Taken By The Viking - Michelle Styles

This was a juicy morsel of viking adventure and action, mixed with the perfect amount of sensuality.

Annis, the daughter of a respectable nobleman, is staying with her uncle near his monastery, when vikings arrive to trade.  Watching from a window she is too far to hear the actual conversation between the handsome leader and her uncle, but watches in horror as the attempt to trade sours and a massacre breaks loose.  Her uncle is murdered along with most of the other monks and ladies who are present.  

When Annis and her servant attempt to escape, circumstances place Annis into the attention of the handsome Viking leader - Haakon Haroldson.  In order to protect her, he places his cloak about her and orders her to be taken along with a handful of captured monks back to his homeland. 

 Annis, captured, taken from everything familiar, is stranded in a foreign land, with only the slightest hope of her family paying ransom for her.  She knows she should hate Haakon for what he'd allowed his men to do, and for the pagan gods he and his people serve, and yet she is drawn to Haakon, craving from him the passion that lays smoldering beneath the surface.  When their feelings become mutual, Annis must make up her mind whether to simply remain a captured hostage or become Haakon's concubine.  Her mind says one thing, her body says something different.  Yet, it in the end it is her heart, and Haakon's, that has the final say.....

This book was delicious with rich history that popped and came alive.  Some of the action sequences had me holding my breath til their outcome!  Loved it!

"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."

- Mark Twain