He tilts his head. I stare until his features blur, wishing again for my glasses. Something about his face is familiar…
“Don’t care about looks?” he asks bitterly. “Only how much money a guy has?”
I raise my chin. “You don’t know me.”
“I know you better than anyone else does.” His words echo in my head, triggering deja vu. I tilt my head, chasing the memory, but it disappears.
“What do you know about me?” At some point in the past moments, I’ve taken his hand. He turns my pale one over his, studying it as if it’s a bird flown into his hands, fragile and precious.
“You’ve always tried to be what your father wanted. But you’re more than that.”
I close my eyes, remembering another time, another moment, another man telling me these things. But that man was kind, gentle. Nothing like the Beast.
“What did my father want me to be?”
“Hope. A lifeline. A savior. But he failed.”
I flinch, drawing my hand back.
“You both did.”
I stare at the fire. “You’re speaking of my mother.”
“Yes.”
“We tried to save her.”
“It wasn’t your burden.”
“Yes it is.”
“Why? Because you can profit from it?” he sneers.
“What happened to you?” I ask, rising up on my knees before him. “Who hurt you?”
His face hardens. “They took everything from me.”
“Who? My father?” When he doesn’t answer, I add, “Adam?”
Large hands close over my shoulders, shaking me hard. “Do not speak his name!” he roars.
“Please,” I cry. “I’m not with Adam. I never have been.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Now the Beast is on his feet, tugging me up. Oh gods, will he put me back in the tower?
“Please, I just want to understand—” I plead as he drags me down the hall. Past the door that leads to the tower. I relax, only to stiffen again when he drags me to another door, and down a dark staircase. The temperature begins to drop again. “You’re scaring me!”
“He won’t ever have you.”
“Where are you taking me?” I all but shriek as he leads me down the freezing stone corridor, holding my upper arm in a vice grip.
“Finding out the truth since I can’t trust a word from your lips,” he growls, shoving open a heavy wooden door and dragging me into a dark room.
He lets go of me only once we’re inside. For a second, I’m left breathing hard in the pitch black. Gods, does he mean to lock me in here?
But then he flips on the lights.
“On the bed,” he demands.
I freeze. Every muscle in my body freezes. “Y-You’re not serious,” I stutter as I take in the stark, almost medieval looking room. Stone floors. Stone walls. The only exception to the monastery design?
The medical bed in the center of the room. Complete with restraints.
He gets in my face, his dark brown eyes burning. “Just how far are you willing to go to save your father’s company?”
I glare up at him. “You want me to say it’s okay for you to tie me down and rape me?”
“No,” he chokes out, sounding furious. “I’m a doctor and I want you to prove you haven’t been whoring yourself out to Adam Archer, as you claim.”
My mouth drops open as he continues. “You can walk out that door right now if you want, princess.” His massive arm shoots out and points towards the door we just came in through.
Damn him. Gods damn him.
“You’re a sick fuck,” I spit in his face. And then I stomp towards the bed and lay down, my arms crossed stubbornly over my chest.
There’s a beat of silence, and then his footsteps sound on stone as he follows. I force myself not to close my eyes as he looms over me. The other thing about the room that’s modern: the lights overhead. There’s plenty of light.
So much light that when the Beast—what I’ve taken to calling him in my head—reaches into a cabinet underneath the bed and pulls out scissors, I can see exactly what he’s doing.
And when he proceeds to reach for the hem of my sweater and starts to cut it up the middle, I know he can see all of me as he exposes me to the open air.
My eyes shoot to his as my breaths get shorter but he seems suddenly calm. Clinical? No, just extremely focused on what he’s doing, I think. This is officially the craziest freaking thing that I’ve ever done in my life. How the hell did I get myself into this situation?
I’m not sure of anything at the moment, but before I even really wrap my head around what’s happening, he’s opened my top and exposed my bra.
My breath hitches and his eyes finally move up and meet mine. All the hostility from moments earlier is gone. There’s…gentleness there? No, that can’t be right. He’s a beast. A monster who’s threatening everything—
“I won’t hurt you,” he says, his voice still gruff but softer than I’ve ever heard it. And then his huge, warm hand takes my wrist, drawing my arm away from my body. He peels my now open sweater off of my arm and then, slowly, gently, his eyes still on mine, he lifts my arm above my head and secures it in a padded wrist restraint.
He leans in close as he does it and when I next breathe in, all I inhale is…him. Pine and leather, but warmed by his body heat…it’s like nothing I’ve ever smelled before. My body wakes up at the scent and I blink in confusion as he secures my other wrist.
“W-why do you have to tie me down?” I ask breathily, trying to gather my wits back.
“No questions,” he says and I’m stupidly relieved at his answer. What if for once, for once in my whole stupid life, I didn’t question everything to death? What if…what if I just let this…happen? Would it really be so bad to just, I don’t know, give up trying to control everything for once?
So I don’t complain or question as he moves down my body with those damnable scissors of his and cuts my leggings off. The soft material gives easily and soon he’s pulling the shredded material from my body. I shiver, left only in my panties and bra. It’s cold in the room, there’s no denying that. But…I don’t think that’s where the soul-deep quiver is coming from.
I’ve never been naked in front of a man before.
The Beast can think whatever he wants, but I’m a virgin in every sense of the word. I’ve never done…anything. Ever.
And his eyes aren’t gentle looking anymore. They’re heated and his nostrils flare as his eyes scan up and down my body. He’s looking at me like…like the way a man looks at a woman. He’s not trying to hide it. He wants me. Wants me like that.
He runs his huge hand down my thigh, pausing on my knee, and then down my calf to my ankle. My ankle has never looked more petite or delicate than when in his giant hand.
I can only watch, mesmerized for some reason, as he pulls out stirrups from the bottom of the bed and sets my left foot in them, and then repeats the same ritual with my right. I’ve never been so, well, manhandled, before.
You should be afraid right now. You should be kicking and screaming.
But his touch continues to be delicate as he skims his fingertips back up my leg, and then up the hollow of my stomach, between my ribs, and finally to my sternum and up to the little bow on the front of my bra in the valley between my medium-sized breasts.