what they were doing as lovemaking. She blinked twice more and glanced down at his chest.

  Peggy blew out a breath and glanced back up at him—at her husband. “I know,” she whispered. She smiled a bit, making his eyes widen. Apparently he hadn’t expected such a conciliatory gesture so soon. And, truthfully, she was surprised she had made one too. Nevertheless, his thoughtfulness in this regard deserved at least that. “But thank you for reassuring me.”