The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales

by Zoe Blake

  Fucking squirrels.

  Somewhere, in the not quite so distant distance, brushes rustled.

  Fucking bunnies, too. That sounded much too big and heavy to be a squirrel.

  She fidgeted with the lock picks in her hand, anger growing as she swallowed her unease. Get in, she told herself. Get the finance ledger and get out again, only two grand richer. Eye on the prize, Goldi girl.

  Eye on the prize.

  The back lock was one of the easiest she’d ever picked, and the most unnecessary. Had she checked latch first, she’d have noticed the door was already unlocked. She tsked, as much at the owners as at herself. “Apparently, some people don’t realize how dangerous the world can be.”

  Apparently, she didn’t either. She was just about to go inside when a stick snapped behind her. Flattening into the shadows of the ivy trellis, Goldi peered through the wood slats and leaves. Her heart thumped to a sudden stop. Less than fifteen feet away, a shaggy brown bear was venturing from out behind two giant red cedars. Breathing heavily, nose to the air, it looked right at her.

  “Oh shit,” she breathed.

  She didn’t move. Neither did the bear, not for the longest time. In the end, easing herself over the threshold as slowly and as non-threateningly as she could, Goldi slipped into the house and shut the door. She locked it too, although fat lot of good that would do if the bear decided it wanted in. Both hands pressed against the door, she waited for her heart to either re-start or explode. She touched her chest, reassuring herself that it was indeed beating, and by the time she eventually peeked out through the side window, the bear was gone.

  “Shit,” she said again, craning her neck and leaving face and hand prints on the window that she then had to erase. But no, the bear really was gone. Give her five seconds and the ledger, and she’d be gone too.

  Relieved, Goldi assessed the main floor of the house long enough to get her bearings. She was a little surprised, frankly. Although the caller had told her this was the home of a woman, there wasn’t a single feminine frippery anywhere in evidence. In fact, the décor was singularly masculine. That didn’t make sense. The furniture was blockish, wooden and looked like it had come straight out of a Medieval Dungeons R Us catalog. The dining table was long enough to double as a rack with a fathomless array of ropes and pulleys dangling from the ceiling above it. Of the four chairs arranged around it, one had thick leather straps on each arm and leg, as well as a seat that could be changed out. The one on it right now was perfectly normal, but there were three others stacked neatly against the wall—one with a giant hole in the seat, one with metal bumps and knobs, and one with a rather sizeable and suggestive protuberance positioned where one would have no choice but to sit directly on it. Her pussy underwent an involuntary spasm, though she wasn’t at all convinced that was where such a protuberance was intended to go.

  To the right, she saw far enough into the kitchen to recognize some of the tools hanging from the over-the-stove utensil rack and on the hooks on the wall were implements that would have been more at home in any gruesome mafia murder scene. To her left in the living room, positioned right in front of the unlit fireplace was a wooden horse. Again, it was blockish, but complete with neck and head and even a long, flowing mane. It was also complete with straps upon its back and at the top and bottom of all four legs.

  “What sick bastard lives here?” she was startled enough to say out loud.

  A puff of heavy breath was her immediate answer. Goldi jerked back from the door to find a giant black nose pressed up against the window right at face level. The bear was back and it was breathing in the air, picking and discarding through all the many scents until it found hers.

  Goldi retreated from that thin pane of glass and only stopped retreating when she accidentally bumped up against the wooden horse. She leapt back from that now too, crashing into the wall where an array of wide to thin leather straps, braided whips, crops and canes were hanging. Two fell from their hooks to the floor. Her skin tingled, not just from where she’d touched the horse, but now feeling every place on her back, hips and buttocks where those now swaying implements had brushed her. Her stomach tightened. Her nerves tangled and twisted together in an odd and uncomfortable… warm but scared… unnerved and yet vaguely aroused sort of way. It moved through her in sinuous, serpentine motions, taking root deep in the pit of her fluttering belly, so low that that she could almost feel it prodding between her legs.

  The ledger, she told herself. Get the ledger and get the hell out of this place.

