Bound by the Viking, Part 2: Compelled Read Online Free

trying not to hesitate, but her body struggling against the will of her mind.
    She heard a sharp intake of breath before her as the shift covered her head, her breasts hitting the open air. She tossed it aside and brushed her hair away from her face, her curls falling over her shoulder. The stranger stared openly, his lips parted, his eyes locked on her bare skin, drinking in the sight of her nipples, now pebbling beneath the scrutiny.
    She wanted to freeze there, like a deer in the sight of a pack of wolves, trying to cover herself, but unable, but she knew she must move. Must get away from those gazes, and more importantly, obey her master if she wanted to make it to see the sunrise.
    She kicked off her leather slippers and hurried off to the side of the hall where the women tended the cook fires. Calloused, dirty hands reached for her, but one shout from the chief, and they withdrew, their owners cursing. Two women carving meat whispered together in their native tongue, and one shook her head, her eyes weary, before handing her mead and goblets.
    She pities me . Most loathe me, but not all. Some just pity me, like a kicked dog left out in the snow.
    Aislin didn’t know which was worse.
    Her bare feet slapped the cold floor, sending a chill through her body on the way back up the dais. Her cheeks burned now, but she kept her head high, avoiding the stares around her.
    The men, their beards dripping with blood and broth, weaving with drink on the benches, sickened her. No matter that many were tall and strapping, or bare chested in the heat from the fire, furs slung loosely around their broad shoulders. No matter their cool, wolfish eyes piercing her as she hurried, naked and afraid, past them. No matter that any one of them could take her if he wanted, right then and there, and there was nothing she could do to stop them.
    Only one man could.
    The man who kept her as his own. The man now looking at her, a twisted light in his eyes as he toyed with a dirk, tracing the blade with his thumb. The nobleman leaned in, whispering something as I approached, and both men grinned, looking at me like they wanted to gobble me up.
    I handed them goblets and poured, breathing deeply, so as not to spill a drop, although I felt as weak as a leaf, quivering on a branch.
    “To the joining of our power, Denholm,” Alrik said, lifting his horn. “You honor my hall and my people with your presence.”
    “It is I who am honored to be your guest, Alrik Son-of-Erik,” the man replied. “Together, we shall be as a scourge upon our enemies.”
    “Skoll!”
    The men drank deeply, and Aislin’s eyes flashed toward the ring on this Denholm’s hand. The workmanship wasn’t Celtic, but that of an English lord. She swallowed hard, but kept her face a neutral mask.
    Before the Vikings came, the English harried her clans’ lands. Her father’s people managed to keep them at bay by banding together with several other families, but last she heard, they were slaying priests on the lowlands, the messengers of her people, who brought the clans together.
    They were her enemies as much as these bastards who ripped her from her lands and left her former life a smoldering ember. They were blasphemers, thieves and murderers.
    They would pay for their insolence, their spilling of sacred blood. They would wither like the burned wick, scourged and brittle, their ashes blowing away on the winds, scattered like the O’Byrne clan from their ancestral home. They would feel her pain tenfold. A hundredfold.
    The old gods would deal with them. Every last one of them.
    They would die with her name on their lips.
    A vision of the mists rolling over the bogs filled her mind, an d with it the flickering of candle flame. A beating rhythm filled her soul, and she breathed it in, breathed in the thought of the old power. The gift passed down to her as a woman of her clan.
    A shout brought her out of her thoughts with a start.
    “Thrall!”
    Her master eyed her, a cold