Chapter Four
Great. Just great. Back in Tarek’s place, Lystra immediately started plotting her escape. Tarek walked around, rather smug with himself, a little gleeful of Lystra’s frantic panic as she bustled around his cavern, making herself busy.
“Why do I get the impression you’re seriously regretting your decision, princess?” Tarek purred, leaning on one elbow, not bothering to conceal his amusement. “One might think you didn’t do that inspirational speech to get me to enter the arena.”
“I didn’t know you were a… a… pervert!” Lystra waved her hands in distress.
“No? You could have just looked around better. It’s not like I was hiding the books.”
“I don’t want to be with a pervert who thinks about doing things with princesses! I have my chastity to think of here!”
Tarek practically burbled in delight. “Ah, yes. I might get too excited and ravage you, because of those nasty books giving me strange ideas.”
It took Lystra a few frightening seconds to register that he was deliberately teasing her. “You fiend.”
“Original. We’re all fiends here.” Tarek let out a yawn, then seized one of his books. “Now, there’s a good passage in Tales of a Dragon’s Princess…”
“No!” Lystra shrieked, clapping hands over her ears and dashing out of the room into the corridor. She then desperately tried each door until she found a stairwell leading hopefully up to a tower, and darted up there. Sure enough, Tarek had indeed stuck to tradition – designing a single, circular room on top with everything she needed, including the appropriate cobwebs and spiders hanging from their traps on the ceiling. The floor spat out dust when she stamped over it, and she flumped into a rather musty smelling bed, likely unwashed for months. Drat, she’d need to start on that as soon as possible. She lay there for a minute, waiting to hear if Tarek followed. When he didn’t, she got out of bed and examined the copper bathtub attached to some shoddy plumbing, and the toilet, isolated in a small, boxed-off room in the corner.
A drawling voice filled the air. “The princess knew that what she did was forbidden, but still she went into the room, still she slipped off her fine silken dress, shivering like a butterfly, her body on a platter to be devoured by the eyes of the monster she beheld…”
“Go away!” Lystra shrieked, glaring furiously at Tarek, who stood at the top of the stairwell grinning, completely ignoring her as he turned the page, took a deep breath, before bursting out into laughter as Lystra jumped up and down on the spot in a tantrum.
“Ahahaha, you’re too easy, princess…” He winked, then gave an elaborate bow, and started walking down the stairs again. “By the way,” he added, “there’s some erotica books under your bed.”
Lystra gave out another maddened screech, prompting another raucous wave of laughter from Tarek.
Oh, she fucking hated him. The anger threatened to froth out of her like a volcano, and it took every ounce of her self-control to not go hurtling after him and trying to strangle him.
Then, in an extra effort to distract herself, she explored the room, opening one wardrobe to reveal some shabby maid clothes and dull fur gear. In the other one next to it lay a mop and three buckets, a straw-ended broom, cleaning liquid, cloths and a drying rack. The chest of drawers next to her bed contained a small box of mass-produced panties and socks. She sniffed dubiously at the panties, which smelled fresh from whatever lined the box, and then wriggled out of her dress to change into the new servant’s robes and fresh underwear.
She set herself to cleaning up the place afterwards, opening the single tower window to let in the mountain air, which came crisp and cold. Using the captured princess training Lystra had learned over the years, she set the place to rights in a few short hours. She also threw all the erotica books from under the bed out the window for good measure. She swept all the dust out and attacked the cobwebs, and the few dejected spiders wriggled their legs at her before streaming out the window. A fly buzzed in hopefully, then let out a high-pitched whine as Lystra swatted it, and it buzzed right back out again. Isn’t the cold supposed to kill these things? She stripped the bed, beat out the mattress, scrubbed out the bathtub, washed each of the sheets in it, tried to replace them with fresher sheets but realized they needed washing as well, mopped the floor and scraped away some of the mold from the walls. She finished with hanging the wet sheets on the drying rack, needing to fold them up a few times to fit.
Sweating profusely, she stepped back to admire her work. The stone floor gleamed beneath her, the air smelled fresh and the bed no longer looked choked up in dust. All the spiders had gone, and she went to the window to allow the air to slap her face and dry the sweat, relaxing for a moment. A stray thought entered. What if she was just too good at cleaning, and ran out of things to do?
Then she’d have to sneak past Tarek, somehow. She doubted he’d just let her walk out the cave without some notice, in spite of the potion fuelling her insides.
Maybe she’d better tone it down for the cleaning. Stretch things out a bit. Maybe read a book… if this bastard had any normal books.
Still waiting for everything to dry, she settled grumpily into the bare bed, thinking it wouldn’t matter if it didn’t have sheets for one night.
She slept restlessly, with her dreams mostly filled with books creeping up on her, before splitting open and spewing out their words at her. She needed to run away, ducking stray pages, only to slam into Tarek, who smiled evilly at her, before getting out a huge, gleaming book with a naked image of Lystra on the front cover. He flipped the page and said, “Well, let’s see how this love story turns out…”
Lystra woke in a sweat, tearing at her long, dark blonde hair, breathing hard and fast. The red dip of dawn filtered through the shut window, leaving a slice of light just above the headrest. Groaning, she rolled out of bed, and her foot kicked something. Blinking, she checked under the bed – and saw about thirty books there, all with obvious erotica titles.
Immediately, anger and alarm rippled through her. He put them back during the night? When I was sleeping? He was in this room? A cold sweat broke out over her. He was watching?
Seething from the ears, she scooped out all the books and threw them out the window.
Then she stormed downstairs to see Tarek cooking for himself, and he turned to see her bristling, and smiled politely.
“Good morning, princess.”
“You put the books back under my bed! You came into the room!”
What if he was watching me? Ugh.
“I’m not going to let you waste perfectly good books, princess. You should give them a read.”
“You’re harassing me!”
At this, Tarek’s smile took on a dangerous glint. “Oh, believe me, princess, I can do a lot worse than this.” He abandoned his food, striding towards her. He then scooped her up as she protested shrilly, beating her fists on his back, and let out a squeak when he slapped her on the ass.
“No! What are you doing?”
He took her to one of the armchairs, flung her on it, then reached under the chair to reveal chains. Before she registered what was happening, he clapped the chains on her wrists, and stood before her as she struggled uselessly, jerking against the confines.
“Now I can do whatever I want to you. And there’s not a thing you can do…” Tarek growled.
Fearful shivers consumed Lystra’s skin. Oh Gods.
His dark eyes pierced her from the inside out, and the smile grew demonic, twisted. A low chuckle welled in his throat. “Anything I want…” He briefly touched her arm with his finger, gliding it softly over, stirring the thin hairs there, sending little bumps all along her skin.
To Lystra’s horror, she felt arousal flare through her, and the reaction caused her to jerk more violently against the chains. Anything to escape. Anything to stop her body doing this.
“You won’t be able to stop me doing this…” His voice dipped to almost a whisper.
Then he took a book from the bookshelf, and proceeded to read it from the beginning.
Lystra huffed and puffed, glaring murder at Tarek as he cheerfully read The Dragon’s Sword. And she had to sit there and endure it. Two bloody chapters.
Please. Help me…