Viking Passion Read Online Free PDF

a pleading
glance backward at Lenora.
    “No.” Lenora started forward again. Erik’s
hand grasped hers.
    “You cannot stop that. Don’t even try,” he
said.
    “She is my best friend. She was to marry my
brother. What will your father do to her?”
    Erik’s expression did not soften. “He will
take her to his bed,” he said. “You must understand, your friend
belongs to Thorkell, and you belong to me now.”
    Once more his sea-green eyes lingered on her
trembling lips and slid lower, along the slender column of her
throat, to dwell on the full swell of her breasts, heaving in
agitation beneath the blue wool gown.
    Lenora glared up at him. This man was
undoubtedly as cruel and heartless as his brother, and already she
hated him almost as much as she hated Snorri, but she would not let
him see how frightened she was.
    “And will you take me to your bed?” she
asked, her voice quavering in spite of her best efforts to control
it.
    A glint of humor softened the expression of
those remarkable eyes.
    “You may be certain of it,” he told her.

Chapter 5
     
     
    Erik made her sit on a bench opposite
Thorkell’s chair. He sat beside her, the length of his thigh
pressed firmly against her own. When she tried to move away, he put
one arm about her waist and pulled her back against him.
    “Stay here,” he commanded, “or I will give
you back to Snorri.”
    Outraged and furious, Lenora dared not defy
him.
    Snorri sat next to Erik on a carved and
painted seat similar to Thorkell’s chair directly across the
firepit. A dark-haired woman sat at Snorri’s side, his great coarse
hand fondling one of her heavy breasts. Snorri disgusted Lenora.
She could not bear to look at him. She vowed again that she would
never forget what he had done to her family. She wished with all
her heart it was not necessary to eat at the same table with
him.
    Trestle tables were quickly set up before
them as Snorri’s homecoming feast began. Lenora and Erik shared a
wooden plate and a silver cup. The serving women handed around huge
wooden platters of boiled meat or fish, cabbage and turnips, and
dark rye bread. Ale and mead were poured freely.
    “Here.” Erik handed her their cup.
    “No,” she said.
    “Drink it,” he ordered.
    She put her lips to the cup and swallowed,
Erik watching her closely. She swallowed again, greedily. On the
voyage from Anglia the Vikings had given food to their captives,
but Lenora, sick at heart, had been unable to do more than take a
few bites. Nor had she been able to sleep. Now the sweet, fiery
warmth of the mead went quickly to her head, enveloping her in
misty lassitude. She was too exhausted, too drained of energy to
fight against her fate any longer. Meekly she ate and drank as Erik
told her to do. Her weary mind could not think beyond the immediate
moment.
    Erik sliced off a piece of meat from a nearby
platter, picked it up on the tip of his dagger, and handed it to
her. She took it in her fingers, noticing as she did so that the
knife had a finely wrought gold handle inlaid with blue and green
enamel, and a thin, sharp blade of some shiny blue-gray metal. She
wondered how Erik had come to possess such a strange, beautiful
instrument. She had never seen one like it before.
    She glanced up at him. He was talking to a
brawny, brown-haired man who had sat down on Lenora’s other side.
She studied her new owner, noticing the crinkled skin about his
eyes, the tight lines from nose to mouth. The scar above his left
eyebrow was a thin red line, the swath of white hair beyond it an
eye-catching contrast to the man’s general darkness.
    She had learned one important thing about
him. When he left his position beside Thorkell’s chair, Lenora had
learned the reason for his odd posture. Erik limped. It was not a
pronounced defect, but it was clear there was something wrong with
his left leg. She wondered if the same injury that had scarred his
handsome face had also wounded his leg.
    He looked down at her,