To Viking warrior Magnus, marriage is naught but a contract, a bargain between a man and a woman for land and title. Lust, love-he scorns such notions as weak and unmanly. But three days before he's to wed a highland noblewoman, he falls into the maelstrom of a maid's startled eyes. Their passionate tryst has him rethinking his notions, and he struggles to find a way to keep the beguiling Deidra while honoring the marriage contract he's arranged with the father of his betrothed. Deidra cannot take a walk in the forest without finding a wounded dove. Devoted to her menagerie of injured bears, peacocks, and wolves, she vows to disobey her da when he betroths her to the Norse warrior known as the Destroyer. Until, disguised as a maid, she's rescued from a would-be rapist by the Destroyer himself. How can any call him ugly or cruel? For he treats her as if she is made of spun glass and teaches her the magikal pleasures of the flesh. But Magnus is furious when he learns the woman he's fallen so deeply for is none other than his betrothed. For there's nothing he despises more than a deceitful female...except, perhaps, two of them...