by Miss Merikan
Panic overtook her senses. The work at Alexander’s household was hard, but predictable. Was she not of use to the master anymore, now that Coal was gone? “B-but …” Annie managed, but nothing else came out. What was she to say? He did own her. She gripped onto her own fingers so hard her knuckles cracked, and she looked to the stranger, frozen on the spot.
His pitch black eyes pinned her in place. His dark, long hair had a slight curl to it but was tidily combed into a ponytail, uncovering his strong jaw. Slowly, he turned his body toward her and moved, each confident step marked not only by the sound of his shoes but also by a knock of an elegant cane he couldn’t have possibly needed and used only for fashion. His figure was masculine and graceful, with long legs and wide shoulders, but as he approached, all Annie could focus on was the handsome face of her new master.
For the first few seconds, she was so shocked to see him clothed, that she wasn’t even sure if this man wasn’t Coal’s twin brother, but that was obviously not the case. Two conflicting emotions mixed in her heart, one being fear, the other excitement. Could Coal possibly be a rich nobleman, who had fallen in love with her and come to save her from the miserable life at Alexander’s house? Would they get married? Annie had foregone any dreams of marriage after Jack’s betrayal. But another voice in her head reminded her who she was. Not even a housemaid, paid measly wages. She was a slave, and her fate would not change. Maybe Coal enjoyed fucking her and wanted a maid at home that he could also use in that manner whenever he wanted. She swallowed and lowered her gaze, deflated by the prospect, and betrayed. She’d confided all her secrets to Coal. She should have kept to herself. Coal had never been a real animal. He understood every word she’d told him and surely remembered the shameful way she lifted her skirt for him to fuck her.
A small smile appeared on his lips, and he reached his hand out toward her. “My name is Dante Salvai,” he said with a slight nod.
To make things worse, Dante had a voice that made her toes curl. Deep, warm, and with a pleasant foreign accent. She didn’t even know when her heart began to race. She knew nothing about him. She told him her deepest secrets and didn’t even know his name, or that he was in fact foreign. She’d had sex with a man she hasn’t even spoken with. He had to consider her an amusingly vile creature. Annie curled her shoulders.
Master Alexander cleared his throat. “As you can see, Dante, she is not very sociable. But that’s your problem now, not mine.”
Dante grinned, showing his perfect teeth, so white in contrast with the dusky color of his skin. “She can be very sociable.”
No matter how hard Annie fought the itching in her eyes, fat tears of shame spilled down her cheek. How was she to live with him and ever look into his eyes after all that they’d done? She would have never stroked a stranger’s cock just because he was horny, so why had she done it for … Dante? Had she been out of her mind? Had she actually believed he was a horse? She wouldn’t stroke an excited stallion though, so it couldn’t have been that. It was her wicked need to touch him, and now it was all backfiring. She couldn’t bear the indecency of it all. Dante should just kill her now and spare her the shame.
“You will find me quiet and hardworking,” she whispered, staring at his leather boots.
His hands tightened on her shoulders. “I’m sure you will like it in your new home. I want you to get your things, and we’ll meet by the door in ten minutes.”
Annie looked up into his eyes. “Yes, sir.” Even without the hooves to make him taller, she only reached to his neck, and it reminded her of how heavy he’d felt on her back. The smile he sported made him look so wickedly handsome that her body wanted her to lift her skirt and bend over for him here and now.
“Go on, girl. What are you waiting for?” Alexander groaned, and it pushed her out of balance so much that she tripped as she skittered out of the room with her heart in her throat.
This was her new life now. After what they’d done with Dante, the man would either marry her, or ruin her forever.
Chapter 3
It seemed to Annie that Dante wasn’t much of a talker, even after shedding the skin of a pony. He hadn’t opened his mouth to her since they left Master Alexander’s mansion and boarded a carriage, and she wasn’t sure whether she was grateful or uneasy. It was a two-person car, and so they were forced to sit so close to one another that it set her thighs on fire despite the layers of clothing between them. Even though they weren’t exactly touching, she could still smell the spicy aroma of his cologne, mixed with the natural scent of his skin that she knew so well.
