The Erotic Carnival Bk. 01 Ch. 03

Welcome, dear reader, to the third chapter of our sexy epic. Two previous chapters exist, and we recommend beginning by reading The Erotic Carnival Bk. 01 Ch. 01: "AIDEN AND ZOE" and then continuing with The Erotic Carnival Bk. 01 Ch. 02: "THE RINGMISTRESS." The whole experience will just make more sense that way. If you're a glutton for En Media Res punishment, though, we can gladly accommodate that particular masochism here.

We began in the fictional city of Arrowhead with our narrative's two protagonists: the scar-jawed orphan Aiden Fletcher and the bookish ingénue Zoe Neemee. Each, separately, had been approached by a mythical being begging for help because their home, The Erotic Carnival, had been viciously attacked by mysterious and shape-shifting forces.

In the last chapter, we got to see the Carnival's primary steward, the voluptuous blonde Ringmistress Astrid, care for those who inhabit her magical abode and seek a potential tear in its protective wards. We saw that there was, indeed, a sudden and undiscovered vulnerability, and we got to experience the sudden feral onslaught on our titular paradise, complete with terror, courage, and casualties, first from Astrid's POV and then from the siren Lyric's.

Back in the post-attack main narrative timeline, Aiden and Zoe, each alone in a mysterious and confusing place, now needed to navigate the sudden encounter with a dangerous and traumatized stranger. What choices will each of our protagonists make? How will they cope with the chaos and grief of the attack's aftermath? What happened to Lyric when she was snatched by the enemy and when she screamed, rending the world around her with her magic? What about Detectives Hana Dusman and Dan Wright of the Arrowhead Police Department, who had pursued one of the beasts back to the edge of the darkened Carnival when that scream tore reality at the end of chapter 01?

And, perhaps, most importantly, what sort of sexy adventures will this chapter of the saga contain? This is, as the fervent reader would remind the authors, a work of literary erotica after all. The chapter you are about to enjoy contains a tandem m/F masturbatory scene, a fair amount of full frontal nudity, and a torrid F/f scene induced by a sudden irresistible aphrodisiac. Will future chapters have even more frequent, more fervent, and more inventive sex? You betcha.

As ever, we appreciate your patience and readership. Without further ado, let's get back to our main characters, then, starting with the courage and choices of our gorgeous, classically gothic heroine Zoe Neemee.

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THE EROTIC CARNIVAL, BOOK 01 CHAPTER 03: "RED AND GOLD"

.......

The darkness was young, but the night had already been turned inside out. Routine had been chased away by chaos. Arousal had flipped to fear. The promise of soft pink had been devoured in the glint of sharp teeth, and even a surprising carnival tent hidden in the woods had suddenly, with the scream of a siren's terror, collapsed into an eerie doorless underworld.

So much of life is forged of experiences that were never supposed to have happened.

Zoe Neemee, on that summer evening, wasn't supposed to be lost and scared. She was supposed to be getting ready for her first semester of college. She was supposed to be making new school friends, fretting about her upcoming general ed coursework, and calendaring extra study sessions into her class schedule.

That evening she was supposed to have been leisurely clerking at the off-campus Second Bennet Bookstore: a part-time job she'd picked up after having moved to Arrowhead from California for her undergraduate studies. She was supposed to be brewing hot cappuccinos and helping soft-spoken bookworms find the next textual treasure they'd cuddle up with for a cozy literary adventure.

She wasn't supposed to have had her responsible routine interrupted by a terrified and nearly nude mythological girl. There should not have been monsters in the world that transformed from man to dog, or that chased responsible students from their off-campus jobs into the unknown. She shouldn't have had to flee into the woods from a snarling beast. Reality wasn't supposed to have shattered with a scream, or the laws of physics to have ceased to govern the topsy-turvy world she'd fallen into.

Zoe Neemee, incoming freshman at Arrowhead University and consummate good girl, felt as though she'd dropped from her idyllic summer into a horror movie.

It figured. She was precisely the archetype that didn't usually make it out of these sorts of situations: a naive teenager, a sensible virgin with a body built for turning heads, yet so bereft of worldly experience that a nun might feel sorry for her.

Going away to college, out from under the machinations of an overbearing mother or the thumb of older sisters, was the first risky thing she'd ever dared to do.

Right now, though, she was regretting that little sliver of rebelliousness she'd dipped her toe into.

