Heart of Honor Read Online Free Page A

cursing, she was sure, though none of the gibberish he spouted made any sense.
    But he was certainly not seven feet tall. Nor was he covered with thick blond hair. Still, he was taller than any man of her acquaintance, with long, shaggy blond hair that hung well past a set of massive shoulders and an unkempt beard that hung down over a chest banded with slabs of muscle. Thick muscles bulged in his thighs and arms, and his eyes…
    Even from a distance, she could see the wildness there, the fierce hatred burning in the incredible blue depths, the color more intense than any she had ever seen before.
    “God in heaven,” Corrie said in awe. “We need to get closer.”
    Her gaze still fixed on the creature in the cage, Krista moved at Corrie’s urging, and they weaved their way to the front of the crowd. Pity for the man tugged at Krista’s heart, and part of her wished she had never spotted the cage.
    Dear God, the worst sort of criminal deserved better treatment than they were giving the man in that cage.
     
    The stick jabbed into Leif’s ribs a second time and he let out a roar. He gripped the iron bars and shook them, knowing if he didn’t the stick would find its mark again. There were scars on his legs and arms, scars on his back, scars on his wrists and ankles from the manacles he was forced to wear.
    Part of him no longer noticed the pain. That part could barely summon the will to rise each morning and face another hellish day, no longer cared whether he lived or died.
    It was the other part of him, the part with the fierce will to live, that kept him going another hour, another minute. Kept him hoping that somehow he would find a means of escape.
    Ignoring the roar of the crowd that had gathered in front of the cage, some of them pointing and laughing, others making jeering faces, he looked up at the tiny creature who slipped through the bars to join him. A monkey, they called it. Alfinn, he had named it, little elf—the only friend Leif had in this godforsaken world he had stumbled upon, and he valued that friendship greatly.
    Leif spoke to the monkey as if it could actually understand him, making fun of the people who were making fun of him, though of course they didn’t know what he was saying. One day, he told himself, he would find a way out of this cage, free of the manacles that rendered him impotent against his captors. One day, he would take the stick away from the fat Snively and run it through the man’s wormy gut.
    The monkey chattered, jumped up and down as Snively prodded Leif into a fit of rage again. The crowd roared and fell back from the cage. Some of the women cried out in fear.
    He liked that they feared him.
    It was the only power he held in a world where he was utterly powerless, his life no longer his own.
    Little by little, the crowd began to disperse. They had seen what they came for, seen the wild man in the cage. When he looked out at them again, only two women remained. One was a redhead, smaller than average, and prettier, too, though she wasn’t the sort who appealed to him, being too much like a child.
    He remembered what it felt like to hold a woman, a real woman, one who could stir a man’s blood.
    The blonde was that way. Tall, voluptuous, ripe for a man’s touch, with creamy skin and a mouth made for passion. His groin tightened. It was good to know that as much as they tried, his captors had not yet broken him. Good to know that he was still a man.
    He grinned at the monkey. “Now there is a woman…a real woman,” he said. “She could fire a man’s blood with a single glance from those pretty green eyes.”
    Alfinn chattered as if he understood. The blonde said something to the woman beside her, then turned and started walking away. Leif watched as the breeze came up and blew her hat off her head. A cluster of thick golden curls rested on each of her shoulders, as shiny as the sun, only a deeper, richer shade. She bent to retrieve the hat, and even though the fullness