Once upon a time, a ruthless virgin mafia Don spirited away three reluctant lovers.
The captive bookworm princess …
The enslaved billionaire heir …
The obsessed and loyal assassin …
He dressed them up in pretty clothes, collared them, kept them.
At his feet.
In his bed.
Trapped in his castle on the hill.
He’s shackled to the throne of the city’s underground, Lord of the Grey Wolfe Mafia.
She’s chained to him, but the hearts of these men are bound to her.
Their tale could end in happily ever after … or it could climax dressed in blood.
One woman, three men, a love story.
*This is a contemporary reverse harem romance, meaning one girl and three male love interests. The series includes M/M scenes, dubcon, and poetic kink, all wrapped in the guise of a modern-day fairy tale.
The Omnipotent Storyteller
Once upon a time, there was a boy who often found himself staring at the clouds, dreaming of faraway places and fantastical things. He was sweet, by nature, but like all soft and sensitive things, he was prone to dents and dings and cracks.
He was a side character in his own life, a throwaway prince with no real purpose. As such, he was left to wander until the sharp blade of reality cut into his throat. It bled the whimsy from him like blood. Pitiless hands placed a crown upon his head that he never wanted, that he detested, despised.
Still, because of his interminable will, he did the best with what he was given. He allowed that cold, cruel dark to mold him, change him, temper him. He became it. He embraced it.
But on the inside, that soft heart remained.
It beat with one, single, simple purpose: to banish the lonely ache that had haunted him all his life.
And so, because he was broken, because he was bent, he went about solving that problem in the only way he knew how.
If the world would not give him what he needed, then he would take it.
By force, if necessary, and with no regrets.
That is when the throwaway prince discovered his captive princess and the two other men destined to become entangled in the strings of her heart …
The Captive Princess
Peyton Drake…
Fairy tales often start with once upon a time, but they don’t always end in happily ever after. The book in my hands, the heavy tome with the gold embossed cover, it’s just ended in blood.
I close it carefully, reverently, resting delicate fingers atop its surface.
“Hmm.” I rise to my feet, skirts crinkling, and I hold the book to my chest as I contemplate the merits of setting it on fire.
“How was your book, honey?” my father asks, seated at the head of the empty dining table with a cup of coffee in one hand, a mountain of paperwork spreading out around him like overzealous ground cover. Perhaps violet pinwheels or blue star creepers or maybe even Roman chamomile.
Pages spiral, mountains of black-and-white documents with seals and stamps and signatures that could quite easily be replicated digitally, but to which my father eschews, blaming his failing eyesight.
I don’t judge: I’m a fan of print myself.
It’s much less reasonable to set an eReader on fire every time a story refuses to end well.
“Awful.” I slump into a chair, voluminous skirts pillowed around me. I’m still holding the book like a treasured child when, in all reality, it’s a backstabbing best friend with a vendetta. “The main characters didn’t end up together. He became king, and she ended up taking his assassin’s knife through the throat.” I thump the cover. “Despite her sacrifice, he remarried less than six months later.”
“Well,” Father begins, shuffling through some papers and then setting his coffee aside. He snaps his fingers and his assistant scurries forward to refill it. He lifts his gaze to mine, his eyes like raspberry honey. The skin at the edges is crinkled and weathered from long, tired years of business dealings and late nights at the office. To show for it all, he has his own empire. “Not all stories end happily. Perhaps the author values realism over whimsy?”
“No author should value realism over whimsy,” I argue, but this is a conversation we’ve had dozens of times before. Neither my father nor I will budge on the subject. “The world provides enough as it is. Too much, really. It’s toxic.”
“If you say it, it must be true,” he agrees, chuckling as I rise to my feet. I offer Franklin Drake up a faux frown, but I’m not angry and he knows it.
My thoughts meander along with my feet as I make my way toward the library. It’s a relatively small room with utilitarian wood shelves built into the walls, but that’s only because my mother sees the entire space as wasted potential. She’d rather I didn’t keep any books.
She’d rather I didn’t read at all.
“Miss.” One of my mother’s maids is waiting near the doorway as I shelve the offending title—I contemplate literary arson often but I’m far too practical (or perhaps too cowardly) to go through with it. “Your mother’s prepared an outfit for this evening.”
I blink at her, fingers tapping the spine of yet another novel penned by a long-dead author from a faraway place. A frown creases my lips as I struggle to remember which party or fundraiser or gallery opening was scheduled for tonight.
“The Gold affair, at Mary’s Peak Manor?” It’s almost a question. The girl is a new addition to my mother’s entourage. She fiddles with her skirts, and my eyes shift to her arms and the mottled bruises decorating them.
Mrs. Drake is not a kind or forgiving boss.
I huff.
“Of course.” I yank the new book from the shelf, flipping it open to study the pages as I walk. This particular story is a retelling of La Belle et la Bête (aka Beauty and the Beast). Only, in this version, the beast is … well, rather beastly.
“His large hands skimmed the pale cream of my virgin thighs, searching out the lace of my garters. Rather than unclasp them as a civilized gentleman might, he digs his fingers into my skin, dragging me to that uncompromising edge between pain and pleasure, and then he tears them off.
Buckles snap, and then his strong hands are shoving my knees apart. His hot mouth descends—”
I pause at the sound of moaning coming from behind the pair of double doors in front of me, the forlorn lust in my book briefly forgotten.
The maid reaches for the golden handles, and my hand darts out, snagging her by the wrist. She winces, but I’m not my mother. I learned my ways from my father, the ways of a gentle, aloof scholar whose thoughts stray more often than not to dreams and whimsy.
Reality? What is reality and why on earth would I ever want to live in it?
“Don’t.” The word is a warning. If the new girl hasn’t learned this yet, she will. My mother likes to play with the young men that work in the kitchen or out in the garden, and she truly hates to be disturbed—particularly by someone as insignificant as myself. “I’m certain that she’s left the dress in my bedroom.”