Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
THE MASTER
Ismelled her long before I heard her.
Humans always carried a certain odor of anxiety when they entered my home. But she...
Her scent was warm cream and fresh soap with just the faintest tang of pride.
And underneath all of that, I could just make out the slight notes of fear.
But fear of what? The usual worry she might make a mistake at her new job, or possibly work for a monster?
Regardless, her scent made something primal in me sit up and take notice.
Beatrice had insisted she'd found the right girl this time.
I didn't believe her. None of the previous applicants had lasted long enough to make it past the initiation, let alone the work that came after.
Some had been loud, arrogant, and too jaded.
While others had broken at the first hint of discipline, others tried to hide their disgust when they learned what the position really entailed.
But when this one had stepped through the front door, wide-eyed and clutching her bags like they were a lifeline...
Something in my chest had tightened.
I'd watched her from my study, looking at the security camera footage like the creep I was. And slowly... surely... fell deeply in lust with the girl Beatrice had bought me.
She looked so small. Soft. And if I was not mistaken from the set of her shoulders and the way she deferred to Beatrice, definitely a submissive. Which was good, yet at the same time decidedly very bad because the girl was here to do a job. Not to be my bedmate.
I had dragged my gaze from the screen, but the memory of her lingered. Jolie Lafleur. The pretty flower.
Her name alone felt like a temptation.
And after my interaction with her in the study, I was even more obsessed.
She was everything she'd seemed from when I'd spied on her.
Soft. Deferential. Yet she didn't come across as meek. There was a quiet determination in the way she moved, and a spine of steel for facing off with a monster such as myself to beg for her job.
The more those big tears rolled down her cheeks, the more besotted I became.
The darkness inside of me relished the thought that I had caused those tears, while at the same time I worried that I had frightened her off before we could get started.
But she hadn't run.
Even with her cheeks streaked and her breath catching in her throat, she'd held my gaze. Even if it was only after I'd encouraged it.
No human other than Beatrice had done that in years.
And even though Jolie had trembled, she'd faced me and begged me to keep her on.
And the part of me that was still a man, buried under horn and fur and the curse that chained me to this damned house, felt something dangerously close to admiration.
The beast in me, though... he felt something else entirely.
He wanted to claim the pretty flower who dared to beg a monster for mercy. Rut her. Mark her.
I dragged in a breath, fighting down the low, involuntary rumble that rose in my chest whenever I thought of her on her knees.
Pushing away the thoughts of her submission, I stormed back out of my study to the dining room.
No matter what my beast wanted, I couldn't partake.
Girls like Jolie were not meant for me. She was here for one thing, and one thing only.
To do her job.
And her job was nothing more than milking the Minotaur.
Thanks to my curse, I could not leave the blasted house. I could not shift back into my human form. And I had to be milked. Daily.
All because of my own stupidity.
Years ago, before horns split my skull and fur overtook my skin, I had been a sorcerer of some small renown.
Arrogant. Brilliant. Hungry for power in all the wrong places.
I'd believed I could bind a creature older than time itself, an earth-spirit who dwelled beneath the forest floor and answered to no mortal man.
I had wanted its strength. It's endurance. It's connection to the deep, thrumming magic of the land. Instead, the creature had laughed at me and wrapped its vines around my wrists like shackles.
"If you crave the strength of the bull, you shall have it," it had whispered to me. "But strength without humility becomes something rotten. You will be bound to the beast until you learn to be humble. Until you learn that there is more to life than your greed."
Before I could do anything, my body twisted, the bones reshaping as my skin split beneath new muscle and hide. And when the transformation had completed and I was a breathless mess on the ground in front of the earth spirit, he had laid the last of the curse on me.
"This form will overflow with power until it breaks you. You must be drained, monster, milked daily, or be drowned in your own greed."
The spirit had left me then, collapsing the woods into a labyrinth and sealing me inside this estate.
My prison.
My reminder.
I had no more magic. No more freedom.
All I had left to me was the knowledge that I would need to be milked daily like livestock to keep myself sane.
Beatrice was the only one who knew the full truth. She'd worked for me even before the curse had befallen me and stood beside me through it all. Through every failed applicant, every woman who had run screaming or sobbing.
Until Jolie.
The memory of her trembling in my study tugged at something deep inside me. It was angry, aching, and starved.
I knew I should send her away. Send her to safety. But I was still too selfish. Too focused on myself to be able to free her.
I finally reached the dining room and forced myself to breathe evenly. For days, I had prepared for this new hire, my sanity slowly leaving me like a thread unraveling, the longer I went without a milkmaid to service me.
"Send dinner to the new maid," I growled at Fifi, the scullery maid who cowered in the corner of the room. "And when you're done, you can bring a plate to my rooms. I'll dine there."
She curtsied before rushing from the room to do my bidding, leaving me alone with my ever-frangible thoughts.
Thoughts of claiming her. Forcing her to submit to me. On her knees. With my cock rammed deep into the back of her throat.
"No!" I growled, gripping the back of a chair until it creaked under my strength.
I might be too selfish to send her away, but I would not use her up like a toy, only to be discarded once I broke her.
It simply would not do.
The temptation gnawed at me all the same.
I could still smell her, her sweetness drifting faintly through the halls, settling in the air. The beast inside me prowled beneath my skin, restless, hungry, and whispering to me all the filthy things it would do to Jolie.
I sank into the chair I'd nearly broken, nails digging into the wood as I forced a slow breath through my nose.
No.
I would not touch her.
My curse had stolen everything from me. My body. My magic. My freedom. I would not let it take the last scrap of my decency.
But even as I told myself no, her face flushed in my mind.
She truly was a flower. And goddess help me, I wanted to be the one she reached for.
I pushed away from the table and stormed out of the room before my thoughts could twist any darker. The floor trembled under my hooves as I made for the corridors that lead to my chambers.
Tomorrow would be here soon enough. I would see if she was brave enough to face me for breakfast.
And then I'd be brave enough to see if she would stay once I told her what she was needed for.