CHAPTER 8

I WAKE IN a sea of furs. Luxurious hides swaddled me all night like a trophy wife burrito. My hand slips free and I reach for the stern form that carried me up here, ate me out a second time, then fell asleep cuddled around me.

All I find is cold air.

The shock jerks me awake. A wool blanket falls off of my tits as I dig my hands into the bed. I’m alone. Maybe he…had to pee?

Oh yeah, I should do that too.

He’d told me I could go anywhere in his castle so hunting for a bathroom shouldn’t end with me running out the door and getting attacked by wolves. As I pad across the floor, cold chews on my toes and nips up my legs. I scurry around, trying to find anything to cover up.

His robe. It’s lying on the chair he sat in to interrogate me before. The idea of him sitting there, jerking himself off while he watches me pounds in the back of my head. First I have to find him and that requires not freezing to death. I bend to pick up the robe and nearly double over at the weight. The coat itself is a heavy wool dyed such a deep crimson it almost looks black in the low light. Furs of brown with flecks of white line the coat while gold embroidery dances off the back.

I lift it and the smell knocks me back. A powerful musk I can’t compare anything to fills my nose. My heart races like a jackrabbit. A flush rises up my stomach and I squeeze my thighs while biting my lip. A throb pulses through the whole of my clit and all I did was smell him.

I’m putting on the damn cloak.

Slinging it around my shoulders, I laugh as the hood falls clear over my face. I reach up to shove it back only to find the sleeves a foot past my hands. After wadding those back, I can finally lift the hood. Heat pours through me like I’m nestled before a roaring fire. I snuggle deeper into the fleece lining below the wool and breathe in more.

Another pulse overwhelms me. My fingers pry at the edge of the coat, revealing my naked thigh to the cold air. I gasp at the cut but keep going. My nails draw over the skin his claws bruised. The pain sends another cascade and I reach lower, darting my fingertip for my aching flesh. Just a quick one will shake me out of this.

A loud gong—like a massive clock striking one—echoes through the room. My hands fall away, the cloak closing around me. Right. I needed to pee. And find the owner of this.

If I do, maybe he can fix this ache between my legs by giving me a whole new one.

The first set of doors down this hallway are all locked. With each one I try to pry open, my curiosity starts to overcome my lust. What’s he hiding back here? Gold? Silver? A room full of horn polish?

All the other women he “saved” last night.

He’d been surprised when I returned, but not exactly shocked. How many others rode his face like a bucking bronco? Or yanked that gold hoop to unleash the monster within?

What if they’re still here, and I’m to be one more bride among the many?

I take a steadying breath and his musk knocks down my body. It screams for me to find the man and rip his chest fur until he breaks my back. Would it be so bad to share him?

We could form a book club.

Jumping ahead of the cart there, Amaya.

I can’t get a single door to open, so—hoping none of them are the bathroom—I head toward the stairs to explore the ground floor. The red door sits there, innocuous. It’s just a thing. I shouldn’t be scared of it. Or have my heart pound faster the closer I draw.

On one hand, what if I open it and it doesn’t work? What if he lied and I’m locked away in some room sewing up his cloaks and sucking on his cock for the rest of my life?

On the other hand, what if it does? What if I’m pulled right back to my one-bedroom apartment and I forget all of this? The best orgasm of my life erased with a snap of my wrist.

I can’t decide which is a scarier outcome, so I ignore my conundrum and hunt through the house. There’s the spa, the door still open from when he carried me out in his arms. I spy the shattered bricks and the heat of the hot springs rushes over me.

Just before the snow globe hot springs are two archways that lead to another two hallways. I peer down the left—the marble’s whiter with gold flecks. Then the right—the walls are jet black with veins of red pulsing through the stone.

“Left it is!” I say to myself. My voice comes back small and insignificant. Shaking off the echo, I walk through the archway. The top is craggy like stalactites are forming in the marble. Stalagmites? Cave teeth and each one looks hungry.

Hustling faster out of a fear they might fall and split me in half—in the bad way—the cloak billows out behind me. It’s so damn long even on my huge frame, it trails like a train. I keep fighting to close the robe but it’s a losing battle.

“Has the man never heard of a belt?” I mutter and make my way through a second archway. I’m so focused on messing with the coat that I don’t realize I’m in a new room until I breathe in a vast emptiness lurking before me.

