Asterion, p.1
Asterion, page 1
ASTERION
SPEED DATING WITH THE DENIZENS OF THE UNDERWORLD
BOOK TWENTY-ONE
C.D. GORRI
CONTENTS
Asterion
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
Watch for the other books
Other Titles by C.D. Gorri
About C.D. Gorri
Asterion
Speed Dating with the Denizens of the Underworld
Book Twenty-One
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Copyright © 2022
C.D. Gorri
ISBN: 978-1-77357-456-1
978-1-77357-457-8
Published by Naughty Nights Press LLC
Cover Art By King Cover Designs
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Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
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Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
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No part of this book may be adapted, stored, copied, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
To everyone who has ever let their mouth run away without their brain,
It happens. Don’t be afraid to apologize, and moooove on (cow joke). Otherwise, you might miss out on something great.
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Del mare alla stella,
C.D. Gorri
ASTERION
He’s a bull in a china shop, but she’s not taking any crap!
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Fanny Meyers’ name is the butt of every joke in the Underworld—pun intended. Wanting to advertise her pottery shop, Kilning It, Fanny decides to sponsor a night of Speed Dating at the Underworld Café. After all, her place is just the thing for second dates, offering couples’ classes in the art of ceramics crafting.
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It all seems like a great idea until the two females who run it want her as a client! Can this half-Demon Witch survive a night of Speed Dating with some of the Underworld’s randiest denizens?
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Asterion is a former Prince of Crete, and he’s searching for his mate. But this bullheaded Shifter is a tough sell. After all, he does not like movies, hates games—especially mazes—and he loathes loud music of any kind.
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Can a spoiled Shifter prince and a Witchy artist with a bad attitude fall in love in this steamy paranormal romance tale?
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Asterion is book twenty-one in the Speed Dating with the Denizens of the Underworld shared world series, filled with saucy half-Demon Witches, brazen Bull Shifters, and more.
PROLOGUE
Asterion stomped on the ground, snorting puffs of smoke through his large nostrils. The heavy brass septum between the two holes was a torturous reminder of those who had sought to control him for so long. Magicked to be unbreakable, it irked him that his shifted form bore such a miserable token of less than happy times.
Growling, he pawed at the packed earth beneath his thick, black hooves, sending clouds of dark, red dust floating through the air.
Could shrubs and flowers even grow in this place?
It was the only thing that gave him pause as he surveyed his new home.
The terrain was rocky and arid—desolate even—from his point of view atop this outskirt of the scenery below. He snorted and shook his head roughly. It did not matter. This was home now, and he would find a way to make it work.
He had arrived after months of trekking through the unknown. At last, Asterion was in the Underworld. He gazed at the village-like settlement below, wondering at the modern looking homes and shops. Not at all what he’d expected, but maybe that was a good thing.
A perfect place to start his new life.
After being villainized and imprisoned for so long, he was more than ready to settle down and have a real life. The desire to find a mate—someone to love, to build a real home and family with—burned inside him like a fire that refused to go out.
Leaving that half-life up top was the best damn thing that had ever happened to him. No one respected him or knew who he was. The Minotaur was pure myth now. His beast had been misrepresented, feared, and hated for centuries.
But what could he do about it?
Not one single thing.
Asterion was tired of the false reputation assigned him—not to mention the grievous treatment he had to endure because of it. Accused of cannibalism, he’d been damned to wander the labyrinth near the palace of Knossos for eons with only one old fool of a servant to tend his princely needs.
Luckily, Alfred—the servant he’d once thought immortal—had died—well, lucky for Asterion, not for Al, er, anyway—and suddenly, a mysterious golden lock to the outside world had been revealed within the labyrinth.
Turned out, the old beggar held the key to Asterion’s prison—literally. And all this time, he had thought the gods had forsaken him! After turning the key in the lock, Asterion took a fortifying breath and then he’d pushed the gates open.
That first step had been the hardest.
But he plowed on, starting his journey on a positive note. He kept his head high, horns low, and passed the throngs of females who’d been left on his doorstep. All of them were sacrifices to his supposedly voracious appetites, but he had no use for any of them. Pointedly ignoring their pleas and screams for him to eat them, Asterion walked on.
As if he would stoop so low as to consume the flesh of mere humans. He was a Bull Shifter, not a Werewolf—and not just any old run of the mill stud. Asterion was the Minotaur—aka the Cretan Bull.
The only one of his kind.
A legendary beast with virgin fur and horns blacker than soot. His hide was pure white, with no markings or blemishes. The only parts of him that were not that untainted shade of alabaster were his beast’s eyes, horns, and hooves.
