Dungeon in My Closet Chapter 4

Amber and I left the pawn shop when the transaction was complete, and the moment the heavy glass door slid shut behind me, I let out a huge laugh that I felt like I’d held in for hours.

“So…” Amber turned to me with a confused giggle. “Ten thousand is a good amount in your world, I take it?”

“And that was just for the three nuggets!” I laughed maniacally. “Your world is gonna make us rich, Amber. We can get an apartment, and we can go shopping, and I can… I can…”

I sighed happily, and I looped an arm around her shoulder as we walked toward the bodega on fifth Aron had mentioned.

“I can give you a life,” I continued. “A good one, not one where you’re trapped inside of a bow and arrow constantly. If you’d like it.”

“Of course I would!” Amber sighed and leaned into me.

We met up with my two friends outside the bodega, where Aron had scored nothing but a carton of cigarettes and a can of Coke, and the two of them studied me with odd expressions as I approached with Amber.

“What’s got you smiling so much?” Honey asked with a chuckle.

“Ahh, just the sweet smell of money in the evening, ya know?” I smirked. “You guys still hungry?”

“I was thinking we could wander ‘til we found somewhere that smells good.” Honey shrugged. “I mean, I’m from the Midwest so I’d be happy with a hotdog stand.”

“Aron?” I prompted.

The guitarist still wore a long sleeved Megadeth shirt as well as a heavily studded leather jacket, despite the warmth in the air, and he just shrugged nonchalantly.

“I’m a garbage can, I’ll eat anything,” he said happily. “Although, hotdogs do kinda sound fun for our first meal in New York.”

I suddenly came to the realization that my new friends weren’t born and bred Brooklynites like me, and a grin formed on my face as Amber looped her other arm through mine while we loitered outside the campus gates.

“Nope, I’m taking us to my favorite pizza place,” I told them excitedly. “Domenico’s is the only place to go, and it’s only a few blocks from here.”

Both Aron and Honey made enthusiastic noises of agreement as I led the way, and then Amber pulled slightly at my arm.

“Pizza?” she whispered curiously as we walked slightly ahead of the other two.

I almost froze in my tracks and had to force myself to act normal.

She’d never had fucking pizza.

“You’ll love it,” I quickly assured her with a wide smile. “I promise.”

“If you say so, master,” Amber said and happily leaned into me as we walked.

Aron and Honey had fallen in line with us at that point, and Honey nudged my shoulder with her own until I glanced down at her.

She just mouthed the word ‘master?’ at me with a pointedly raised eyebrow, and my face heated up as I lightly shoved her back and fought the grin on my face.

It somehow felt completely normal for me to have Amber on my arm. A couple hours ago, even the thought of hooking up with a girl let alone being one’s master, was so completely out of my first day checklist.

Granted, the frat party might’ve changed that thought process, but it didn’t feel odd at all to walk hand in hand with a woman I’d somehow rescued from another dimension, in which she took the form of a hunter’s bow.

I decided not to question it too much and just enjoy it for what it was.

I felt inexplicably connected to the auburn-haired woman, and the sensation was apparently completely mutual, so I allowed myself the constant grin on my face as the four of us walked through downtown Brooklyn to get to my favorite pizza place.

Domenico’s was the only place I bothered getting pizza from, unless I made the ungodly trip into Manhattan, and then I’d just settle for dollar slices. But the restaurant I led my new friends to was the best in the city-- a hill on which I’d die on-- and it had been owned by the same small stocky Sicilian guy for however many years it’d been since my mom and I first found the place.

The moment the little bell above the door jingled, I heard Amber’s sharp intake of breath.

“Is this like a tavern?” she asked me in a hushed voice as her eyes took in the pizza shop.

“Restaurant,” I corrected her with a rueful smile. “We pay to eat here.”

“You mean, James pays,” Honey said with a grin of her own. “Right?”

“If I can’t treat beautiful women to some food, then I’m doing something wrong,” I replied to my friend with a smirk and then cleared my throat. “Uhh, Aron can buy his own, though.”

“Hey!” My long-haired buddy pouted jokingly. “Don’t I deserve to be treated, too?”

