Page 26 of Beast

I look into the enormous, gilded mirror above it and see the violence all over my face. The puckered skin. The healed gauges. The pink lines crisscrossing along my skin. Echoes of the blade that created them.

The person who did them was right handed and favored the left side of my face with their blade.

I turn away from my reflection. As a rule, I don’t look at it often.

It took a long time, but I’m used to my scars. But for others, they take some getting used to. Even the club girls were afraid of me when we first met. But they’re family now, and it’s as if my scars are invisible and inconsequential to them.

But strangers… now that’s a different story. When they first see me, they recoil quicker than a snake charmer from a cobra strike.

Yet, Belle didn’t. When I stepped out of the shadows and into the lamplight, the golden-haired beauty didn’t step back in horror. Her eyes didn’t fill with fear.

Instead, something strange and unusual passed between us. Her eyes had widened, just a little, then her plump lips had parted with a silent gasp and my heart had pounded violently with an unexpected longing in my chest.

A longing to taste those lips.

To feel the silkiness of them on mine.

Even now my body tightens at the memory. But before I entertain it, I shove it into the dark recess of my mind where all the dead dreams live.

Dreams of true love.

Dreams of the fairytale ending.

Because fairytales aren’t real.

The rattle of glass in the window draws my attention away, and I glance around the room.

I never moved into the presidential room that all the presidents have slept in before me. After Dodger’s disappearance, I didn’t want any part of being around his things, let alone sleep in the bed he slept in.

This is the room I’ve had since birth. The same room where Guinevere succumbed to her hatred and broken heart and took her vengeance out on me.

What she did that night set the course for a very different future for me. She took my face from me. And my fiancée. But most of all, she took my arrogance and self-absorption and left a very different man in his wake.

I stay in this room because the gruesome reminder of that night keeps me on the right path. And I know I’m on the right path. I knew that the moment I saw Belle.

A knock sounds at my door.

“Come in,” I say, taking another pull from the whiskey bottle.

Mya appears in the doorway dressed in nothing but a see-through cami showing off her spectacular naked bodyunderneath. She’s carrying a bottle of cognac and a glass on a tray.

“I thought you might need this,” she says as she places the tray on the table, taking particular care to bend just enough so the cami rides up her hips and exposes her sweet shaven pussy.

She comes over to me, stands close enough to run her hand up my chest. “You look stressed, let me take care of you tonight.”

Mya is soft and gentle, and she likes to nurture. She also likes to fuck hard, according to my club brothers.

I could bend her over my bed, part her thighs, and slide deep into her warm pussy. I could grab her hips and fuck her until she whimpers and shakes with pleasure and pain. My body is willing. Jesus, my body is begging for it. And my cock has been hard ever since I lifted Belle over my shoulder and took her to her room. But I don’t indulge in the club girls because the guilt of my past still lingers in my blood, and I have no desire to be the reckless man I once was.

Yet, when I think about Belle and how she looked tied to the bed, a new wave of heat rushes through me like wildfire.

It’s been a long time since I’ve touched a woman in the way I want to touch Belle. God, I ache to climb over her and blanket her with my size, then watch her beautiful face when I push deep and slow into her sweet pussy.

Darkness sweeps through me, and I move away from Mya to pour a glass of cognac.

She won’t take it personally. She knows the drill. All the girls do.

But it doesn’t stop her from trying one last time.

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