Enslaved by a Viking Read online

  The woman’s sneer rubbed salt into an already festering wound. She didn’t. Not unless she counted Adem. But even he would slit her throat rather than let her stand in the way of his plans. “They’re safe,” she muttered. “Your Vikings. Healthy and fed.” And very well sated by now.

  “Was there one called Eirik among them?”

  Fatin felt her cheeks turn clammy. The way the woman had said his name, rather husky and hesitant, as though he stirred deep emotions inside her, made Fatin’s chest tight. “There might have been.”

  Green eyes sharpened. “He would be dark-haired. Unusual for my people.”

  Fatin realized denial was fruitless. The Viking woman would only find someone else to bribe to discover it for herself. “Yes. There was a dark-haired one.” With icy blue eyes that could look right through a woman.

  “We were told you sold him at auction, along with the other men, like a thrall.”

  Fatin’s shame dried up. The way the woman spat the phrase, like a thrall was something low, something dirty, infuriated her. “Like a thrall?” Fatin drawled. “Well, it’s what he is now. And a sex-thrall at that.”

  The woman’s lips drew away from her teeth. She took a step closer and raised her arm again.

  Fatin gritted her teeth, preparing for the blow.

  The Helio man cleared his throat. “Who procured their papers?”

  Fatin turned toward him. “The Garden.”

  His body stiffened, and he cursed under his breath.

  The blonde shot a glance his way. “It’s the place you mentioned. This is bad?”

  “The worst. It will be like breaking a prisoner out of a Consortium gaol. Tricky. It’s well funded by a very generous government subsidy and wealthy patronage. They have their own security force.”

  “What kind of place is it?”

  “A research facility that specializes in reproduction and genetics. With a very exclusive brothel on its grounds.”

  “A brothel!” The blonde’s voice rose; her head swung toward Fatin. “Do you even know who you took? Do you have any clue?”

  Fatin knew all too well, but would never admit the fact. Not and hope to make it off the ship alive. “An Icelander. One of twenty.” She shrugged. “They are what I contracted to procure.”

  “But you didn’t procure; you abducted.”

  “I could find no Viking thralls to purchase,” she said, lying because she hadn’t been willing to part with an ounce of gold or ore to get what she needed. She’d set out from the beginning to kidnap the men.

  “Eirik is the Ulfhednar heir,” the woman roared. “A prince.”

  “Which would make you what?” She forced her lips into a downward curl. “His thrall?”

  The woman drew back, eyed the male who held up his hands, smirking.

  “Not stopping you now, Princess.”

  Fatin had time only to blink as a fist flew toward her face.

  Seven

  The next day, Eirik kept careful note of the route he and Hakon took as they were escorted under armed guard from the brothel.

  They’d been rousted from their beds in the thrall’s barracks midmorning and taken to the common room, where some had been fed, while others were led away in pairs. It was his and Hakon’s turn now.

  Their prison was a compound, comprised of whitewashed, concrete buildings connected by flagstone walkways that all led to the tallest building at their center—the facility where he’d awoken the morning before—his body denuded of hair and the implant placed inside his body.

  Dressed again in the short loin skirt, he felt the bright, blazing sunlight warm his shoulders and back. Around him, birds twittering in the lush pockets of forest artfully planted on the grounds were the only sounds he heard save for the thuds of marching feet.

  The guards were dressed in gray, lightweight fabric trousers and short-sleeved knit shirts. Composite, lightweight armor covered their torsos. Helmets with black visors protected their heads and eyes. They sported stun guns in holsters strapped to their upper thighs and carried long, pronged spears that delivered a jolt of electricity every time they tapped a back or buttock. And they seemed to enjoy the jerk of their thralls’ muscles and tightening jaws.

  But why were they so heavily protected when all they escorted were two nearly naked, unarmed men? Did they really expect them to resist?

  Yesterday’s demonstration had made an impact. Eirik remembered all too vividly the pain that had doubled him over and left him clutching his knees to stay upright. None of the men doubted the intensity of the jolt the implant had delivered. And situated where it was, none wished to experience it.