The server behind the polished wooden counter greeted me with a familiar smile as the four of us entered the place.

“Hey, we haven’t seen you in forever!” he said in a booming voice.

“It’s barely been a week,” I chuckled.

“That’s forever!” The server just shrugged and laughed loudly. “Four of you?”

He seated us at the same booth I always sat in and diligently handed the four of us menus, despite the fact he probably knew exactly what I’d order.

“Woah…” Amber murmured as she glanced at the leather bound menu. “The devil?”

“Diavola pizza.” I grinned. “Spicy.”

“No, thank you.” Amber wrinkled her nose again.

“Speak for yourself,” Honey said across the table as she winked at me. “I like it hot. Like your James.”

Amber looked confused for a second, and I kind of felt the same way. Honey told me she was gay, but she was obviously flirting with me, so I just returned her grin.

Honey went ahead and ordered a diavola pizza, Aron ordered a sausage calzone like a madman, and I requested a margherita with extra cheese for Amber and I to share.

Amber’s pale eyes grew wide when she saw how huge the pizzas were, and she quickly looked over to me to study my exact movements.

I picked up a long slice of cheese pizza by the crust, used my middle finger to fold it in on itself, and guided the slice into my hungry mouth like a true New Yorker. As I chewed, I watched Amber, and I couldn’t stop the smile that grew bigger and bigger the longer I watched her.

She gingerly picked up a slice with both hands, one on the crust, the other right on the point with her pinky finger sticking out, and she bit into it on the edge of the long side. I couldn’t help but huff out a laugh, but then her eyes became even wider as she chewed.

“This is so good!” she mumbled with her cheeks puffed out. “I can’t believe I’ve never had this before!”

Aron choked on his bite and looked round at Amber in sheer horror.

“What do you mean, you’ve never had this before?” he asked.

“I’ve just… never had pizza.” Amber blushed, and she shot me a look as if to make sure she’d pronounced it right. “But it’s really good. It beats hard bread, that’s for sure.”

“Hard bread?” Honey grimaced but then chuckled. “I don’t even wanna know.”

“Pizza is better,” Amber said decidedly, and she shot a dazzling smile at me. “James was right.”

“I told you,” I chuckled. “Best pizza place in the city.”

“It’s pretty fucking great, actually,” Honey admitted as she chewed her mouthful, but then she swallowed and placed both elbows on the table so she could lean across to Amber. “But girl, why are you eating pizza like that?”

Aron and I laughed into our food, and the four of us spent the next hour or two just eating and hanging out together.

It was weird to think how earlier in the day I’d had Amber’s soft voice in my ear teaching me how to handle her in her bow form. I’d shifted between worlds into a reality that resembled a video game, and then I’d just suddenly reappeared in my home city, in my college room, with a beautiful girl on my arm, and two new friends that felt like I’d known them for years.

Staying in Brooklyn had definitely been the right decision.

We finished our meal and then headed back toward campus. We’d accidentally spent a good couple of hours hanging out at Domenico’s because night had almost fallen completely by the time we left the pizzeria. There was only the faintest hint of sunlight on the horizon, a bright crescent moon hung large and low in the sky, and the residual warmth from the evening sun was carried on the breeze as our little group made a beeline for the Kappa Sigma house.

It was glaringly obvious that it was the first party of the semester because despite it only being about eight o’clock in the evening, the frat party was in full swing already.

The Kappa Sigma house was a hulking four floor brownstone, with the front facing windows covered proudly in various different flags and sigils of the college fraternity. The loud music thumped like a heartbeat from within, the stoop was already littered with party stragglers, and I could see that some were slugging malt liquor from brown paper bags while others stood beneath clouds of pearly smoke with white tipped cigarettes between their fingers.

“I meant to ask you earlier…” Amber murmured under her breath, and her grip on my hand tightened. “Are these… Are these all buildings that people live in?”

“Yeah, this is just a frat house,” I chuckled lightly. “Nothing special.”

“But it’s huge…” she murmured as her eyes traveled skyward. “And there’s just so many… All bunched in together.”

“This is only the city,” I assured her. “It gets a lot more rural. This is just a very… Busy place.”

