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Max removed his softening cock from between her breasts and lay down beside her, exhausted. He turned on his side and embraced her, hiding his face under her right breast, nuzzling it playfully. He couldn’t have enough of that soft, generous body, but neither of her bright, blue eyes. He lifted his head to look at her, and was entranced by how her flushed cheeks made her eyes stand out even more. He moved up to her level and captured her plump lips with his, tasting himself on her tongue.
After long minutes, they broke the kiss, and Avelyn was once again surprised at the tenderness she saw in his eyes. Still, she had come down from her height, and the rational part of her brain started driving the sex-induced fog away.
“At least now you know I was worth the money.”
“Don’t go there.”
Avelyn saw the immediate change on his face. His eyes hardened and his brows furrowed slightly. “Ah,” she thought. “That didn’t last long.”
“Why not?” she said out loud. “It’s the truth.”
“No, it isn’t. I didn’t buy you for… sex. A shifter-bride is not a sex slave, you know that.”
“The fact that no one uses that term to describe us doesn’t make it less true.”
Max pushed himself away from her and gave a deep, exasperated sigh. The Avelyn he knew was back.
“Please, let’s not ruin this moment.”
His voice was almost pleading, and Avelyn wanted to comply and take back her words. She had enjoyed everything that had happened between them since the moment they woke up, but that didn’t change the fact that she was still trapped in this room and she still had to face the reality in which he had thrust her against her will. Yes, sex was nice, and she now knew that Max could treat her right if he was in a good mood. However, none of this made her less of a prisoner. Coming here hadn’t been her choice. Being with him hadn’t been her choice. The fact that she enjoyed some of it didn’t make it all better.
“Okay,” she said, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t disguise the sadness in her voice.
There was a moment of silence, then Max squeezed her hand, and raised it to his lips to kiss it.
“Come on, let’s take a hot shower.”
“You go first.”
“That was not…”
“Please, just go first. I need some time.”
He wanted to protest again, but it wouldn’t have done any good. The magic was broken. He got out of bed and headed to the bathroom.
Avelyn wrapped herself in the thin sheet that had been covering the mattress but was now wrinkled and messed. Her gaze locked on the tall windows, and the desire to go out in the sun and enjoy the fresh morning air sent a pang through her chest. After a couple of minutes, she sighed, turned to look around the room, then at the closed bathroom door. She thought of the power she had had over Max during their passionate game, and an idea took shape in her mind. “If I play my cards right, he’l
l let me out of the room in no time.” She straightened her back and smiled with new-found determination. “The Schloss is huge and I’m sure his lackeys can’t possibly guard every door and crevice. Yes, Mr. Blackmane, my dear husband, every cage has its weakness.”
END OF BOOK ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Too Close
Avelyn was pacing the room, stopping in front of the window once in a while to watch the activity in the courtyard. She could see the old gardener tending the flower beds and a young she-wolf reading under a beech tree. She could barely see her small frame hunched over the book when the wind blew harder and ruffled the branches. Avelyn’s own book had been abandoned on the bed half an hour ago, as she couldn’t concentrate on the story. It wasn’t the author’s fault, obviously, especially since she loved Umberto Eco, but it was the fact that too many things were going through her mind. She watched as a huge, gray werewolf crossed the courtyard, went through the tall gates, and disappeared in the deep, lush forest. She sighed in frustration. “I’m going insane.” After one week of being locked in the bedroom, Avelyn was slowly descending into despair and depression. She needed to go out, feel the cold wind through her hair, smell the flowers, and take a long walk to clear her head and get the much needed exercise her body was craving for. She was starting to feel claustrophobic.
Each time these feelings of anger and frustration overwhelmed her, and each time her moments of depression threatened to turn her into a crying mess, Avelyn tried to distract herself with reading, or with one of her hobbies. Often, she grabbed her smartphone and called Christine, who came up and spent a couple of hours talking with her or simply watching TV. The only two numbers she had on her phone were Christine’s and Max’s. She never called Max. However, today she didn’t feel like doing any of this. In two hours, Christine would bring her lunch, and Avelyn had to be ready to talk to her about the thing that had kept her awake last night. “Will she understand? Will she help me?” She watched the gray wolf appear and disappear between the pine trees until she couldn’t see him anymore, then she walked away from the window. She couldn’t stand seeing how everyone in the castle was free to go out and do whatever they liked while she was stuck in this huge, luxurious room she had come to hate.
Avelyn went to her desk and sat down in the leather chair. She spun a couple of times, enjoying the way the room flashed before her eyes in a blur of colors and light. She stopped, closed her eyes to chase away the dizziness, and turned her laptop on. Waiting for it to flash to life, she remembered how surprised she had been when Max had told her that everything in the room was hers, including the shiny black laptop on the desk and the smartphone beside it. Avelyn had thought that locking her in the room came with isolating her completely from the outside world. Max had laughed and told her that was nonsense. He was aware that she’d get bored very soon, so she at least needed access to the Internet.
Avelyn checked her favorite websites, but closed the browser after five minutes. In the past seven days, she had read dozens of articles and news about what was happening out there, in the world. For the first time, she realized she truly had access to what the Internet had to offer: real information that was not being filtered by Alma Venus. Sure, at the boarding school the girls could go online, but everything they did was closely monitored. Alma Venus used its own inside network that only allowed students to access certain websites. Finally, Avelyn was free to do some proper research on the war between humans and shifters, on the current state of affairs, and, sadly, also on what happened to the brides who were kicked out of boarding schools. She had read so much these past days that her brain was swimming in new information it needed to process. Right now, however, she didn’t feel like reading the news, or going through all the links she had saved for future reference. She left the desk and started pacing the room again.
“What if she tells Max? Then, I’d be in deep trouble.” She would have thought out loud because talking to herself had always helped her make decisions easier, but she never knew who could be somewhere close, out on the corridor, minding their own business. When you lived in a castle full of werewolves, you couldn’t afford to think out loud. Their keen hearing could catch any whisper if they happened to be close enough. Avelyn threw a bored glance at the colored paper scattered on the glass table and the sofa. She hadn’t felt like continuing her origami project since yesterday. Max had been quite enthusiastic about it.
“What are you doing with all this paper?” he had asked.
“An origami swan.”
