Sanctuary with kings, p.1
Sanctuary with Kings, page 1
SANCTUARY WITH KINGS
TEMPTING MONSTERS
BOOK III
KATHRYN MOON
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Copyright @ 2023 Kathryn Moon
Sanctuary with Kings, Tempting Monsters Book Three
First publication: July 20th 2023
Cover art by Jodielocks Designs
Editing by Bookish Dreams Editing and Jess Whetsel
Formatting by Kathryn Moon
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kathryn Moon
ohkathrynmoon@gmail.com
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CONTENTS
Foreword and Content Information
Prologue
1. Freedom and Starvation
2. Feasting for the Senses
3. How Long?
4. A Change of Pace
5. Propositions and Partings
6. The Hidden Castle
7. The King of Dreams
8. Overdue Nightmare
9. Give Chase
10. The Dreamers' Ball
11. The Dragon's Jaws
12. The Patient Lover
13. Cutting Truths
14. Stubborn Monsters
15. Through Feast and Famine
16. The Entertainment of Guests
17. Treasures of the Hoard
18. Courting Rituals
19. A Ceremony of Pleasure
20. At Arm's Length
21. Waking, Crashing
22. Well-Rested Blessings
23. Evasive Maneuvers
24. The Faceless Man
25. A Tender Trap
26. Winning Hand
27. Howl and Knot
28. The Wyrm
29. The Quest to the Mountain
30. The Centicore and the Sword
31. The Rise of the Red Wolf
32. In the Nest
33. Training Techniques
34. Mating for Beginners
35. Taming the Minotaur
36. Adieus and Introductions
37. Dancing and Gossiping
38. The Company of Friends
39. An Evening Interlude
40. Pucks and Traps
41. Settle the Matter
42. Nightmare and Néktar
43. The Path to Vengeance
44. Morgana Le Fay
45. The Victor
46. What Next?
Epilogue
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Kathryn Moon
to salmon, honored sponsor of this book
FOREWORD AND CONTENT INFORMATION
Thank you so much for returning to the Tempting Monsters universe! For a complete list of content information please check out kathrynmoon.com/books but there are some pertinent details below!
This is a why choose monster romance and includes mf, mmf, mfmmm, and mm content.
Note on Medieval Mythology: I am the first to admit that I play fast and loose with old myths, but since I know Arthurian legend is so beloved I’ll go ahead and defend myself a tad. There are versions of the myths that are popular, but there are many older and lesser known as well. I promise I did research, although I did still make my own adjustments in spots.
Content Warnings Include:
Murder - off page discussion and on page action
Violence - strangulation, gore, magical violence (all in scenes of action and conflict)
Trauma - there's a theme of nightmares presenting past trauma in a non-literal and more symbolic way, they are not graphic but they are meant to be menacing and if you would like to avoid those scenes in particular they are all in italics. Light suicidal ideation in early parts of the book.
More CWs at kathrynmoon.com/books
PROLOGUE
The prickle of my patron's stare scratched at my breasts as the beautiful bodies surged against me, rolling me between them. I'd had plenty of guests who preferred to watch my work rather than partake of it themselves. Some as high and mighty as you might find on thrones or behind pulpits. I'd always enjoyed their strained energy, their desperate refusal. They sought to deny themselves pleasure, but they didn't understand their own habit. The denial was the source for them, and it fed my own hunger and craving every bit as much as the grunting, gasping, sweating figures who touched me with enthusiasm and demand.
But not this man. There was no warmth from his stare, no need and no denial. He watched for some other purpose, studied with some other goal.
It should've warned me, but I was busy feasting.
The néktar was rich from the two men on the bed with me. They were other, like I was, although not in any way I could perceive.
A mouth lowered to my breath, kiss almost vicious, and I arched with a cry, pressing my ass to the hips fitted behind me. They held me close, their frenzied need like clouds of perfume in the air. I gasped, swallowing it by the lungful, my skin stroked with the ripples of rising sexual pleasure. My ambrosia. My néktar. A richer drink than wine, a stronger meal than a king's roast.
In my body, release was a wave, a sweeping, curling, retreating motion. But in my soul, it was a sudden flood, a cascading rush into the hollow of my belly. If I was starving, I might be sated, soothed by the fresh supply of pleasure.
Whoring was clever work for one of Hedone's daughters, and I was never starving.
