Free Besieged by Jaid Black

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