Shared by the Vikings by Isabel Dare Read Free Book Online

 
    Leo would never get used to seeing holy objects in the hands of the Vikings. Objects stolen from his monastery, just like he had been stolen. The Vikings had carried him to their homeland with a rope around his neck, for all the world as though they were leading a beast to market, and God had not seen fit to strike them down for it.
    As Leo sat in the jarl’s longhouse, watching the Vikings celebrate yet another successful raid, he could not keep from shivering at the sight of the altar vessel in the jarl’s hands. The jarl was the lord of the Viking village and the surrounding area, and he liked to choose the best of the spoils for himself.
    The jarl was drinking mead from the golden cup, rivers of it streaming past the cup’s jeweled rim and into his long beard.
    “Hail Runolf!” some of the men yelled, toasting their ship’s war leader, and the jarl gave them a look of displeasure.
    The jarl was an older man, and Runolf was a challenger to his power. Runolf was young, fit, and a leader of the most successful raids this village of Northmen had ever known. It might not be very long before Runolf son of Ragnar was the new jarl.
    Runolf was also Leo’s owner. Leo followed the jarl’s gaze to where Runolf sat. It was a place of honor at the head of the main table, and he had all his men round him, laughing and celebrating.
    From Leo’s humble seat among the village thralls on the stone floor strewn with rushes, he could just see Runolf’s broad grin as he told some story of their summer adventures. His blue eyes gleamed in the firelight, and his broad chest heaved with laughter.
    Leo could not keep his eyes off him.
    Runolf was simply beautiful. He was nearly a head taller than Leo and much more powerfully built, with wide shoulders and strong, capable arms. A gold armring glinted around the bulging muscles of his left upper arm; a gift from the jarl for his bravery in battle.
    With his startlingly blue eyes and long white-blond mane, Runolf looked like a very masculine angel. The kind of angel Leo had liked to draw, back in his other life where he had sworn himself to celibacy. Where he had never known the touch of a man’s hand upon his body. Things were very different now.
    Sometimes, he almost wondered if his new life was real. In his other life, at Culverston Priory, Leo knew himself to be sinful. He knew that even thinking of men in a lustful way was wrong, and as for lying with them - that was unthinkable. He was a servant of God, and all the older monks were always telling him he should be grateful for having been given such an opportunity, for Leo’s family was a poor one.
    And yet, now that Leo was a slave, he was happier than he had ever been before.
    “Disgusting,” someone muttered in Saxon, just loud enough to reach Leo’s ear.
    Leo sighed. If there was one flaw in his strange new happiness, it was this: that he was not the only slave who had once been a monk.
    Next to him sat Brother Theodore, one of the other monks from Leo’s monastery who had been taken captive. He was an older man with a sour disposition, who had always prided himself upon his status as the Abbot’s right-hand man. But Brother Theodore was now a mere household slave, just like Brother Leo, and he was not adjusting well to his new life.
    “Drinking from the sacred vessels!” Brother Theodore hissed. “May God strike them all with plague!”
    Leo tried to hush him. “That’s hardly charitable,” he said softly.
    Theodore turned his head and gave him a vicious look. “Charitable! Aye, and I suppose it’s out of charity that you whore yourself out to these Godforsaken barbarians!”
    Leo flushed. He could feel the heat rising to his cheeks, and the tears of mortification starting behind his eyes. He blinked furiously, denying Theodore the satisfaction of seeing his tears.
    It wasn’t the first time he had heard such words. The other monks had given him no peace from the day they arrived at the Viking village.
    Leo