Heart of Honor Read Online Free Page B

of her garments disguised her feminine curves, he could tell that her waist was tiny and her bottom nicely rounded.
    “See that, Alf. There is an arse built for a man’s pleasure. If I was not in this cage, I would give her a ride she would not soon forget, a ride that would satisfy us both.”
    The grin slid from his face as the blonde whirled to face him. Her cheeks had turned flame-red and her green eyes snapped with fire. She strode toward him like a falcon swooping down on its prey, and Leif found himself stepping back from the bars of his cage.
    “How dare you!”
    For seconds, he stood there frozen, wondering how the woman could possibly have read his mind.
    “You are a crude, vulgar beast! And to think I was feeling sorry for you—what a fool I was!” She glared at him, a look far more fierce than any he had hurled at the crowd. She turned and stomped back toward her friend before it occurred to him that she had spoken to him in the same language he had spoken to her.
    “Wait!” he shouted after her. “Do not leave! Forgive me for what I said. I knew not that you could understand me. I did not mean to insult you. I swear I would never insult a woman!”
    The blonde’s head went up but she just kept walking, her friend falling in beside her.
    “Please, I beg you! I need your help.” A lump formed in his throat. Every day he came closer to losing his mind; dimly, he wondered if mayhap it had finally happened. “By the gods, please come back. I am begging you.” His voice broke. “You are my…only hope.”
    She stopped then, stood there with her back to him for several long seconds. Then she turned and started walking back toward the cage. He wasn’t mad; she really had understood. Leif didn’t realize there were tears in his eyes until he blinked and they ran into the heavy growth of beard on his cheeks.
    He wiped them away before she could see.
    “I am sorry,” he said when she reached the front of the cage. “I know I insulted you, but that was not my intention. You speak my language. No one else understands. I am a prisoner here and in desperate need of your help.”
    She was frowning, he saw, no longer angry. “The language you are speaking…how did you learn it?” Her words were pronounced clearly, not perfectly, but well enough that he could understand her.
    “It is the way we speak where I come from.”
    “That is not possible. No one has spoken Old Norse for more than three hundred years.”
    “On Draugr Island, this is the language we speak.”
    “Draugr Island? I have never heard of it.”
    His heart was beating. He knew one slip, one wrong move, and the woman would walk away, and with her his only chance for freedom. “I sailed from there six months ago. My ship was lost on the rocks in a place far north of here. I was badly injured when I washed up on the beach.”
    “You were shipwrecked?”
    He nodded. “By the time I had healed enough to know what was happening, I had been captured and sold to the man who put me in this cage.”
    The blonde was biting her lip, which was plump and a rich shade of rose. It amazed him to feel a fresh shot of lust for her. Living like an animal as he had for the past six months, he would not have thought it possible.
    “I am called Leif.”
    She looked down at his wrist, saw the faint trace of blood beginning to seep from the raw spot rubbed by the manacle.
    “My father speaks your language much better than I do, Leif. He will be able to talk to you, help you get out of this cage.”
    Leif forced himself not to move toward her. He didn’t want to do anything that might seem threatening. He couldn’t afford to scare her away.
    “You will come back then, and bring your father with you?”
    “Yes.”
    “What is your name?”
    “My name is Krista Hart.”
    “Do you vow this on your honor, Krista Hart?”
    For a moment, she looked surprised. “Yes, I vow it on my honor.”
    He gave a faint nod of his head. As he watched her walk away, he