Taming The Beast

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Taming the Beast

TAMING THE BEAST By Raquel Taylor Venus Press LLC

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Rachel Taylor

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. TAMING THE BEAST Copyright © 2006 by Rachel Taylor ISBN: 1-59836-117-1 Cover Art © 2006 by Wendon Smoot All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form without permission, except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. Printed and bound in the United States of America. For information, you can find us on the web at www.VenusPress.com

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Welcome Beauty, banish fear. You are queen and Mistress here. Speak your wishes, speak your will. Swift obedience meets them still. --Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont

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Prologue

Once upon a time, there lived a young woman who was known to be beautiful throughout the land. She was the youngest child of a prosperous merchant. Her two sisters envied her completely, but her brother loved her dearly. This young woman was admired by all who met her and had several marriage offers in her young life—from fellow merchants sons and from the sons of rich nobles alike—all of which she turned down. She offered no explanation for rejecting these fine proposals much to her sisters’ disgust. In her heart, she had simply known that the offers were not right for her. She preferred books and studies to the grand parties of nobility that her sisters attended and courted no men and paid no heed to even the slightest hint of romance. Her gorgeous blonde head was always buried in a book when people came across her on her long country walks, the wind blowing through her platinum tresses. Her striking golden eyebrows furrowed with the strength of the passage she was reading, one soft full rose bud lip trapped between perfect white teeth. “That Cher, she is a smart one,” they would whisper as they drove past her in their carriages. “As quick as she is beautiful. Nothing like her haughty, acquisitive sisters at all, that girl.” “Pay attention to where you are going, pretty little Cher,” others would call to her, “or the wolves will get you.” The young woman would laugh at the comment about the wolves, a common warning, since the forest was filled with the creatures. Those that heard the laughter, soft and silvery, tinged with an excitement that was wholly sensual, would wonder why their cocks hardened or their pussies grew wet with the sound. They would drive away quickly, unable to look into the frank eyes of the girl they had left behind on the road. There was a secret in the soul of this most beautiful young lady. Some of the books that she read were not exactly scholarly material. In her secret heart, the most brazen dreams rose to the fore, setting her on a dark path of sheer erotic fantasy…dark 5

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secrets that had nothing to do with the innocence of her virgin body. Dark secrets that set her at midnight upon the cobbled walks of the town to the Inkers Shop. There this master of inks and metals marked her body with the force of her desire, piercing her pale and perfect flesh with shimmering silver which seemed to quiet, for a time, that aching in her soul. The Inker, a strange little man, twisted of body, took great delight in piercing the beautiful young woman. He had pierced her breasts and her clit. He had inked a dragon on the inside of her thigh just beneath the pale, silver colored hairs of her pussy. A black widow spider nested in the small of her back just above the crack of her ass. Her navel, which he had pierced with a glorious ruby, was a hot bed of rose thorns. Under her clothing, the young woman was a mad man’s masterpiece and each inking, every piercing had come from the pages of books she had read, and the things she had learned within them. When it seemed that the young woman was completely caught up in the realms of astrology, the truth was that the book had been tampered with. The astrology book read long ago had given up its cover, which had been removed and pasted onto readings of a much darker nature. She knew every sexual position and how to twist and bend a lover to her will. The writers that had penned the young woman’s books were pitiless, and their lovemaking was intense, the passion within tinged with the pain of the lash and submission to the cuff and collar. Often the young woman would find herself deep in the forest, the book laying beside her, forgotten, her skirt hiked up to her waist so that she could rub ruby tipped fingers against the ache between her legs. Eyes closed, she imagined that she ruled the cuff and collar and that some nameless, faceless lover surrendered to her in the darkness of a bedchamber equipped with the instruments to sustain her desires. As her hands became wet and slick with her own hot juices and her body shuddered against a tree trunk, she would scream to the empty forest as she came, fiercely, violently, as the power of her orgasm stole her breath away. She had only seen a wolf once in her travels, a great silver beast that seemed bigger to her in the silence of the forest than it should have been. Her hands were still wet of herself when the wolf made its presence known, and a scream came to her lips as the monstrous thing stalked toward her. All around her, the forest set to howling and somewhere, beneath the dark terror of the monster wolf’s presence, she realized that 6

