Pocket Dungeon, page 13
The gorgeous fox-woman began to chew on her lower lip. A part of me was terrified she would say no. It felt crazy considering how little time I’d had with the woman, but I liked her.
And based on everything she’d told me about her homeworld, I was worried about what might happen to her if she chose to go back there right now.
Yasha met my eyes, and I felt a small thrill roll down my spine. There was an undeniable spark of something between us, that much was for sure.
“I will come with you, Wesley Rhodes,” she said as her fox ears perked forward. “I think I would like to see your world.”
Chapter 9
I learned new things every day, like apparently, trying to climb a ladder with a hot, injured woman on your back was not, in fact, as easy as every movie I had ever seen would make it appear.
But after what was probably an embarrassing few minutes that only Mimic was there to witness, I pushed open the hatch and pulled myself up from the crystal dungeon and into my shitty, Chicago apartment.
It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the change in light, but sure enough, I had safely returned home.
And the goddamn power was out again.
I gingerly helped Yasha off of my back and onto her feet. I kept one arm threaded through hers and around her waist for support as she looked around my dark apartment with the widest eyes I had ever seen. Her pupils were practically the size of dinner plates as she seemed to take in everything around her.
“This is where you live?” she asked breathlessly. Her ears began to twitch in what I assumed was excitement.
“Uh… yeah?” I said. I wasn’t sure what to make of her reaction. On the one hand, she looked pretty fucking cute in the streetlamp light coming through my curtains, on the other hand, I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely excited or just trying not to make me feel bad.
I knew my apartment wasn’t great, but given all of the gold currently weighing down my jeans, that was about to change.
Before I could offer some sort of apology about how it wasn’t really that much, Yasha clapped her hands together in glee.
“It’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. “I have never seen a place so wonderful!”
My eyebrows knitted together. “Really?”
“Yes!” She still sounded a little breathless.
I couldn’t tell if it was from excitement or pain, so I gently helped her move over to my couch to sit down. It was just a plain red couch that I had taken off a curb when I first moved in, but she even seemed in awe of that.
I hadn’t expected a reaction like this at all. She ran her hands over the well-worn fabric like it was expensive silk or velvet.
“It is so… so…” She seemed at a loss for words, and I wondered if English wasn’t her native language.
I supposed it made some sort of sense. If she came from a different world, why would she speak a language that only came about due to the specific course of my planet’s history of colonization and intermingling?
Maybe the crystal also acted as some sort of translator? I supposed that was the most logical answer to my question, and I made a mental note to ask Yasha about it later to see if she knew. But at the moment, she seemed more than a little ecstatic over everything else in my apartment.
She bounced up and down on the couch cushion a few times like a giddy child, and it took me about three seconds to comprehend the wonderful things this did to her breasts before I abruptly looked away.
“I have never sat somewhere so soft!” she exclaimed.
“Did you not have couches on Arcadio?” I asked as I lowered myself down next to her on the couch.
I wished I had candles or something to light the place up, but at the moment, all I could do was hope she was used to dim dwellings at night time.
She shook her head. “No, no, nothing like this. Well, maybe some of the richer citizens did, but we had nothing of the sort in my home.”
“What was your home like?” I asked. She had told me a few things so far, but they hadn’t painted a particularly pleasant picture, and I couldn’t help but be intrigued. I felt like some sort of anthropologist doing a really fucking weird sort of ethnography survey.
God, I had been spending way too much time with Carrie if I was starting to use words like “ethnography.”
I wasn’t even sure if I was using it right, but I thought it had something to do with cultures.
“Very dry,” she said.
It took me a moment to realize that was a joke, and I barked out a surprised laugh.
“Because of all the deserts,” I said. “That makes sense.”
She nodded. “It affected everything. Oftentimes, our homes would fill with sand. We lived partially underground, in homes made out of the sand itself. It was one of the only ways we could stay cool, but as soon as there was any sort of wind, everything was covered. It meant nothing stayed nice for long.”
“That sounds hard,” I said. I couldn’t imagine living in such harsh conditions.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It was very hard. It was also very crowded. Creating homes under the dunes was not easy, and so they were not often very large. My entire family had to share a small space. I shared a room with my four sisters, smaller than this room we are in now.”
I looked around my living room in awe and tried to imagine having to share the small, congested space with four other people. It sounded like a fucking nightmare.
I’d had to share a bedroom with Carrie for a few years when we were both in elementary school, and we had nearly killed each other. I couldn’t imagine that being a permanent situation.
“And because of the limited livable areas in Arcadio, everyone’s homes had to be close together,” she continued. “It made it dangerous. Someone had to guard the crystal all night for fear of another family breaking in to take it.”
“That’s horrible.” My eyes widened in shock at the prospect.
Yasha gave a solemn nod. “It was not, as you say… fun.”