  No wall surrounded the larger compound. Only a water-filled moat that separated the lushly planted grounds from a sandy plain beyond the edge of the water. Recalling Aliyah’s promise of freedom to roam the grounds, he suspected the landscape hid many more watchers’ devices or perhaps heat-imaging equipment to track their movements.

  Metal rails bisected the grounds and traversed a bridge over the moat where a tram rolled to a halt beside the main building. The same one that had transported the Vikings in a cargo car from the arena after the auction.

  Discounting the device that emasculated with pain, how else did the facility keep out intruders or hold inside anyone who might seek escape?

  A shove against his shoulders reminded him not to make his interest in his surroundings so apparent. Glass doors opened with a soft whoosh as they approached, and once again they entered the sterile environs of the heart of the compound.

  This morning, he studied his surroundings with new purpose, looking beyond the artifice.

  Pleasure was only an offshoot of the main trade that went on inside Pandora’s Garden. The logo of the industrial entity, a locked and banded chest set at the foot of a heavily branched tree, was rendered in gold foil and wood on the wall above the wide desk that sat at the back of the tall, vaulted foyer of the building.

  From the bathing attendants, he’d already heard the story of the first woman of earth, doomed by her feminine curiosity to open the casket and release evil into the world. A Greek myth that had been carried here with the first travelers the Consortium stole away from Midgard.

  “Why call this place her garden?” Eirik had asked the woman bathing him. “She opened a bloody casket.”

  The woman had shrugged, but her hands never left his muscled torso as she scrubbed him. “She had to have someplace to play.”

  In the cool, dry air, Eirik’s skin prickled into goose bumps. Not so much from the cold air, but from the fuzzy, disjointed memories he had of his first visit.

  Men and women dressed in white lab coats, pricking his arms, lifting his cock to take measurements, sinking lubricated tubes down his penis to empty his bladder for their mysterious purposes—entering his ass to prod and examine him. Ensuring his health, so they’d said, but also his enslavement.

  Bile burned the back of his throat. He knew why they’d been led here again, and that this would be a daily occurrence. His seed would be extracted, stored, mixed in a scientist’s dish to mate his sperm to a Helio woman’s egg. A child would form and be implanted in a ripe womb. A child he’d never know.

  While he’d fucked his way through the women the evening before, he’d closed his mind to the true purpose of the gathering. Drowning in perfume and pleasure, he sank his cock in mouths and pussies while he’d tried to forget the abomination practiced on him and every one of the Vikings held here.

  Sperm donors were all the men were. And their seed wasn’t prized for the people they’d breed—the Vikings’ intellect wasn’t valued. Only their muscle and taller, more powerful frames were wanted. The children born to contracted wombs wouldn’t be loved or treasured. They’d be warehoused, trained in combat, and one day led in a great battle against their own kin.

  The son of a Wolfskin prince might slay his uncle. And what of daughters? Would they be disposed of since they wouldn’t be needed? Would that be the kindest fate? Or would they b
e sold as slaves, servants to the wealthy? Made whores at seedy brothels for Helio men to visit and lord themselves over their savage captives.

  Even Hakon, who wasn’t one to ponder things, looked somber. He met Eirik’s gaze, hatred boiling in moist eyes.

  They broke the glance, jaws grinding.

  “Look. Listen,” Eirik whispered, before being prodded with the business end of a spear again. He jerked away and aimed a glare over his shoulder.

  “No talking,” the guard said, a grim smile stretching beneath the edge of a dark visor, revealing two gold-capped teeth.

  Hakon gave a rumbling growl, fisted his hands for a moment, but unwrapped them and held them up when another of the guards aimed the point toward his crotch.

  A sadistic bunch of thugs, these soldiers.