  And then she had it, that oh shit moment when for all her alertness and caution, she heard the slow shuffle of heavy footsteps crossing the hardwood floorboards of the room directly above her head. A lesser thief might have forgotten everything and bolted right then; not Goldi, although she did bolt. Out of that interrogation-slash-serial killer-style décor of a living room, down the hall past the corner staircase and into the study. The ledger was exactly where the directions she’d been given had said it would be. A stark black book almost a foot wide, twice that in length and heavy enough to balance out a baker’s morning sack of flour—it was lying open on the desk where anybody could steal a gander at the contents.

  Normally, Goldi would have been tempted, but now was not the time. Already those shuffling steps had reached the upper-floor staircase and now were coming down the steps. She ducked back out of the study, striving hard to be quiet even knowing she was trapped. With every step she took and every step she heard—it had to be a man; he sounded so heavy; what, did he weigh a ton?; and why did his boots on the stairs make a sound like claws scraping the wood?—she knew she wasn’t going to make it out without being seen. For the first time in the whole of her nefarious career, she was caught.

  Her heart thundering against her ribs, indecision froze her in the hallway. Huge shadows of movement were growing upon the wall of the corner landing to her right. The snuffling black nose of the bear was still exploring the back door’s window straight ahead of her, and to her left, the only door-sized exit left available to her, was the front door.

  It was locked. Padlocked, in fact.

  From the inside.

  Once upon a time, a wise man had told her that the downfall of man was destined to be greed. Another had immediately corrected him, saying that fate would always be caused by a woman. Well, Goldi knew better. They were both wrong. The downfall of man always had and ever would be his or her own morbid curiosity, and certainly she was not immune.

  Heavy ledger clutched to her chest, Goldi couldn’t save herself from her own awful curiosity. Just as the heavy shuffling footsteps turned the landing corner, she turned far enough to see what was even now staring back at her with beady black eyes. Not a man. No, it was another bear. A huge bear, bigger even than the one starting now to scratch for entrance at the back door.

  They stared at one another and, for one horrible, heart-attack-like pause that gripped the interior of her chest, neither moved. Then animal muscle rippled under the dense fur of its pelt and the bear hupped up to stand on its back legs. Stretching out its massive neck, it opened its mouth and brayed the kind of bellow no girl wanted to hear from any creature as big as that or outside the protection of an extremely sturdy bear-proof cage.

  She ran, the book still clutched tight to her chest (because if she made it out of this alive, it was still worth two thousand; a girl had to have priorities), and that bear in fast pursuit. It bounded down the stairs, chasing her the length of the hall. Its size was her best ally. When she rounded the corner, it hit the wall and she ducked into the first open door she saw. Slamming it fast between them, she almost fell down the stairs directly behind her before she realized she was trapped in the cellar instead of a closet.

  It was very dark down below, but with a glimmer of light that reminded her there was another way out. The double cellar doors she had seen during her reconnaissance outside. Those doors were her way out, especially now that the bear had reached this one. She could hea
r it snuffling along the crack at the bottom and see the massive shadow of it blocking out the light. This door opened inward. All the bear had to do was shove and the jamb would shatter, and then the beast would be inside. With her.

  Goldi fled blindly down the stairs, barely able to see the dim outline of each in the darkness. What she found when she reached the bottom did not make her happy. There were no windows. Her only avenue of escape lay in the cellar doors she’d seen from the outside. She ran to them, pushing and shoving and doing little but rattling the double doors on their very secure hinges. Shit; she’d forgotten they were padlocked.

  “Damn it!” She slammed her shoulder against them, trying with all her might to force the doors up and open, but neither budged and the only other exit was currently being investigated by a very large and growling bear.

  She turned in a full circle, her eyes gradually adjusting to the gloom enough for her to make out the sparse lines and hard edges of widely spaced furniture and even the dangling cord of a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Feeling the way with her feet, she reached for it, hoping the light might help her find another way out. It didn’t, but it did help her see her situation more clearly.

  This wasn’t a cellar. It was a torture chamber and she was standing in the middle of it, mere feet away from some kind of cruel bondage bench. Like the horse upstairs only without the equine neck and head, it had four legs, a padded rail across the top, and multiple rings on all sides by which to affix whoever was stupid enough to get caught in this house.

