Authors: Anne Marsh
“You won’t,” she said confidently.
“You sure she’s got you pegged right?” Var closed the distance between the exit and the cage. “You sure you’d never fuck her and sell her, Vikar?”
Var was every bit as big and brutish as Vikar, a big, hard bear of a man with sun-browned skin and a shaggy mane of dirty-blond hair into which he’d woven beads and other souvenirs. Including the knucklebones from his previous opponents. The slow, knowing smile lighting his face was familiar trouble.
“You don’t need to. You’re good at what you do,” she acknowledged.
Vikar was good, but then she’d just watched him fight. Watched him stride out of the pit covered in the blood of his dead opponents.
“You want to know why I want out, or where I want you to take me?” she challenged.
He shrugged. “No. Not really.” Stepping backwards, he crossed his arms over his chest. “The
hel
I care,” he muttered.
Hel
summed it up, too—when a man came face-to-face with Hel, the goddess of the underworld, he was royally fucked. Confronting Hel might have been easier than this. “What are you offering?”
She wanted to buy him—or rather buy his services—so she could damn well tell him what she really thought he was worth. She’d lowball him, of course, because a woman like this would never have a high opinion of his kind. It was a miracle she’d survived the pits until now. And he’d stopped believing in miracles centuries ago.
“Myself,” she said. “That’s the price tag for this job.”
Lust ripped through him, and he stared at her in shock. Beside him, Var inhaled sharply. His second hadn’t expected that little bombshell either.
“I don’t do emotions.” Some long-vanquished code reared its chivalrous head for a fleeting second before he could tamp down the useless impulse. “I won’t tell you I love you. I don’t do happily ever after.”
“That’s not a problem.” The smile that lit up her face was as pretty as the ice in the frozen fjords where he’d grown up. Diamond-like and lethally sharp. “I’m not looking for love, Vikar. Just sex.”
This close to her cage, he could see the perfect strands of blonde. Smooth and sleek, her hair parted around her face, flowed down her back like a straight, pale arrow. Exquisitely ordered. He wanted to shove his hands into that heavy mass—and tangle her up in his fingers until she was deliciously mussed.
“Be sure,” he warned, and she laughed, her eyes going to the muscle ticking in his jaw. Yeah. She got to him. She made him feel sensations he hadn’t felt in hundreds of years.
A wiser man would have spun on his heel and left her there in her cage. She hadn’t been locked up because she was harmless. No matter how lovely her face or how angelic her gaze, she was dangerous.
She’d been brought here to fight. To kill him if she could.
He frowned. Looking at her beautiful, calm face, he didn’t see how she posed any kind of threat. She bore no visible weapons and, with those angelic good looks, she was no dark elf. Maybe a magic wielder, but he recognized nothing about her. Sensed no powers or overt threat. Just the intense, feminine curiosity with which she examined his face.
“What are you?”
She smiled. Slowly.
“Yours,” she purred. “If you pay my price, Viking.”
“That’s a lovely offer, but what’s to stop me from simply taking you with me when I leave here? I’m a berserker and a Viking. I
take
.” He wrapped a hand around her wrist, pulling her against the bars of her cage, and they both stared at the skin on skin.
He wasn’t hurting her, but he could. In a heartbeat.
And they both knew it.
“You want me willing,” she said, and her eyes darkened. “And I could be very, very willing.”
He’d never been this hot for a female before. Did she know what she was offering? How badly did she want this? He hadn’t missed the calculation in those brown eyes—or the spark of curiosity.
Deliberately he ran a finger down her forearm. “Really pretty,” he drawled. “But how willing is willing?”
“Willing,” she repeated. “You do right by me and I’ll do right by you.”
“You want me to break you out of here for a handful of words? No.” He shook his head. “You tell me what
precisely
you mean by willing, and I’ll think about it.”
The flush creeping up her cheeks clearly just made her mad. “Look,” she spat, “I don’t have the entire
Kama Sutra
memorized, but I think we can make this up as we go along.”