Zoe had no idea where she was. The implorative siren, Lyric, had begged the freshman's help in saving her home, a place she'd called The Erotic Carnival. Was this that place? This couldn't be it, could it? Everything felt much more eerie than erotic.

The black-haired book clerk had, in fleeing from a monstrous dog, slipped beneath the edge of a canvas tent, but that space had morphed first into a dark doorless room and now into some blood-violet passageway from nowhere to nowhere.

Worst of all, Zoe was alone.

Or at least she'd thought she was alone.

As she'd felt her way from the darkness that had rearranged the world after Lyric's terrible siren-scream, running her tentative hand along the purple-papered and wainscoted wall, Zoe had accidentally touched the sudden alcoved statuette of some defiant woman and experienced an immediate and violent orgasm... not that the good girl could have explained what an orgasm was. She'd never had a boyfriend. She wouldn't even have been able to recall a time she'd touched herself.

"Oh my goodness!" She'd clenched her fists while the sudden and all-consuming sensation overtook her, rattling her teeth as hard as it did her pelvis.

It had made her gasp and convulse. It had hit like a freight train and then....

And then it was gone. The assault of arousal vanished as quickly as it had come. It had been like a sniper's bullet through her previously unstroked libido: a sudden confusing assault that left her both panting and panicking.

"What just happened?" The raven-tressed freshman gasped in its aftermath. Her voice felt muffled in the strange space, as though her query had been muttered beneath a pillow.

Then a rattle from her right, as of a chain... or of something chained.

Zoe nearly jumped out her skin. That eerie sound felt more bone-chilling than the preceding silence. Worse still, the reality around her didn't seem to be done shifting unexpectedly. The long gothic hallway, which had seemed endless, had transformed around her yet again. She stood on the edge of a red room, windowless and, at first glance, terrifying.

Her eyes raced over its ominous contents and a pit opened in her stomach. She saw tables and chairs, plushed and padded, bristling with restraints. A giant wooden X loomed near the right-hand wall. In the corner behind it, a black four-post bed stood haughty and intimidating, its wrought-iron scrollwork festooned with various accoutrements of restriction rather than with curtains as such a bed might. The left wall of the room unrolled with a disturbing display of paddles, whips, thongs, rubber phalluses, and other devices; as replete with tools of torment as a mechanic's garage might be with wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers, and ratchet sets.

There were mirrors in odd places: on various walls, on the ceiling, underneath what looked like a transparent plastic mattress. And what hung from the exposed crossbeams: chains, ropes, leashes, swings, padded wristcuffs....

This was a dungeon. The kind girls like her should never enter.

She had to get out.

Her shoes scuffed against the carpet as she turned.

A woman's grave contralto croaked like a ghost's from somewhere in the sudden red room. "Who's ðere?"

The modest college freshman nearly jumped out of her sensible black pumps. At first, she thought that the statuette of the gorgeous frowning woman in its nook had spoken. But the voice, although it seemed to be eerily muffled in the unnatural environment, did not sound as though it had originated from the nook in the papered wall behind Zoe, but from the far end of the sadistic dungeon.

The only thing that kept the young book store clerk from screaming and fleeing back somehow into the darkness was the vibrato of terror in the voice.

It spoke again, a little louder, but hoarse as through a larynx parched with grief and defeat. "Who's ðere?"

Zoe couldn't immediately see who was speaking. Her gaze swept back and forth, searching among the various implements of restraint and penetration for either a recognizable head and torso.

There were none.

But the voice had to have come from somewhere.

Zoe Neemee would have never considered herself brave. Perhaps she'd never had to be brave before that night. Perhaps, though, some echo of Lyric's initial terror from earlier that evening lingered in the back of Zoe's subconscious empathy. The querying voice certainly did not belong to the siren, but it carried a comparable tremor of terror.

The black-haired girl slowly stepped forward between the benches and mattresses, between the tables and hanging chains. Her head pivoted this way and that, wary of any jumpscare that might leap out from among the various implements of confinement and torture.

One of the stranger contraptions stood about fifty feet from the far wall. At first glance it looked like a metal doorway, bisected by something padded across its midsection, and cross-buttressed below with wooden beams and above by counterparts of some indeterminate material, curvy and checkered rather than straight and smooth. The lower crossbeams terminated at their junction with the posts that held the contraption upright. The upper crossbeams, though, seemed attached to either upright of the device with some sort of padlocked bar, and they terminated with... horns red and pointy.