“I’ll say…” Amber breathed as she brought her wide eyes down to meet mine. “Don’t leave me.”

“I would never.” I squeezed her hand back and then shot her a quick, reassuring smile.

“Ready up, squad!” Honey hollered above the noise. “Let’s go and find something to drink.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice!” I grinned eagerly, and with Amber’s hand still gripped tightly in mine, I led the way into the booming frat house.

Inside was somehow even more chaotic than outside. There was nothing to light the place other than several bunches of haphazard string lights thrust up into the stairwell, and the living room appeared to have some sort of strobe light pumping in time to the music that hammered from a set of DJ decks standing in front of the mantel.

The place smelled of cheap perfume and wine coolers, as well as questionable clouds of smoke and the twang of sweat. It was also packed to the rafters, and we somehow managed to push past a bunch of girls that had glittery eyeshadow splashed on their cheeks like drunken tears as well as a stoner slumped against the wall with an expression that looked like he’d seen another dimension.

Finally, our little group finally made it into the kitchen.

“Are you okay?” I pulled Amber close to me so I could mutter in her ear above the thumping music.

She looked up at me with a sparkle of excitement in her pale blue eyes, and a breathless giggle escaped her shapely pink lips as she quickly nodded.

“I’m okay!” she told me as she instinctively leaned against me. “I think! It’s just so… Loud.”

“Yeah, frat parties tend to be like that.” I laughed.

“This is normal?” Amber asked and gestured helplessly at the chaos of the kitchen, where liquor bottles and red cups and ice buckets littered the island in the center.

“Pretty much,” I admitted. “College is for partying first, studying second.”

“That seems… Counterproductive.” Amber giggled. “But alcohol I know well. I used to be able to drink most of the big loutish woodsmen under the table, in the tavern back home.”

“I have no doubt that you did.” I grinned before we were interrupted by Aron’s incredulous snort.

“Woodsmen?” my long-haired friend scoffed. “Tavern? Where are you from, Amber?”

“Somewhere with a lot more green,” Amber said with a light laugh of her own, and she shot me a look to wait for a reassuring nod. “But I like it here. It’s different.”

“So you’re a small-towner like me, then?” Aron nodded understandingly as he shuffled over to the island in search of a drink. “I get it.”

“You’re doing great,” I whispered in Amber’s ear.

“It’s kinda crazy, but…” she glanced around at me with her blue eyes glinting. “Still nothing on fighting a troll in a river with you.”

“A troll?” Honey turned around with a disbelieving smile on her face.

“Ahh, video game,” I quickly explained as a bubble of panic ran up my spine. “We run raids together.”

“Right.” Amber nodded confidently, despite not having a damn clue what I was talking about and she frowned at me in panic which only made a laugh escape my mouth.

“You fucking nerds.” Honey laughed loudly and then pulled a bottle of whiskey out from behind her back with a smirk. “You’re lucky you’re both cute. Let’s drink.”

“I’m guessing ice is a long distant memory?” Aron sighed as he took the bottle. “I guess I can drink it neat, like a neanderthal.”

“Amber?” Honey grinned across at my girl. “Whiskey?”

“I, ahh…” I faltered a little as Amber wrapped her slim fingers around the neck of the bottle.

She turned to me with a sly smirk, and for the first time since she’d fallen through that portal with me, she looked confident instead of bewildered at her environment. Then she poured herself a drink and set the bottle back down on the kitchen counter, where it immediately got scooped up by a passing frat boy.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she took one slow step toward me, and then right as she got within touching distance, she took a long sip of whiskey, licked a stray drop from her bottom lip, and stood on the tips of her toes to mutter into my ear.

“We may be from different worlds, James from Brooklyn…” she murmured, and she was so close I could feel her soft breath against the side of my neck. “But whiskey is universal. I’ve seen people drink it before, and I’ve always wanted to… taste it.”

“That is unfairly hot,” I muttered in reply as I watched her take a step back.

“Yeah, I can’t watch this all night.” Honey threw her hands up and slugged her drink. “You guys are sickeningly adorable.”