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there were more of them, a great deal more. And she wondered how she had wandered so far and how she had let it get so dark. The sun had set some time ago, and the forest was draped in a gentle gray inspired by the fierceness of the full and throbbing moon above. And steady the wolf came… Its luminous emerald eyes were as wide as saucers in the darkness. Its gray fur glinted silver in the moonlight. She could smell the heavy meat scent of its every panting breath as it padded across the grass-covered ground toward her. The young woman tried to stand, tried to run but she couldn’t move. The most she could manage was to close her legs as the wolf shoved its massive head into her breasts. Its teeth clicked ominously and a dull scream locked in her throat. With a hand meant to push the hideous thing away, she reached out and touched its great shaggy head. The wolf snarled and moved so fast she barely had time to gage its movements with her eyes. Suddenly, her hand, the hand she had just used to gratify herself, was in the great beast’s mouth, and the young woman realized that she could smell herself, the scent of her desire, underneath the wolf’s breath. Its teeth bore down into the flesh of her captured hand, and yet, it did not bite her. Its rough tongue raked over that captured soft tissue, tasting it, savoring it. Still as a statue, the young woman watched the wolf lick each of her fingers individually and then turn its attention to her palm, licking to the wrist. When the thing was done, it simply opened its mouth and waited until she withdrew her shaking hand. The howling of wolves in the background increased in frenzy as if they could smell her blood on the air. The big wolf moved back and after a moment, the young woman found the strength and the sense to move, heart racing, leaving her precious book behind her, she ran headlong into the night. It followed her, shooting after her like a bullet, its gaping, toothy maw open in a bestial snarl. She whirled, putting her hands out, palms flat, in a gesture for it to stay away. The command in her voice came from her very terrified soul. “Stop!” It halted, panting, licking its chops as if to get the few traces of the taste of her that might have been left on its mouth. “Don’t you dare follow me,” she told the thing, “Don’t you dare.”

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She stood there a breathless moment. When the monster wolf made no advances, she fled. It took her a few moments to find a familiar path. She did not stop running until she collapsed on her father’s doorstep. She never told a soul, not even the Inker, who held her most precious secrets in his twisted misshapen hands. And when she walked in the future, the young woman stayed closer to home. “I must pay attention,” she would whisper from time to time, when the fantasies within the books threatened to carry her away, “or the wolf will get me.”

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Chapter One.

“How much for the youngest Moreau sister?! How much for pretty little Cher?!” A lecherous voice called over the noise of the milling crowd. Lewd laughter rang out, echoing over the rapidly empting spaces of the Moreau mansion. “Hurry now, magistrate! Bring the merchant’s daughters to the platform. I tire of being sold their used serving maids. Let the true auction begin!” Cher Moreau stood in the courtyard of her father’s fine mansion and stared at her reflection in the crystal pond at her feet. Brilliant shimmering goldfishes swam there, reflecting the heat of the summer sun and in the distance, as she watched the incandescent whispers of their topaz bodies across the silver blue waters. She listened to the low sounds of her sisters weeping, but disregarded the noise of their blended and mournful crying and instead examined herself for any signs of outwardly similar grief. Her disheveled silver blonde hair danced sinuously in the slight wind of the summer’s breeze and twisted around the heavy material of her plain blue gown. Beneath it, the rough material of the gown teased her pierced nipples, but the lack of undergarments was a mercy to the piercing in her clit, giving that bit of flesh open air of which it was unaccustomed. The thin silver chain connecting her piercings met at the ruby stone embedded in the rounded flesh of her navel. The stone was cold enough to be bothersome, as if, in the wake of the horror that had come so suddenly upon the Moreau family, it felt the cold discontentment of the small city around them, and reveled on their dispossession and misery. Cher was glad to see that there were no tears in the wide amethyst of her gaze and when she blinked, long platinum lashes hid the shadows in her eyes. I will not cry for my father’s sake, she promised herself. I will not betray him with the humiliation of my tears. Is it not bad enough that his unscrupulous business associate took advantage of him and robbed us of everything…or that the magistrate and all of the aristocracy have allied with this mysterious, faceless individual against us? Selling us into slavery is 9

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unheard of, and yet the whole town has turned out to see it. And the nobles will buy us and walk us around their lavish estates like pretty dogs. Could there be a worse torture for a loving father? Cher wondered. To see his children weep and bemoan their fates. She refused to be part of the plot to destroy the father who loved his children so much that he had put them through the finest schooling and simple wealth—so not to incur the ire and envy of the noble class. The sun glinted on the harsh metal of the heavy collar around Cher’s neck. It threatened to cut off her breath with the horrifying truth of her predicament. Her gaze followed the links in the metal chain to the four stakes that had been pounded into the ground on the cobbled walkway of the pond. Her siblings were at her feet, their blond heads reflecting the sunlight. Only Julien, the eldest at four and twenty, did not weep. Instead, he watched the pool, much like she, mesmerized by the blue-green waters. He was like a statue of smooth marble, young, rough, distinctly male and yet smooth as glass in feature and form. His face betrayed nothing of the inner turmoil he had to be feeling and it seemed that he was hardly breathing, so deep was his contemplation of the waters of their destroyed world. She reached down, almost absently and stroked his blond curls, more to comfort herself than to give comfort. He did not react to that gentle touch, and she noticed the dark bags under his chocolate colored eyes. Poor Julien, Cher though, poor all of us. And then she looked—almost desperately—for her father, but she would not hurt him with her desperation either. Jean Moreau stood in the throngs of nobles and peasants who were, present to take away all his worldly possessions, including his beloved offspring. His shoulders were slumped and the wind whipped through his white hair. Cher watched him, her heart going out to him. Her family had fallen, in a single day, from the spiraling heights of nobility and riches to utmost unforgivable poverty. The platform had been erected in their rose garden and the beautiful red flowers swayed in homage to the terrible nightmare that was befalling the people that had raised them. Ivy hung from the walls of the magnificent mansion and the ivory pillars that the Moreau children had often hidden behind in childish games of long ago stood in solemn contemplation as the family’s goods were sold off to the highest bidder. The crowd grew steadily wild with the foreknowledge of the fleshy auction that was soon to come. Liquor glasses swayed in the upraised hands of nobility, who came to purchase, while paupers 10