When shifted, his eyes glowed red like fire, and were heavily lined as if with kohl. He had enormous cloven hooves, both blacker than pitch. Those deadly appendages were strong enough to hold the over three ton beast that Asterion shared his existence with. Last, were his horns. Huge and lethal, those bony structures began as white but were black just at the tips, stained as if by Demon blood, or so the poets had said.
Heavily muscled, he was easily twice the size of the human world’s largest bulls. With smooth shoulders, powerful, straight legs, and a free-moving gait, Asterion’s Bull was the envy of all the other cloven-hooved beasts—even certain prominent members of the Underworld—if the rumors were true.
He supposed the rumors were true, since knock-kneed, bow-legged Demons did not bring in all that many sacrifices these days. Life was a popularity contest, even among minor deities. For Demons and monsters like Asterion, their worth was often weighed by what the common folk were willing to pay in tribute to them—sacrifices, offerings, prayers, and the like.
People always paid more for beauty, and he was one bodaciously beautiful bovine, if he did say so himself. As the females lining the exterior of his former abode could attest to, Asterion was not lacking for sacrifices. He simply was not interested.
Those virgin sacrifices with their “eat me” signs and ear-piercing screams as he walked past them—like he was some sort of human rockstar—were mooing up the wrong bull. He liked his women a little more subtle than that. At least, he thought he might. Being a prisoner in a labyrinth for centuries put a serious cramp in his style.
Fine—he could admit it to himself. The man had no love life to speak of. His experience with the opposite sex added up to some very minor making out sessions with a couple of virgin sacrifices who ran screaming the second they saw his, er, manparts swell. To his consternation and epic frustration, Asterion the mighty Minotaur was a virgin.
Freaking sacrifices, all they wanted was for him to devour them.
Gross.
And no matter how many times he told them—contrary to popular belief—Asterion did not eat meat, they would get all angry with him. Nothing was worse than an ornery female who did not listen to reason. After the first few times, he’d stopped trying to explain himself.
How many ways could he say the obvious?
Um, helloooo.
I’m a Bull.
Vegetarian.
Duh.
That was just another dark spot in his life. He’d had to put up with all sorts of nonsense from other Shifters when he was a calf, but that was centuries ago. He still recalled the fights and verbal lashings he’d received from his parents after he had gored a certain pug-nosed Satyr with his then still-budding horns.
The fight wasn’t his fault, though. The Satyr had called Asterion’s mother a teat-dragging, grass-eating cow. Two things were very wrong with that statement. One, his mother was Queen Pasiphae, and she was human—not Shifter born—and two, as his
So what if Asterion preferred a nice meal of sorghum and wheat silage?
And if he chose to spend hours grazing in rolling green and gold fields of tall, sweet grass or stacking bales of hay for fun, who was to say that was wrong?
No one should make him feel ashamed of his animal or his likes and dislikes.
Damn.
He still missed the old man.
Minos and his mother had been very good parents, but even they could not stop his fate. Imprisoned, scorned, and alone, he’d lived for so long in his own company—well, his and Alfred’s—that Asterion could not believe he was now free.
He puffed a cloud of smoky breath from his Bull’s nostrils. His beast’s inner fire always ran hot. He was a Shifter, yes, but he had other innate powers his kind did not usually exhibit—fire breath, unmatched strength, and a fierce loyalty he had yet to lay at anyone’s feet.
He had his shortcomings, too. Asterion’s animal was mighty, but also a tad hard to control. Quick to temper too. That last trait had cost him the one thing he’d craved throughout his life—a friend.
It had been lonely growing up a Greek prince with a giant, raging beast inside of him. Tricked in his youth, he’d been imprisoned, but instead of iron bars, his was a gilt palace with a large courtyard and a garden maze—the very reason he hated hedges to this day—but it was still a jail.
Left alone with only a servant, and the odd sacrificial virgin. Asterion never ate them, but he had attempted a dinner or two—disastrous though they’d proved—he’d really just spent the long centuries just trying to control his animal.
Freedom was frightening, but at least now he could control his Bull, and attempt a life. After hearing tales of Eve and Aphrodite’s Wednesday night Speed Dating events at the Underworld Café from one of the latest sacrifices to set up camp outside the palace, something had clicked—not the woman, who kept screaming and waving her hands in front of her face all night as if she were about to faint—but something else.
Hearing that news had felt very right. He might not know what Speed Dating was, but his Bull liked it. Deciding it was his destiny to find out, Asterion set off on this journey after Alfred’s fortunately unfortunate demise.