“If I find you fucking in the bathroom when I need to pee, I’m breaking down the door,” Aron said nonchalantly, and then shot me a wink over his shoulder as he left in the opposite direction.

“Okay so, you have magic in your world, I have pizza here, and we both have whiskey… I wonder what else we have that’s universal?” I leaned against the kitchen counter as Amber ran her fingertip over the rim of her whiskey glass and looked up at me with sparkling eyes.

“Well, the more we get to know each other, the more we’ll find out.” Amber smiled at me as she took another sip of whiskey. “Your world is… Very strange. No one carries their weapons for some reason, and your carriages and carts are made from metal and smell worse than a horse after a week-long trek.”

“Granted, your dimension has a slightly different version of natural beauty than New York does.” I chuckled ruefully. “But that’s not to say it can’t be beautiful in its own way. Like when the sun sets down the avenues. Or the Rockefeller tree when it’s lit up during the holidays.”

“What’s a Rockefeller tree?” Amber giggled in confusion. “I’ve not heard of those types of trees.”

“It’s not the name of the tree, it’s the name of the place where it stands,” I tried to explain, but my words were starting to get jumbled in my head the more I fought to explain my entire world to her. “I’ll show you one day. The holidays here are incredible.”

“Holidays?” Amber asked and cocked her head curiously. “Like the solstice?”

“I guess that’s kinda what it’s based off.” I nodded. “God, I don’t know how to explain everything, there’s just so much.”

“I’ll learn,” Amber said as she lifted her chin confidently. “As long as I’m with you.”

My two friends had left me alone in the kitchen with Amber, and although the room was still packed with various different pockets of people, it felt like it was just the two of us. That insatiable pull I had toward her was made stronger by the low lighting, pounding music, and warmth of whiskey as it traveled down my throat and past my chest, and she seemed to feel the same because her eyes sparkled still, and she silently insisted on being at least within touching distance of me.

“This is normal here?” Amber asked me with a slight chuckle as we watched a meathead frat boy with sandy blond hair and sunken eyes shotgun a beer to raucous cheers from the crowd.

“Pretty much.” I grinned in reply. “Although, frat boys are a completely different breed.”

“Frat boys?” Amber asked and cocked her head curiously.

“These guys.” I motioned to the group of them gathered around the keg, and out of the four or five that were there, only one had an actual shirt on. “The complete opposite of me.”

“I prefer you,” Amber immediately retorted, and despite it sounding like flirtation, I could see in her pale eyes she was serious.

“Well, I’m glad.” I smirked as I leaned against the kitchen counter again. “There are not many girls I rescue from different worlds that can handle a frat party so well.”

“You clearly haven’t experienced a night at the tavern when the bard’s in town.” Amber shrugged nonchalantly. “Now, that’s full of different breeds.”

“I don’t doubt it.” I laughed as I finished my drink. “You’ll have to show me some time, but I bet you can probably drink me under the table.”

“Maybe I could have,” Amber muttered as she poured me another measure of whiskey. “Before I spent a little over a decade trapped in another form.”

“A decade?” I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice, but she could definitely still hear it because her expression saddened, and she couldn’t quite make eye contact with me.

I watched as Amber fiddled with a thread on her leather dress and stared into her drink, and then she eventually just shrugged her shoulders.

“You’d think that time would have less meaning, when you’re not in human form.” She sighed heavily and shook her head, so her auburn hair fell in front of her face. “But I felt every single day pass, from sun up to sun down, stuck in the same damn spot under that tree. I don’t know the exact time, but a decade is about where I managed to count to.”

“Do you have any idea how you ended up like that?” I asked her in a gentle voice.

“I don’t, no,” Amber murmured and then shook her hair out so she could look up at me with big round eyes. “I don’t have any memory of how I came to live with this curse. I have vague memories of my old master, but more just… Fleeting images. Like I can’t quite remember fully, just the odd thing crops up… Like whiskey.”

She trailed off with a smile, but it was still tinged with a little sadness.

“That must’ve been awful.” I sighed and instinctively placed a hand on her shoulder as a way of comfort. “To be so alone.”

Amber glanced at my hand where my fingers touched her soft skin, and a smile began to tug at the corners of her mouth.

