Goldy: A Reverse Harem Fairytale Romance Series (The Happily Never After Series Book 2)

by Plum Pascal

  “But… I thought you wanted to fuck me?” I ask, clearly and completely confused.

  “I do,” he says as he looks up at me then back at my sex. “Fuck, I do.”

  “Then?”

  “Tomorrow night. Tonight I want nothing more than to taste you. I want your flavor in my mouth, on my tongue.”

  Again, my resolve wavers. He’s not going to fuck me tonight? He’s going to give me the sensation I’ve been waiting a lifetime for, the thing I can never find with my own hand? Release. Powerful, incredible release, beneath his fingers and tongue.

  Well, that’s really not so bad, right?

  I mean… I guess not.

  Yeah, let him have my… flavor as much as he wants tonight and then tomorrow night when he tries to stick me with his timber, I’ll suck the life out of him.

  Er, maybe suck is the wrong word…

  His tongue swipes between my folds and shatters all my careful contemplation. His tongue is somehow impossibly better than the press of his fingers. It traces the contours of my clit, bringing me tantalizingly close to the sweet ending I’m so eager to experience again. When he sinks two fingers into me a minute later, I’m almost sobbing with pleasure.

  Yes, yes, yes, you perfect and enormous man-king!

  Yes, you wonderful man-bear!

  Oh, Gods, I want more.

  I want his cock, Kassidy, please!

  I tug his hair hard, sure I must be hurting him, but I can’t bring myself to care. This feeling is so intoxicating, it’s hard to think past it. When another orgasm tears through me a second later, tears leak from my eyes. The rush of emotion is completely foreign to me. It’s frankly off-putting, and it gives me renewed focus.

  If you’re going to do it, do it now!

  Before you start to care about the fucker!

  I press my fingers to his scalp. The head isn’t the best place to do this—I usually prefer the torso, where the energy is strongest. Failing that, a limb. I’ve taken energy from a dragon via his ankle; taking power from a werebear from his scalp is hardly the strangest thing I’m likely to do.

  His power is ready and waiting just beneath his skin, pulsing with desire, ready strength, and the restrained rage of his beast. No worries about draining him to the point of death. Unlike fragile mortals, he’ll survive what I’m about to do.

  And that’s a good thing, because I don’t want to hurt him.

  He has been very good to me, considering.

  I roll my hips once more, groaning for his benefit. Then I reach deeper, snatching his power. It’s a strange sensation, stealing from him like this. It doesn’t precisely feel like theft, the way it does when I lift a coin purse or an artifact… or Ambrosia. It feels like... downing a glass of rum. It leaves me tingling, full, and elated.

  Every person has their own flavor, so to speak. Ordinary humans taste bland, like water with a lemon twist. Barely any substance to them. I don’t like draining humans. We have so few years as it is and most have no power to make up the difference, like I do.

  Witches vary, but they always crackle on the tongue. Wickedness tastes bitter or sour. Good witches taste like liqueur: sweet and thick, but with a stinging aftertaste.

  The only dragon I’ve stolen from tasted like ozone and char, with the ominous energy that comes just before a firestorm and the devastation afterward.

  Leith tastes like resin, pine, and bitter greens. It’s a sharp flavor, but I like it. I take it in until I’m metaphorically full, the energy stretching the wall of my internal reservoir.

  The werebear startles when I begin, but it’s too late. He’s paralyzed for the thirty seconds it takes for me to drain his power. There’s no way to take it all at once, I simply don’t have the capacity for something like that. But I take as much as I can, until I feel like I might burst, until a faint sense of psychic nausea settles over me.

  If I do this to humans, it kills them. Period.

  But not Leith. He still has enough energy to lift his head, a look of accusation on that handsome face before his eyes roll back into his head and he slumps, unconscious, to the floor. Guilt claws at my insides. He doesn’t deserve this, but I have no choice. I have to get out of here with that Ambrosia.

  I have to do it for the Guild.

  Look, his cock is still hard.

  So what?

  So, maybe you could just climb on top of it and test it out for a bit?