Contrary to her initial worries, he didn’t try to molest her and just looked out into the street, as if he weren’t interested in his newest purchase. But if that were the case, why did he even bother to take her from Alexander? Did he pity her, yet consider her a burden and regretted his decision already? His prolonged silence made Annie increasingly aware of her own body—of her rough, reddened hands, of the dirt on her skirt, and her unkempt hair. No wonder he wasn’t interested in her anymore after getting back into the world after a whole year.
Unable to stand the awkwardness, she pushed away the curtain on her side of the carriage and looked outside. It’d been a while since she’d left the mansion, and seeing unfamiliar buildings frightened her more than she’d like to admit. She was enslaved three years ago, but she couldn’t imagine the city changing this much. The air seemed cleaner than she remembered. Would there have been any improvements made in terms of pollution?
The street they were driving down wasn’t cobbled, and the buildings were much lower than the London slums where one floor was built over another until something collapsed, and the whole stacking game was played all over again. Yet the houses were shoddy, some just a pathetic mix of wood and clay and some colorful like a house of an impoverished exotic prince.
She was appalled to see a man walking past the carriage in nothing but a shirt and a pair of dirty boots. She could swear she saw the tip of his cock dangling from underneath the hem! It turned her attention to the passersby, and she was surprised to notice that amidst a crowd that looked familiar, there was an abundance of eccentric characters of all colors. She had met foreign people in the city, but here it seemed one couldn’t pass a block without seeing someone whose skin wasn’t as pale as hers. Women in men’s clothes mixed into the stream of people traveling by foot, in strange tiny carts pulled by men, or even in sedan chairs.
This wasn’t London. It couldn’t be.
When the carriage finally came to a halt, Annie was too stiff to move and only left her seat when the driver opened the door for her. He took hold of her waist and transferred her onto a wooden platform built over muddy ground, but she almost fell over when she took in the monumental edifice before her. At first glance, it looked like a large church that someone had expanded in all directions with structures of painted wood and grey stone. The final product reminded Annie of a patchy Easter egg enclosed in a cage of wooden scaffolds. She had no idea what that peculiar place could be at first, but realization came when she noticed posters as large as doors on both sides of the entrance. It was a theater.
She wanted to ask where they were, but before she could gather the courage to do so, Dante gently nudged her back with his cane, and she got the hint that she was to turn around.
The townhouse opposite had signs of past grandeur, like an old, impoverished countess still putting rouge on her cheeks despite not being able to buy a new dress in years. The paint on the building had once been green, but now was more of a muddy color, yet each balcony housed a whole array of pots with plants that looked more like tomatoes and onions than the orchids that Master Alexander had at his home. There were figurines of little angels stuck to the facade, but after living in a rich man’s mansion, she could already see they were as fake as the jewelry their cook wore on her days off. Clearly, Dante wasn’t of the same status as Master Alexander.
Annie walked forward, holding her few belongings tightly to her chest
. Her heart sunk when in the distant horizon she saw London's thick walls, looming over as background. She had to take a quick glance back to make sure, but behind her there was no wall, just an endless landscape of houses mixed with shacks. It finally struck her. They were in Bylondon, the parasitic district that grew around the city walls since they had been finished in 1891. A place of vice and danger, a place where the only law was the one made by those who called themselves ‘Bylords’ and those with enough money to keep the cruel Bylords happy.
All that protected her now from the teeth of the undead that roamed the whole land for the last twenty years was a measly wooden fence. Guarded and carefully tended to, but still a structure not nearly as massive as the stone and brick wall around London. Annie had been a young girl when she first heard of Bylondon. A lady working for a children’s charity had told her to never agree to go there, no matter how many sweets a stranger would offer. But no one ever offered Annie any sweets. She would only sometimes hear stories about outbreaks of zombieism in Bylondon, and thanked God that she didn’t have to live there. Until now.
