by Sam Hall
As You Wish
Sam Hall
To Matt,
for your advice, support and love.
Contents
Description
Author Note
Trigger Warning
Re-cap
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Description
Tess is over being a sidekick.
After experiencing life as a dragon rider, doing inventory at the shop is a mundane nightmare. Unfortunately, Ash continues to insist she live a normal life, staying safe on their side of the interdimensional portal.
Of course, Flea could be a welcome distraction... if he would speak to her. They shared one truly amazing night and then the dark-haired hottie popped through an inter-dimensional portal to save her, but now, he barely manages a hello when he comes into the shop.
As if responding to her unspoken need for a little action, dragon riders suddenly appear and demand her presence before their court. What she thought was going to equate to a traffic fine for having an unregistered dragon quickly morphs into a life-or-death journey.
Join Tess and the gang as they rampage through the land of Aravisia, on a quest to discover the truth behind Nan’s curse!
Author note: This is a full-length paranormal romance novel for those sure if they just stepped into a portal to another realm, their lives would be sorted. It deals with the ability to wish for what you want and the consequences of that, dragons pretending to be dogs, sexy magicians manipulating the MC and the fight to find yourself and help others.
The Bottom Ring
The Bottom Rung © Sam Hall 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except for in the case of brief quotations for the use in critical articles or reviews.
Edited by Chanderella Editing
Cover art and design © Nicole Witholder
The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Created with Vellum
Author Note
This book is written in Australian English, which is a weird lovechild of British and American English. We tend to spell things the way the Brits do (expect a lot more u’s), yet also use American slang and swear more than both combined.
While many people have gone over this book, trying to find all the typos and other mistakes, they just keep on popping up like bloody rabbits. If you spot one, don’t report it to Amazon, drop me an email at the below address so I can fix the issue.
[email protected]
Trigger Warning
The book deals is set up in a fantastic realm where systemic disadvantage exists. There are scenes of animal cruelty committed by antagonists against the dragon characters that are described in reasonable detail. There is also references to rape towards the end of the book.
While none of the scenes are there simply tot titillate or manufacture drama, they could definitely be traumatising for some readers, so exercise caution and take care of yourself.
Re-cap
What happened in Book 1? A quick summary.
We met Ash as she was visited by Prince Charming, and learned she was doomed to wake up next to whichever popular culture character her sister, Tess was reading, watching or dreaming about.
Ash met Gabe, hot biker and the jury’s still out if he’s a fictional character come to life or just a random hottie. Anyway, Ash and Gabe are now in a relationship.
He works with Flea, a tattooist, who had a one night stand with Tess.
Jez works for Ash and Tess in their grandmother’s old occult supplies shop. She’s pansexual, mouthy and pretty much up for anything.
Ash and Tess’s shop has an inter-dimensional portal that allows them to go to alternate dimensions. Ash, Gabe and Flea go after Tess, when she sneaks through the portal, expecting all her geeky fantasies will come true.
They all end up in the country of Damorica, one where humans are effectively mentally on the level of pigs and where animals act much like humans. Tess is taken to the exiled Prince of Damorica’s citadel where it appears she’s Belle in a real life re-enactment of Beauty and the Beast. While he does have a kick arse library, he’s cursed to take human form until he finds someone to fall in love with him. And when they don’t? Well Prince Damon is more than happy to serve them as main course for dinner.
The story ends with the girls using the curse for good, working out how to use a combination of an exhaustive knowledge of sci-fi and fantasy and wish magic to strike a blow for women-kind. They also end up with a shape-shifting dragon in tow who pretends to be an Irish Setter while on Earth.
Now, onto the next adventure!
1
“Mm…” I purred. I was lying on the softest of silken sheets, my hair perfectly fanned across my pillow. A hand skimmed its way up my calf, the fingertips light enough to almost tickle. I looked down to see a blond-haired guy shoot me a rakish grin as his caress moved upwards. Another trailed across my stomach, circling my belly button before raking up my ribs. Ooh, the owner of this one had dark brown hair, dark skin and the most beautiful sea-green eyes. I leaned back into the pillow, closing my eyes as an additional pair grasped my ankle firmly, before pushing the thumb against the tough muscle of my instep. Hands slid over my shoulders, moving lower and lower, my back arching to meet them. Hands, so many hands, but if they would just move up or down that little bit further…
Beloved. The voice was a low buzz in my mind. Tess, you need to wake up.