It took Zoe's mind a moment to make sense of the tableau.

Horns? No. Not horns. Shoes. Those were shoes pointing toward the ceiling. Red stilettos. And the crossbeams descending in a v-shape from them to the bisecting padding? Not irregular beams at all.

Legs. They were legs.

And their checkered pattern? Stockings. She was looking at legs in fishnet stockings, spread in a V toward the ceiling.

The ankle of each leg was secured to its support by a padded crossbar. The owner of the legs was definitely female, since the fishnet stockings, although they stretched across her legs and nether regions, had no protective paneling or panties to prevent the exposure of her genitals. Instead, the pattern of black mesh extended from the strap-heeled feet down powerful calves and thighs, right down to an incredibly ample and curvaceous backside.

And between? Criss-crossed by black mesh, a bare pink pussy stared at Zoe, modest lips hugging either side of a tender gash.

Zoe had never seen a human being so blatantly displayed before. She was only vaguely aware of her own parts, and even those she only really addressed for the exigencies of hygiene.

This woman's vaginal lips were smooth and golden. The clitoris right above them was slightly engorged and pierced by a golden ring that glowed in the soft red light of the dungeon. Zoe had never even imagined a piercing in such a place. Her first thought was that it must have hurt to have had that pierced. A second thought, which she quickly suppressed, was to wonder if the ring would flip up and down if gently played with.

The woman's torso was initially hidden from Zoe by those thick stockinged legs held aloft in ankle restraints. The bisecting horizontal, then, must have been a bench; and the woman must have been laying on it.

Slowly, slowly, the amber-eyed teenager approached. She could see that the woman's arms were extended above her own head, as restrained by the wrist as her lower extremities were by the ankles. The whole device reminded Zoe of something out of a medieval romance, or of a torture device employed by some especially heinous inquisition.

A third time, the voice sent its query out into the room, more palpably terrified than ever. This bound woman was definitely the speaker... and she seemed to be able to sense that she wasn't alone in this crimson space. "Who's ðere?"

Zoe inched up closer between the woman's spread legs until she could see a face emerge like a dark dawn from between thick thighs.

The bound woman was a beautiful blonde. Her torso was not nude the way her lower half was. In fact, it was adorned quite elaborately. She wore a lavish red coat that matched the scarlet walls. Its clasps were unfastened, though, revealing large breasts barely contained by a tight white button-down blouse. That blouse boasted satiny black trim about the lapels and starched white cuffs crowned with gold cuff-links, elaborate with some craftsmanship that Zoe did not recognize. The woman's wrists were held above her head, just below the starched cuffs, by padded restraints chained to a metal bar that protruded at an angle from the table that held her horizontally.

But the eyes. Piercing blue eyes. Sad eyes. Scared eyes. Eyes hollowed like an alpine summer swept before an inexorable winter.

As Zoe rose into their periphery, they went wide as saucers. Color drained from the face of the restrained woman. Zoe might as well have been a ghost... or the queen of the damned come to collect her due.

Ruby lips quivered and the captive's throat constricted once, twice, compelled to speak its own judgement at the inevitable advent of the Grim Reaper.

"You...." An expression of horror passed over the woman's features, one mixed not with defiance or hope, but with shame. A hard swallow. A desperate flitting of those blue eyes over Zoe's face.

Then surrender.

The hoarse voice let fall a self-condemning edict. "I failed you."

Zoe Neemee did not know where she was, much less the identity of this constrained beauty. She did not understand the storm of terror and resignation undulating around those blue eyes and over the trembling lip. She certainly did not know how the stranger had failed her.

Her own features fell into the slightest of frowns.

But the bound woman was despondent.

"I'm sorry," the bound woman croaked. Those crystalline eyes filled with tears. "I'm sorry." Desperation. Despair.

The woman had not asked Zoe's name. She had not asked to be released from her restraints. However and whyever she was here, bound like this, left like this... Did she think she deserved it? What had happened? What traumatic event had put this beautiful woman in these circumstances? And with this sort of internal pain? And why was she apologizing to a college freshman who had been disrupted from her evening shift at an off-campus bookstore by a siren and a monster?

The raven-haired girl had a million questions, but only one made it through from her brain to her lips. "Who do you think I am?"