  You’re sick, you know that?

  Just the tip?

  No!

  I slide off the bed and push a pillow beneath his head. Then I take his coat, swipe the bottle of liquid Ambrosia and slip it inside one of the pockets. Tying the garment tightly around myself, I creep to the door and open it a crack. There’s no one waiting in the hall for me, not even a sentry.

  Leith has tried to protect my modesty.

  I’m such a fucking asshole.

  I pad to the end of the corridor, checking around the corner again. No one.

  Taking a deep breath, I lope forward.

  My mission is clear. Find my satchel and bag, sneak past the guards, Sorren, and Nash, and make good my escape—all in fifteen minutes.

  FIVE

  Nash

  I’m about thirty seconds away from exploding into fur, fangs, and teeth.

  My bear pushes hard against my tenuous control, urging me down the long corridors toward Leith’s rooms. As the Chieftain of our clan, he has numerous rooms on the uppermost level of the castle, but he makes the largest his bedroom.

  I’m just going to talk to him, I try to reason. Even I know it’s a fat lot of pig toss. I’m really going so I can catch a glimpse of her. The golden-haired renegade that almost got away. Grudgingly, I have to admit she’s impressive. Too impressive.

  The Rite of Three is a bad idea. It allows her too much freedom to escape to try to accomplish her bold scheme all over again.

  At the very least, Leith should manacle her to the headboard before fucking her.

  He won’t though, and that’s at least part of the reason I’m going to stand like a deviant by his door. Leith has always been too lenient with women.

  If she tries to sneak away after the deed is done, I’ll be waiting. Maybe it will quell the seething jealousy if I can hear her sounds of pleasure reverberating off the stones of the castle walls. Then at least I can imagine it’s my cock inside that tight fud, coaxing moans from her throat as she cums over and over.

  I press back hard against my bear half. All it wants to do is storm inside and claim her. That’s all that part of me has wanted to do since the foolish thief pushed her face into mine, defiance shining in those exotic green eyes. She doesn’t know the show of dominance was the surest way to rile my beast. If we’d been alone, I’d have pressed her back into the stone column and hoisted her up, thrusting into her as hard as I fucking could.

  For the love of all the Gods, I might have done so if Leith hadn’t stopped me. Sorren sure as hell wouldn’t have. He’s never been the same since the incident, and his morals are a long-distant memory. But he’d have watched, the dirty bastard.

  I should thank Leith for stopping me. The thief clearly loathes me and won’t welcome me inside her. I’m a monster, yes, but that doesn’t mean I must act like one.

  When I reach the end of the corridor, I find Leith’s door slightly ajar. I pause a yard away, straining my ears for the sound of their mating. The slap of his hips into hers, the ragged breaths, the moans. But I don’t hear anything. Leaning slightly forward, I sniff the air. My bear growls its approval. I smell release. Sex of some sort has happened. But the scent is mostly unfamiliar.

  I’ve been alive long enough and through enough mating cycles that I unfortunately know what my cousin’s release smells like. And the smell of his seed is conspicuously absent. The thief’s is the only aroma that lays thick and intoxicating in the air. She’s achieved release once, possibly twice, but Leith has not.

  I find that questionable and. more so, troubling.

 
I wait several more seconds for one or both of their voices to sound in the room beyond. When only silence greets me, I creep forward, daring to push the door open a little more so I can peer inside. If they’re rutting, I’ll go. Or at the very least, I’ll do my best not to watch. Or at the very very least, I’ll do my best to hide so no one will find me doing my best not to watch.

  I’m expecting to find her beneath him, writhing as he drives his cock into her repeatedly, mercilessly plundering her lithe body. Failing that, to find her atop him, riding his cock, small but firm tits bouncing as she rocks against him. My cock hardens painfully at the mere thought.

  I find neither in the room beyond.

  The bedsheets are rumpled, but there’s no golden-haired thief tangled in them. Instead, I see Leith lying prone on the stone floor, a pillow shoved beneath his head. His eyes are closed, face slack. Is he dead? If she’s killed him, I’ll rip her from sternum to pelvic bone and leave her outside the gates so the crows can pick her clean.

