Chapter 52
CHAPTER 52
B ELLE
I’m in the dreamy state between sleep and wakefulness when Beast walks in smelling like smoke and liquor.
I sit up. He’s angry, and his knuckles are bleeding.
“What happened to you?” I ask, climbing off the bed.
He eats up the space between us and takes my face in his hands.
“No one touches you. Do you hear me? No one.”
Panic tingles in the pit of my stomach. He knows about Gaston.
“I was trying to be a good old lady,” I say.
He arches his eyebrow, but his face remains hard. “By not telling me that Gaston threatened you?”
“There was a lot happening at the time. I didn’t want to add more to your plate.”
“Add more to my—Jesus, Belle, none of that matters to me as much as you do.”
I swallow hard beneath his fiery gaze. “I thought I was protecting you.”
Only now does his face soften. “I don’t need you to protect me, little one. I need you to tell me if someone ever hurts you or makes you afraid so I can protect you. You are my priority. Nothing else comes before you.”
He claims my mouth in a kiss that is hard and hot, as if we’re sealing a pact.
When he pulls back to look at me again, a flicker of understanding passes through his expression. “It was Annika, wasn’t it?”
I’m not about to dump Annika in it or throw her under the bus, but clearly he knows she was involved.
“We both thought it was a good idea,” I say. “She didn’t tell Ryder for the same reason.”
“And about now he’s having this same conversation with her.” When I bite down on my lip, he senses my remorse and pushes a lock of hair behind my ear. He softens the stern edge in his voice. “It’s why you got so toasted that afternoon, wasn’t it?”
“We needed something to take the edge off.”
He shakes his head. “You should’ve told me. And I’m going to say the same thing to my cousin.”
“You will do no such thing. Her intentions were good. She tried to protect me from Gaston. Stood between me and him so he couldn’t touch me.”
“I saw.” He scowls. Obviously aware of what happened next. How Gaston slapped her to the ground.
“So you know that she put herself in physical danger for me. She doesn’t deserve your wrath, Beast.”
Thinking, he rubs his jaw and I see just how red-raw his knuckles are. “She should know better.”
“We made a mistake. We’re human.”
He lifts my chin. “Promise me you won’t keep anything like this from me in the future.”
“I promise.”
A smile tugs at his lips. “Good, now I can kiss you.”
“Then stop talking about it and do it.”
He claims my mouth and kisses me deeply, making my toes curl and my heart pound. This man knows how to kiss. Hell, this man knows how to set me on fire.
Speaking of which…
I break off the kiss and reach for his hands so I can inspect his bruised and bleeding knuckles. “What did you do?”
“I killed him.”
I lift my gaze so quick I almost give my eyes whiplash. “You killed Gaston?”
“Yes,” he says.
I find it hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “How?”
“I broke his face a few times then set the bar on fire and left him inside it.”
“Did he suffer?”
He holds up his hands. “These don’t tickle.”
I nod, wishing I’d seen Gaston broken and bloody after Beast had finished with him.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
I let out a shaky breath. “Disappointed.”
His brow furrows. “In me?”
“No.” I take a step back and sit on the edge of the bed. “Because I wanted to be the one to do it.”
Beast kneels before me. “I did it for you.”
I run my hand through his hair. “I know.”
“He needed to pay for what he did. It was a lesson long coming.”
I sigh. “I can’t believe it’s over.”
He runs his palms up my thighs. And I’m not going to lie. It’s a turn on to know they’re the very hands that broke Gaston’s face not more than an hour ago.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “He was your brother.”
“He stopped being my brother the day he attacked you.” His fingers find the edge of my panties. “Now can we stop talking about him? I’m hungry for my wife. I want to put tonight behind me by getting behind you.”
I laugh at his cheesiness.
But the laughing fades and the moaning starts when he rips off my panties and buries his face between my legs.