A Ruin of Roses (Deliciously Dark Fairytales #1)(21)

I stared in complete and utter shock. I was no prude, but…

Fuck, maybe I was a prude. The pub in my village was nothing like this. This level of debauchery was beyond anything I’d ever imagined.

“What sort of outfit are you running here?” I asked.

A man trotted across the black checkered floor, wearing cloth hooves on his hands, which he kept tight to his chest, slippers fashioned to look like hooves on his feet, and a sort of horse mask with a bridle on his head. A leather-clad woman sat in the saddle on his back, custom-designed to be worn when he was upright, giving him slaps with a riding crop. He was enjoying it, if his hard-on was any judge.

One by one, the partygoers saw us, their large smiles slipping and their movements slowing and then stopping.

The lead guy in the dick train popped himself off his caboose and turned our way. I knew instantly that it was an incubus just by his posture and the sensuous way he moved. The crowd parted before him as he made his way toward us. He took the crop off the horse rider with a knowing little smirk on his face.

“Nyfain, how good of you to join us.” His obsidian eyes sparkled with mischief and haughtiness. He stopped in front of us. “What have we here?”

He reached that crop toward my cheek. The goddess only knew where that thing had been. Whose sweaty ass it had spanked. No fucking thank you.

Before I could swat it away, the man who held me—Nyfain—kicked forward. His foot connected solidly with the middle of the incubus’s chest. The incubus flew backward with an expression of surprise mingled with pain. He hit the ground and slid across the marble, his greasy backside not allowing him the traction to stop. He bowled over the previously dancing women and into a mixed group that had stopped to watch.

“Hadriel, step forward,” Nyfain barked.

“Now, now, Nyfain.” A woman strode toward us from the side, wearing a crimson lace bustier halter with garters and no underwear. Succubus. Of course they were behind this debauchery. They fed off lust and misdeeds. “The sun has set. You have no jurisdiction here.”

“I don’t need jurisdiction, I need Hadriel. Step forward!”

“Hadriel is otherwise occup—”

“Here!” A slim man in the center right inched out of a throng of people. It was a wonder that I hadn’t noticed him earlier.

He wore a furry purple sort of…costume thing that made him look like a silly mock-up of the beast. His shaggy pants ended in black shoes that resembled hooves, kinda like the man posing as a horse. A black vee covered his pecker region, but then the costume opened up to bare the torso, exposing a couple of hairy nipples. His arms were covered with the same material as his legs, cinched up around the neck. Two stuffed horns curled up from his head.

“Oh goddess, that is a sight,” I said with a small giggle. It was just the thing to slice through my terror.

“Here, sir.” Hadriel inched a little farther forward and then wobbled. He clearly wasn’t sober.

“Compose yourself and then report to the tower room,” Nyfain barked.

“You don’t have to go, Hadriel,” the succubus said. “There is nothing he can do to you if you stay.”

“There’s plenty he can do to me,” Hadriel murmured as he all but staggered in our direction.

I pulled away from Nyfain a little and tried to look down his body.

“What are you doing?” he growled, squeezing me to his chest so I’d stay put.

“Trying to see if you have an erection.”

He huffed, heading back out to the stairs and up. At the third floor, he turned into a lovely, picturesque hall with arched windows along the left and stone on the right. Oil paintings lined the way, some with mustaches drawn on the subjects’ faces and occasionally a few dongs. Clearly a few partygoers had gotten out of control.

At the end, he ascended a small staircase that wound up to a single heavy door. The tower, most likely. He planned to stick me there.

“I thought you were going to kill me,” I said in a small voice as he put me down.

“Picking a weed is not really stealing, but your persistent trespassing warrants detention. Your sentence is for an eternity. Here is your cell.”

He twisted the key before pushing open the door. Darkness waited within. He gestured me through.

“But…” I fidgeted with my collar as I stared into the inky depths. “You’re going to keep me in a tower?” My voice kept rising. “In a room that locks from the outside?”

“Would you rather I throw you in the dungeon?”

“Is there a third option? Like a slap on the wrist and public humiliation?”

He grabbed me by the arm and shoved me into the room. I staggered, fear rising to choke me. He took residence in the doorway, his massive shoulders nearly filling the frame. His body was built for power, and he’d honed it with strength.

“Welcome to hell, princess.”

The door slammed and the lock clicked. I pounded on the door, jiggling the handle and yanking. Nothing.

“That rotten-faced weasel fucker,” I spat, turning and pushing my back against the door.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Thank the goddess for the nearly full moon. Weak light filtered in around heavy curtains. I started forward, waving my hands in front of me to feel what I couldn’t see. My foot hit something solid and then the side of my arm did. Wood of some kind. A little farther, and I kicked and then practically fell onto a little table. Farther still, I finally reached the window.