  Right now, that someone was her.

  Everywhere she looked, she saw horror after horror. Neatly coiled ropes, straps, manacles, crops, paddles, and even hooks—hooks, hanging from other hooks—dangled off the stone walls. Blindfolds and masks lined the shelves amid more gag varieties than she’d ever known existed. Gags with balls, gags with bits, gags with round metal hook contraptions designed to force a jaw open and keep it that way no matter what.

  Another hard thump pulsed through her, an unexpected echo of which landed, centered, and took command of her clit.

  Once upon a time, a wise man had told her moments of stress could teach a person a lot about themselves. She had to stop talking to wise men because this wasn’t at all something she wanted to learn.

  The low, scraping footstep on a hard stone floor.

  Goldi looked down at the stones she was rooted to, at her own feet which hadn’t moved. Her heart thumped again, her clit hummed, and every fine hair on her body stood up on end as she heard the bellows-like exhale of beastly breath nowhere near far enough behind her.

  Her own breath sounded abnormally loud and shaky as Goldi faced the third bear. It was even larger than the other two she had seen, and it was squaring itself against her from the far side of this entirely too small cellar. Facing it now too, she hugged the ledger tight against her.

  She was going to die. She was a little surprised that she wasn’t more scared. Her legs were shaking. She was clutching the book so tight that the edges of the hard cover bit into the fleshy parts of her fingers, making her knuckles ache and throb. But she didn’t scream. The urge was there, choking up the back of her throat at tonsil level, but that was as far as it rose, even when the bear rose to stand. Twenty good feet separated them and it still towered over her, not roaring or growling, or making any noise apart from the heaviness of its breathing. Not moving either, apart from a faint pawing at the air and a twitch of its black nose.

  She was just beginning to think here was where she was destined to stay until the owner of this horrible house came home, when the bear took a lumbering step towards her. First one, and then another, and then it threw the whole of its massive body into a furious shake, as if it had just come out of a river and were shaking off the water. Only there was no water, just the massive coat of its own fur that rippled, shifted, melted. The whole bear melted and in the span of time it took to take that third lumbering step it was no longer a bear. It was a man—long and lean, with the fur of his previous pelt becoming a headful of neatly trimmed hair and a dark brown trail of the same that lead the way from his navel to his… oh-dear-God, he was naked. And huge. But mostly naked, which was ominous enough to break through the muffling grip of shock and horror to dislodge a mousy squeak.

  The cool dark of his stare never once wavering from her face as he started toward her. Helpless to do anything but stare at the heavy pendulum swing of his cock, Goldi watched him come. He stopped within feet of her and, without a word, took the ledger from her numb hands.

  At the top of the stairs, she jumped at the click of the cellar door before it swung open. Two more men came down the stairs, their bare feet tromping on the wooden steps and their lean naked bodies every bit as impressively formed as the man frowning before her.

  “Told you she’d come,” said the last male, as he stepped off the bottommost stair. They could have been brothers, they so closely resembled one another. Of the three, he probably stood the shortest, although only by a scant inch or two.

  “You were right,” agreed his companion. Of the three, his brown hair was the lightest and he was the only one with a light dusting of fur upon his chest. He was also the only one not clean-shaven. His neatly-trimmed moustache grew down to join the thin square lines of the beard that completely framed his unsmiling mouth. “Beautiful, but as greedy as she is dishonest.”

  The two men fanned out as they approached her. Like hunters, locked on a target worth stalking. The pit of her belly fluttered. She didn’t like this feeling. She didn’t like feeling like prey. She especially didn’t like that way her nipples were tightening the closer they came, or the burlap scrape that assaulted the tips with each shallow, shaky breath she took.

  “Whatever shall we do with her?” the shorter mocked, all but purring with sarcasm.

  Her heart was pounding hard, battering the insides of her ribs and making it so very hard to think. She hated that her hands were shaking and that raising them in surrender, as she did now, only made that shaking worse. Not that she had a lot of options, but her racing mind hadn’t given up on the slim chance that she might come up with a way to get out of this.

