by Wild, Callie
Table of Contents
Title Page
About the Book
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
About the Author
Please enjoy this free excerpt
ENSLAVED
A Kinky Adult Fairy Tale
Bedding the Bad Girl Book Three
By Callie Wild
About the Book
ENSLAVED: A Kinky Adult Fairy Tale
Bedding the Bad Girl Book Three
A spell gone wrong has some sexy consequences…
He’s a hot, single king who knows his way around the bedroom. She’s an innocent fairy who has accidentally cast her first love spell. Together they generate enough heat to set a castle on fire.
Aaron and Calliope team up to save his lovesick brother and a sleeping princess from an enchanted keep, but along the way realize their own love is an illusion. Can they find their way back to each other in time, or will Calliope end up taking the sleeping princess’s place for all eternity?
A sexy, stand-alone continuation of Sleeping Beauty. No Cliffhanger.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Enslaved c. 2015 Callie Wild
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This erotic romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring Dominant alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. This book was previously published as Beauty Sleep by Anna J. Evans. It has been extensively revised and reworked before being re-released. Cover design by Bootstrap Designs.
CHAPTER ONE
Calliope
Calliope jerked awake on the cold stone floor of her cell, sending the rodent nibbling at her fingertips scurrying back to its burrow in the wall.
Her hand flew to her chest, where her heart did its best to burst through her ribs.
She wasn’t too late—thank the Goddess—but it was only a matter of time. Sooner or later, she would sleep too hard and the rats would have their pound of flesh. The guard who brought her meal each evening had joked that no one came out of the dungeon with as many toes as when they went in.
As soon as he’d left, Calliope had torn the sleeves off of her nightdress and wrapped them around her feet, hoping to keep her cellmates from getting any ideas. She was colder without the sleeves, but the trade-off seemed worth it.
“Cold arms, safe toes,” she muttered, wincing as she rolled to her side on the stones, feeling every bruise she’d acquired in the past two weeks of bedding down on the floor in her flimsy gown.
But she hadn’t bothered feeling sorry for herself. Of course she hadn’t been abducted from her home during the daylight hours when she would have been wearing shoes and warmer clothes. It was the story of her life. Misfortune was as much a part of her existence as her magic—as inseparable from her as her skin and bones.
She had learned to live with her own bad luck. She hadn’t learned to live with the pain her magic so often caused others. She regretted every spell gone wrong more than she could say. And so a part of her felt she deserved to be thrown in the King of Outer Kartolia’s dungeon and left to rot while the king was away in Kingdom City.
She would begin to rot soon—or at least to fester and lose the last of the color in her skin. She had been given one meal a day and the luxury of a cold shower the day before yesterday. Other than that one trip to the dungeon’s bathing room, however, she hadn’t been out of her cell for fourteen days.
But surely she was still better off than Rosamund. Poor Rosamund, trapped in an enchanted castle, destined to sleep her life away until a prince outsmarted the castle’s defenses and freed her with a kiss and a proposal.
Sadly, even the spell-modification Calliope had made in an attempt to fix her first spell was a nightmare.
A prince’s kiss? Just any old prince?
And Rosamund will actually have to agree to marry this man in order to gain her freedom. What were you thinking?
“I was very young, and had read too many fairy stories,” Calliope spoke aloud to the walls. “I was only seven when Mother asked me to gift at Rosamund’s birthday celebration.”
The stones were quiet, cold, silently condemning both her and her mother.
“But in Mother’s defense,” Calliope hastened to add, “she had no way of knowing my affliction until it was too late.”
The “affliction.” That’s what her mother had called Calliope’s rotten luck with magic, but it had all too often seemed that she was talking about Calliope herself. The “affliction” forced them to move to the most unpopulated regions of Outer Kartolia to prevent Calliope from doing injury to other children with her magic. The “affliction” drove Calliope’s father away, causing her mother to die alone and friendless except for her only child…a talentless daughter, her own “affliction” to bear to the end of her days.
“But I haven’t cast a single spell since Mother’s death. Mother was the one who refused to give up on my magic. I never cared.” Calliope walked slowly around the circular edge of the cell, dragging her fingers over stone, then bars, then stone again, imagining that she was talking to the animals on her farm. They would be a kinder audience than the dungeon walls.
She had lived alone for nearly five years now, just her, the pigs, the goats, the geese and a cat or two who preferred to keep the relationship casual except during feeding time. It was odd, she supposed, but if she hadn’t started talking to the animals, she would have gone mad. Just as she would run mad in this dungeon if she didn’t find something to occupy her mind.
