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Just as Cora Walker owns mine. As she’s owned it for the longest time.
The beast has always known of her, as if sensing her presence in the heart we share. He has always searched for her. Yet we’d kept her away, fearing the beast would find her.
Because that is another part of the curse—if a promise of love and marriage has been made, then the woman only has to draw near and she will be bound by that promise. I didn’t know what form that binding would take, but it is the necklace I gave to her. Trapped by an innocent gift, given with the purest intentions.
Now my vow to marry her will destroy either her or me. Because the beast has scented her now. He’s tasted her skin. She fills his heart as fully as she does mine.
Now he will fight to possess her. Yet if she gives herself to us in love, if she consents to be ours, then he will be content, and lie tame beneath her hand, only emerging if she is in danger or needs protection.
But if she leaves and shatters the heart we share, the beast will die.
And I will die with him.
If Cora ran from me, I would welcome death. Better than living with the scent of her always filling my lungs, better than living with the taste of her skin always upon my tongue, better than living without her. But I am not ready to die yet—and she will be safe here until the next full moon, when the beast within me will not give her any choice.
And if he takes her through force, forever will I remain the beast, because he will always struggle to possess her and will never relinquish control to me again. For now, I can keep him leashed. Yet if I should change forever, a beast driven by desperation to possess her…
Better for her that I will be dead.
I can feel that death approaching, bitter and cold. For years, living here alone, I thought I’d known bitterness, coldness. But they were nothing compared to having her here, knowing she will never be mine. Knowing the end is coming.
“So will you say yes to the other, then?” I ask of her. “Will you give yourself to me with love in your heart?”
Her baleful gaze meets mine. Flatly she says, “So that you may use my cunt for your pleasure?”
Her fragrant, juicy cunt. So wet and hot to the touch. Wetter and hotter than even in my fevered dreams. And the honeyed flavor of her juices that I licked from my bloodstained fingers was the sweetest heaven.
I would rip apart mountains simply to have one more taste. I would drag a star from the sky just for the chance to sip directly from the well of her cunt, to tease her clit with my tongue.
Cock aching with need, ravenous for another taste, I softly growl, “Yes.”
Her response is silence, once again turning her beautiful face away from me.
I battle the urge to reach for her, to make her look at me. But I do not know how much control I have—and could not bear if she flinched away from my touch. So I use my voice to reach her, instead.
“Are you certain you wish to refuse?” When she still does not look at me but only takes another sip from her spoon, I tell her, “Your pussy wishes to be used for my pleasure. The moment I spoke of you giving yourself to me, the scent of your arousal bloomed like a flower. Even now, you are drowning in your own nectar.”
Her wide, stunned gaze swings back to mine and she stares at me, pink embarrassment darkening her cheeks. “Why do you say such things?”
“Because they are true.” Satisfied for the moment, now that her gaze is upon me, I lean back in my chair and reach for my wine. Its flavor is a poor, sour substitute for the sweet juices I’d rather taste upon my tongue. “I would ease that need for you. You do not have to get on your hands and knees tonight to take my cock. Instead sit upon this table and let me suck on your clit and feast from your cunt.”
Between her full, parted lips, her breath comes in hot shallow pants. She stares at me, then looks away, then stares at me again. All the while her arousal fills the air with its rich, heady fragrance.
All the while the beast fights to emerge, wild to have her.
But the beast has not wanted Cora as long or as violently as I have, and his lust for her burns not nearly as hot as mine. The first time my fist ever wrapped around my cock, it was she who I pictured—at an age when I was still too young to truly understand what I wanted from her. By the time I was seventeen, I knew full well, and my desire for Cora was stronger than I ever let her know. Because she was still too young.
Now she is not. And all of these years, picturing how she would look—no longer a girl but a woman—my imaginings were but pale imitations of the beauty she had become. I had thought she would be all softness and curves, from the thick waves in her ash blond hair to the gentle swell of her belly to the sweep of her calves into ankles. Yet although the curves are there in the softness of her breasts and fullness of her lips, she’s taut and lean, with an edge that sharpens her beauty to a painful degree.
With a shuddering breath, she tears her gaze from mine. Her fingers shake as she lifts another spoonful to her luscious mouth, then she asks quietly, “What happened to this place? Why is no one else here?”
“Because I sent the staff away.” Those who had not already fled.