  They were led down a long gray corridor to the right of the foyer, through another set of hissing doors, and into an open room with overhead lighting that gave off a staticky hum. Here were long, white tables lined with beakers and cabinets, and workbenches pulled in front of viewing devices that peered into small dishes. Above, a screen showed squiggles of sperm engulfing an egg, its outer membrane resisting the attack, until at last, one persistent and wriggling sperm pierced the shell. Was it a Viking child forming in the dish? Was it his?

  He wasn’t given time to worry. Inside the room, technicians wearing gloves and white coats over thin, dark uniforms hurried toward them.

  They were parted, and Hakon was led farther down the long tables toward a set of stocks at the back.

  Eirik was prodded into another. Since he’d been forced into just such a contraption aboard Fatin’s ship while she’d milked him, he groaned inwardly, understanding the process.

  Bindings were latched around his wrists over his head and around his ankles. Then the smirking guards moved away to chat up one particularly pretty female.

  Another woman, her hair tied in a queue behind her head, approached him with something in her hands that looked like one of the milking machines dairymen used on cows back in Thorshavn.

  His balls drew close to his groin; his cock twitched. His stomach knotted, the muscles of his abdomen clenching so tightly they quivered. When she was directly in front of him, he could no longer stand still. He rattled the stocks, screwing up his face into a wild grimace, trying to frighten her away. Eirik Wolfskin would not be milked like a frigging cow!

  The woman hesitated in front of him, her lips thinning. She was young and attractive in an understated way, but smelled of antiseptic. Her gaze swept his face, and she gave him a look that surprised him. Compassion shone in her soft brown eyes. “I will use this if I must. But if you prefer, I’ll manipulate your penis into surrendering your nectar.”

  Manipulate. He almost laughed, but he was afraid the bark would sound too raw. These days, his whole existence centered around his cock and his precious seed, a concept he would never have imagined growing stale in his former life, but he hated how helpless he was now.

  When he escaped this place, he swore silently that he’d never take another thrall for granted. “Your hands,” he said, his voice grating. “I prefer your hands.”

  Her head bobbed in a single nod, and then, without a blush, she untied his linen garment and knelt. She gave a sideways glance to another tech who held a wide-mouthed beaker, then resettled on her knees in front of his flaccid cock.

  Her gloved hands cupped him, kneading his balls gently and squeezing his cock until he felt his flesh warm and begin to stiffen with blood.

  When there was enough firmness for her to work, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a tube. She squeezed gel into her hands, and then wrapped her fingers around him again. The gel warmed with contact, heated even more with the friction she worked with agile fingers as she tugged and stroked until his cock was hard and rising toward her.

  Breaths deepening, he gave himself up to the pleasure, letting his mind wander and dream.

  Another’s face replaced the woman in the lab coat. Fatin’s almond-shaped eyes peered up as she tossed back her dark hair, issuing him a silent challenge. Blood surged south, engorging him, stretching the skin surrounding his shaft until it felt ready to burst with the pressure.

  The beat of his heart echoed in the pulse of his cock as he tightened his thighs and buttocks to rock forward and back. Denied the ability to surge hard, he jerked through a tight fist.

  But the hands kneading him slowed. The woman working his flesh stared at his cock, studying him. “You are wondrous.” She sighed, then ducked her head. “I’m not supposed to talk to you, but Bethel and I,” she said, indicating her helper, “we’ve been curious. Would you mind if she felt you too?”

  His gaze slid to her companion, a fuzzy-haired woman with a soft face and body. “Have you never handled a man’s cock?”

  “Oh, yes. Often. But not one quite so large.”

  Amused despite the indignity, Eirik felt a grin tug the corners of his mouth at this fascination they all had with his man parts. Gods, if only he weren’t a thrall, he might enjoy spending time as a free man among them. After all, he loved women, loved the act of sex.

  When Bethel knelt beside her companion and began to massage him, he could forget the circumstance. Forget the stocks that held him still for their “protection.”

  “I prefer a mouth to hands,” he growled, eyebrow lifted in challenge.