The bound woman's features shifted from grief to confusion. She blinked at Zoe a few times. Then her eyebrows raised and her mouth opened in some realization that the college girl did not comprehend.

"Oh! Ohhhhh! Oh goddess!" Her gaze flung wildly around the room, her tongue wagging with some strange accent. "And þis... But not like...." She bucked against her restraints. "Ænd I'm... I'm in.... Ðhis is what it.... I þought it would be different.... I þought I'd go to.... But of course not.... It all hæppened so fæst and...." Then those blue eyes fixed again with desperation on Zoe. "I didn't realize.... I'm so sorry.... Your mæjesty...." The woman nodded her head in what Zoe recognized as an attempt to at least approximate a frightened bow in her inclined and spread-eagled position.

The college co-ed frowned harder. Someone had done something awful to this woman locked into cuffs and spreader bar. None of it made sense, and this poor woman was half-crazed, it seemed. She thought Zoe was a queen? Zoe was supposed to be selling second-hand textbooks and brewing coffee.

She looked around. There didn't seem to be any other exit from this scarlet dungeon and, when she looked over her shoulder, the passageway she'd come down had disappeared, replaced by a wide carpeted staircase leading up.

Dungeon. Underground. That, at least, made sense.

She turned her attention back to the woman strapped to the bench. "How did you get here?"

Those blue eyes unfocused and her lips stammered for a few moments as she searched for the answer. "I... I died, your mæjesty."

Zoe instinctively took a step back. Her mind raced to reassess her situation. Was it possible that in this eerie place, she'd stumbled across a ghost? A damned soul? She'd never believed in such things, but the red room certainly seemed like a plausible place to torment a restless spirit. Or was it that this woman had not died? But thought she had? And that SHE was convinced that this strange place was a horrible afterlife? Was the blonde woman crazy? Zoe's fear had dipped into empathy, but now her sense of danger was again piqued.

She looked over the restrained woman: her large breasts, her tight stomach, her thick legs. The stranger was bigger than herself, Zoe could tell. Those arms and legs were muscular. What if she were to break free of her restraints? Would she pose a danger to Zoe? The raven-haired teenager had seen precisely one exit from this room, but she didn't know where it went, or even if safety were possible here. If this woman were divorced from reality, what would she do if unshackled?

Zoe looked around at the various pieces of furniture and devices for restraint and torment. Having their roles reversed, herself captured and this strong woman free... that would be bad. Very, very bad.

But was she insane? Was she a danger? Or just in need of help? Zoe had no way of uncuffing her, regardless. But why was Zoe Neemee even here? Was this a chance encounter? Or had the strange un-physics she'd encountered tonight brought her here for a reason?

Maybe those weren't the questions to ask of the agitated captive. Perhaps a probing of the woman's sanity was a better place to start. "How did you die?" she asked instead.

The blonde's eyes unfocused again and her head fell back against the bench. Her wrists wrenched against her cuffs and her feet, held fast in the air on either end of the elevated spreader bar, seemed to try to run, as though by instinct. Either she was vainly trying to escape, or else muscle-memory was reliving the events of her own demise.

Finally her body relaxed and gave up their struggle against cuffs and spreader bar. Her eyes did not search for Zoe again. She let her face fall to the side and whispered her answer. "Cry Hævoc and let slip the Dogs of War."

Zoe frowned. "Isn't that Shakespeare?"

The blonde turned her blue eyes back to Zoe. Her brow was furrowed with confusion. "What?"

Zoe kept a safe distance, but warily explained, "I read a lot. I think that's from Julius Caesar. Marc Antony says it, if I remember."

The blonde blinked at the black-haired girl: trying, seemingly, to reconcile her preconceptions with what this nubile intruder was now saying.

Zoe, the quintessential bookworm, frowned and quoted the full line as best she could:

"I think it's... um... something... ranging for revenge?... With A-te by his side come hot from hell...."

She was starting to remember it better.

"Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice... Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war...."

The crystal gaze looked Zoe up and down, and then up and down again. "Are... are you A-te?"

"What? No," corrected the younger woman. "I'm not a... a goddess... or a literary character... or whoever it is you think I am."

"Are you wiþ Him?"

Zoe didn't know what that meant. "With who?"

"Wiþ HIM?" The blonde's eyes flashed.

Zoe did not have a boyfriend. Her boss at the bookstore was female. The closest thing to a "him" in her life was her father, half a continent and a few weeks removed from her current life. "No," she could state definitively.