Wouldn’t need to occupy your mind if you had the power to free yourself. Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind, as harsh and disappointed as it had been in life. Without your fairy magic, you’re no better off than a human.
No better off than a human—truly a fate worse than death to Heliotrope La Fae.
Calliope’s mother had loved a human once, of course. She had given Calliope’s father the gift of her body, her magic, a child, and, finally, magic of his own. She magicked Calliope’s father the gift of longevity, charisma, and a knack for finding riches.
He was gone within a month of receiving the gift, off to take the world by storm and forget he’d ever been saddled with a wife and child.
“It was terrible, but just one man’s terrible. There are humans who are ki
nd.”
Humans will rip your heart from your immortal chest and stomp it to bits on those stones if you let them.
Calliope’s brow furrowed. “We’re not immortal, Mother.”
Compared to them we are. We are ancients. We should be their gods.
Calliope squeezed her eyes shut. She had to put a stop to this before the line between the real world and the imaginary one grew too blurry.
“You’re not really here.” Calliope turned away from the voice. “I’m not going to listen to you anymore.”
You always were a liar.
“You are the liar!” She took a deep breath, trying to compose herself. “We aren’t immortal. We die. You died. You aren’t—”
Silence, Calliope. If you can’t say something sensible, don’t say anything at all.
“I am being sensible.”
You’re a fool. A curse upon my life. You and your affliction.
“Mother, I—”
Fool!
Calliope staggered back, the force of the shout inside her head seeming to knock the world sideways.
She shouldn’t have engaged the voices. She always ended up frightening herself, even when she wasn’t locked in an awful place with the sounds of claws on stone waking her in the middle of the night.
Her mother was dead, but the animals on the farm loved and needed her. She had to hold it together for a few more days. Then surely the king would hear of her plight. The King of Outer Kartolia was merciful and kind. Calliope had never met him, but she’d seen the pictures of his coronation pasted to the billboards in the village close to her farm. She and the other village girls had giggled together about how handsome he was.
Surely such a handsome, compassionate-looking king would understand she hadn’t meant to—
Idiot. You were born an idiot.
My fault for cursing you with a human father.
“I am finished with this conversation. You aren’t real.” Calliope pulled back a foot and kicked the stone beside her—hard.
“Ouch! Ouchouchouch.” She cursed, but the pain had the desired effect. Her mind cleared and the spark of hope within her grow stronger.
The king was kind and he would set her free, even if his younger brother had fallen victim to Rosamund’s enchanted castle. Prince Johann should never have gone to the castle. Everyone knew that it let princes in, but never let them out again. Johann wasn’t the warrior his older brother was. He should have known better than to—
Know better than to enter a place cursed by a freak.
Calliope pressed her hands to her ears, sinking down to the floor with a moan. She couldn’t fight it anymore. The voice in her head was too strong and she had been too long without her herbs. She had begged the king’s guards to let her take her medicine with her, but they’d refused.
And now she was alone, trapped in the dark, with the voice that had always been the cruelest of those that spoke in her mind—the harsh imitation of the mother Calliope knew she had disappointed beyond all reason.
You aren’t just a disappointment; you are an abomination. Always have been; always will be.
“Please. Please…” Calliope ran a trembling arm across her face, smearing the tears running down her cheeks.
How dare you beg for mercy when you’ve given up of your own free will? What kind of fairy are you? You have magic, use it!
“I can’t. Please. It’s too dangerous, and I—”
Then I suppose you will die, Affliction.
“I am not an affliction!” Her voice echoed out of her cell into the vast underground dungeon. She was shaking now, her hands clawing at the air in front of her face as if she could shred the voice with her mangled nails.
Then prove it. Free yourself. Cast, Calliope. Cast or die
Calliope squeezed her eyes closed. “No.”
Cast, daughter, cast and live.
“N-no.”
Fool!
“I am not a fool. I have memorized every spell you ever taught me. My mind is not lame, my magic is.”
What’s the difference? You’re still a waste.
“Stop it!”
Pathetic, absolutely—
“By the Goddess of good and old,” Calliope keened over the voice that tormented her, “magic do as you’re told. Liberate me in my time of need, ease this heart and set me free.”
A sudden wind swept through the cell, the first breeze she’d felt in the weeks she’d been confined, and Calliope knew the spell had been cast.
What consequences it would bring, however…
No matter how well spoken or intentioned, her magic had a way of doing as it would, not as it was told.
Some spell…doesn’t even…of the…
Her mother’s voice was weaker now. Calliope easily pushed it away as she rolled back to the ground.