  Crossing quickly to his side, I kneel, groping to find a pulse in his neck or along his wrist. I soon find one, weak but still there. The relief that realization brings still isn’t enough to quell my fury. The thief is going to pay for this. Leith extended a hand of mercy and she’s bitten him for it, betraying his trust the second she had the opportunity.

  I’ll find her and deliver her just punishment. Thirty swipes from my claws. I don’t care how long it takes or how far I have to track her. She will pay for this.

  I find a group of servant girls to tend to Leith before stalking off to the armory. The thief’s things were taken there, and she’s not likely to leave without the spoils she came for.

  It’s a five-minute journey from Leith’s quarters to the armory, if one is moving at a dead sprint. I go double that, skidding to a stop outside the armory door in two minutes. I shoulder open the door, tensed and ready to do battle. She’s already proven herself formidable, and I refuse to die because a tiny thief ran me through with a polearm.

  The morning sun glints off rows of metal weaponry, shields, and armor. There’s no sign of her here. Perhaps I’ve beaten her to her quarry. But when I round the corner to the section set aside for leather armor, games bags, staves, and other assorted supplies, I find the knave’s pack and satchel conspicuously absent. Hurling a swear word at no one in particular, I turn on my heel, loping toward the courtyard.

  Where the bloody fuck are our guards?

  They’re meant to protect against something like this. How could she bypass them so easily? They’re all trained shifters, the strongest we could find from our far-flung tribes, brought here to be honored with service. And yet she bowls through them or slips past as if they’re not even there! Leith will hear of this and the useless lot of them will be flogged!

  It’s disquieting, to say the least.

  Before I flay the skin from her bones, I ought to pry from her the answer as to how she managed her escape.

  Beyond the courtyard are the gardens, a maze of overgrown shrubberies, rambling rose bushes, and veritable forests of stone and ivy that Leith is too busy to keep. Before rule fell to him, gardening had been a mild obsession of his. Now the place is derelict, all but abandoned—a shadow of its former self. Much like Leith, himself.

  The chase with the little larcenist brought out the most life I’ve seen in him for years. Her apparent acquiescence made him happier than I could have imagined.

  Maybe, if things had turned out differently, he might not grasp at opportunities for escape quite so fervently. Sorren is the eldest of us, but due to his bastard heritage, he’ll never take the throne. And owing to the incident, he’s not in the right frame of mind, were he given the opportunity to take the throne.

  I’m older than Leith, but owing to the fact that my relation to my grandfather, the original king, is through my mother—his daughter—the clan decided Leith had a stronger claim, since he’s descended from our grandfather directly through his father’s blood. Sometimes I wish neither Leith’s father, nor my own, had died and then this tenuous question of rulership would be a moot one.

  I traverse the gardens easily. After so many years of navigating the property in search of my absent cousin, I know it by memory alone. It gives me an advantage the thief lacks.

  The sky retreats to a dim gray haze overhead as I enter the maze, boughs of leafy green blotting out most of the winter sun. A thousand overgrown branches reach for me, and I slide a blade from its sheath, cutting away the obstacles in my way. A tightly-knit golden curl hangs from one of the thorny plants up ahead and I know I’m on the right track. She’s been this way—and if the scent just barely discernible over the earthy smells of the garden is correct, she’s been here recently. I’m not far behind her now.

  I bare my teeth in anticipation, though it’s more snarl than smile. I want answers and I’m damn well going to get them.

  And then I’m going to kill her.

  The scent of blood hits me next, overpowering even the reeking colony of fungi that has taken root in the pits of the Poseidon statue near the exits. We’ve put the statue up to appease Triton, who’s gone and lost his damn mind, exiling his youngest and bringing storms to ports who don’t pay him fealty.

  Delorood is getting hit the worst, and though we don’t live incredibly near, Leith thought it prudent to give the fish-fucking bastard a gesture.

  I slow, taking the next corner at a walk just in case there’s something nasty waiting for me around the bend.