A subdued pause. "Ðen are you here to punish me?"

The thought made Zoe recoil, especially in a dungeon like this. "No."

The woman raised her head again as high as she could. "Are you not...? And is ðis not...?" She seemed to examine Zoe's features carefully. "No. It couldn't be...." The woman looked around the room again before addressing the amber-eyed intruder. "Æmelie?" she asked quietly.

The amber-eyed college girl frowned. This guessing game was getting them nowhere. "I'm Zoe."

"Life?" The woman looked around again. "Isn't ðis... is ðis ðe underworld?"

Zoe stood up straight and quickly reassessed her dangerous surroundings. "I... I mean... it could be. That would explain a lot, actually."

"Do you know me... your Mæjesty?" probed the trapped woman.

"I'm not... royalty. My name is Zoe." The black-haired youngster slowly shook her head. That felt like a weird thing to have to clarify. Better to ask about the other woman. "Who are you? And why are you like this?" She gestured at the contraption holding the woman's extremities.

"Ðis?" The blonde looked over her restraints. "Ðis... ðis was... ðis was how Lyric hæd me." Something wasn't computing, though. "Before."

That got Zoe's attention. Lyric she knew.

"How do you know Lyric?" the freshman asked suspiciously.

The blonde blinked a few times before answering. "I love her," she answered quietly. "I'm supposed to take care of her."

"Care of...." Zoe's understanding trailed off.

"All of ðem." The bound woman's eyes filled with tears. "I'm supposed to take care of all of ðem. All of ðem! Goddess below, what hæs hæppened to my fæmily? Where are ðey?"

Was that plea directed at Zoe? Perhaps. She didn't know about this woman's family. She did know about the pink-haired beauty who had interrupted her life earlier in the evening.

"You know Lyric," she clarified.

The restrained woman nodded. "She was here." Her head turned to look up to the wall behind her. "We were...." What she was searching for on the back wall, Zoe could not know. "But ðere was... ðere were intruders... a mæn... ænd his monsters."

"Who are you?" the amber-eyed teenager asked again.

A resolution steeled within the restrained woman. Her stare fixed again on the girl. "I æm Æstrid Eiríksdóttir, Ringmistress of ðe Erotic Carnival." Her voice began to carry some heft to it again. "And if you are here to judge me, ðen judge me. If you are here to haunt me, ðen haunt me. But if I æm really here... ænd not dead... ænd ðis is still my home, then I need to find my fæmily."

The name Astrid rang a bell for the college girl. Hadn't Lyric mentioned that name? Was that the right name? Zoe couldn't be sure.

"You know Lyric." The blonde intruded with suspicion on Zoe's thoughts. "But not Devlyn?" She seemed to be trying to clarify that the black-haired college girl really was a stranger, and not someone she knew... or was supposed to know.

"Who?" Zoe did not know that name Devlyn.

The girl could see that the woman in the red jacket was putting mental pieces together in her head. "You said you were... Life? Not Deaþ?"

This didn't make sense to the girl. Life. Death. Haunting. Monsters. Well... the monsters made sense. There was a giant beast somewhere around here... and who was to say that this woman was not in league with it?

That didn't quite sit right, though. The woman's erratic inquiries spoke of trauma, not predation. And the thing that had broken through the glass at the Second Bennet Bookstore and chased them through the city hadn't asked any questions at all. It didn't seem to need clarification before choosing violence. This woman seemed to be seeking answers. Her suppositions about Zoe's identity were wildly erroneous, though. "I'm in college," the prim teenager finally revealed. "Or... I'm about to start."

A pause. "College." Then another inquiry. "How do you know Lyric?"

"We... came here together," Zoe admitted.

"She's here?" The blonde, Astrid Eiríksdóttir, bucked again against her restraints, almost giddy. "She's safe?"

The bookstore clerk frowned. "No," she had to admit quietly. "They... it... something...." She took a deep breath. ".... Took her."

"Took her," the blonde repeated, as though not wanting that to be true. Her head fell back against the cushioned bench she was strapped atop of. "Took... her." The beautiful features of the bound woman scrunched up in that way of an unintended and unwanted cry. "Des," wept the woman. "Oh my sweet, sweet Des."

Des? Zoe didn't know anyone named Des. How many people did Lyric live with here?

And what awful fate had befallen them all?