“It was.” She nodded and then brought her pale gray-blue eyes up to meet mine. “But you were worth the wait, master.”

I felt a sudden heat in my chest as our eyes locked, and I realized just how badly I wanted to kiss her, because the moment our eyes met every single nerve ending in my body was suddenly on fucking fire.

Her lips were shaped almost like a heart, plump and the same shade of pink as the inside of a seashell, and as we silently continued to stare at each other, with the chaos of a college party raging around us, I wanted nothing more than to press my mouth up against hers and taste the whiskey on her tongue.

Amber could definitely sense my desire for her, because the slight smile turned into a full blown smirk, and I was about to make a heavily flirtatious reply when I was suddenly interrupted by a loud and drunken voice.

“Now, how the fuck have I never seen you around before, gorgeous?” A shirtless guy with a backwards baseball cap suddenly had an arm around Amber, and his hooded eyes couldn’t tear themselves away from the admittedly enticing sight of her cleavage.

She just grimaced as he leaned down to speak to her, and a sudden red rage ignited in my chest at the sight of his mouth so close to her neck.

“Back off, buddy,” I warned him.

The frat boy blinked slowly and eventually turned to face me with a smarmy grin on his drunken face, still with his arm clasped tightly around Amber’s waist.

“Or what, first year?” he snickered as he took a long drink of beer from the red plastic cup in his free hand.

“I said back off,” I repeated again in as calm a voice as I could muster.

I suddenly realized most occupants of the frat house kitchen had eyes on us as the shirtless guy stared me down, and I didn’t particularly feel like getting into a fight at my first party of the semester, but the sight of his sweaty arm around Amber’s waist had my entire bloodstream flooded with fury.

I was psyching myself up to get into a brawl with the guy, but suddenly Amber whipped around in one fluid motion and pushed the guy away from her so hard that he almost stumbled into the kitchen counter with a grunt.

“I’m not interested,” she said flatly as the frat boy whirled around, and then she raised her voice so everyone in the kitchen could hear her. “I’m with James. I’m his, and no one else’s!”

“Mine, huh?” I grinned down at the gorgeous redhead as I put my arm around her.

“Yes,” she cooed softly. “Yours, master.”

I wanted to put as much distance between us and the frat guy before his dangerous pout turned into unbridled anger, and so I grabbed the whiskey bottle from the island as I guided Amber out into the backyard. He was too dumb to realize right away what’d happened, and by the time he had, we were already in a whole other part of the house.

“Yes, yours,” Amber clarified the moment we stepped through the doors and out onto the garden patio, and she turned to face me with my arm still wrapped tightly around her slim waist. “If that’s okay with you?”

“Definitely,” I agreed with a fervent nod. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m just… drawn to you.”

“We are bound,” Amber said in a soft voice and through a wide smile. “Like I said before.”

“Bound…” I let a chuckle of slight disbelief escape my lips. “I guess we are, huh?”

“Yes,” Amber said, and I could see her ample chest stretch out and back in as her breathing started to become just slightly more ragged the longer our eyes were locked. “We are…”

I became hyper aware of the fact my arm was still around her slender waist, and I flexed my fingers against her hip and let them brush against the soft leather of her tight dress. Then I watched as the tight skin of her throat moved slightly as she swallowed. Her blue eyes were huge and round, and they glistened with desire in the dim light provided by the raucous party behind us. Her pale pink lips parted, as if she were about to speak, and I felt myself leaning in toward her so I could finally taste her lips.

Then, suddenly, the spell between us was broken when we were rudely interrupted by Aron crashing drunkenly through the sliding garden doors.

“What the hell did you two do to Brad?” our metalhead friend demanded as he shook his long curly hair out of his face. “Dude’s on a warpath.”

“I’m guessing Brad is the dudebro in the backwards cap flashing his abs?” I asked with a heavy sigh, and I reluctantly let my arm fall from its place around Amber’s rounded hips.

“Yeah!” Aron nodded quickly. “What the hell happened?”

“He tried to hit on Amber, and I told him to back off,” I explained with a shrug.