Dante led her up to a double door, which he opened with a large brass key. They walked into the shadows, and she realized the walkway went all the way through the building and into a courtyard that seemed to house a vegetable garden. There were two entryways on both sides of the corridor, and Dante led her up the stairs into one of them. Inside was a freshly painted staircase, which was used to grow produce, but her master seemed to pay no mind to the ripe fruit as he climbed all the way to the top floor and knocked on the only door there with the handle of his cane.
After a few moments, Annie heard a muted sound of footsteps inside, and the door opened. A petite woman leaned against the doorframe. She wore a bright blue dress that reached to her knees at the front, uncovering a pair of obscenely shapely calves, but slid all the way to the floor at the back. Her waist was so small Annie would probably faint if someone pulled her corset into this kind of shape, and yet the unknown woman didn’t seem dainty at all. Locks of chestnut hair fell all the way to her waist, and when Annie dared to look at the woman’s face, her mind stalled in horror. Her nose shone in the candlelight, polished enough for Annie to vaguely see her own shape reflected on the metal surface. Four flesh-colored straps that disappeared at the back of the woman’s head held the prosthetic in place.
Their eyes met, and the woman’s gaze narrowed. “Girl, it’s rude to stare.”
Annie instantly looked down, trapped between the strange lady and the tall, warm presence of Dante behind her. Was he getting rid of her? Fulfilling his duty to a pitiful girl and leaving her with an acquaintance? What if this was a brothel—after all, it was located close to the theater. Was this her sentence? Free of Master Alexander, yet a slave of men who’d be willing to pay for her? And if she caught no one’s eye, would the lady throw her out into the Bylondon streets? Or worse, outside the shabby walls and into the woods? Into the bloodied mouths of hungry animated corpses outside?
Annie whimpered and bit her lip not to cry again.
Dante chuckled. “Rose, don’t scare her. Just look how skittish she is,” he said, gently prodding Annie to walk inside a small hall with walls full of books and small porcelain figurines on shelves stacked all the way to the tall ceiling. The air smelled faintly of fried fish, and the moment the door closed behind them, Annie’s stomach decided to growl.
Rose shook her head. “I know what she is thinking. That’s what everyone thinks when they first see me.”
Annie took a deep breath and dared to give the lady one more glance. If it weren’t for the copper nose, Rose could have been considered a beauty. “I don’t judge anyone, madam,” she quickly said. She felt sorry for Rose more than anything else. A moment of weakness with the wrong man, and any beauty can end up with French gout.
Rose rolled her eyes and walked off to what looked like the kitchen. A noise of sizzling oil, as well as the scent of fish, came from the room. “I was bitten. Had to have it removed.”
Dante didn’t let Annie say anything in reply and pushed her toward one of the two remaining doors. The room they entered was warm though with a hint of dampness in the air. The scent of musk and shoe polish was a faint presence in her nose as she took in the fairly large space with a broad wooden bed right in front of the door. The furnishings seemed fairly basic at first glance, with an old wardrobe with a huge mirror and a cupboard near the bed, but when her gaze trailed toward the large windows and entrance to the balcony, she saw an enclosure made with a metal grate that looked somewhat like a pen used for keeping poultry at Master Alexander’s house. In the corner was a brass tub for bathing, a washbasin, and all the necessary utensils a rich man could use for everyday ablutions. Annie never bathed in hot water or in a tub as big and comfortable as this one.
But then her mind came to a halt, and she looked back to the bed. He’d brought her to his bedroom. Or did this place belong to someone else altogether, and Dante was selling her off? Had he noticed in her what Master Alexander hadn’t because of his homosexual proclivities, and decided to make a profit on bringing her to Bylondon?
But no, Dante closed the door and dropped his cane, hat, and gloves on the bed. “Dinner will be ready soon,” he said absentmindedly and started pulling off his clothes.
His voice made Annie shiver. She’d never feared him this much when he was Coal. They had an understanding back then. But now? How was she to navigate the situation with him being a man?