  They thought she was beautiful. Though none were smiling, that at least gave her one feasible avenue to try.

  Goldi eased into a cautiously seductive pose, her empty hands held high, hip cocked in a way that amplified her curves. “All right,” she acknowledged, tucking her elbows to make her full breasts a little rounder. “You caught me. So, now what?” She let her tone dip into playful taunting, hoping against hope they might rise to the bait and completely disregard her next suggestion. “Anybody going to call the police?”

  Two of the three cracked thin, dangerous smiles.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” the smallest said. “Now where’s the fun in that?”

  She never should have turned her back on the largest male. She hadn’t heard him move and didn’t realize how close he’d been creeping until he suddenly caught her by the ponytail and yanked her back against him. She only caught a glimpse of the white rag before he clamped it over her mouth and nose.

  She sucked an involuntary gasp, tasting the cool chemical smell on her tongue before the whole of the cellar and everything in it spun into darkness.

  Chapter Two

  “Crybaby,” someone said.

  “I’m not crying about it, I’m stating a fact. We agreed to take turns. You went first the last time. The time before that, he went first. It’s my turn to break her in now.”

  Goldi came to gradually, gaining awareness first to the unusual loudness of the voices around her, and then to the niggling discomfort in her shoulders and her arms as they were hoisted by the wrists high above her heavy head. She tried to lift it, but only managed to get her chin off her chest enough to relieve some of the pressure in her neck. Peeling her eyes open was a Herculean task and one that required a lot of blinking before she could bring things into focus. First was the spreader bar strapped to her ankles, forcin
g her legs a good two feet apart; then, the eyebolt in the floor that the bar was clipped to. Finally, she raised her head enough to blink at the wrist cuffs attached to the chain that held her suspended from another eyebolt in the ceiling.

  She groaned. “Fucking were-bears.”

  “Oh good!” the shortest male said cheerfully. “She’s awake.” He clapped his hands, rubbing briskly with anticipation. “Let’s get started.”

  Her eyes kept drifting shut. Goldi had to pry them open again. “What the hell did you do to me?” Her head fell back until she caught herself and forcibly dragged it upright. It took real effort to focus on the largest of the three men standing in a semi-circle around her. “Did you drug me?”

  “It’s the ‘Lone Cabin in the Wilderness’ special. We offer one free chloroforming with every unscheduled break-in.” The smaller of the three grinned, but no one else did.

  Goldi looked up at the manacles that stretched her arms to the hook in the ceiling, and then down to the spreader bar at her feet. The chains, hooks and latches clanked as she tested the inescapability of her bonds. “I take it this means we’ve decided not to involve the police?”

  “When someone wrongs us, we enjoy handling the matter ourselves,” the middle-sized male replied.

  “It’s a violating thing to be robbed,” the largest added, his deep voice rumbling a little as he approached her. “It must not be a feeling you’ve ever experienced, or I can’t imagine you’d make a career out of inflicting it on others. Perhaps what you need is a little familiarity with violation.”

  “Oh, please,” she sniffed. He had a singularly penetrating stare. Goldi didn’t rattle easily, but it shook her a little—the grimness of those dark, unblinking eyes. She rolled hers, hoping to cover her unease. She would have looked away entirely, except that he caught a fistful of her blonde hair and yanked, forcing her gaze back to his. “Ow,” she said, striving for bored. “Look, let’s skip the bullshit, okay? First of all, if you want me to say I’m sorry for breaking into your house, then fine. I’m sorry I broke into your house. If you want me to say I’m sorry for making you feel bad, then sure. I’m sorry for that too. If you want me to say I’ll never do it again, just please, please, please let me go. I’ll even say that, but the fact is, I can make a helluva lot more money doing this than I can doing… well, anything else. So… yeah, I won’t be making any career path changes here today. And lastly, if you were going to ‘violate’ me, you wouldn’t have left me fully dressed, nor would you all have put your pants on. So, cut the crap, cut me down, and if you want to be really sporting about it, give me the ledger on my way out the door.”