On instinct, I reach for the side of the door expecting a light switch. Just as I realize my stupidity, I find a string and pull it. One by one, curtains fall off of rods all around the room. Powerful sunlight bounces off the snow piled just outside the glass to illuminate a throne.

Not just any throne. It’s massive even at this distance. The room itself could double as a ballroom for a wedding and a convention at the same time. But there’s nothing in here save the throne and the stairs up to it. I’d expect feasting tables or huge statues dedicated to pagan gods and nature. Maybe one of Krampus nude, but ya know, tasteful. Just fucking a couple of nymphs kind of thing.

It’s empty. Not in a way to put all the gravitas on the throne and the ass who sits on it empty. No, it feels unfinished. Bereft. Lonely.

As I pad across the floor, dust whirls in my wake. No one’s been in here for a long time. Halfway through the room, I spy a chandelier tucked into the ceiling. All of its candles are doused. It’s hard to make out, but it looks as if every one of the five levels is made of antlers. The light shifts and catches on the hidden chandelier. Gold glimmers back from every wicked curve.

All of the floor is the same white gold marble across the hall except for a black sigil centered before the throne. Twin circles, one inside the other, form the base of it while letters I’ve never seen before are etched between them. I don’t know what any of it means, but I give it a wide berth and stare up at the throne.

Holy shit, those stairs are tall. The first one comes up to my knees. I have to slap a hand to the base of the step above, drag my foot over the stair, then climb to reach the next. All while keeping a firm grip on the coat that really doesn’t want to stay on my body.

The fur slips over my tits, leaving me bare-breasted as I scale the last of the summit. My head bobs over the top and I gasp. Across the room, the throne looked big, but not like this. The single front leg is a good two feet wide. It’s carved from wood with the same images all over the walls upstairs. Deer frolic, bears sleep, and a solitary figure trudges from scene to scene without revealing itself.

“Come on, come on…” I give a very lady-like roll up to the last stair. My legs are wiped not just from the five-stair mountain but my whole night. Day? It’s impossible to guess how much time has passed in this world where the blizzard never ends. I tug the coat back around me and focus on the throne.

The seat comes to just under my tits. The velvet is as crimson as the coat. Fur lines the armrests. I can see the tips of it poking over the wooden frame.

What drops my stomach and clenches my throat is the back of the throne. Far away it looked abstract and artistic. Here, face to face, all I can see are antlers. Hundreds of them, maybe a thousand—piled in stacks so that the horns interlock to form a wall. They’re all of varying sizes. Some are so small they had to come from a young deer, others bigger around than my arm.

And, dashed over the fifteen-foot pile of antlers, is red. Not like it’s painted. No. The red smashes into the back then splatters droplets all around like old spin art. Or a murder.

He’s probably not good at painting. Or he ran out partway through redecorating and hasn’t gotten back to finish. That’s probably it.

Nothing nefarious going on here at all.

I reach my hand out to rub the velvet. It looks surprisingly cushioned for a chair that’s never used. My fingers grace the edge.

A wail shatters behind me.

Spinning around, I raise my fist. My heart anticipates a fight. Then I hear tears inside the scream.

“Help?”

Was that a voice? It’s my head playing tricks. I’m freaked out and imagining things. There’s no one here but me, a goat monster, and his cavalcade of kidnapped brides.

Oh shit, what if it’s the brides?

“Hello?” I call out, working my way down the stairs.

“Help?” The voice grows stronger as if it's gotten a response for the first time in years. I can’t tell who it is. Not a man, that much is obvious. It’s soft, like a kidnapped woman pleading for salvation or a…

In spinning around to find the source, my feet brush over the ominous sigil. I yelp and leap back just as the entire floor under it flips up. Down below, smoke belches through a tunnel. The crackle of a distant fire and heat rushing up my body sends me skittering away.

It’s the pits of hell.

Why does he have this under his throne?

I reach a toe over, hoping that touching the perpendicular sigil will close it. Hands spring up through the clouds of smoke. They bat at the air, shaking it away until faces stare up at me. Filthy, soot-stained, panicking, tearful, tiny faces.

The faces of children.

“Help!” they cry out.

I run.