The Hunted

by Jaid Black

  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 that 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 6

  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 7

  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 deco
ration. 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.

  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 h
er 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.