Bound Villain Read online

  Bound Villain

  By

  Antony J Woodward

  Copyright Notice:

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  There is use of Pop Culture references, with no intention of copyright infringement and are merely used as references and do not claim any ownership of copyrighted material.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Notice:

  Whilst every care has been taken and every effort applied, there may still be the odd

  grammatical or spelling error in this book.

  Be sure to remember to leave a review on Amazon!

  Other Works by Antony J Woodward:

  The Black Winter

  P A R A D I S E

  The Mendacity Games

  I Am Pug

  P R O G E N Y

  Puss In Boots and the Werewolf Cult

  Puss In Boots and Frankenstein’s Monster

  Rewind

  P R O G E N I T O R

  Ten Missing Children

  Other Works:

  Bitchcraft

  The Count

  Available now

  About the Author:

  Antony J Woodward lives in his hometown of Scunthorpe, with his Pug. A lifelong enthusiast

  for cathartic entertainment, he studied multimedia at college level before finding himself

  in the ever fascinating world of healthcare.

  He’s always excited to hear from you, so drop a message on twitter (@DirtyPrettyThin) or find him on Facebook.

  And please be sure to leave a review on Amazon!

  Dedicated to

  L Morris, S Hanley, S Simpson, S Bell, S Brown,

  WARNING:

  This book contains themes and scenes that some readers may find disturbing, arousing, offensive or upsetting.

  CHAPTER ONE:

  Once upon a time it had been a happy kingdom, but those days had long crumbled into dust. There was now a tension in the air, it was palpable in every corner of the kingdom. It clung like a festering damp in each corner of every pauper’s hut, every citizen’s house and even in the walls of the grand castle. People were unhappy, very unhappy. Times were hard and there was seemingly nothing that could be done about it. The royal consensus was that of keeping your head held high, soldiering on in the face of extreme adversity. Pretend everything wasn’t falling apart.

  King Edward knew it was a hard burden for his citizens to shoulder, he knew it very well. Despite popular opinion, the life on the inside of the castle was not much better. The royal family were barely surviving better than the classes beneath them. But, like most things, the lower classes didn’t see it so it simply didn’t exist. They couldn’t fathom the idea that perhaps they weren’t the only ones hovering in poverty. It was also something of a catch twenty-two, if he displayed the crumbling sovereign he would win his many naysayers over but it would expose his weaknesses and invite his enemies to attack. His enemies would not mercy his crumbling kingdom.

  So Edward was in a difficult situation. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place, the only solution was to fix the very problem that put him in this corner. Of course, that was a lot easier said than done. He’d spent many years trying to solve that dilemma without much joy. A decade earlier Edward had been a tall, handsome and gentle king. With a broad frame, long silky brown hair and dashing looks - he was the talk of many women. He was popular, he was respected and most of all - he was adored.

  When the ongoing trouble arrived at his feet it took its grave toll on him. His hair was now white and brittle from stress, the dashing looks had crumpled into heavy bags and cracking wrinkles. He looked tired, incredibly withered and heavily bothered. He was a man who had suddenly found a demon upon his back and he’d been struggling to rid himself of it ever since.

  It was a burden he carried pretty much alone, very few people understood the gravity of the situation. There was very few he trusted and confided in. While it was noble to spare his subjects the details of atrocity they faced as a kingdom, it only isolated him and made him out to be a cruel king.

  Taxes kept rising as Edward desperately tried to maintain the equilibrium. It was a ransom he was forced to pay, there was no way he could back out of it. No matter how much he hated it. The whole thing was slipping from his grip and he was powerless.

  As Edward took his seat on the throne, buoyed slightly by the slight buzz of music from the party around him, the hundred-thousand strong kingdom weighed heavily upon him. He flopped upon the bare stone seat, the royal cushion had been pawned off long ago.

  His royal robes hung off him, his frame skeletal and malnourished. He rubbed a temple with one spindly hand before using it to scratch his white beard. The party was forced, a celebration of an ancient kind that didn’t feel right in the light of current circumstances. It was hard to enjoy music and a feast when majority of your subjects were almost starving. Starving because you’d raised taxes that high that life was almost impossible to live. But what was the alternative? The alternative was certain death…

  His grey eyes slid over the few nobles dancing together, trying to enjoy themselves but failing at it. The feast wasn’t a feast, it was a spread of crude and cheap food. The kitchen staff had thrown it together, using what they could.

  “My lord,” Jasper appeared by his side.

  “What is it?” Edward sighed. His voice cracked.

  “He struck again… This time he bailed twenty prisoners from the -”

  Edward silenced him with a hand. He sighed again, this time louder, and rubbed his eyes.

