Page 47 of Beast

CHAPTER 18

BELLE

“Wow,who do I speak to about getting an upgrade?” I say, glancing around Beast’s magnificent bedroom.

It’s huge. And while my digs are hardly anything to complain about, this room is something sensational. Cathedral ceilings. Floor-to-ceiling arched windows. Some of them made from stained-glass pictures of Knights on motorcycles. A giant stone fireplace on the far wall. A massive four-poster bed in the middle of the room.

A shiver runs up my spine when I think about that bed and all the things that have probably taken place on it.

Which of course makes me think about what Beast looks like when he’s in that bed—sleeping, jerking off, fucking—then I remember what Mya told me. He hasn’t been with a woman since she’s known him, and I wonder what he does to relieve the urges he surely has. Does he lie on this bed with his hand around his giant?—

Behind me, Beast closes the door, and the noise knocks some sense into me. I tense my shoulders and brace myself for whatever it is that’s coming next.

“So what happens now?” I ask, not waiting around to be mauled by this maniac. I like to see things coming before they arrive. “Am I supposed to give you my body as a thank you for looking after my uncle?”

Beast gives me a dark look. “That won’t be necessary.”

I cross my arms. “You can’t blame a girl for thinking the worst when an asshole holds her against her will.”

He takes a step closer and towers over me, a seven foot wall of rock-hard muscle. “And you should think the worst of me, Belle. It will be safer for you if you do.”

The deep rumble of his voice and the darkness in his tone reminds me to tread carefully. Even if they do light little fires across my skin while making me think about him dominating my body as he crawls over me on the bed, his powerful body blanketing me in heat and…

Jesus, get a grip, Belle.

I take a step back and tighten my arms around my chest as if I can protect myself from my own thoughts.

I should be terrified of this man. Of this situation.

Yet there is something oddly comforting about Beast. I might be mad as hell at him but I can still admit feeling a strange attraction to him. Which is insane. Yet easy.

Too easy.

Beast walks across the room and slips his leather cut off his broad shoulders and hangs it over the wingback chair near the bed.

I take a sweeping gaze at his powerful body and the muscles straining against his black T-shirt. His thick arms are roped with veins and covered in ink. And his chest is so broad you could line two of me up against it and there would still be room either side of us.

My gaze drifts lower to his belt buckle which is a silver Knights of Saint Bon emblem. It looks heavy and thick. Lower, his boots are huge. And you know what they say about huge feet…

Oh my God, Belle, stop.

“You are free to spend the next twelve hours doing whatever it is you like, as long as it’s in this room,” he says.

“I’m assuming yelling at the top of my lungs that I’m being held prisoner and am not happy about it isn’t one of those things?”

He gives me a pointed look. “I thought after today that would be something you wouldn’t want to do.”

The reminder sends a bolt of resentment through me, and I glare at him. “Fine, what about some Netflix then?”

“Your wish is my command,” he says picking up a remote from the nightstand.

“Clearly not if I’m still here,” I mumble to myself.

Beast presses a remote and an enormous TV rises out of a cabinet on the wall across from the bed.

He hands me the remote.

“If I’m sleeping here tonight, where are you sleeping?” I ask, having to crane my neck to look up at him. This close he is like a wall of muscle and grit.

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