Chapter 15 Isabeau #2
I stood back, surveying my small accomplishments with disproportionate pride.
House slippers. Stored grains. Running water.
Beans soaking for tomorrow’s meal. Such simple things, yet each represented a step away from mere survival toward something resembling living.
In the face of witchcraft accusations, near-drowning, and being claimed by a beast, finding these ordinary comforts felt like triumph.
The scrape of claws against stone alerted me to Beast’s return before I saw him coming through the back door to this kitchen.
I glanced up from the wheat grinder I’d been examining, wiping dusty hands against the faded fabric of my borrowed dress.
But the creature that appeared in the kitchen doorway wasn’t the same one who’d left me hours ago.
Oh, he looked the same physically. His massive body covered in that rich brown fur, amber eyes, black horns curving from his skull, but something fundamental had changed.
His movements were jerky, anxious, as he paced the perimeter of the room, nostrils flaring with each rapid breath. He wouldn’t look directly at me, his gaze darting around like a cornered animal searching for escape.
“Hello there,” I said softly, as if greeting a skittish horse. “Found the kitchen, as you can see. There’s plenty here we can use.”
He didn’t acknowledge my words. His paws made no sound as he moved, but I could feel the vibration of his weight through the stone floor.
Back and forth he paced, a pendulum of fur and muscle, keeping to the edges of the room as if afraid to approach me.
His fur looked darker in places, matted with what might have been mud or worse.
He’d been digging, hunting, or fighting.
None of which explained this new nervousness around me.
I laughed lightly, trying to break the strange tension. “Come here,” I said, waving him over. “Look what I’ve found. We won’t have to survive on just meat.”
Beast’s head snapped toward me at the sound of my laugh, ears flattening briefly before pricking forward again.
His eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that made my breath catch, but there was something missing in that gaze.
The human intelligence that had so struck me before seemed dimmed, buried beneath something more primal.
I waved him over again, but his only response was to tilt his head in apparent confusion, as if my simple gesture were incomprehensible to him.
A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the castle’s perpetual dampness.
Was he slipping away? Losing what remained of his humanity to Beast he appeared to be?
The thought terrified me more than it should have. I barely knew him, this creature who had claimed me so thoroughly. Yet the prospect of him sinking completely into animal instinct felt like losing something precious. Something that couldn’t be replaced.
How long had he been trapped in this form? Years? Decades? Curses were the stuff of children’s stories, yet here I stood in an abandoned castle with a man-beast who couldn’t speak but understood human language…or had, until now. Papa’s words from my dream echoed in my mind. “Trust your questions.”
And the question that haunted me now was simple. What if every day in this form chiseled away more of his humanity? What if, eventually, nothing of the man remained?
I made my decision in an instant. If his primal yet intimate connection to me was the only thing keeping him tethered to his human side, then I wouldn’t deny him that anchor.
Not when my own situation remained so precarious.
Not when I needed him sane and at least partially human if I had any hope of breaking his curse and saving Papa from those blood-drinking roses.
My fingers moved to the worn fabric of my dress, untying the simple knot I’d made to keep it closed at my throat.
Beast’s pacing stopped abruptly, his nostrils flaring as he scented the change in me.
Those amber eyes tracked my every movement as the dress slipped from my shoulders, pooling at my feet like water.
I turned from him deliberately, bending over the worktable where I’d been grinding wheat for tomorrow’s bread.
The position felt vulgar, exposed. My bare backside presented to him like some animal offering, but I recognized the raw power in it.
This was a language he would understand, even if my words failed to reach whatever humanity remained inside him.
I wasn’t wrong. A low growl rumbled through the kitchen, so deep I felt it vibrate in my chest rather than heard it with my ears. There was no hesitation in him now, no confusion or nervous pacing. He knew exactly what I offered and what he wanted.
Beast crossed the room in three powerful strides, his claws clicking against stone, his breath hot against my exposed flesh. He climbed slowly to tower me, and I felt his movements by where his heated breath hit my spine next.
I had a moment to brace myself, hands gripping the edge of the worktable, before he mounted me. No preamble, no gentle exploration. Just the blunt pressure of his manhood seeking entry, finding it, and claiming me with a single, powerful thrust that forced the air from my lungs.
God in heaven.
The fullness, the stretch, the sudden invasion…
it still shocked me every time, no matter how my body had already been reshaped by our previous couplings.
He was larger than any human man could be, filling me beyond what should be possible, the pleasure-pain of it sharp enough to bring tears to my eyes even as heat pooled low in my belly.
This was different from our previous encounters.
Beast moved with greater urgency, his thrusts hard enough to slide the heavy worktable across the stone floor.
His fur felt coarser against my bare back, his growls deeper, less controlled.
He rutted into me with single-minded purpose, chasing his pleasure with an animal intensity that left little room for the careful consideration he’d shown before.