  This goddamned thief was proving to be quite the bother. An individual who lived in the Enchanted Forest and had become something of a public hero. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor. It was definitely a noble idea, and Edward respected him for that, but it was also proving incredibly bothersome. He was quickly becoming a problem that he just couldn’t stop. Every search for the vigilante had turned up nothing, he was too well hidden by the public who adored him. Every time this thief struck, stealing back the tax money, he only amplified the precarious situation the kingdom was in. The thief and his merry men thought they were restoring the balance of things, unfortunately they were just making things worse. Edward had to come down harder, he had to squeeze on his subjects even harder to try and stymie the damage. Of course this only made the situation worse and then the thief worked even harder. It was beginning to feel like a cosmic joke, a universe pointing at him and laughing at his powerlessness.

  If ever there was a man Edward wanted to meet it was him, this “noble thief”. It wasn’t to behead him as the kingdom would have you believe, it would be to ask for his help. To show him the direness of the situation their kingdom was in, to show him his noble deeds were actually making everything worse. Show him how Edward was choosing the better of two evils. Perhaps even Edward could then feel justified, or even praised, for his sacrifices. Perhaps this stranger would alleviate Edward’s heavy wary heart just a little.

  Edward knew his position in history would always be one of terror. He would be the terrible king and he’d accepted that fate long ago. He just prayed he could fix everything before his son inherited the throne.

  As if on cue Lucien appeared on the dance floor. He appeared on the fringe of the small gatherings near the feast. Lucien was a peculiar boy, special in a
n otherworldly sense. He was thin like his father, tall yet carried none of that magnificence. He wasn’t broad, he was delicate. He was slender, petite almost. Pretty.

  Everything a man should hate in a son, but Edward enjoyed them. He was the third child, his only living one. His two sisters that preceded him had died not long after birth. Perhaps it was just the gratitude that one of his progeny had actually survived that made Edward forgive and appreciate his son’s differences. He idly watched his son scan the crowd around him, he recognised that dark look in his son’s blue eyes. It was almost predatory.

  The common misconception was that Lucien was a weakling. It was true he was all but useless with a blade, but Lucien had the strongest will of any man Edward had met. His mind was sharper than any blade could possible be and he was not easily pliable. His weak appearance was deceptive, he was just strong in different ways.

  Edward, as kings tend to do, had contemplated how his son would survive on the throne. His general conclusion was Lucien would be a wise king, capable of making the best of bad decisions. He would just need a protective layer of loyal men to act as a buffer and insulation. A task Edward reckoned he should probably attend to sooner rather than later.

  Lucien was thirteen, almost a man. His hair was long and dark, silky and fine much like his father’s had been. He was dressed in a royal blue jacket and trousers, a look finished with, and ruined by, incredibly worn buckled shoes. He found his target in the crowd and purposefully walked across the dance floor to her. Fabiana, a pretty little girl, with ethnic features. She was dressed in a pretty yellow little dress, pulled in at the waist and exaggerated at the hips with plentiful layers. This new phase of female fashion made Edward think of bells. Quite why women-folk had decided this was an attractive look he didn’t know. He’d never heard a single man remark how nice it looked, on the contrary many had moaned at the amount of layers to wade through in order to get between her legs. Fabiana accepted his son’s gracious bow and extended hand. She joined him on the dance floor and they began a slow waltz.

  She was his current flavour, before her it had been Bianca, before that Selia. He smoothly spun her around the dance floor and Edward could see she was deeply enthralled in her partner’s attention. He could almost taste her desperation to remain the subject of Lucien’s attention. Was it a genuine interest or was it because she had dreams of being a Queen? It always struck Edward that Lucien was always aware of this, he seemed to go to great lengths to weed out those who merely interacted only to curry favour with the king-to-be.

  “My Lord, what would you have me do?” It was Jasper. He had been standing patiently awaiting further instruction while his King daydreamed.

  “Nothing now… Tomorrow we round up the prisoners, return them to jail…”

  “But my lord, surely we should strike now?”

  “Let them have a night with their family… It’s Hallow Eve,” Edward dismissed. Jasper didn’t agree but he respected his king’s decision. He stepped back and disappeared off.

  The band finished the current song and the dancers stopped to bow to one another.

  “My Lord, you must eat…” it was a female voice. Edward looked. It was Megan, bearing a plate of bread and sliced cured pork.

  She was an attractive girl. Thick hips and a delightfully wide ass that Edward had desperately wanted to rut against in his darkest moments of desire. She was twenty years his younger, a paltry late twenties and still revelling in the warmth of youth. She was dressed in a drab dirty dress, as servants oft did. Her long golden hair tied up around her ears in one long string. Her face was round, soft and blemish-free. She was beautiful.

  She gave her master a small friendly smile but her watery blue eyes pleaded for acknowledgement. She desired him as much as he did her.

  “Thank you,” he accepted the plate from her. The air between them crackled with energy. With a soft glance she turned and left him.

  Damn he yearned to take her.

  Yet he couldn’t…

  His wife, the Queen, was a stranger to him now. Locked in a room that she refused to leave. The doctor had called it Melancholy. The illness had dug its wicked claws into her and she was now lost to it. She hadn’t bathed in a year, too lethargic to even try. She had spent the last few months wasting away, too ill and frail to rise from the bed.