“But you’re here now,” I assured her. “You don’t have to worry about anything like that. There isn’t anyone trying to break into my apartment to take the crystal, and I–”
Suddenly, the power in the building came back on, and Yasha shrieked as lights popped on and my refrigerator groaned to life.
“It’s okay!” I quickly assured her. “That’s just my power. It, uh, does that sometimes. Apparently.”
Yasha relaxed ever so slightly, but she still squinted in the harsh light.
“Like I was saying, though,” I chuckled. “You’re safe here. I have all the water you could ever need, too.”
Her eyes brightened as she turned to look at me. Her ears perked up at my words.
“You have water?” She said the word with a reverence I hadn’t been expecting. It was so endearing that I almost laughed.
“Would you like some?” I asked. “I can get you a glass, or you can take a bath if you want? A shower?”
Her eyes continued to gleam. “What… What is a shower? I do not recognize that word.”
“You don’t have showers on Arcadio?” I asked, but it was clear that they didn’t. It just felt so insane and removed from anything I had ever experienced.
She shook her head in response. She was staring at me with such an intense focus that it was hard to concentrate on anything else.
I cleared my throat. “Imagine it’s like rain, but just for you, not the whole city. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes,” she breathed out excitedly, and her chest swelled with the statement.
This was the weirdest goddamn Tarzan situation I could have ever imagined being in. I wasn’t even sure which of us was Tarzan and which of us was Jane.
I had a feeling that despite being the one to introduce her to my world, I was still probably Tarzan.
I pushed myself up to my feet and extended a hand to Yasha. She took it without hesitation and shifted up onto her good leg. We were really going to have to get that looked at soon. I hated to imagine her trying to struggle around on it for much longer, but I had a feeling that trying to bring her to an emergency room right now wasn’t the smartest plan.
She had just come to Earth from some sort of pocket dimension and didn’t even know what showers were. It would probably overwhelm her far too much. Plus, you know… the whole “she has fox ears and a tail” thing…
Either way, I would give her a little more time to adjust, and then we could go get her ankle looked at in the morning if she needed to.
I helped support Yasha’s weight as I led her down the narrow hallway toward my bathroom.
It really wasn’t much, but when I pushed open the door, she cocked her head to the side in some sort of combination of confusion and intrigue.
“This is the shower?” she asked curiously. “I do not see the rain.”
I laughed. “Hang on. Here, you can sit down right here while I start it for you.”
I helped her move over to sit on the lid of the toilet before I bent over to fiddle with the dials on the shower. The bathroom was so small that we were still right next to each other as I turned on the water.
I heard the familiar sound of the water rushing through the pipes as the faucet started to sputter. It took a few seconds, and for a moment, I was more than a little afraid it was going to be one of those days where the water just didn’t want to work.
Thankfully, a second or so later, water began to stream out of the faucet and down into the small tub.
The look on Yasha’s face was something I would never forget. Her gorgeous, sharp features illuminated into the brightest smile I had ever seen. She looked like a kid on Christmas as she quickly stumbled up to her feet and leaned over the edge of the tub next to me.
Then she thrust one hand out under the downpour of water like it was the most magical thing she had ever seen.
“This is incredible,” she gasped. “You have access to this… all of the time? In your home? Are you some type of royalty and did not tell me?”
I couldn’t help but laugh while I marveled at her reaction.
“No, no,” I assured her. “Most people on Earth have these. They’re how we clean ourselves.”
She grabbed at the water with both hands like it was confetti. The sleeves of her tunic were soaked, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her ears were perked and alert as she giddily splashed in the water.
“Do you want to take a shower?” I offered her. “You can if you want. The water might get cold after too long, but you can adjust the temperature here.”
I leaned over to show her how to use the dials on the faucet, and she watched each of my movements with such rapt attention that I practically blushed under her gaze. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had been so wholly focused on me.
“It can get cold, too?” she asked. “Astounding! I would love to take of the shower.”
“Take a shower,” I gently corrected, and she giggled in the cutest fucking way. “Although, with your injury, it might be safer to take a bath instead–”
“No, this looks like very much fun,” she assured me. “I am very good with balancing, too.”
She unsteadily pushed herself up to her feet, and before I could so much as react, she started to strip off her clothing. I barely had time to process what was happening before I quickly turned to give her some privacy, but also, holy fucking shit.
I had caught a glimpse of a long stretch of tantalizing, tanned skin, and very, very perky breasts before I had averted my gaze. She seemed unbothered by the interaction, but the last thing I wanted to do was make her uncomfortable or feel as if I had only brought her back to my world for sex. That just felt… scummy.
Yasha let out a peal of laughter as she stepped under the water. I heard the sound of the stream pattering against her skin, and she let out a downright obscene-sounding moan.
“Damn,” I croaked.
I blindly reached back and gave the curtain a swift yank to pull it closed so I could fucking breathe again. Through the thin, white, plasticy material of the curtain, I could still see the outline of her body, and it was enough to make my dick twitch in my pants.