Not yet, I pleaded. Two of them were sliding up the insides of my thighs, coming closer and closer…
Tess, there are strange men in your bedroom again.
My eyes snapped open. I wasn’t on satin sheets; I was lying on my own cotton ones, ones that had those tiny little balls all over them. “What the hell!” Around my bed kneeled four, no, five men, each touching me. I jerked my feet away from the man massaging them. I didn’t want to, he was doing an amazing job. I mean some guys, they say they’ll massage your feet and then it becomes this half-hearted, slightly firm, rubbing thing which you have to pretend to be grateful for when a couple of rounds of shoving your plantar fascia against a spiky therapy ball would be much better. No, his fingers were like velvet-covered iron…and they were moving towards me as if my feet and his hands were magnets. “What are you doing? No!” I said, brushing the rest of the very gropey hands off me like one would do a cluster of spiders.
“C’mon babe,” a guy with light brown hair and blue eyes that, I shit you not, sparkled, said with a grin. Tha
t was no mean feat in the dark gloom of my bedroom. “You know you want this.” He reached out for me and I batted his hand away, giving it a good couple of slaps when he seemed persistent. My dragon…dog, ah, dragon-dog jumped up on the bed and growled when the guy struggled to get his head around the idea of no. All of them pulled back, giving me some much-needed space.
“Bloody Ash…” I mumbled, reaching over to grab my phone off the bedside table. One of the remaining guys, tall, big with dark hair and equally dark inked tattoos, took the opportunity to look up my now rucked up nighty as I did so. “Are you right there, mate?” I said. He just gave me this long, slow smile like that was supposed to be sexy or something. I sat cross-legged and Miazydar flumped across them, to protect me from anymore Peeping Tom incidents. “We talked about this,” I muttered, unlocking the device and thumbing the Messages app open.
Surprise! Was the latest message from my dear sister.
“Goddamit!” I said and threw it down on the bed. I was stuck with a harem of five gorgeous guys for the day. “Right, well I guess introductions are in order. I’m—.”
“Tess, we know, beautiful,” Sparkle Eyes said with a breathtaking smile. Seriously, there were sunsets who just turned around and flounced away in jealousy in the face of that beauty.
“Right,” I looked at the guys surrounding the bed, taking them in more clearly now the adrenalin was pumping through me. Dark hair, blond, brunette, sandy, yep we had the usual spread of reverse harem contenders. I’d put money on one being a Talon or a Cooper. “OK,” I said, “let’s play a game I like to call, ‘Tell me the first letter of your name and I try to guess it’,” I said.
“That’s a game?” the last guy asked. He had long black hair and dark skin.
“Humour me,” I said.
He shrugged, “Starts with a ‘C’.”
“Right, C. How about Caelen, Cameron, Connor--.”
“I’m Connor,” Sparkle Eyes said.
“Of course you are.” I looked over tall, dark and ethnically ambiguous for a moment and then clicked my fingers. “How about Crowe?”
“Holy shit, how d'you do that?” Bad Boy Cliché with the Tattoos said.
“Of course it’s Crowe.” I rubbed my forehead.
“Yeah, my mom’s Lakota on her Dad’s side.”
“Is that culturally insensitive?” I tapped a finger on my lip. “I feel like it is, but I’m not sure why?”
“A guy saying he’s part Lakota is culturally insensitive?” the blond guy asked. “What drugs are you on, babe?”
“No, no, it’s the sexual fetishization of qualities of certain races, along with the Othering process of usually making them somehow subtly subhuman. Like, I bet he has some sort of mystical powers.” The guys' eyes all flicked to each other. “Oh really? He’s not a werewolf or something?” More shifty-eyed silence. I sighed and rubbed my face. I needed a shower, coffee and to get the hell to work and I wasn’t sure how I would do that on the back of the Tess-mobile with this horde. I took a deep breath and called my sister.
“Look, I don’t know how the hell you know—” I held my hand up to Sparkle Eyes, no, Connor, indicating he would have to wait. Which he did. All of them did, just sitting there, shirtless, looking like a very obedient troupe of marching boys from Mardi Gras.
“Tess, my darling sister!” Ash said. I could hear the laughter in her voice. Bloody bitch.
“You’re going to need to come and pick up the Chippendales, as they won’t fit on the bike.”
“Oh, I dunno, you guys could form a pyramid like those trick motorbike riders.”
“They usually have at least three bikes to do that,” I heard the muffled voice of my sister’s partner, Gabe down the line.
