Chapter 817 - 816- Mother-in-Law in Public

Chapter 817: Chapter 816- Mother-in-Law in Public

The capital’s lower district smelled like fish guts and cheap ale.

Narrow alleys wound between crooked buildings that leaned against each other like drunk men propping each other up. Laundry lines crisscrossed overhead, dripping gray water onto the cobblestones below. Merchants hawked wares from wooden carts, their voices competing with the clang of a blacksmith and the squeal of pigs being herded through a side street.

Two commoners stood near a fruit cart, elbows touching. One nudged the other.

"Who do you see?"

"Where?"

"There. Coming down the road."

The second man squinted. His eyes went wide. His mouth fell open. A piece of half-chewed apple fell from his lip.

"Why have she covered her face? After revealing so much, I can even see her panty."

The woman beside him, presumably his wife, slapped the back of his head. The sound was sharp. He flinched. Rubbed his skull.

"What are you looking at, pig?"

"Nothing, nothing, I was just..."

"Your eyes were in her direction. I saw them."

"I was looking at the fruit cart."

"There is no fruit cart there anymore. He sold everything and left because you were staring at that woman instead of buying."

The man swallowed. Looked at the ground. But his eyes, traitor eyes, crept back upward.

Because the woman walking down the road was impossible not to look at.

She was thick. Not plump. Not curvy. Thick. The kind of thick that made fabric weep. Her hips were wide, the bones prominent, the flesh heavy on each side. Her thighs, bare from mid-thigh down, were full and soft, the skin milky white against the grime of the street. She wore a skirt that was too short. Far too short. A garment that ended at the middle of her thigh, the fabric tight, the hem struggling against the sheer mass of her hips. Every step she took, the skirt rode up. The air, a gentle breeze that carried the stench of the district, lifted the fabric. Her panties were visible. White. Cotton. Stretched tight across her wide hips, the fabric pulling at the seams, the outline of her pussy visible through the thin material.

Her hands, gloved in lace that reached past her elbows, were busy. One hand held the skirt down. The other, uselessly, tried to cover her exposed cleavage. The gloves, pushing her arms together, had the opposite effect. Her breasts, heavy and massive, were pushed up by a corset so tight that the flesh overflowed. Her cleavage, deep and dark, was a canyon of pale skin. The tops of her areolas were visible. The nipples, barely contained by the fabric, created visible peaks in the bodice.

A collar was around her neck. Leather. Black. Buckled at the side. A rope, thick and rough, hung from the collar. The other end was held in the hand of a man who walked three steps ahead.

He was tall. Lean. His face was covered by a half mask, the kind worn at masquerade balls, the kind that concealed the upper face while leaving the jaw visible. His hair was dark. His eyes, behind the mask, glowed faintly violet. He wore a long coat, dark, well-made but not ostentatious. His hands, one holding the rope, the other in his pocket, were gloved in black leather.

He walked with the casual confidence of a man who owned the street. Who owned the district. Who owned, in that moment, the entire world. His stride was measured. Unhurried. The pace of a man taking his dog for a walk.

Except the dog was a woman. A noble woman. A countess. His mother-in-law. Dressed like a first class hooker, collared like a slave, paraded through the filthiest district of the capital.

The mother-in-law’s face was partially covered. A veil, thin and translucent, hung from her hat. It covered her nose and mouth. But her eyes were visible. Brown. Wet. Terrified. They darted left and right, scanning the faces that watched her. Every face. Every man. Every woman who glared. Every child who pointed.

Her body trembled. The trembling was visible. Her thighs shook with each step. Her breasts, heavy and barely contained, quivered. The skirt, riding up with every stride, revealed more and more of her thighs. The panties, white and stretched, were a beacon in the gray, dirty street.

’Why did I agree to this? What am I doing? What has he done to me? What am I wearing? Everyone is looking. Everyone can see. The panties. The cleavage. The collar. The rope. They can see everything. They think I’m a... they think I’m his...’

Her internal thoughts spiraled. Each one feeding the next, the cycle of shame and arousal spinning faster. Because beneath the terror, beneath the humiliation, beneath the overwhelming exposure of being walked through a public street in her underwear, there was something else.

Heat.

The heat was in her core. In her belly. Between her legs, where the panties, already damp, were growing wetter. The exposure, the degradation, the collar, the rope, the eyes. Every pair of eyes that landed on her body, every whisper, every nudge, every slap of a wife hitting a husband for looking. All of it fed the heat.

’I am his bitch. His breeding bitch. Walking on a rope like a dog. And I am wet. I am wet and everyone can probably smell it and I cannot stop it and I do not want to stop it and I hate myself and I hate him and I want him to...’

The thought dissolved as the street changed.

The buildings grew shorter. More crooked. The windows, once glass-paned, became boarded. The cobblestones gave way to packed earth, the surface uneven, rutted with cart tracks. The merchants disappeared. The fruit carts vanished. The people changed.

These were not commoners. These were criminals. Thugs. Men with scarred faces and missing teeth and tattooed arms. Women with hard eyes and sharp mouths. Children who moved like rats, quick and furtive, their eyes calculating.

The slums.

Viktor walked into the district without hesitation. His stride didn’t change. His pace didn’t slow. The rope, held loosely in his hand, tugged the mother-in-law forward. She stumbled after him, her bare feet, she’d been forced to remove her shoes, finding the uneven ground treacherous.

The criminals noticed.

A group of men, leaning against a crumbling wall, turned. Their eyes, hard and calculating, swept over Viktor. Over the mask. Over the coat. Over the rope. Over the woman on the other end of it.

One of them, a big man with a shaved head and a scar across his nose, whistled. Low. Long. The sound was obscene.

"Oh shit." He elbowed the man beside him. "Look at that."

The second man, wiry and sharp-faced, looked. His eyebrows rose. A grin, yellow-toothed and wide, spread across his face.

"Did you fuck that slut?"

"Obviously." The big man laughed. "Look at her. Collar. Rope. Skirt up to her ass. She’s been fucked. Probably by him." He jerked his chin at Viktor.

"Should we take her?"

The wiry man considered. His eyes, raking over the mother-in-law’s body, lingered on her breasts. On the visible swell of her areolas. On the panties, the white cotton visible between her thighs. "Come on. That guy looks wealthy. We can just pay him something. Or kill him."

The big man nodded. "Yeah. Kill him. Take the woman."

They laughed. The sound was rough. Practiced. The laugh of men who had done this before. Who had killed before. Who had taken women before.

The mother-in-law heard everything.

’They are talking about killing him. About taking me. About... about...’