It might have been a minute since I’d gotten laid.
“Stay in as long as you like,” I told her in a forced casual tone. “I’ll set a towel out for you so you can dry off when you’re done. Do you want clean clothing to wear when you get out?”
“You have more clothes?” she sounded shocked.
“Yes,” I laughed. “I’ll put something in here for you with the towel, and then I’ll get us some dinner started. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
I pulled a towel out of the cabinet under the sink and set it on the toilet lid for Yasha whenever she emerged. I made a quick detour into my bedroom to grab the cleanest pair of flannel pajama pants I had and a t-shirt before depositing those there as well. She seemed so enraptured by the shower that she didn’t even notice when I came back into the bathroom.
I pulled the door closed behind me to give her some privacy before making my way into the kitchen. It was about then that I realized I didn’t have anything in my fridge, like, at all. How the fuck was I supposed to make the very hot, very easily impressed woman in my shower dinner from the meager things I had on hand?
The obvious answer was: I couldn’t.
Usually, I would have been a bit more frazzled at the prospect of ordering takeout, thanks to my meager savings and equally meager budget, but I had just beefed up my bank account thanks to the dungeon.
I’d have to go grocery shopping soon, but for now, I was more than content to put in an order for pizza from my favorite local chain. I had no idea what Yasha liked, and I figured she would be too enthralled with the shower to answer, so I just took a wild guess and got four separate pizzas.
It was, in my mind, the epitome of living large. I even got cheesy bread.
What could I say, I was a man of simple taste.
I changed out of the clothing I had worn in the dungeon while I waited for the pizza to arrive. I could hear the faint sounds of Yasha splashing around in the shower through the thin walls of my bedroom, and I bit back a smile.
I was happy that she seemed so pleased. She had lost some of the hardness I had observed from her in the dungeon, but there was still clearly a sort of feral sharpness to her that I found myself very fond of. She seemed like the sort of woman who could beat me up, and I suddenly realized I appreciated that trait in a woman.
Especially when said woman had the cutest fucking tail and fluffy ears to go with her ferocity.
While I waited for the pizzas, I let myself fully grasp everything that had happened in the second dungeon, or rather, everything I had learned in the second dungeon. Not only were there other worlds out there, but now I had access to them.
Most likely, at least. How I’d reach those worlds, I had no idea. I’d been led straight back to my own equipment room, but the possibility was there.
And it was distracting as hell.
That was the sort of shit that happened to people in science fiction films, not me. But then again, I supposed it was sort of out of the norm that I could apparently now pop in and out of fantasy dungeons on a whim, so long as it was every twenty-four hours.
Shit was fucking weird.
The more I thought about it, the more it made my head begin to ache.
How many crystals were there in the world? Did the people in charge of literally everything know about them? I had to reason that the government knew about them, right? It definitely seemed like the sort of thing the government would know about and tell no one.
But their mere existence changed the implications of so many things that I was forced to restructure the way I had thought about quite literally everything.
I could have continued to spiral down the rabbit hole of “oh, my god, holy shit, what the fuck” for a while longer, but the sound of the water shutting off in the pipes caught my attention.
Yasha must have finally decided she’d experienced a long enough shower for the time being. I pushed myself up to my feet and quickly made my way over to the bathroom door.
I didn’t want her to think I had just been listening to her shower, but that sort of had been what I was doing. I rapped my knuckle against the door.
“Let me know if you need any help on your foot,” I called through the thin wood.
The last thing I needed was for a woman with literal fox ears and a tail to fall while getting out of my shower. I had no idea how I would even begin to explain that to the paramedics when they showed up. That felt like the sort of thing that would end up getting a person sequestered into Area 51 for the rest of their lives.
“Thank you,” Yasha replied. “I am alright.”
A moment later, the door swung open.
Yasha’s long hair was more than just damp, it was sopping wet against her back and had begun to soak through the thin cotton of the t-shirt I’d left out for her. The flannel pants were a little too large for her narrow waist, and she’d been forced to double-knot the tie to keep them up over her hips. Her tail was draped over the back of the pjs and was also soaked, but despite that, she had a bright smile on her face that lit up my dull apartment.
Her sharp canines poked through as she smiled, and my stomach did a wild backflip as I forced my face to remain completely calm.
“Here,” I said and reached out an arm for her to grab.
She took hold of it, and together, we made our way back over to the couch. She moved a little awkwardly, like she was trying very hard not to show just how badly her foot was hurting her.
She’d slipped the thick pair of socks I’d left for her on, but I could still see just how swollen one of her ankles was. She really had done a number on it with the falling ceiling in the dungeon.
I couldn’t help but wonder how many other people had been downed by that same element of the dungeon early on. It was a miracle I had managed to land correctly.
Yasha sank down onto the couch with a grateful sigh. She pulled her good leg up next to her on the cushion and made herself comfortable with ease while leaving her injured foot extended toward the ground.