  He hadn’t clapped eyes on her in over a week, it was simply too depressing to see. She was gaunt, skeletal like a figment of a terrible nightmare. She refused to eat, a delirium that the doctor had struggled with. Eventually he decided to knock her teeth out so the staff could force-feed her. It had been barbaric and horrific, an experience Edward never wanted to think of ever again in his life. Pinning his wife to the bed as a doctor smashed out her teeth with a hammer.

  Her latest affliction was open sores on her body, from laying in bed every hour of the day. No medicine nor magic was working, they were simply too deep and too ghastly to remedy.

  The smell was enough to turn you off food.

  So he’d begun avoiding his ailing wife, he’d lost hope that she would recover. He now secretly prayed for her to die, so he could be rid of her. He took a sharp breath as the idea crossed his mind again. It upset him that he was filled with such a dark thought, but he truly believed it would be better than the private Hell she had unleashed in the castle walls.

  He spotted Megan give a small backwards glance. She was tempting, of course she was. He was a man and he longed for intimacy, to be touched and be wanted. Yet his loyalty to his dying wife held firm.

  Come the day she died, he wasn’t sure what he would do…

  Lucien shouldered his mother’s ailments well. If anything he seemed to be enduring it too well. Was he not affected or simply very good at hiding the pain? Edward wasn’t entirely sure either way…

  Edward slipped a slither of meat into his mouth. It was salty and over-smoked. He knew why, it was to disguise the cheapness of the cut of meat. It depressed him just a little more.

  Everything in this kingdom had turned to shit.

  -------------------------------------------

  Lucien deposited Fabiana with her parents and thanked her courteously for the dance. The entire family was smiling broadly, all too desperate to impress him. While Fabiana had genuine romantic interest in her brown eyes, her parents had only financial gain in theirs.

  Perhaps they wouldn’t be smitten if they knew Lucien felt like taking their precious daughter to a backroom and fucking her wildly. Or maybe they would? Maybe they’d actively encourage her to lay beneath him and be ravaged by his advances? Maybe they’d even allow him to humiliate her, to abuse her, anything as long as they profited?

  Fabiana’s eyes glittered but he didn’t feel he could reciprocate. He liked her, but only because he yearned to strip her naked. He had wondered what her petite breasts would taste like in his mouth. Or what the dampness in her loins would taste like? Would it be metallic and moist? Would she moan and writhe as he slipped his tongue across her body or would she be just another precious princess star-fishing on the bed?

  He bowed and departed their company.

  It could be a very difficult burden being the heir to the throne. It meant everybody’s eyes were always upon him, whether they were judging him or trying to impress him. It was all in all very exhausting. Sure it came with certain privileges but sometimes they didn‘t outweigh the burden. He had a lot of liberties, ones that most young men could only dream of, he had an entire kingdom at his fingertips after all but sometimes it wasn‘t as fruitful as you‘d think. He rarely was left wanting for anything material but he was often left wanting of other things his status denied him. Like friends, they were difficult to keep when you second-guessed someone’s intentions. Sometimes it was the loneliest of lives being the prince of an unhappy kingdom.

  It was undeniably true the recent financial hard times had impacted on him, but he was still very aware of his privileged status. His version of poor was obviously not the same as the peasants
but he had empathy all the same. His hardships were just different to theirs, sometimes he wondered how he would fare were the tables turned.

  He crossed back across the dance floor, people instinctively parting out of his path as he headed for the feast. He wasn’t particularly hungry but it would fill a little pocket of time. He felt obliged to attend this ball, this hollow celebration that everybody was faking. He picked a small platter of food, aware that he was being watched as he did so.

  Would his many judgers approve of the meat he put on his plate, would they disapprove of the cheese? When he turned to depart the table, several women spun on the spot and pretended to be lost in conversation.

  Once upon a time it was amusing, now it was suffocating. Quite why they obsessively studied him he never understood.

  Now where to eat? Should he take his seat beside his father? Should he join in the watch of the noblemen bidding for attention? He decided it was the best course of action.

  Stefan, one of the servants, crossed his path. He was a much older gentleman. Nearer his father’s age than Lucien’s thirteen. There was a quick awkward glance and then he continued to collect silver goblets of red wine.

  They had a private history, a complicated affair that nobody would approve of.

  A secret that would probably be the death of the servant should it leak.

  The head servant, a man entrusted with leading the workforce, had deflowered the prince.

  It had been consensual, a relationship born from a fragile friendship. A bonding over theologies and art that turned into sexual chemistry. Now they continued a secret affair in snatched instances of time and hunger.

  He wasn’t the only one to have secret liaisons with the prince. There was Raquel, a busty young girl who worked in the kitchen and Lucien’s current sexual favourite, and Christopher, the horse-keeper. The horse-keeper who was decidedly hung very much like a horse.