This woman, Astrid, seemed certain that she'd died. And now she was here? Tied to a torture device? How did that even happen? Had she fallen unconscious? Had these intruders she spoke of trussed her up like this? If so, what other violations might have happened? Zoe's eyes darted down to the woman's genitals and then, with deliberate alacrity, back away from them.

The black-haired beauty pursed her lips with resolve and conclusion. Whatever was happening with this strange woman locked and left... she wasn't crazy. She'd had something awful happen to her.

Zoe remembered what Lyric had asked. She'd asked Zoe to come and "save" her home. Apparently this place, and its people, DID need saving.

Miss Neemee had no idea how to do that, though.

"Why did Lyric ask me to come here?" she asked, clear-voiced for the first time.

The woman sniffled and blinked a few times. "Wha... what?"

"Lyric," Zoe clarified. "Why did she bring me here?"

"I...." This question seemed to genuinely confuse the bound blonde. "Normally... Lyric ænd Jonie bring þose who need us...."

Zoe tilted her head. "So I need you?"

Astrid's confusion did not abate. "I don't understænd. We're not... ðis isn't... we couldn't possibly...."

"Couldn't what?"

The woman groaned. "Host."

"Host?" Zoe frowned.

"We're... ðis place.... People need love. Understanding. Sex. Connection."

The college girl frowned. What sort of commune or bordello had she stumbled into? She looked around at the dungeon again, and it finally dawned on her. This wasn't a place to hurt people.

It was a place to pleasure them.

"Wait. Is this... do you live here?" she asked.

"Well, upstairs, but yes."

The college student took a deep breath. Somehow this revelation made the red room seem significantly less frightening. This was a sex dungeon. And it was in someone's home. This woman's home. She lived here.

And if she lived here....

"Is there a way to get you out of that... whatever this contraption is?"

Astrid titled her gaze up and tried to examine the handcuffs tight around her wrists. Then her eyes scrutinized the spreader bar that her legs were suspended from. "Yes...." She frowned. "But it's weird." Her voice trailed off like she was having a difficult time processing something.

"What is?" asked Zoe.

"It's... it feels like deja vu."

The amber-eyed girl tilted her head. "How so?"

A rueful smile crossed Astrid's features. "Þis is the second time tonight I've told someone how to get me out of the spreader bar."

That didn't sound right to Zoe. "Second? Who was the first?"

"Lyric," admitted the blonde.

Oh, yes that was right. Lyric had talked about being engaged romantically with Astrid when....

And both these gorgeous women were into girls.... What if....

No. Zoe shut that thought down. She was in an upside-down wonderland of monsters and sex dungeons. She needed to keep her wits about her and not begin to entertain the tinges of corporeal feelings that she'd never had before.... Except, just a few minutes ago, when that thing had happened to her... that amazing, sudden, terrifying thing....

She stopped herself. Lyric. Lyric had been here with this Astrid woman. Lyric had....

The proper question finally jumped into Zoe's mind.

"Does she... normally wear a necklace?"

"Yes," Astrid answered. Then something dawned on her. "I took it off of her. Þat was part of...." She looked at Zoe more critically. "Did she... compel you... to come here?"

"Um... coffee?" Zoe wasn't quite sure how to explain the siren's voice, or how Lyric had helped mitigate its effects on her. Apparently, though, she didn't need to explain it.

"Ah." Astrid merely accepted Zoe's answer. Coffee made perfect sense to her, apparently. The bound woman tried to look around the room again. "It's... it's probably here."

"What is?"

"Her shell necklace."

That piqued Zoe's interest as well. Lyric would probably want it when.... if....

Best not to go down that road.

"Okay, how do I open the locks?" asked the college student.

Astrid turned her head to indicate the wall where all the various accoutrements were hanging. "Over þere, on þæt wall, about ðree or four feet from þe left, you'll find þe key to þese locks on a hook. Þere will be..." she thought about it, "... six different keys, on six hooks. Þey'll be in two rows of ðree. Þe one you need will be... þe one on the lower right of the six." She paused, then added warily. "If everyðing's where it was."

Zoe nodded and threaded her way through the maze of pleasure-furniture. She found the keys as Astrid had described them. She tried not to look at the other things hanging on the wall around them... but caught a mortifying glance of a soft riding crop and a purple strap-on. Crawling back inside herself, she pivoted swiftly and returned to the blonde.