  Bethel’s amber eyes blinked, but she gave him a sly smile, lifted her chin to the other, who moved in to block the view from the others farther down, working over Hakon’s cock. Bethel leaned forward and opened her lips, then gave a little moan as she widened her jaws and sucked him inside her hot mouth.

  “Much better,” he said softly, wondering if these women could be turned, seduced to his cause. He’d leave no avenue unexplored. “You’re very talented.”

  She gave a muffled giggle and came off his cock, but her hands continued to pump him. “You’re all the talk.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded eagerly. “Yes, your arrival. The auction. Pictures are everywhere. We’re all excited.”

  “Why?” Could this help their escape?

  “Well, because we rarely see your kind. Usually only Viking pirates standing trial. Off the dock and straight into gaol. It’s rather anticlimactic. But everyone’s abuzz over the offerings.”

  “We’re not offerings. We’re men,” he said quietly.

  Her eyes softened. “I know.” She leaned toward him again, and sank her wet mouth around him.

  The woman who blocked the view of what Bethel was doing rubbed her hand against his flanks. “You’re hard everywhere.”

  “And your men aren’t?” he asked, trying to hold a conversation while the one on his cock increased the force of her suctioning. She’d pull his seed from his toes with her talented mouth.

  The woman stroking his skin wrinkled her nose. “Our men are arrogant. And other than security or the few who are into sports for pay, their asses and bellies are soft.” Her hand cupped one buttock. “Not at all like yours.”

  He gave her a smile, then let his eyelids drift dreamily down. Bethel’s tongue stroked his shaft. Her lips pulled harder. His balls were tightening, and in a moment or two he’d spew.

  He contemplated erupting inside her mouth, but he didn’t want to alarm her, or cause her trouble if she didn’t collect his seed. So he cleared his throat. “Bethel, elskling.”

  Her back-and-forth bobbing slowed, and she gazed up, her eyebrows rising.

  “It’s time.”

  She backed away. Her companion lowered the beaker toward the end of his cock. With only her hand to work him now, he concentrated, closing his eyes to feed the source of his passion and hasten his orgasm along.

  Fatin. Her dark eyes soft and moist as she lay beneath him. Her buttocks quivering while he’d hammered her from behind. Her soft, lilting voice when she’d leaned in to say, “You’re mine,” a moment before he’d erupted, and his body had broken into a million particles.


  Hanging in the stocks, his body slick with sweat, he rubbed his face against his arm to wipe away the moisture beading there, and to hide his sudden weakness of spirit.

  Damn her to Hel, anyway.

  He hung trembling, while Bethel gently kneaded his balls, and wiped the top of his cock against the glass rim. Ropes of semen slid down the sides of the beaker.

  As her companion loosened his bindings, Bethel stood and leaned toward him. “Take heart, Viking,” she whispered, sympathy shining in her liquid eyes. “Adem comes for you.”

  Fatin strode through the sliding doors of the tram and glanced around the station platform.

  Guards looked her way, but made no move toward her. So, she wasn’t banned after last night’s fiasco. They also didn’t start at the sight of her face. A large round bruise swelled her left cheek. Not something any amount of cosmetics could hide. So she hadn’t bothered. Perhaps they thought one of the Vikings had gotten to her last night.

  Making her way to Aliyah’s offices in the brothel complex, she didn’t turn her head to glance around her. The flagstone pathway led past the exercise field and the pool where Vikings exercised and swam. But from the corners of her eyes, she didn’t find Eirik. Just as well. He was a distraction she could ill afford today.

  Despite the many aches that twinged with each jolting step, she kept her pace quick.

  Princess Birget had worked her over last night, taking out her frustrations on Fatin’s body. And then once again, she’d been draped over the tall Helio’s shoulder and carried out of the ship. They took her to Suffrage House, a flophouse for indigents. One of Adem’s haunts.

  There, she’d introduced her two new “friends” and acquired a single bed for them all.

  Sandwiched between the male’s back and the rigid wall, she’d closed her ears to their coupling and drifted into a fitful sleep. She awoke in the morning with them both glaring down.