She was exhausted, half starved and as miserable as she had been in those dark days before her mother’s death, when Heliotrope’s bitterness had been at its greatest, poisoning her as surely as the disease that ravaged her body.
“Goddess, protect me,” Calliope murmured as she closed her eyes.
She was too tired to stay awake and unwilling to part with the last bit of bread she’d tucked into the pocket of her nightdress to set other bait for the rats. She would just have to trust the Goddess to keep her safe while she slept and pray the spell would achieve her goal, without anyone getting hurt in the process.
CHAPTER TWO
Aaron
Aaron, King of Outer Kartolia, was royally pissed.
He’d only been in Kingdom City for two months and this was what he returned to find.
Johann was lost to the enchanted castle north of their lands—his journey a stunt to punish Aaron for missing his younger brother’s sixteenth birthday, no doubt. And Henri, Aaron’s royal advisor, had taken the law into his own hands. Now, there was a pixie or a fairy or whatever she was locked in the dungeon he hadn’t used in the four years since he’d taken the throne.
“We have a perfectly serviceable jail, Henri,” Aaron snapped, quickening his pace down the stairs to the dungeon. “I can only assume you were indulging your flair for the dramatic.”
“Never, Sire. She practices the black arts, she had to be detained in stone,” Henri panted, already out of breath.
“That’s a myth, Henri.”
“I must disagree, Sire. She hasn’t cast a single spell. The stone has kept her powerless.”
“Or her own restraint has kept her from turning you into a toad. I would not have been so kind if I had been locked away in such conditions.” Aaron couldn’t look at the man who scurried along beside him or he would truly lose his temper.
How dare Henri do this? It didn’t matter that he’d been a royal advisor since before Aaron was born. Henri knew how Aaron felt about these barbaric practices. It was this kind of behavior that gave Outer Kartolia a reputation as a wild, untamed land not fit for tourists.
He’d just spent eight weeks judging a ridiculous reality show in Kingdom City to help promote a more positive image for his country. Now, as soon as word of the fairy’s time in the dungeon hit the news, that effort would be wasted.
And it would make the news. Aaron wasn’t the king that his father had been. He didn’t believe in scaring his people into silence. If the fairy wanted to tell the world she had been treated terribly, he wouldn’t lift a finger to stop her.
But that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it…
“Where is she?” Aaron asked the guard at the bottom of the stairs.
The man scrambled to his feet, wiping his grimy hands on his shirt as he moved. “At the end of the hall, Your Highness. Last cell to the right.” He picked up a large ring of keys. “I’ll take you back.”
“Really, Aaron, there’s no need for you to be down here,” Henri said in a winded voice. “I can have the girl brought up to the throne room. You haven’t even had time to change out of your riding clothes. Surely you must be tired. The journey from Kingdom City
is a long one and—”
Aaron cursed as he stopped in front of the thick black bars, bile rising in his throat as he took in the state of the cell. “Who has been tending this prisoner?”
He hadn’t thought the dungeon would be a comfortable place after so many years of disuse—it hadn’t been designed for comfort and neglect had made it even worse—but he hadn’t expected this. Rats scurried into the walls, fleeing the light of the guard’s lamp, and an overflowing waste bucket sat in the corner of the room. Clearly no one had bothered to empty it in the weeks the prisoner had been confined. The smell was horrible, but that wasn’t what turned his stomach.
It was the sight of her that did it. She lay on the stones, without so much as a blanket, either unconscious or dead, he couldn’t be sure. What had obviously once been lovely, long blonde hair was matted with dirt and tangled around her face, her nightdress was torn and filthy and she possessed nothing but scraps of fabric tied around her feet to serve as shoes.
“I asked who has been tending this prisoner!” Aaron shouted.
Henri jumped at his side, beginning to babble. “Sire, I had no idea the creature was housed so pitifully. This was none of my—”
“Creature? You call this girl a creature and expect me to believe you meant for her to be treated well?” Aaron turned on the shorter, aging man, for once not caring that Henri had helped direct the course of the nation when he had still been in diapers.
“She’s not a girl, Sire. She’s Fae, and the fairy responsible for your brother’s loss.”
“Johann is responsible for his own loss for being fool enough to venture into an enchanted castle. Just as you are responsible for torturing this woman.”
Henri’s rheumy eyes grew wide as he realized the depth of his mistake. “I gave orders for her to be secured, Sire. Not treated like an animal. I swear it.”
“You were in charge of this country in my absence and you failed me, Henri,” Aaron said quietly, his rage cooling into a cold knot of certainty inside his chest. “Your services are no longer needed. You are relieved of your duties.”