“Where should I put my things, sir?” Not that she had much. A blanket a friend knitted for her years ago, before she’d even met Jack, a small gas mask for just the bottom of her face, a pair of goggles too big for her, and a deck of cards.
He walked past her and opened the wardrobe to put back his suit jacket and accessories. “I think I should call you Crema. You have such a lovely, pale coat.”
Annie looked up into his eyes, unsure what to make of it. “Excuse me, sir?”
Dante frowned at her, his dark eyes flaming up with something she couldn’t read. When he put his index finger against her lips, she fought the sudden urge to kiss it and stayed silent. Pay attention to her surroundings and stay aware of danger was all she could do.
Slowly, he stepped even closer and turned her around to face away from him. Annie stiffened when he pulled on the belt of her apron and then pushed the garment off her. The way it fell to the floor had her stiffen. A part of her did want to repeat the sex they’d had a few days ago, but it felt as if it had been a different life, a different man.
“I think there might have been—”
“Hush, Crema,” said Dante. He put one of his large hands on the front of her neck, and as she opened her mouth, gasping, he gently pushed something between her teeth. It was rubbery, with something hard inside.
Now it finally clicked. After a year spent with Coal, she knew exactly what this was. A bit. He shushed her with a bit! This couldn’t be really happening. Sure, she’d said she wanted the life he’d had, that she’d wanted to be his mare, but the fantasy was getting all too real. Before she could fight against it, Dante closed the halter the bit was attached to at the back of her head. She was left with a little whimper for protest.
“Shh, easy, girl. It’s all right,” he said softly as he pulled her against his warm chest. His hands squeezed around her waist before trailing up her chest.
Annie’s breath quickened once his hand reached her breasts. He’d never touched her there before. That is … he did nuzzle her, but never like this. Coal would always get only as much as she would allow. Dante? Dante took whatever he wanted. But it seemed that he did want to keep her. Annie’s head spun. He didn’t just keep her. He owned her. He named her.
“You will be safe here,” he said, squeezing her breasts before unfastening the first button of her blouse. “No more hard work.”
Annie clenched her thighs together at the surge of excitement. She wished her body wouldn’t betray her, but her nipples instantly hardened a
t his touch and at the sound of his accent. It was as if she knew him without knowing him at all. Did she want a break from scrubbing floors, pans, and working for hours? Did she want to eat nice food and sleep until noon? Maybe she did … But what would be the cost? What would her future hold? Who would want her if she spent a year as a mare to Dante? Would he sell her on? Would the next owners sell her as well, until there was nothing left of her health or dignity?
He nuzzled the back of her neck as the buttons of her blouse popped open one after another. “I have a lot of tasty greens for your feeder.”
Dante was making her his mare. A shiver went down Annie’s spine, and she inhaled deeply through her nose. She was embarrassed for him to see her old hand-me-down under-bust corset. She’d always wanted one of those that held the breasts instead of having them lay loosely in the camisole, with her nipples all too visible and hard. She gasped when his hair tickled her neck. Dante must have untied the ponytail.
The blouse was off her shoulders and fell to the floor. Dante pulled on her so that they now faced the mirror embedded in the door of his wardrobe. Annie was such an obscene sight with a halter on her flushed face, hair all over the place, and her breasts completely bare over the grey corset. The sight made her gasp, but the more rapidly she inhaled, the more her small breasts moved. Dante groaned like a bear and cupped them with his palms, warming Annie’s stiff, sensitive nipples.
She whimpered and grabbed his wrists when he rubbed the little pebbles between his fingers. The teasing sent such a wave of arousal down her body she was happy to still have her skirt on, as she was thinking the way she clenched her thighs might have shown. When Dante had worn hooves, he’d been even taller, yet he’d never had the kind of overwhelming presence he did now. He’d always been playful and affectionate, but after the uncertainty of the first few days together, she never felt intimidated by him. Dante was completely different, even though he shared the same skin as Coal.