Oh, how I cried out, my voice echoing against the stone walls like a prayer in a forgotten cathedral.
His massive member claimed me deeper than the other times, stretching delicate flesh until I felt him press against my very womb.
A spot that hurt when beaten against. It caused me to cry out again, but Beast kept going.
The invasion burned like fire and ice simultaneously.
A sweet agony that made stars burst behind my eyelids.
It felt like impaling myself on a heavy oak branch, the unyielding girth forcing my body to accommodate its presence, yet I never wanted that fullness to leave my core.
With each savage thrust, I felt his previous seed coating both of us, creating a slick channel that allowed him to drive even deeper.
That natural lubrication was desperately needed as he seemed to grow impossibly larger, harder, his naked flesh pulsing against mine like a second heartbeat.
I managed to twist slightly, looking over my shoulder at him.
He stood proud and powerful above me, his massive form blocking the light from the windows.
His eyes were closed, his head thrown back in pleasure, completely lost in the sensation.
He wasn’t watching me as he had during our previous couplings.
Wasn’t checking my reactions or adjusting to my responses.
This was pure, primal need—Beast ascendant over whatever man remained inside.
That wouldn’t do. Not if I wanted to keep him human enough to help me, to communicate, to find a way out of this shared nightmare.
I shifted my weight to one arm, the motion causing him to sink even deeper inside me with a growl from me that sounded almost surprised.
My free hand reached up, fingers stretching toward his face.
“Look at me,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure he could hear me over his own panting breaths and the wet, slapping sounds of our coupling that left my breasts shaking with every new thrust.
My fingertips grazed the side of his muzzle, stroking through the short, soft fur that covered his face. The effect was immediate and dramatic. He froze mid-thrust, his entire massive form going utterly still above me. Those amber eyes snapped open, fixing on mine with a startled intensity.
For a heartbeat, we simply stared at one another, joined in the most intimate way possible yet separated by the gulf between human and beast. Then, slowly, deliberately, he leaned into my touch.
His eyes closed again, but differently this time.
Not in abandon but in something that looked almost like relief.
Like a starving man finally being offered food.
How long since anyone had touched him with gentleness? Since anyone had touched him at all, except in fear or violence? The thought ached in my chest like last night, making it hard to breathe for reasons that had nothing to do with his weight pressing me against the table.
He began moving again, but the quality of his thrusts had changed.
Still powerful, still claiming, but with an awareness of me that had been missing before.
His paws repositioned, taking more of his weight, preventing me from being crushed.
His angle shifted slightly, finding the spot inside me that sent lightning up my spine with each deep stroke.
I felt the change in him before I saw it. The swelling at the base of his member, stretching me further as his knot began to form. My breath came in short, sharp gasps as pleasure coiled tighter, higher, eclipsing the lingering discomfort of accommodating his size.
When he bent to bite me, I was already falling, my inner walls clenching around his intrusion as release crashed over me in waves.
His teeth broke the skin at the side of my shoulder, adding a new mark to the pattern he seemed determined to create across my flesh.
The back of my neck, the front of my shoulder, and now the side—three bites forming a clover leaf of ownership across my skin.
The sharp pain of the bite only intensified my climax, drawing a cry from my throat that echoed off the kitchen walls.
Beast responded with a sound that was half-growl, half-howl as his seed flooded me, hot and copious.
His knot locked us together, ensuring none of his essence would be wasted, that all of it would remain deep inside where it might take root.
The thought should have terrified me. I could be breeding his child—or cub, or whatever unholy offspring might result from our coupling.
Yet as we remained joined, his massive body draped over mine and his breath gradually slowing against my neck, I felt only a strange peace.
A wave of warmth shuddered through me like the last two times, and I knew this wasn’t normal.
A magical bite lingered in our bond, but I would draw on that to keep him human another day.
Then, without warning, he withdrew. Not gently, not carefully as he had done before, but with a sudden, brutal motion that tore his knot from me before it had fully subsided.
Pain flashed, sharp and immediate, drawing a gasp from my lips.
But before I could speak, before I could reach for him, he was gone.
He went bounding out of the kitchen door on all fours, leaving me bent over the worktable with his seed trickling down my thighs and questions tangled on my tongue.
I stayed there for a long moment, catching my breath, feeling the pleasant ache spreading through my body.
Three times now he had claimed me, marked me, filled me.
Three bites forming a pattern on my skin.
Nothing about it was random or purely animal.
There was purpose behind his actions, meanings I had yet to decipher.
I straightened slowly, wincing at the soreness between my legs.
If he continued at this pace, I would indeed need more food to keep up my strength.
The thought brought a wry smile to my lips, inappropriate perhaps given my circumstances, but genuine nonetheless.
Whatever else this strange captivity might be, at least I wasn’t bored.
And at least, for now, there seemed to be enough humanity left in him to recognize me as more than just a vessel for his needs.
That would have to be enough until I could learn more.