Page 6 of Hot & Heavy

"I find humor in you." She was getting a kink in her neck from looking up at him.

Instead of running her through with his broadsword as Madrene half expected the man to do, he just studied her, stroking his unkempt beard thoughtfully. "I have heard you are a shrew, no doubt due to the free rein given you by the men in your family. Fools they must have been. Everyone knows that women are meant to serve men, not stab them with their sharp tongues."

Blather, blather, blather. Why don't you just kill me? I have nothing to live for anymore. Oddly, Madrene felt a sense of peace come over her.

"Are you ready to come to my bed furs… as my bride?"

Oh, yea, I am ready. Best you keep your manpart away from me. Even if I have to use my teeth, Steinolf, you will have no dangly part by dawn light. "You already have two wives and several concubines. I have been baptized by a Christian monk and do not accept the more danico practice of multiple wives." Why am I attempting logic with such a dolt?

Anger blazed in his gray eyes. "Wouldst join with me in wedlock if I put those women aside?"

Oh, for Valhalla's sake! Even I, lowly woman that lam, can see that is a ruse. "You would not want me. I am barren, you know. 'Tis why my husband put me aside ten years ago."

She saw surprise on his face before he masked it. "That matters not to me. I have whelps aplenty. What does matter is all your soldiers and housecarls who escaped our battle-axes. They must come back and pledge fealty to my banner. Otherwise, they will be like pesty gnats."

She hated the fact that she was carrying on a conversation naked whilst everyone else was clothed. But she understood Steinolf's reasoning. He hoped to shame her into compliance. It would not work.

Madrene valued Norstead and her people more than her pride. She knew without a doubt that her people would be slain once they returned. There was no dishonor at being paraded naked before one and all. The dishonor was on Steinolf and his men for subjecting her, a lady of noble birth, to such humiliation.

In fact, she saw some of them turn their gazes away in guilt. Not Steinolf, though.

"I ask you again. Will you wed with me?" The warrior's impatience was evidenced by his mottled face and clenched fists.

"When all the fjords in the Norselands freeze over," she answered tiredly.

Apparently, this final insult was the last straw for him. He leaned down and backhanded her across her face.

She flinched, and tears welled in her eyes at the pain, but she held her ground, still kneeling upright.

"Coward!" she gritted out through the blood that seeped from her cut lip.

"So be it," he said then and motioned for a man to come forward. She recognized Toki the Trader. The poor man, who had oftimes been a guest of her father, Magnus Ericsson, tried his best to avert his eyes from her nakedness. "Take her as far away from here as possible. To the Arab lands. Yea, that is it.

Take her to the slave marts and sell her to some lustsome caliph for his harem. Far from her home and the trouble she would surely brew."

The trader gazed with sympathy on Madrene.

Noticing that stare, Steinolf told Toki, "Heed me well, Toki. If I find that you have helped this woman to escape, I will skin you alive and hang your carcass on the ramparts for all to see."

"I will do as you demand," Toki said, and he meant it.

Madrene's spirits sank. As long as she was here, there was hope that she could escape and regain her rightful lands. An appeal to the high king or a gathering of warriors might have been successful. But separated from the Norselands by vast seas, she would be lost.

Should I agree to wed the beast in order to stay here?

Nay, I would rather be dead. Leastways then I can join my much-missed family in the afterworld.

As Toki led her off, she decided that she had only one recourse now. She began to pray.

Chapter Two

Are we having fun yet?…

Ian and his SEAL squad were flying in a C-130 over the night skies of northern Iraq. It would soon be daylight.

In the next fifteen minutes they would HALO jump into their insertion point, a small, flat area in the midst of a very hilly region. High-altitude, low-opening exercises always carried some measure of risk, especially in a mountainous region like this, but they were all experienced jumpers. Geek was the only one who hadn't been "blooded," but he'd been as well trained as any of them. A piece of cake!

Even so, there were eight collective sphincter muscles that were tight right now. The pucker factor was sky high. Some people likened it to riding a bucking horse in a rodeo. It took balls to get on the freakin'