A little frown forms between her brows as she looks down at her soup. “Then who cooked this? And who brought the bread and cheese I ate for lunch?”
“Twice a week, Mrs. Collins leaves a basket for me outside the gate.” Because I do not like to venture far outside the manor’s grounds. The beast is territorial—and so I am now, too. Everything within the walls surrounding the estate is mine.
Everything outside those walls is none of my concern.
“Mrs. Collins?” Her gaze lifts to mine. “Our Mrs. Collins?”
The pleasure of hearing that word from her lips—our—is like a fierce, hot embrace around the hollow ache of my heart. “The same. She is still in my employ.”
“But what of the others? Letting them go must have been a blow to the village economy.”
So she will look at me while speaks of the manor and the people here. It is only when I speak of marrying her or of touching her that she turns her face.
Then I will always speak of the manor and its former staff. “I am not a savage,” I tell her. “They all received severance packages large enough that they might retire, even if they were not of retiring age.”
She laughs at that. “So? People don’t want to do nothing. They want to be busy and useful. Well, most people do, anyway.”
I narrow my eyes, trying to interpret her tone. “Do you refer to me?”
“I must. What do you do all day, Gideon? Because you are clearly not spending your time tending to your estate.”
No, I do not. “I spend my days in the southeast tower. You are always welcome to come and see what I do there.”
“I don’t care what you do there,” she abruptly snarls at me. “I only want you to release me.”
Instantly the beast is right beneath my skin, urging me to take her, to make sure she can never leave. Struggling for control, I grit through clenched teeth, “Then agree to marry me.”
She shoves her chair back. The chain trailing across the floor softly jingles against the marble tile and she freezes for the barest moment, despair tightening her lips—as if she had forgotten the chain was there until the sound reminded her.
Agony lurches through my chest. In one lunging stride, I am at her side, cupping her face in my hands, the beast roaring for me to ease her pain.
But we cannot let her go. Not yet.
Bending my head, I capture her mouth. She stiffens against me, then softens on a trembling sigh. Her lips part and I claim her with a possessive stroke of my tongue, the earthy flavor of the soup combining with her own luscious taste and exploding through my senses. Ravenously I feed from her lips, until she’s clinging weakly to my arms and the scent of her arousal fills the air like the sweetest perfume.
Her blue eyes are soft and unfocused when I lift my mouth from hers, her lips red and swollen from our kiss, her nipples standi
ng stiff beneath the thin fabric of her blouse. And although everything within me—man and beast—clamors to take her now, that is not what we need from her.
“Tomorrow,” I growl against her lips, “your answer will be yes.”
Her answer is the same, tossed carelessly at me over a meal of roast guinea hen. “Release me first.”
Not yet. But I say nothing, cold bitterness digging into my throat with arid, icy claws—hot irritation prickling my skin. The beast does not like clothes, but I have taken to wearing them again now that Cora is here. Though I do not wear much. The beast would not tolerate shoes or underpants. But even a soft cotton shirt and my ancient jeans seem to chafe and constrict every movement.
As if heading me off before I can ask her to get down on her hands and knees, she asks, “My luggage is out by the east access gate. Can you get it for me tomorrow?”
“I already collected your suitcase.” Drawn there by her scent as I’d run a course through the grounds, because the open air pleases both me and the beast. “I took it to your bedchamber this afternoon.”
A chamber in the northwest wing—as far from mine as she could get.
“Thank you,” she says absently, poking at her meal. “What else did you do today?”
“I watched you.”
Her head jerks up and her widened gaze meets mine. “From where?”
From a distance, because I wasn’t certain of my control. The beast has become more insistent since she arrived. “The northeast tower.”
“You said you stayed all day in the southeast tower.”
“That was before you risked choking yourself to death.”
Because today she tested the length of the chain, walking across the great lawn. A few paces away from the main gates, the chain had gone taut, stopping her short. Yet still she’d pulled against it, futilely trying to break the links or make them stretch farther, until she crumpled to the ground in a sobbing heap.
The beast’s claws dug gouges into the stone sill as we’d watched, knowing we could cross the distance quickly if she hurt herself, terrified she would. And it was I who had held us back, because I didn’t know whether I would be the one in control as we rushed to her side. If the beast emerged…he would not stop at easing the chain’s pull upon her neck. He would not stop until he made her his.