A golden hand gripped my throat, drawing me back like a bowstring, and the man behind me bellowed as he reached his finish. I laughed as his hand squeezed a little too tightly, my head soaking in the surplus of rapture. My breath was gifted back to me as the lovely young man pounding into my cunt cried out, falling into me, sending the pile of us to heavy, soft sheets.
It was a beautiful drowning. I would sleep for hours until it settled into my bones. I would glow brightly and dazzle eyes for days. I smiled, reaching drowsy hands to my companions, petting them with sweet gratitude.
Out of the corner of my eye, the shadow of my third guest rose from his seat.
"She'll do very well. Collect her."
I giggled at the words, and the man at my back groaned, shoving me to the side, the younger man still catching his breath.
"Quickly," the cool voice ordered. "Before she recovers."
I was drunk and vulnerable in my satisfaction. My hands were limp as someone covered my face with fabric, thrusting a coarse bag over my head. I scratched weakly at the hand that wrestled my arms behind my back.
And still I laughed, cried, trembled in the wake of my traitorous guests' pleasure.
I was trapped, though I didn't yet know what kind of cage had fallen down around me in my foolish naïveté. Only that I was of a kind to survive.
I didn't know that survival would not be a blessing.
And so, centuries passed…
CHAPTER 1
FREEDOM AND STARVATION
“Fancy a fuck, luv?"
"Give us a wink."
"I'll see you right, mi'lord."
The pretty birds of the evening fluttered on the corner in front of me, skirts swishing up to reveal the wares on offer.
"She's costin' us punters," one of the women hissed as the pack of merry men passed our little huddle.
I hunched and ducked my head, turning my back to the group.
"She's no more trouble than a mouse."
"She looks ill. They'll think we're the same."
I licked my lips, torn and chapped as they were, and they stung in the wake. My hands were numb. My feet too. The street wavered and slid side to side in my vision.
I was starving. A fathomless hunger that dug a pit deeper than my frail form could hold.
But I was free.
Maggie sighed, and her shadow loomed and lurched across the cobblestones as she crossed to my little corner of the alley.
"Dolly…" she started.
"I heard them," I rasped, looking up at last.
Maggie had found me. After the fire. After the house cracked. After I'd run screaming into the night, taken my first breath of a world I didn't recognize, found myself free of Birsha's shackles.
"I'll get you sometin' to eat. Just go back to the flat, why don' you?" Maggie said gently.
I'd heard the women whispering to each other. Maggie found broken birds, tried to nurse us, mend us. She'd bring me half a pie at dawn and comb my hair and pat my back. It wouldn't fill the massive void inside of me, the twisted, corrupted hollow of craving, rotted and wrong after centuries in the worst company, the darkest pleasures.
"I'll find work," I whispered, stumbling away from the street lamp. T
Pleasure on the streets was cheap and brief, perfunctory. There was no joy in the minutes of grunting and pumping from the human men who stumbled out of pubs and gaming hells. As crooked as the meals Birsha delivered to me had been, they were the appetites and satisfactions of far greater creatures than human men.
I trailed in my path away from the whores who'd taken me in, away from the bright corner of safety, into the darker shadows. Someone would find me. I may not take a coin out of the exchange, but at least it might feed me a little. The night was muggy and foul, but a chill had started to eat away the feeling in my fingers and toes weeks ago, my blood sluggish.
A blessed woman, wasting to nothing but hunger for pleasure.
Pleasure made me sick now. I was a perversion of the woman I ought to have been. Centuries in the cold, barren cage of Birsha's grip had bled me dry.
The wheels of a carriage clicked and ground over the stone street, hooves clopping to a stop, a still groomsman sitting high and silent like a sentry. I kept my eyes ahead on the swimming darkness, but stopped to let the gentlemen have a look at me. He would move away soon. I was not a tempting sight.
Except the door opened silently, a white glove extending out, a silver coin pinched between thick fingers.
"Come into the carriage, and there's another," a low voice offered.
Two silver coins and I might buy my passage to the grave, I thought, blinking at the coin as it tipped and shivered in my eyes. No, it was me that was tilting and weaving and trembling.
"Come out, and you'll only need the one, mi'lord," I answered.
His voice grunted and the hand withdrew and the door closed softly. It would drive away again, which was good, because the men who paid too much often asked too much in return. I started to move, to almost fall forward into motion again, when the door opened fully.
Out stepped a mountain of a man, dressed in gleaming black and shining white. I looked up, but it made me dizzy, contorting the handsome face and setting the liquidy dark eyes spinning until I ducked my head again. He was too big, too beautiful. I backed away, but one of those pristine white gloves reached for me.
