Free Desire's Hostage: Viking Lore, Book 3 by Emma Prince Page A

touched, albeit lightly.”
    It sounded like something from the old ways. But she and her people were Christians now. They only had one God, and her sensitivity was certainly not a favor granted by Him.
    She shook her head. “It does not feel like a gift most of the time.”
    “Perhaps your people do not understand your true value.”
    Alaric lifted his hand as if he would brush a lock of her hair behind her ear, but then hesitated, his fingers suspended in the air between them. Her mind shot back to how she’d pulled away from his touch last afternoon. Suddenly she felt a stirring, barely a flutter, low in her belly. Would his touch be as soft as it had been before?
    “Your eyes are the color of amber.” His voice was like a silky caress, intimate and dark.
    “Aye, so I have been told.”
    “Amber is a most precious stone where I come from. Its beauty is held in the highest regard, its value unmatched.”
    The flutter turned into a knotted warmth deep in her core.
    “Aye?” It was barely more than a whisper, for suddenly her throat was dry as he held her gaze for another long moment.
    At last, Alaric dropped his hand, and the spell seemed to break. Elisead shook her head a little to clear it.
    “I have a great many questions,” he said. “And you have been less than forthcoming.”
    He softened the critique with a quirk of one side of his mouth. “I do not wish to drag answers from you. Surely you can see how providing me with the information I seek will have you settled back in your home with your father and people all the sooner.”
    “Nay, I suppose I don’t see.” Now that she had recovered her senses, she forced her feet to take a step back from Alaric’s large frame.
    “The better I understand your people and their ways, the easier it will be for my people to join yours and get on with the process of making our home here.”
    “And you truly wish to settle amongst us?” Though she’d heard him proclaim it in the great hall, she still didn’t fully believe that a Northman wished to do more than plunder and destroy.
    “Ja,” he replied, slipping back into his own tongue, though from the fervency of his tone and the clear, stubborn set of his face, she understood his meaning well enough.
    She hesitated for a long moment, considering all that had transpired since yesterday morn.
    The Northmen had landed upon their shore, armed and prepared for battle. They’d reached her father’s fortress and demanded admittance.
    But they had never attacked, even when her father’s archers had fired on them. Since then, they’d built a temporary camp but hadn’t made another move against her people or the fortress. And of course before all of that, Alaric could have killed her by the river, but instead had let her go.
    And here she stood with the man now, alone and far enough away from camp that no one would hear her scream if he tried to harm her.
    Perhaps it was all some elaborate plot to lure her father into letting his guard down, then striking. They’d already managed to earn enough trust—or mayhap simply leverage—to gain the chieftain’s daughter as their hostage.
    But from what she’d heard of Northmen and what she’d seen for herself seven years ago, they weren’t known for their patience or their elaborate plots. Nay, they normally took what they wanted when they wanted it, life, limb, and property be damned.
    Mayhap Alaric and his men were different than the other Northmen. Should she believe the little voice in her head that said she could trust him?
    “I suppose I can answer your questions…in the interest of ending my sentence as a hostage.”
    It was a lie, the soft voice whispered in the back of her mind. If not a lie, then an untruth by omission. For though she longed to free herself from the role of hostage, more than that she wished to trust the tall, golden man before her.
    What was happening to her? What powers did this pagan barbarian have over her?
    She didn’t dare consider