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Can I draw your attention back to the glass casket, the faerie prince who was an arrogant douche, that ‘is he evil or is he a misunderstood love interest vampire guy”—I could just imagine her ticking each bloke off on her fingers—“Oh, and that guy who was only partially corporeal. Like, was he a ghost?”
“He was a sensitive soul, trapped between the realms of life or death.”
“Yeah, so I had to deal with one of them, every damned morning.”
“I know.”
“And you said you were sick of being the geeky sidekick.”
“Yes, I know.”
“So now’s your chance! The curse has returned and seems focused on you now, thank God. You have the dragon dog and the harem of guys and the cool motorbike with a sidecar.”
“Ash, just help me out, please? I’m sorry, so sorry—.”
“What’s the point of bringing them into work? They’ll just get in the way. Take the day off and indulge yourself. They’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll get an Uber then,” I said, my fingers clawing at the sheets.
“Probably for the best. That many guys wouldn’t fit in my car.”
Therese, is that wise? You know how your conveyances affect me, Miazydar said as I ended the call, looking at me with big, brown, puppy dog eyes.
What else can I do?
Perhaps leave the man things here? They look fit enough, they could do all that cleaning you were so upset about last week.
We both looked at them speculatively. They definitely were big and strong. Almost as if in response to my gaze, Dark and Tattooed flexed his bicep and Blondie Bear stretching his arms over his head, his shirt pulling up to reveal washboard abs. My eyes bumped on down over each ridge, following that happy trail of light-coloured hair until… I jerked them up and his smile widened.
“I couldn’t help hearing your sister suggest you stay home today,” Tattooed Bad Boy said, grabbing my phone and placing it on the bedside table.
“And we could certainly find a way to pass the time,” Connor said, taking the position at the head of the bed, his body replacing my pillow, his fingers turning my shoulders into putty.
If you are going to mate with the man things, I’ll be in the next room, the dragon dog said, though we must start working on mental shielding. Today, Therese.
The reminder that my dragon life partner would feel everything I felt down our link had me straightening up and stepping outside the multi-armed octopus of guys. “I need to have a shower.” Blondie Bear was instantly standing by my side, that grin only getting wider. “By myself. Stay here, have a coffee, watch TV or something. Just keep out of my undies drawer and out of the bathroom.”
“We can draw this out all you like, babe, but you know how good it will feel when you finally surrender.”
“No surrender, never surrender,” I muttered and closed the door firmly behind me.
2
Twenty minutes later found us all standing on the side of the road outside my house. I crouched down, clipping a collar onto Miazydar who gave me a look of complete betrayal.
“I have to, bud. They won’t pick us up if I don’t.”
You could have left the man things at home, had them walk to the shop, anything but this.
Yeah, but M, this way I can dump them on Jez. They’ll make her very happy and then she’ll give you lots of those treats you like.
Dragons are above bribes, he said with a lift of his nose.
That bag of half empty liver snacks at work says otherwise.
“So, he’s alright in cars, right?” the Uber driver said as we all clambered into the soccer mum van.
It’d been the only one that could fit the seven of us.
“Yes,” I said, waiting for everyone to be seated and buckled up. The car pulled away from the curb before I finished the sentence, “Just, if I tell you to stop the car, stop the car!”
“What?!” The guy slammed his foot on the brake.
Therese, I’m feeling quite ill.
“It’ll be fine, I promise. Let’s just wind this window down a bit.”
After negotiating an extra fee for cleaning the driver was finally happy. Well, not happy, but reconc
iled to taking us to the shop. The minute the window was opened, Miazydar was on Crowe’s lap, nose poked through to suck in the fresh air. He didn’t start gagging until we were well and truly in peak hour traffic. Unfortunately, my dragon dog got motion sick very easily unless he was travelling under his own steam. I bought an old motorbike with a sidecar from Gabe as that was the only compromise I had found that worked. The air in his face, the movement, all felt as close to flying as he’d experienced this side of the portal. The Uber driver’s face fell once he heard the rhythmic hurking sounds coming from the dog, but he was fighting his way into the big roundabout near the shop so he couldn’t pay it too much mind. The car next to us wasn’t so lucky. Partially digested kibble sprayed all over his door. I just caught his look of surprise and horror as it disappeared under the deluge and then we were off again.
“Is that all of it?” the Uber driver said, eyes wide in the rear vision mirror.
