Chapter 24

After a quick shake to clear his head, Aiden scanned an inky blackness ... to no avail. It was so dark he couldn’t see the hand before his face. However, his other senses cast their votes and decided he stood in a large room, both broad and long. On either side, the rattling of heavy chains plus muffled, tiny moans came to his ears. Before him lay only silence. Yet he somehow perceived a looming presence.

At a quiet gasp, he turned, and his pulse ratcheted higher. From nowhere and everywhere, the gloom oozed brighter, and a darker shadow resolved, its form becoming Anna’s unmistakable curves.

“Aiden?” she whispered, scanning his face.

“Yeah, baby. It’s me.”

While one hand swept disheveled hair behind her shoulder, the other reached for him. Just as he tugged her closer, the lighting intensified.

A thought slammed into his skull. He stood upon a stage, the most important of his life. As if thick black velvet curtains lifted, more figures appeared. While her heated body slid against his back, hiding from whatever awaited them, Anna’s breathing grew faster.

As more details sharpened, his heart rate soared, racing for ... whatever lay beyond the darkness overhead. The clank of chains drew him to a pair of naked forms attached to the flanking walls. Still partially shadowed, Treacle’s loyal servants hung from solid black iron restraints. The clasping metal at ankles and wrists kept their limbs wide.

Vivid blue eyes flooded with wildness, Leah on one side. Draped with dangling raven hair, Hui Ying’s petite body adorned the opposite wall. Live paintings, they squirmed with more force as his gaze swept between them. Thick leather bands of glossy black covered their mouths, preventing them from calling out, but both sets of nostrils flared when they recognized him.

“Welcome, Aiden.”

At an upper-crust British accent, oozing a preternatural femininity, he squinted into the still rising illumination to the front. On a high-backed, wooden chair, its ornate carvings proclaiming it to be throne, sat ... beauty. Wavy, thick golden hair swaddled toned shoulders of the purest alabaster and draped over firm, proud breasts topped with darkened pink. She sat with toned legs crossed, and the gleaming of her body intensified as the light continued to rise.

Behind one shoulder, another form appeared from the gloom. A tower of black muscles, a heavy-jawed, naked young man stood, adorned with swooping loops of gold. Between tree-trunk thighs hung an impressive manhood. Around its root was an even thicker golden band. A gilded leash attached to a matching metal collar at his neck ran to a bolt on the rear of the throne.

On the seated woman’s other side, another female figure resolved. Also sporting thick blonde hair, but of a silver sheen, she stood trembling. A delicate mesh of twinkling gold crisscrossed the impressive pale curves of an athletic body, hiding nothing but highlighting everything. Her neck was also lashed to the throne by a slender golden rope. From a gorgeous face, wide blue eyes flicked between him and Anna.

“Not to worry. If I meant you harm, you’d have suffered such already.”

Her voice brought him back to the betrothed lady ... and she was a lady. The aura she projected, both via an exquisite physical form and the pulses with which she was trying to impress him, required obeisance.

However, teeth gritted, he was in no mood for such things. Weeks of nothing, then this ... While grinding even harder, he swept his gaze around the entire tableau. No other surprises awaited him on the stage, and he returned to the seated figure.

“Why am—”

“Tsk, tsk. All in good time.” She flicked her wrist and looked at the chained women. “First, we must discuss a few things.”

“At least tell me where I am?”

Pulse thundering, he clenched his jaw and again scanned what had been revealed. Under the better lighting, a floor of worn wooden planks glimmered. Discolored rectangles on the walls flanking the writhing figures proclaimed large frames had once adorned the faded yellow paint. A long table and stacks of chairs shoved to one side, partially obscured by dusty shrouds, meant the place had once been a dining room.

“Hmm, suppose it doesn’t matter,” the lady muttered. “Did Larial mention he had a town once?”

“Um, no.”

“Well, he’d proven himself rather troublesome. Thus, I chose to retain his pretty toys.” She glanced at the woman and the man flanking her. Under the gaze, both quivered, and their golden outfits twinkled in the still-dim lighting. “They don’t mind, don’t care at all. Your kind is quite simple. Pleasure them and they remain loyal. Isn’t that right?”

“Um-hmm,” left the mesh-wrapped blonde as she nodded.

With bright white teeth deep in the red lipstick on her lower lip, she scanned him. Atop her tits, darker points made themselves known, poking through gaps in the gilded threads. Eyelashes fluttering, she gave him a longer inspection.

“Yes, mistress.”

At the grumbling voice, he tore his gaze from the stunning beauty. The black giant’s eyes glinted.

When the seated woman sniffed, Aiden returned to her. With fingers playing in her hair, she was looking at the writhing figures mounted on the walls. Her irises, composed of every shade in the most wondrous of rainbows, glimmered as they found him once more.

“Now, I’ve been forced to do the same to poor, disillusioned Treacle. Although hers are so much more than pets. Quite the disappointment. I held such great faith in the dear creature’s impressive ability.” She laughed; the sound dripped ice. “Seems the poor beast is more of a builder than a keeper.”

“Wait a second,” he muttered. When he took a step forward, the blonde’s eyes widened, flooding with hunger. The glimmering muscles of the giant, more protective, grew tense. “I thought...”