He might be fucking near immortal, but he’d spent most of his life fighting. The berserkers weren’t culture queens. He knew enough to pass in Sin City as human, but he’d been most interested in weapons, bikes, and boats. If this female took issue with his ignorance, she could damn well fill him in. “Explain more about this
Kama Sutra
.”
Her delicious pink flush darkened. “It’s a Hindu text,” she said. “Of sexual positions.”
“You going to show me this book?” Maybe the last two hundred years had produced more than AK-47s and Budweiser.
“I can’t.” She wet her lips, and he knew his eyes were glowing again. “Yet. It’s back at my ship. You take me there, I get the book for you.”
She had a ship?
He dismissed the idea temporarily, wrapping his hands around the bars of her cage and leaning in. “Are you a virgin?”
“No.” She eyed his hands, like she was thinking about where he could put them. His dick got harder just imagining the possibilities.
“Good,” he said, satisfaction rumbling in his voice. “That makes this easier. I’m still waiting, baby. Waiting for you to convince me. What are you planning to do for me?”
“Anything,” she repeated.
“Just to be perfectly clear,” he asked, and the air suddenly got real quiet around them, “you’re going to let me fuck that pretty little pussy of yours? And you’re going to
let
me touch it all I want?”
He didn’t miss her swallow. “Whatever you want,” she repeated.
“Baby,” he said nastily, “no one
lets
me do anything. I do whatever I want. You willing to please both of us?” He nodded towards Var, who stilled beside him.
“That’s a generous offer,” Var interrupted them. “Can we leave now?”
“That too,” she whispered hoarsely. “Whatever you want—as long as you get me out of here. Just try not to hurt me.” The words tumbled out rapidly. “That’s the other thing I ask.”
She’d obviously heard the rumors about the berserkers and figured correctly that he was more animal than man.
Hel
. In the heat of battle, when he shifted and his bear half came out to play, it was true. He wasn’t one hundred percent human—and the human part was more mercenary and straight-up killer. He was a dirty bastard, no way around it.
She certainly wouldn’t be
pure
when he finished with her.
The noise headed their way down the tunnel picked up in volume. “Now,” she ordered, “would be very good, Vikar.”
He didn’t have time to think her offer over further, however, because more guards sprinted towards them, clearly having dug up some courage somewhere. No way would the hired muscle allow the gladiators to break out. To break free.
One hard blow with the handle of his blade and the lock on Pure’s cage broke.
“Come on then.” He held out a hand to her, and she didn’t need inviting twice, latching on and letting him pull her out of the cage.
Vikar flowed to his feet as Var got to work, cutting through the incoming with the blade he’d recently acquired from one of the guards.
Shooting his new companion a look, he put himself between her and danger. This was going to get real ugly. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Vikar shoved his blade into a newcomer’s stomach. The male’s gun went flying as the dark stain on the uniform spread. One more bastard down. Behind him, he swore he heard Pure’s gleeful laugh. What. The. Hell.
Var shot him a questioning look as they advanced towards the exit. “You sure about this?”
“Yeah.” Vikar didn’t need to look at Pure again to know. He’d touched her, and something in him had recognized the female hugging his back. “She’s
mine
, Var.”
Var looked like he wanted to argue, but the fighting rage was already tugging at the male, threatening to drown him in the familiar tide of red. “So we get her out of here.”
Vikar’s shock team of berserkers was closer than blood brothers. They’d had each other’s backs, fighting and fucking their way through each sorry day in the centuries since Loki had transformed them. Since they’d lost everything and everyone. Vikar had led them all those years, directing their tide of violence and mayhem where it needed to go. Where it earned them the most coin or the greatest liberties. If Vikar decided he wanted Pure, Var would make sure Vikar had her.
He’d do the same for Var.
As the fight rolled over and around them, he got to work. This, he knew. Fighting was familiar. Fighting felt right, felt good.
“Hang on to my belt. Don’t let go. You decide to let go, I may not decide to stop for you.”
She whispered something that sounded suspiciously like
No worries
and
Sticking tighter than a leech,
and he took her through the tunnel and out.