With his regal, and bullish head focused on the village below, Asterion loosed a thunderous growl, and pawing the hard ground once more for good measure, he ran downhill—to his future.
CHAPTER 1
Fanny Meyers unpacked the latest crate of red clay and stacked it on top of the shelf in the back of workroom 1, careful to keep it moist by wrapping it in a soaked cloth. It was a task easier said than done in the Underworld.
“Curse this heat,” she muttered.
Her shop, Kilning It, would open in a few minutes, and she had a nine o’clock class to teach. She loved all things pottery, always had. There was something so natural and magical about allowing her hands to create from unmolded clay. It was kind of godlike, she supposed, and bit her lip.
Not that she thought she was a god, or anything. But being an artist, a sculptor, meant working with her hands and creating from something so basic, the results often took her breath.
But how to make a living from it?
That had been her parents’ biggest worry, but Fanny had found a solution. A pottery shop where she not only sold her wares but also taught them. Kilning It was an awesome addition to the suddenly thriving Underworld. With so many newly mated couples making it their home, the village was really shaping up.
Residents were settling down and opening new businesses, splitting their time between the topside and below. She hardly ever traveled to Earth anymore. Being a half-Demon Witch kinda put a stop to all that. Controlling her witchy magic was one thing, but stopping her aggressive Demon side from smiting even the most innocent human joshing had proven difficult for Fanny Meyers.
She had her parents to blame for that, choosing, as they had, to name her after her maternal grandmother. It wasn’t like she got to pick. Besides, it was very fashionable in the 1900s, when she’d been born.
Being the only daughter of an Earth Witch and a Fire Demon, Fanny had lived almost all of her childhood in the human world. Her parents had decided to relocate the entire family to the Underworld decades ago, and now, they were cruising the River Styx for their hundred and twentieth anniversary.
So, yeah, Fanny was the butt of everyone’s jokes—literally. If she never heard another ass joke, it would be too soon.
Sigh.
It was always, “Hey Fanny, what has two butts and kills people? —An ass-assin!” or “Hey Fanny, bet I can guess when you wake up—at the butt crack of dawn!”
Idiots.
Organizing the workroom, and her thoughts for the day, she frowned as she tried to come up with a solution for their project. Her students had voted, and they were to begin work on tiny planters that morning. Not as easy a concept as some might think.
First, there was the very delicate molding of the inner bowl that would house the plant, then the design, and, of course, establishing a drain in the base. Next, was the problem with filling the planter, considering they lived in the Underworld where the air was so hot and dry, plants were dying to go there—literally.
You are literally not funny, Fanny.
As if she needed the reminder, she snorted and rolled her eyes at herself. The only thing remotely humorous about Fanny was her name. Well, not to her, but at least, it brought joy to others.
Thanks Mom and Dad.
Her parents loved her, but there was just no getting away from her name. Maybe that was why she’d built her pottery store and work barn all the way at the very edge of where civilization began in the Underworld. Her closest neighbor was a ten minute walk, and that was just fine with Fanny.
She liked her privacy, enjoyed her space, and was able to practice her craft in peace and quiet. The earthy scents of clay, fresh water, and minerals filled the air, and she smiled to herself as she strolled through the workroom and into the next. She set about making sure each of the three small sheds she’d designated as workrooms 1, 2, and 3 were fully stocked with supplies and materials. Then, she went on to the kilns and checked the temperatures were just right. She had two operating at this time, and they were quite wonderful.
Last, she crossed the small yard that sat between sheds and the main store, which she’d created out of an abandoned barn. Next door, was a huge open lot where a farmer had once tried, unsuccessfully, to grow crops—as if that would work in this harsh climate.
Today was going to be a good day. She could tell. The Underworld’s sky was a deep, dark purple with hints of red streaking through, proclaiming the coming morning. She had always been an early riser. Had to be, if she was going to get her ovens to temperature before her first class began.
The store shelves were lined with her art. She sold glazed and unpainted ceramics of her own design and took on many a commissioned work. From ornaments and trinkets, to statues and gargoyles, she worked wonders with clay. Fanny had many patrons, and they appreciated her artistry and designs.
She had finally found her place.
The store smelled like a mixture of clay, earth, and the straw she used to pack crates with her work. She turned on the lights and checked on the boxes that were to be shipped that day. Fanny stopped and ran her hands over one of the labels.
She was quite proud of the collection of tiny orb spiders she’d created for a client. They were to be mounted to the walls of the exclusive boutique, Metamorphosis, owned by her friend Arachne, and commissioned by her mate, Griffin Jara. The hot-as-sin Demon was a legate in the Daemonium Guard, and truth be told, Fanny thought he was scary AF.
