Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
About the Author
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2011 by Deloris Lynders.
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Heat trade paperback edition / October 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Devlin, Delilah.
Enslaved by a Viking / Delilah Devlin.—Heat trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN : 978-1-101-54497-6
1. Vikings—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.E88645E57 2011
813’.6—dc22
2010054384
http://us.penguingroup.com
Prologue
Eirik tried not to breathe too deeply. The rotten, sour smells of his dark, dank prison already made his skin stink. He didn’t want the awful stench inside his lungs or belly.
He hadn’t seen the other prisoners, not after they’d been herded like cattle through a chute once the hatch had been opened at the side of the ship and his keepers applied prods to their backsides to move them out in single file.
With only brief impressions of his new home, of searing heat and blinding, harsh sunlight, he’d shielded his arm over his eyes and stumbled down the gangway, through the iron-barred alley that disallowed any thoughts of escape.
He’d been led to this cell, deep inside an enormous stone building. A brief glimpse of an open arena, and then he’d been shoved down two flights of narrow stone steps.
Once they’d slammed the solid door and slid the eye-level window closed, he’d been left alone, no sounds penetrating his prison other than the hum of the light above him, and the sounds his own body made.
His thoughts drowned it all out, screaming inside him. He’d wanted to beat his fists against the door, rail at his captors, but he didn’t know if anyone watched him, and wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing how close to abject despair he was coming.
Hel, he’d even suffer Fatin’s derision, her cold, calculating touch, just to feel or hear another human being.
He didn’t know how long he’d been here, there being no window and no way for him to know how the natural passage of time was counted on this planet, but he knew it was long enough that he’d stopped believing anyone would come to his rescue.
They must think me dead, he thought. Like Father, lost on the ice. One day waving as he skimmed away across the frozen blue water, never to return. Only Eirik wasn’t lost. He wasn’t dead.
A key grated in the lock at his door, pulling his glance. The heavy door swung open, and two sweet-smelling women strode inside, dressed in short white skirts. Their breasts were bare. Leather sandals with straps laced up to their ankles. Both were dark-haired and ombré-skinned. Like the witch Fatin. They carried linens and an urn of water.
He pressed a hand against the wall of his cell and pushed up from the floor.
“There’s a guard outside the door,” the one nearest him said. Her dark sloe eyes glittered as they raked his body. “We’re here to bathe and dress you.”
Pushing past them would earn him nothing. He clenched his fists at his sides and held himself still as they brought their clean, sweetly fragrant bodies close enough to strip away his clothing and bathe him like a mother might a child. Only their hands lingered over his sex, and although he might have wished otherwise, his cock unfurled, coaxed by their hands and then their lips to deliver his body’s nectar. Or so they called it.
Dressed now, and more relaxed, he allowed another woman just outside his cell to lead him through a winding warren of corridors until they climbed a final set of steps and she pushed open the door, letting sunlight drench them.
Eirik closed his eyes, lifting his face to the light. But he wasn’t allowed to savor the sensation. A prod behind him reminded him not to dally. He stepped out onto a platform in the center of the arena. A stage surrounded by thousands of men and women dressed in long robes and jewels.
A blended roar of voices greeted him. Women’s excited chatter, men’s laughter. He emptied his mind of the indignity, of standing in the center of the stage, hands rising, voices shouting. Then one voice separated from the throng, for it was nearer and familiar. His head swiveled toward the sound, caught the triumph glittering in Fatin’s eyes as she met his gaze for a moment, then turned back to the crowd, accepting rapidly escalating bids.
A woman near the front of the stage shouted something that sent the crowd into gales of laughter.
Fatin turned toward him, warning him to behave with her cold, black gaze. When she was within arm’s reach, she pulled at the tie on his hip and unlaced it, letting the short, skirtlike garment the women had dressed him in fall away.
He stood nude, his body exposed to the air and the rapacious gazes of the crowd. His head cleared of the numbing despair, all focus on Fatin’s slender frame. No matter the outcome of today’s shameful events, he vowed to have his revenge. One day, Fatin would be the slave; one day she would know the shame he felt.
Something of what he thought must have transmitted. Fatin’s look of triumph faded, and her eyes became dark mirrors of doubt.
Slowly, his body warmed; his cock expanded. The things he would do to her, the many ways he would take her, filled his mind. No woman would ever know the depths of depr
avity he would visit on her body.