"Um... hands or feet first?" she asked awkwardly.

"Feet," answered Astrid. "I kinda cæn't feel them anymore."

"Right." Zoe stepped to the end of the bench between Astrid's upturned and powerful legs. The nudity demanded at least a cursory glance. Zoe couldn't help it. Between Lyric and Astrid, this was the most the sheltered girl had been exposed to sexuality in her entire life. It probably didn't help that some sapphic desire had been awakened by the siren's voice. It also probably didn't help that Zoe had, completely beyond her own choice, cum hard just a few minutes before. That statuette of the gorgeous woman, for some reason, had had it in for her.

The quick dart of amber eyes down to the confluence of Astrid's thick legs again revealed, criss-crossed by the black mesh of the woman's stockings, a smooth bare pussy crowned with a golden ring through a prominent pink clitoris. For just a moment, Zoe wondered what her own genitalia must look like. She'd never really thought about it, of course. She wondered, too, what someone else would think if they were to come across her in circumstances like Astrid's: bare, exposed, helpless.

For some reason, that idea didn't want to get swept out of her head, and when she tried to assert her good-girl-ism and purge such unmentionable thoughts, they resisted.

Perhaps Astrid could see that Zoe's attention had been captured by the blonde's tantalizing nether-regions. She cleared her throat. "Þe key should fit in þe lock on your left, ænd turn to þe right."

Embarrassed, and pretending that she'd been focused on the spreader bar all along, Zoe Neemee swallowed hard, nodded her acknowledgement of the instruction, and raised both hands to the lock near Astrid's right ankle. With one hand she held the device in place and with the other she fumbled with the key until it finally wormed its way up into the cylinder.

As soon as the key turned in the lock and sprang the pins, the spreader bar flew open from the weight of Astrid's ankles against it. Both of the woman's exhausted legs dropped like great pendulums from their elevation and struck heavily against Zoe's shoulders. Their weight and momentum pulled the black-eyed beauty from her feet and she fell between the blonde's thighs, her head striking between the great soft breasts, and her hands landing on top of the blouse-covered nipples.

"Oof," grunted Astrid, perhaps relieved to have her legs lowered. Perhaps, too, with her arms still fastened above her head, she had no way to prevent the wind from getting knocked out of her.

"Sorry," winced Zoe, pinned between the blonde's large legs and large breasts. She tried to push herself up off of the cuffed woman, only to recognize with sudden mortification that her hands were full of big boobs. Pushing herself up against them was only going to hurt the woman beneath her. "Sorry!" she panicked, quickly sliding her palms off of the thick torso of the Ringmistress and onto the edges of the bench beneath her.

"It's fine," Astrid grimaced. "My legs. I cæn't lift þem."

Zoe shimmied out from between Astrid's thighs, gingerly sliding first one shoulder and then the other from under Astrid's knees with enough tact to try to lower the woman's unresponsive legs without just dropping them.

The awkward maneuver brought her face far too close to Astrid's bare pussy, though, and Zoe exerted herculean effort to not stare at the gold ring or the pink femininity beneath it.

"Um...." Her cheeks flushed. "I didn't.... I don't...."

"It's okay." Astrid managed a pained smile as the circulation slowly made its way back into her lower extremities. She took a couple of deep breaths. "Would you mind?" She rattled her wrists, still cuffed above her head.

"Oh. Right. Yeah." Zoe slipped out from between Astrid's heavy thighs and around the side of the contraption that held her.

Close up, she could better see the face of this bound woman who lived above a dungeon. This Astrid person was gorgeous. Like... Nordic deity gorgeous. Crystal blue eyes and golden skin beneath flowing hair like glistening rivers of dragon gold.

The blonde caught Zoe staring. For a few moments, both women's gaze perused the other's face. The Ringmistress seemed just as befuddled by the college co-ed's beauty as the youngster was by hers.

"You sure you're not a goddess?" Astrid half-joked.

Zoe swallowed hard and offered a half-deprecating smile. "I don't think so." It took her a moment to notice that the busty blonde's eyes were watching her mouth. "Right. Let me... um...."

The black-haired girl gestured to the end of the bench as though to excuse herself. She blinked, refocused, and scrutinized the padded cuffs that held Astrid's wrists. They seemed simple enough. She inserted the small key into the lock of first one cuff, and then the other, giving each a small twist to the right. The cuffs promptly unlocked and fell off of Astrid's skin, allowing her to bring her arms down.