Chapter Two
At first, Pure just rode. Her companion was in the driver’s seat, literally and metaphorically. After he’d gotten them to the surface, she’d found herself waiting on a side street not far from the Strip while her Berserker and his team fought for—and won—the motorcycles from a Hell’s Angels club.
She had a feeling she’d love Sin City. All that pretty glitter and color. She liked looking at the Strip, and it certainly provided excellent cover. Last time Odin had gone strolling down the main drag, he’d been hailed as a spectacular new animatronic statue. Vikar hadn’t given her much of an opportunity to sightsee, however.
After his quick side trip to challenge the Hell’s Angels, he and his men had helped themselves to the losers’ clothing, although she’d point-blank refused to accept more than the biker’s jacket they’d offered her as her share of the spoils. Then they’d mounted up and ridden. Fast. Now, Vikar’s broad shoulders blocked her in view, his leather-wrapped hands gripping the handlebars of the Harley. The quiet purr of the engine eating up the ground as he drove it down the highway was as surreal as the male behind her.
The male who was going to be her lover.
He hadn’t even kissed her yet.
And yet, tonight, he’d take her however he wanted. There wasn’t much she could do about it—she didn’t kid herself about his strength—and she’d given her word. She always kept her word when she could.
Two men.
Nothing had prepared her for the wash of heat flooding her when his gold eyes had looked her over as he’d considered having sex with her and sharing her with his companion. That sensation was new.
Without knowing anything more about her, he wanted her. She’d expected the vulnerability, but the sheer eroticism of giving him carte blanche was stunning. He’d touch her. Taste her. Her nipples stiffened against the worn cotton lining of her corslet. She’d lied to Vikar when he’d asked whether or not she was a virgin. She was—and she didn’t fuck for the simple reason that her perpetual virginity was a job requirement for Odin’s Valkyrie handmaidens. The day she gave up her virginity was the day she lost her immortality and her place in Odin’s hall. It was the day the god would
have
to let her go.
Which was why she’d taken this job when Odin had offered. She would test the berserker’s control. She’d let him take her virginity along the way. Odin would set her free. Done deal.
Desert slipped by them as Vikar took the cycle off the highway, abandoning well-worn asphalt for dirt. The world around them changed slowly with every subtle shift of the sun overhead. Thick ridges of sand hid the occasional abandoned car half-consumed by the tumbleweeds and more drifts of sand.
Despite the sun and sand, it was winter out here in the desert. As the sun went down and Vegas’s artery of highway disappeared behind them, the falling temperature and the cold creeping through her body were all too familiar.
While she remained virgin, she retained her immortality and her ice-maiden status.
But not for long, and certainly not after tonight.
Vikar shifted, guiding the bike through a curve, and she flinched as arousal and shock hit her hard. Already she was warming up at his touch,
feeling
something besides the icy calm of her kind.
“We’ll find a place to hole up for night.” His voice was a raspy growl. “Desert isn’t such a good place to be after dark.”
“How long?” She’d promised to be
willing
—and she’d keep her promise. Maybe her berserkers would be slow and careful.
Or not.
“Half hour.” Pressed up against him as she was, she could feel him shrug. “Maybe an hour.”
She was running out of time.
###
Every time Vikar inhaled, Pure’s scent teased him. He was hard and had been since she’d looked up at him through the bars of her cage. It would take two days tops to get her ass to the California beach town she’d named as her desired destination. He’d spend the daylight hours moving them closer to the target—and his nights living out a lifetime of fantasies.
Two nights. No more.
He didn’t want to know, because her reasons had to be personal and none of his damned business, but part of him kept wondering why a woman like her was alone. And why she believed she needed to hire a troop of gods-damned berserker mercenaries to guide her through it all.
She sat stiffly behind him, obviously unused to the motorcycle, which was fine by him. She’d had him off balance since he’d first spotted her, so turnabout was fair play. He’d waited for the hesitation—
hel
, he’d been waiting for the screaming because he
knew
how human women felt about berserkers, and they weren’t wrong either. A berserker could tear a woman up if the man wasn’t careful.
Hel
, even a woman in love had qualms about taking a berserker to bed.