Frozen, her gaze locked with his. Eirik let the smile tugging at his mouth expand.
Be frightened, sweet Fatin. Be waiting for me.
One
It was a long-standing joke among Ulfhednar warriors that when they perished on a battlefield, they would tell the Valkyries who came to deliver them to Odin’s hall that they’d prefer the fiery underworld of Muspellheim. For Icelanders had lived so long on their frozen world that searing heat seemed a more fitting paradise.
However, Eirik Ulfhednar knew the truth. The realm of fire wasn’t a mythical land. Due to one fateful error, he’d landed there, and the sultry heat of this godless place wasn’t anything to be envied.
Despite the fans circling high above the garishly appointed salon, the temperature of the room where he stood was sweltering, the air stifling and thick in his lungs. Sweat gathered on his forehead and glazed his bare chest.
For the first time, he was thankful for the inadequate and embarrassing clothing he’d been given. The linen garment draping his hips allowed air to cool his nether regions.
However, the fabric was so thin he might as well have stood naked before those gathered to examine the new arrivals—or “offerings,” as the whore-mistress called them. A term that somehow made him and the men standing in a straight rank behind him seem less human, more like a feast spread out on a banquet table to be devoured. A feast of twenty rugged Icelanders—all with their long hair slicked back in queues behind their heads, their muscular bodies oiled and perfumed like women, and wearing the same transparent swath of fabric about their hips and silver cuffs around their wrists that proclaimed them the lowest order of slaves—sex-thralls.
Every trace of their proud heritage had been erased except for their large, rugged builds—the very qualities that had precipitated their capture and enslavement.
“I count only two guards inside this room,” Hakon murmured beside him, lifting his chin to point toward the tall wooden doors at the entrance to the salon.
Called Hakon the Bold on their former world, Eirik’s new comrade was just another of the captives being paraded to satisfy the lusty appetites of the Heliopolite elite. All female, thank the stars.
Eirik gave an equally subtle nod toward the windows overlooking the landscaped grounds. Lush green grass, oases of tall flowers and leafy trees, couldn’t hide the armed guards patrolling openly around the facility’s perimeter. “I’ve counted six soldiers so far. Armed with stunners. We haven’t shields to protect us should we try to make a break. They could take us all.”
Hakon grunted. “But we have hostages. Or are you too squeamish to harm women?”
Eirik gave him a narrowed glare. “I wouldn’t hesitate, not for a second, to do what I must to secure our freedom.”
His companion’s casual shrug belied his sharp scrutiny. “I thought I should ask, given how eagerly your body reacts to the vicious bitch that brought us here.”
Not accustomed to having his motives questioned, Eirik bristled. “If I grow hard in Fatin’s presence,” he bit out, “it’s because I envision all the ways I will make her suffer.”
Hakon chuckled. Suspicion cleared from his face. “Good to know you will not shed a tear over her death.”
However, as furious as Eirik was with the woman they discussed, the thought of standing over her lifeless body gave him a moment’s pause. His chest tightened uncomfortably.
Perhaps he felt a connection to her because of the way they’d met. She’d been a gift from the men operating his family mine, a companion to warm his bed while he visited. Due to the hesitant way she’d mounted his body, he’d thought her young and untried. That first impression had been obliterated by what had happened next. He’d felt the prick of the needle she’d used to subdue him, experienced his body disintegrating into molecules as he’d been transported to a ship orbiting his planet. When he’d next awoken, he found himself caged inside the hold of a cargo ship bound for Helios, the Outlanders’ home planet.
Even enduring the humiliating auction had done little to blunt his desire for the woman. He just wanted to punish her, he told himself. To visit untold demeaning acts upon her supple body. Only then would his thirst for revenge be quenched. His hesitation to end her life existed only because he didn’t want her suffering to end too quickly.
“I think I could take the first thirty or so,” Hakon murmured dryly beside him, eyeing the throng entering the room.
“But will you fuck them or beat them to death?” Eirik muttered, watching the scores of wide-eyed, feverishly animated women streaming inside like water breaking through a dam. The doors had just been opened, admitting the first customers.
Hakon snorted, his chin jutting upward. “I’ve never struck a female, but I am sorely tempted now,” he said, his tone filled with disgust. “I’m a Berserkir, not a sex-thrall.”