  Prudent, I realize, when I turn the corner and find Sorren leaning casually against one of the hedges, staring down at his feet in... well, it isn’t quite glee. Sorren hasn’t been able to muster an emotion positive enough to be called happiness or joy in twelve years. But he’s definitely amused, in so far as he can be. His amusement is always cruel and at someone else’s expense. I’ve seen him in such a mood before, when he tests his traps on prisoners.

  My cousin was once a highly sought-after engineer, a master of architecture, an innovator who pioneered advances that improved life all over Fantasia. He’d taken his lot in life—the disgraceful stain on a proud werebear royal bloodline—and made it something worthwhile. Of the three of us, Sorren was the only one who went to war with the Guild.

  And then, the incident happened. Now, he’s little more than a shell. A hollowed-out vase collecting filth and brackish water. He still constructs his traps and works on his experiments. It’s really the only thing that brings animation to his face any longer.

  I flick my gaze to the left and see the mirror that cuts out the hedge path to the left. The magic on the glass is so transparent, even I wouldn’t have noticed it, except for the fact that the mirror’s been broken. A shape roughly the size of a human head has cracked a hole in it. The blood runs from the broken shards down the glass to pool scarlet on the stones below. More blood lines a gap in the stones, bloody handprints made by dainty human hands.

  The thief has fallen inside Sorren’s mirror and from the looks of it, she tried to lift herself back out again. Sorren will have put a stop to that.

  “Did you cut off her hands as she tried to get back out again?” I ask dully. It should horrify me that such is even a possibility, I suppose. But if I continued to be appalled at Sorren’s soulless antics, I’d never stop feeling nauseous.

  “No,” he says, a chilly smile curling his thin lips. “I thought Leith might be cross with me if I did.”

  Restraint from Sorren? Will wonders never cease? I’m beginning to wonder what magic this thief wields over my brethren. Leith, the responsible justice-dealer, wanting to show leniency. Remorseless, sadistic Sorren, sparing her pain? It shouldn’t be possible.

  I approach the hole cautiously to peer inside. It’s one of Sorren’s mirror traps. He’s created at least a dozen in the last ten years alone, obsessed with the need to trap Vita should she ever return to the mortal plane. There’s a small labyrinth playing out beneath our feet all the time. I’m always leery of falling into one of
Sorren’s traps. He can open the entrances to them damn near anywhere.

  Sorren leans over to peer into the hole with me. “Why? Do you think I should’ve taken a pinky for posterity’s sake?”

  I shake my head once in disgust. “You should have just killed her, Sorren. This is cruel.”

  “Killing her would be a waste,” he insists.

  “A waste?” I ask, looking up at him.

  He nods. “I still want my turn with her. All that pale, flawless skin is like a canvas. I could scar it so prettily.”

  I can’t let that happen to her. And that means I have to go in after her. It’s what Leith would do, if he were conscious. And once he regains consciousness, he’ll be pissed off if he knows I didn’t go in after her.

  Fucking fuck.

  I let the bear push to the fore—I let its fury dominate my mind, a cushion against the madness that’s coming. But I don’t let it take over me completely. I don’t want to shift.

  Then, I leap into the hole after her. There’s a ten-foot drop to the bottom, and glass shards stab into my boots and up at my ankles when I land. I smell still more blood; the scent is incredibly potent in the enclosed space. She’s hurt and she’s hurt badly.

  The tunnels are well-lit, the phosphorus lamps that line the ceiling cast an eerie green glow over the tunnels and the shifting monsters in its walls. Streaks of red line the mirrored glass that surrounds me in every direction. All I have to do is follow the trail. Or follow the screams bouncing through the tunnels from a ways off.

  With another snarled curse, I’m off, crunching through glass and blood to save the stupid thief from herself.

  SIX

  Kassidy

  The monster looms out at me from the eerie green void and takes a swipe at my head, its bone claws flying toward my already battered face with improbable speed. Hateful, beady eyes are set in a face too ugly to be real. It’s part bat, part snake, and part ape. This abomination shouldn’t exist in nature and yet here it is, bearing down on me, all the same.