"Whew!" smiled Astrid.

The blonde rotated her crimson-sleeved arms slowly up and then down to below her breasts. The breasts. Zoe could see now just how voluptuous the blonde really was. Those mammaries rose and fell, rose and fell. "Goddess, it's good to be able to breaþe all þe way again!" She rubbed each wrist where it had been restrained. Astrid groaned and pulled herself up into a sitting position on the bench. She rolled strong shoulders and rubbed her wrists.

Now that Astrid was upright, it was easier for Zoe to understand her ensemble. Astrid's red coat had long tails and her buttoned corset flared just above her naval. The fishnets began somewhere under that corset and extended from there to her toes, which Zoe could now see were painted cherry red to match Astrid's fingernails. Her blonde hair cascaded about her face and shoulders, framing her bright bloodshot eyes. She looked like a sexy Vegas magician, or the very erotic ringmaster of a circus.

"How long were you like that?" asked Zoe.

The blonde frowned, raised her head, and looked around as though for some indication of the time. "I don't æctually know." The answer seemed to bother her as much as it did her younger guest. "So many þings are wrong."

"Like what?" Zoe asked before she could catch herself.

"Well, æs far æs I know, þere should be a big hole in þe wall right up þere." She pointed to the junction of the far wall and the ceiling. "Þæt's how I left before... before...." Her features drooped and her eyes moistened.

The trauma this Astrid woman had experienced seemed viscerally real, and Zoe felt awkward standing next to this woman while she started to cry.

Astrid turned her gorgeous wet baby-blues up to the new girl. "Ðey killed Désirée."

The college girl swallowed hard. Things were getting both sad and scary again. Killed? People were really dead? Barely audible, she asked, "Who did?"

The blonde sniffled and wiped a tear from her cheek. "Ðe Dogs of War."

"Dogs of...."

"Yeah." Astrid swallowed past the lump in her throat and absentmindedly rubbed her thighs to help bring back the circulation.

"There's more than one?"

"Þree," Astrid spoke with almost humorous hopelessness. "I got two of þem pretty good, þough, before...." She frowned. "Before...."

The Ringmistress stared at her own forearms, turning them over, and then turning them over again. Zoe couldn't quite understand why. The scarlet coat-sleeves ran to the wrists, and crisp white cuffs extended beyond those around the heels of the woman's hands.

Then the blonde tore the topcoat from off her own arms, shucking it onto the bench behind her. Beneath, the form-fitting white blouse did nothing to conceal the strength and curvature of this impressive specimen of a woman. Her breasts pressed against the blouse buttons in an almost torturous way. It was a wonder that she didn't pop them in her manic divestment of the scarlet topcoat.

Astrid seized the cuffs of her own sleeves and yanked them up to her elbows. Zoe could have sworn that the woman expected to find gaping wounds on her arms. Something was there beneath the sleeves, but it wasn't blood. Dark, the college girl could see, but not dripping.

Astrid's panicked eyes leapt from one of her own forearms to the other, turning over each as though she'd been infected with some plague now visible on her epidermis. She grabbed one arm with the opposite hand and wrenched her skin, as though trying desperately to wipe something off. When she couldn't, the woman panicked worse, stumbling to her feet and scraping at whatever she couldn't pull off of her.

"What? Why?" she sobbed. "No! What is....?" She slumped against the uprights of the device she'd been shackled to. Her desperate blues lit on Zoe. "What's hæppening to me?" she begged. The woman was almost in hysterics. "Are we dead? What is ðis?"

Zoe stepped toward her, hand half-raised as though to touch Astrid to reassure her. "What's what?"

"Ðese should be broken. Shredded. I... I fought ðe dogs. I... beat ðem. But my arms. Ðis one...." She held up the one that she'd used to pry apart and lift the jaws of a Dog of War so that she could choke it out. "Ðis one should be torn to the bone. Ænd broken. Bædly."

"Let me see," Zoe interjected, trying to do something... anything... to calm the terrified Ringmistress. "Here." She stepped boldly to Astrid and took the woman's left forearm between her hands. She looked it over, front and back, turning it multiple times to make sure she understood what she was looking at.

There were no wounds on Astrid's forearm. No bite marks. No tears. No lacerations. The bones were obviously not broken. Everything functionally seemed fine.