“And then I told him that I belong to James, and not him,” Amber said as she looked at me proudly.

I stifled a laugh at Aron’s momentarily dumbfounded expression.

“To be fair,” Aron hiccuped as he hung off the door frame and shot the two of us a toothy grin. “Anyone with a pair of eyes can see that.”

“You wanna get outta here?” I looked down at Amber and tried to keep my expression neutral, but even just the potential of leaving the frat party and heading back to my dorm with Amber, knowing full well that Dalton Hall would be all but empty, was too enticing for words.

“Yes, I do,” Amber replied after a moment, and she stifled a giggle behind her fingers.

Even in the slight darkness, I could see a flush creep up Amber’s lightly freckled skin, and I watched as it traveled up her slender neck and then stained her cheeks an adorable shade of pink.

“No wonder Brad’s pissed,” Aron snickered. “You two are just too much.”

“Even more reason for us to get the hell out of here,” I shot back with a smirk of my own, and my fingers tightened around Amber’s where she held my hand. “You guys gonna be okay?”

“I mean, by some miracle I found a girl in a Slipknot t-shirt who absolutely destroyed me at beer pong, and the last time I saw Honey she was making out with a girl dressed as a nurse in the living room, so…” Aron just shrugged and then shot me a drunken wink. “Think we’re good.”

I left my two new friends to the chaos of the frat party and hightailed it out of there with Amber hot on my heels. It was never really gonna be my scene anyway, and I was glad Aron and Honey were having a good time, but I had a mysterious, drop dead gorgeous redhead on my arm who’d proclaimed herself to be mine for the entire college to hear.

That, and that alone, had been enough to get adrenaline shooting through my veins, but I also had a couple drinks of whiskey floating around my bloodstream, and the fiery alcohol did absolutely nothing to stop the growing desire I felt for her.

It seemed like it took us an age to get back to Dalton Hall, though it had probably only been ten minutes at the most, and I suddenly became hyper aware of how good her hand felt in mine as I finally unlocked my bedroom door.

“Are you going to send me back?” Amber suddenly asked as I shut the door behind us.

“Back through the portal?” I confirmed with a frown. “Of course not.”

“Then I can stay with you, master?” she asked, and her eyes lost their sudden sadness until they glinted with flirtation again. “Is your bed big enough?”

“Plenty big enough.” I grinned, and then I nodded to the double bed in the corner of the room, covered in admittedly too many pillows and a squishy gray comforter.

“Oooh, it looks so soft,” Amber cooed as she walked toward the bed. “Much softer than the ground and tree I was stuck under for all those years.”

“Well, I won’t make you go back there, if you don’t want to,” I promised as she bounced down onto my bed.

Her breasts and thighs jiggled ever so slightly as she sat on top of the comforter on my bed, and I had to make a conscious effort not to immediately cross the room and push her further into the mattress.

She leaned back casually so she rested on her elbows, and then she looked up at me with slightly closed eyes, and I just watched her for a moment, almost in disbelief at the fact that this gorgeous otherworldly woman was on my bed.

“I just can’t believe I’m human again.” Amber suddenly smiled widely, and she leaned all the way back on my bed so she could kick her legs as she laughed. “It feels so good.”

“There’s other things that feel better.” I smirked as I folded my arms and leaned against the doorframe, and Amber’s laugh suddenly died.

Then she swallowed thickly and immediately sat back up.

“Will you show me?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I laughed.

“Show me,” Amber repeated earnestly. “Show me the other things that feel good as a human.”

“I… You’ve never…?” I shook my head and then ran a hand through my hair. “You’ve never, y’know… Been with someone?”

“I’ve never gotten the chance to… To lay with a man,” Amber explained in a soft voice, and I noticed her eyes had become even more hooded with a strong desire she couldn’t quite mask any more.

Her pale blue eyes strayed from my face and began to hungrily look me up and down, and I felt my breath hitch in my throat as she subconsciously bit at her plump bottom lip with perfectly white teeth.

“Oh, this is gonna be so much more fun than a frat party…” I muttered under my breath, and I finally pushed myself away from the doorframe and headed straight for where the redhead was sprawled against my bedsheets.