Iona
An uncontrollable shiver ran through me and I pulled the blanket tight over my shoulders. The vision of the beast never left me. It haunted me in my dreams and when I awakened my breath was caught in my throat.
Perhaps he would grant me a swift death.
My fingers trembled and my grip on the coarse blanket loosened, but I grabbed the edges of the fabric before it fell. I turned to look past the iron cage to the long arched window. Dawn was approaching, the sky the colour of an old bruise, and I wished that I was back in my cell beneath the castle.
My fingers traced the place he cut. There was no wound, healing or scar and it made me wonder if it even happened. Only the memory remained—the scrape of his claw, the pull of my own blood leaving me.
The door burst open. The wood hit the stone wall and I gasped as the beast strode into the room, screams followed. When I glanced lower, I saw he dragged a man by his hair in with him.
The man was covered in blood.
The beast raised him up by his hair and I caught sight of his face before he flung him across the room. It was the nobleman whose house I had been sold into. His cry abruptly ended as his body bounced off the stone wall.
The dull thud as he landed on the wooden floor was accompanied by a groan before there was complete silence.
My back pressed against the cage as the beast turned to look at me. His chest heaved as though he had run the length of the province, and something dark and wet clung to the fur along his forearms. It was not his own blood.
There was no sign of man within him. I don't know what happened last night, but I knew my demise had grown closer. I closed my eyes to avoid his fury. His heavy footsteps moved back and forth, the boards groaning beneath a weight I did not think any floor should bear.
I turned to look at the bruised and bloody man on the floor. He wore a dark red bed robe, so it was difficult to know if he was wounded or not.
The metal clink and the spring of the lock yielding made my head snap to the cage door. I tried to scramble further back but his claws clamped around my arm as he dragged me out.
He did not speak. That was the first wrong thing.
I was pressed against his torso even as I tried to kick myself free.
He smelled of smoke and iron, of a night that had not ended well for someone else, and beneath it something coppery that was not mine.
My mind grasped for a reason—had I overstepped, touching Borin, sitting too long in the kitchen, daring to ask him how he still lived—but none of it fit the size of what was coming off him now.
This was not punishment. This was something older than me, and I only happened to be standing in its path.
I floundered in the air until I landed on the bed.
He did not move at once. He stood over me, chest heaving as though the running had not stopped even now that his feet were still, and for a moment there was only his breath and mine, uneven in different rhythms, filling the space between us.
I could not see his eyes in the dark, only the shape of him blotting out the window, and I understood that whatever had put that blood on his arms had not finished with him yet.
Then his weight came down over me, and his hand moved between us to unlace his breeches. Memories of my husband made my eyes well. The scent of mead and his sweat clawed up my throat as I began to gag.
His knee pressed down and parted my legs. I managed to draw a breath, but it wasn't mead and sweat in the air. It was smoke and blood. He smeared something cold between my thighs. A thick paste. He smeared it all over my sex.
I gasped as heat began to radiate outwards.
It was not something that I had experienced before.
My husband had never touched me with anything but contempt, and my body did not know what to do with warmth instead of pain.
My fingers clenched the soft cotton as I allowed myself to feel the warmth of his body on top of mine.
He chuckled softly through my haze, but his rough touch softened and he circled around my most intimate place. The claws grazed but did not cut.
“I should cut your filthy human cunt open to ensure you’re fully able to accommodate me,” he rasped.
I froze at his words. His breath was hot against my skin, and beneath the words I could still smell the violence of the night on him.
“But I’d rather you feel it all once the balm has worn off,” he whispered close to my ear.
My eyes widened, but his fingers continued to torment me and I ground myself against the bed. Once. Twice. Then a ragged groan left my parted lips as my insides clenched. His fingers trailed upwards and he smeared more balm between my buttocks.
“For the main course.”
I didn’t understand his words until he rubbed the balm around my other opening. That forbidden place where no man had claimed me before. I pushed myself off the bed, offering myself to him as though fornication were my profession.
What was happening to me?
His weight shifted and I began to pant, inhaling and exhaling while I could. He spread my legs further apart and ran his claws down my spine. I almost raised my hips off the bed, seeking more. I was not sure if I needed pain or pleasure.
“Please,” I whispered. “Make it stop.”
His claws paused at the base of my spine.
“Be grateful that I used the balm,” he said, his voice cold and hard, making me gulp.
I felt his member press against me. He held it there for me to feel. It felt too thick and before I could panic or beg, he moved. His hand grabbed my hair, pulling me until I leaned my weight on my elbows. I felt his monstrous length begin to fill me up.
“This is what I needed after a bloodbath,” he growled, tightening his grip on my hair.
The painful stretch of my insides trying desperately to accommodate him did not stop me from enjoying the sensations that followed. My breasts grazed the soft cotton and I clenched around his member.
“Such a tight cunt. I cannot wait to fuck your other hole,” he said, chuckling. “I cannot wait for you to bleed.”
The thought of blood reminded me of my fate.
Then he moved, slowly drawing himself back before almost lazily thrusting inside me.
I shuddered and moaned as I grew wet, clenching and unclenching around him.
His growl was vicious and the words that followed were not any better.
I took the pleasure along with the pain, all while part of me realised that I made him lose control. Before I could analyse the thought, he released my hair and gripped my shoulder. His claws dug into me and I hissed.
He cursed and rested his hands on either side of me before he began to slam his hips against my rear. His thrusts were so powerful that my entire body jolted.
I gripped the bed to hold myself in position.
It was easier to place the blame on the balm than to admit to myself that I was deriving pleasure from such a wicked beast.