Not for the first time, Eirik reflected on the fact that he’d grown close in a very short time to the cousin of the enemy king. They’d raised swords against each other in “friendly” skirmishes back on their home world. Neighbors, Berserkir and Ulfhednar had warred for centuries, but now they were bound by their shared plight. And although Eirik was the only Ulfhednar in their midst, all the assembled Icelanders turned to him for leadership. He was, after all, a Wolfskin prince, the fiercest clan among the Icelanders and brother to the legendary Black Wolf.
Too restless to stand still, Hakon rubbed his chest and grimaced. “Do you think it is true?”
“What?” Eirik ground out, only part of his attention on the conversation as he studied the curvaceous crowd filling the large room, wondering how many he would be expected to pleasure.
“Do you think our hair will never grow back? I’m as smooth as a woman.”
Eirik grunted. He’d been every bit as dismayed as Hakon to awaken and discover his current smooth-skinned state. “My friend, I think that’s the least of the indignities we will suffer.”
The Norsemen were lined up in the center of the salon. Because they were close in stature and musculature, Hakon and he had been placed just in front of the line of new offerings. The most valuable prizes among the men who’d been procured for this event.
“Hymir’s bollocks!” Hakon whispered furiously.
Eirik glanced down to where Hakon stared and noted that his companion’s cock tented the linen, a fact that had the women strolling by to examine them tittering.
Hakon shrugged, a blush staining his cheeks. “I can’t help it. I haven’t enjoyed a release since that white-coated witch Miriam milked me like a dairy cow aboard the frigate before we arrived on this frigging planet. After she finished, I thought my manhood would remain shriveled forever.”
The scientist hadn’t come near Eirik, but only because another cold bitch had seen to stealing his semen to test its potency. Eirik searched the throng of robed women, wondering if the heartless bounty hunter would dare show herself today.
Still, as furious as he was with Fatin, Eirik’s own man-staff thickened at the memory of her mouth tugging at his sex to coax him into spilling his precious seed.
The last time he’d seen her had been two days ago when she’d stood beside him on the stage erected in the arena and whipped away his clothing to display his attributes to the bidders gathered there.
Dark eyes flashing with triumph, she’d been beautiful.
He’d been furious, blood pounding at his temples and racing south to harden his cock. He’d glared daggers her way, promising her silently that one day she would know the same humiliation. That one day she would be at his mercy, and he’d show just as much of that tender emotion as she’d spared him.
“Do you think they did more than remove our hair?” Hakon whispered.
Rage made Eirik tremble anew at the thought of how he’d awoken that morning, feeling sluggish from the remnants of the drug that had been slipped into his food, his entire body denuded of its manly fur, his arse sore. He’d wondered if he’d been taken in his sle
ep, raped by some unknown person, and for those first waking moments, he’d felt a searing despair.
Everything else he possessed had been stolen—his clothing, his rank, his standing among his people. Had they also taken his pride?
But he’d been assured by the female technician who’d loosened the bindings around his wrists and feet securing him to a gurney that he’d only been examined to assure his health. Had the pinkcheeked woman read his dismay? He was accustomed to hiding his emotions. The shame of her recognizing his weakness had hardened his resolve.
He was Eirik, heir to the Wolfskin kingdom of Thorshavn, and he’d not remain a slave for long.
“We could take them,” Hakon repeated in a whisper. “There are only the two guards, and we could use the women as a shield when we rush the gates. You only have to say the word and the men will follow your lead.”
Eirik nodded, his gaze sweeping the room again, looking for clues as to how their Helio captors intended to keep the Vikings subdued. The room was large and airy with rich red and brown upholstered sofas and thick carpets strewn on top of smooth gold marble floors. The large windows were unbarred and opened to display the grassy lawn surrounding the facility. Cool air spilled from vents in the ceiling and was pushed downward by the whirring blades of the fans.
Cool enough to suit the Heliopolites who were accustomed to the heat of their planet. Not for the Vikings who were fresh from New Iceland, a cold, ice-bound world.
Hakon was right. There were only two armed guards. How did they intend to force the Norsemen to do their will? “We wait,” he whispered. “Something isn’t right.”
Hakon growled beside him, but nodded. “Do we cooperate? Do we let them command us like thralls?”
“For now. Use them as they intend to use us. Find your pleasure, but keep your eyes and ears open. We must discover how they intend to keep us confined.”
“Yes, milord,” Hakon gritted out, clearly unhappy at having to wait.
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