Page 55 of Her Viking Master

Camille cried out. I cried out. I lost track of time and space. The visions continued to swirl around me as I floated around the vast root system of the great tree.

Suddenly, I was yanked back to my body by a searing heat deep inside me. Sven’s cock pulsed in my ass, flooding me with his seed. The sensation was so intense, so primal, that it sent me careening over the edge into my own climax. I screamed, my entire body convulsing with pleasure so powerful it bordered on pain.

Beside me, I heard Camille cry out as well, her voice raw and desperate. Erik grunted, his hips slamming against her one final time as he found his own release.

The stable fell quiet, except for the sound of our ragged breathing. My mind reeled, trying to process the intense visions I had experienced, even as my body jerked with the aftershocks of my climax. I felt utterly spent, terribly, completely used.

Then, cutting through the haze of pleasure and mystical revelation, came the sharp trill of a cellphone. I flinched at the sudden, jarringly modern sound.

Sven pulled out of me abruptly, leaving me feeling achingly empty. I whimpered at the loss, hating myself for wanting more even after everything that had happened. I heard him fumbling with his clothes, then the beep as he answered the call.

“Yes, Monsieur Beaumont,” Sven said, his voice suddenly businesslike even with his recent exertion. There was a pause as he listened, and I held my breath, knowing that this call would determine our immediate fate.

“I understand completely,” Sven continued. “Yes, we made sure to document everything thoroughly. You’ll be very pleased with the merchandise.”

My stomach churned at his words. Merchandise. Was that truly all we were now?

Another pause, longer this time. I strained to hear the voice on the other end of the line, but it was too faint. Finally, Sven spoke again.

“Right away, Monsieur. We’ll have these whores to you in twenty minutes.”

My heart began to race as Sven ended the call. Twenty minutes. In just twenty minutes, we would be handed over to Beaumont and then, it seemed to whatever Pretorian Guard operatives were posing as his people.

I felt Sven’s hand on my back, gentler now than it had been before. “Up you get, girls,” he said, his voice gruff, but lacking the cruel edge it had held earlier. “We need to get you cleaned up and ready for transport.”

As Sven helped me to my feet, my legs trembling beneath me, I caught his eye. For just a moment, I saw myHerra, the man I loved despite the insanity of it all. I saw the real Sven, the Viking warrior, assess my condition and find it satisfactory. A flash of warmth went through me, though, as with perfect clarity I understood that if Sven had seen anything else, had thought that I couldn’t take the strain of the mission, he would have called it all off, civilization be damned.

Then my beloved master vanished behind the ice of his gorgeous eyes.

“Eyes down, whore,” he growled. “And don’t look your master in the eye unless he tells you to—or you want the cane across your backside. Monsieur Beaumont is fond of the cane.”

CHAPTER28

Matthew

I sipped my coffee, letting the bitterness bloom fully onto my palate before I swallowed, as I opened the latest report from the Guard’s surveillance of Étienne Beaumont, codename Leopard. I’d been following Beaumont’s movements closely for the last few months. He hadn’t justified my time yet, but I’d kept going, checking on his activities as reported by our deep coverMilesevery few days.

I wasn’t the only senior analyst in the New York Mithraeum who felt sure that the French trillionaire would eventually give us something actionable. The otherleoneswho worked in this control center deep below the streets of Manhattan didn’t share my conviction about the specific, vital importance of Beaumont’s efforts in one particular area, though.

I knew in my bones—in the face, too, of my colleagues’ skepticism—that the magnate would soon close a very important loop.Groupe Synergistiqueand a certain bunch of Russians who had a vise grip on a crucial asset had been flirting with one another for months. These Russians, led by a warlord named Georgy Horakovsky, codename Ashcan, happened to control a very substantial power grid in Eastern Europe. The grid supplied a sizable territory there that the Guard—returning to older place names in the current geographic disorder—called Pomerania. I felt confident in my prediction that the two parties stood on the verge of a deal to divert an amount of power that would cripple local infrastructure, a development the Guard absolutely had to disrupt, if it did occur.

I didn’t have any hard evidence, though. The only thing that backed up my instincts was a brief report from theMiles, Jean Gisard, that provided a few snippets of some overheard conversations Beaumont had had on an encrypted phone. I had to admit to my fellowleonesthat Beaumont could have been talking to anyone.

Iknew, though, that someone from the Pomeranian group had been on the other end of the encrypted line. I knew it with the same kind of unshakable confidence that my colleagues at least had to admit had led to more than one intelligence breakthrough in the past.

I leaned back in my chair, my eyes scanning the report on my monitor. The familiar surroundings of the control center faded into the background as I focused intently on the information before me.

The report detailed the transfer of two young women, Mary O’Toole and Camille Dubois, from known sex traffickers Sven Hallstrom and Erik Thorvaldsen to Beaumont. My heart rate quickened slightly as I absorbed the implications: the break I had waited for might have just fallen into my lap.

Gisard, it seemed, had clocked the new girls’ arrival and alerted the Guard to trace their previous movements. I scrolled through the details our algorithms had found through our surveillance resources, my mind racing.

Mary O’Toole, eighteen years old, a redhead with striking green eyes. Camille Dubois, also eighteen, dark-haired and exotic. Both students at the University of Rouen before their abduction. Mary, an American, had even come from a Selecta college, which meant I could find a lot of data on her in the Guard’s files—notably including her submissive sexual orientation.

The report also included high-resolution images captured by surveillance drones. The first few of these showed the girls being brutally disciplined by Hallstrom as Thorvaldsen filmed, presumably for Beaumont’s benefit. Then, immediately after making the video, it appeared from the time stamps on the images, the men had fucked the girls over a hay bale.

The dominant style of the traffickers’ enjoyment, their idea of putting Mary and Camille head to tail, made my cock harden against my thigh. My analyst instincts kicked in even more strongly than my sexual ones, though. I scrolled through more images, showing the men putting the girls in a white van and, later, their arrival at Beaumont’s chateau.

Then, the note from Gisard that I had somehow known I would see.

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