"There's better fare down the road," I gasped, twisting out of the way.
The hand clenched on air and then opened again, held out flat in invitation. "Not ones who need so much as you."
I blinked and froze. He was the most alluring trap, his voice thick and low and sweet, like a tongue lapping over my weak pulse, trying to bring it back to life again. He was even more perfect than the pair Birsha had drugged me with centuries ago when I was a spoiled and innocent child. And I was starving. Dying, probably, although it might take years more of this withering life before it was over.
His other hand lifted, still holding the silver coin. "Take it, at the very least."
The coin would buy me food, but it wouldn't feed me. No matter what this man wanted from me, I had survived worse already.
My hand shook as I reached for his, my skin dirty and ruining his perfect white gloves with one touch. His grip was gentle, and it was strange to be touched so.
"Come closer," he said.
I swallowed, and my throat scratched itself, dry and aching. My steps were unsteady, and his arm circled around my shoulders, a shelter or a cage, but his warmth soaked through my thin rags of clothing.
"You look tired," he whispered.
Does he mean to kill me? I wondered.
But he bent, and I had to lean back into the strong arm behind me. He dropped the hand he held in order to cup my face, soft white kid leather stroking at my cheek as he tipped my face up. His face was less clear to me than ever as he ducked down, features all blurring strangely. I shut my eyes and found full and heavy lips covering mine, thick breath rushing over my numb face.
The kiss was chaste, barely more than a press, but the power that came with it was like dropping an anchor into my belly, the weight sinking and sinking, measuring the real distance and depth of my hunger.
I gasped and my hands flew up, eyes opening into a confusing cross of visions. The face in my grip did not match the man looking down at me.
"No!" I breathed, but I was swaying, my legs weak, my starvation pleading a new demand for more of this man. But he was not a man.
Two brows furrowed, one human and handsome, the other dark and powerful and familiar.
"Forgive me, daughter of Hedone," the low voice rumbled.
And then his hand rose up to smother my scream, bringing with it a heady, dizzying scent that blotted out the world.
I woke, my head heavy, and my hands tightened beneath me. In their grip they found velvet, so thick and lush and soft that I moaned, rubbing the fabric between my fingers. I turned my head, and the pillow beneath me gave way sweetly, silk cool against my cheek.
My breath caught, a whimper stifled in my chest. I smelled foul, and I only knew as much because the air around me was thick and redolent with lavender and rose and gardenia. I was in the softest bed I was sure I'd ever known. I opened my eyes and shut them again, gasping.
Decadence.
I sat up, eyes squeezed shut, and tried to make myself let go of the velvet blanket draped over me.
"Move slowly," a gentle voice offered, a woman's. "I promise you're safe."
I forced my eyes open again and searched the glittering, gleaming, and lush surroundings. A woman sat on the foot of the bed, pretty and pale, her gaze milky and absent. In the corner of the room, another figure moved, and this time I hissed, scrambling backwards. My strength faltered at the perfect cushion behind me, a mountain of pillows offering me comfort.
But the man, the monster in the corner of the room, was familiar. The basilisk. He'd never touched me, but he'd been there in Birsha's lair—more than once, from what I could recall. He was tall, with black horns curling high, and he wore a pair of black spectacles that hid his gaze.
"She recognizes me," the basilisk said.
The woman sighed. "I told you."
"I'm not leaving you alone with her," he growled, arms crossing over his chest.
And it took me a moment to realize he was speaking to the woman, as if I were the threat in the room.
There were bouquets in every corner, works of art on the walls, golden filigree frames, chandeliers dripping with crystals.
"My name is Lillian. I'm human," the woman offered. "And that is Marius. He is—"
"I know what he is," I said, my voice croaking.
Lillian dipped her head. "He is not a danger to you."
"Unless you are a danger to her," Marius warned in a low snarl.
And the woman, the human woman, sighed in amused acceptance, her lips quirking. She was blind, I realized, watching her stare move aimlessly. And he was protective of her. Was she his to torment? Except she wore an elegant yet simple dress, and she had color in her cheeks, and there was…a hint of satisfaction in the air coming from her. I sat up again, scooting down the bed, and my lips fell open, trying to catch the taste.
They were lovers. And it was a sweeter flavor than I'd known in…
"We have a bath prepared for you," Lillian said. "And there will be food. Anything you'd like. For now, I have this."
She lifted a delicate cup on a small plate, both painted and touched with gold. A dense and delicious fragrance floated to me from the cup, and my mouth watered.