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watched in horror as the nobles won another one of the petty games they tended to play with the lesser classes. When there was nothing else of worth to sell from the house, when the land and property had been sold down to the very last china plate, then the Moreau children themselves would go up for sale, three daughters and one son, each more beautiful than the last. “Isn’t that the Marquis de Carignan in the crowd, Emeline? Has he finally arrived? He will not let this happen to me. He swore that his devotion was eternal. He will save me. Donatien! Donatien!” Ambre’s voice was so filled with wretched hope that Cher ached to hear it. She watched her sister stand for the first time since being chained. Ambre ran her fingers through her thick golden hair, attempting to set it to rights. She smoothed the wrinkles in the plain blue gown and tried to make herself more appealing to the approaching bit of nobility she thought might save her. At Ambre’s feet, Emeline suddenly feigned a swoon worthy of the finest theatre actress. Cher glanced at the approaching marquis. There was a big and utterly artificial smile pasted on his face and malice in his eyes that had always been there…malice that Ambre and Emeline had always failed to see. The marquis would not save them, Cher knew, not for Ambre’s sake anyway. There was a cruelty in him that went far beyond her sister’s foolish and petty games for the noble’s attention. He frightened Cher, almost as much as he inexplicably excited her. She had always gone out of her way to avoid him— and his kind—petty nobles and their power games. Preferring her books and studies to the many garish parties her sister’s attended amongst the upper classes. “Who would have ever thought it would come to this?” the marquis said, sauntering up to the small gathering of new-turned slaves. He was tall, a foot or two over six feet, with wide shoulder and a tapered waist. The Marquis de Carignan was handsome to the point of setting any woman into a genuine swoon, and Cher was unwilling to admit how much time she’d spent studying the man from afar. His beauty was almost ethereal, his every feature a thing of absolute perfection. His face and form seemed sculpted by a fine painter rather than something born of mortals. The sun had tanned his skin a gentle golden hue. High cheekbones marked his visage. His nose had an arrogant and unmistakable aristocratic tilt to it. Dark raven locks peaked from beneath the brim of the ridiculously fashionable hat perched atop his head. Ebon eyebrows rose 11

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in a wicked arch over smoldering emerald eyes with lashes too long for a man. “Who would have ever thought that the haughty Moreau’s would fall so low?” “Donatien,” Ambre breathed, attempting to throw her arms around him. He stood just beyond the reach of her chain. He studied Ambre as if she were a particularly bizarre species of spider. How her sister did not see, had never seen, the marquis’s contempt was beyond Cher. “You have to help me, Donatien,” Ambre continued. The marquis crouched in his black silk suit, his hat tilted askew on his head in his eagerness. “It seems as if Emeline has fainted, Ambre, or did you not notice?” He shifted through the dark, golden, mass of her hair to find Emeline’s face, ran his fingers across the tears drying on her eyelids. He seemed to take great indulgence in the touching, so great in fact, that his body gave an almost imperceptible shudder of pleasure with the gentle stroke. “I’m sorry to say that I did not notice, Donatien,” Ambre said, “As you can see, I awoke this morning and was clapped in chains in my own garden. Because of this unusual and most horrifically unexpected occurrence, I did not observe when my sister fainted dead away from the horror, but I can say that I cannot blame her for surrendering to that sweet oblivion. As you can see, I am moments from the auction block. I sent a messenger for you hours ago and paid him with the last thing on earth I had that was truly mine, the beautiful brooch that you gave me. What took you so long to come to me?” Haughtiness born of years of prosperity had slid easily into Ambre’s voice, despite her precarious situation. The marquis looked up at her with narrowed eyes. “I was deciding whether to come or not,” he said simply, standing. He was careful to stay out of the reach of her desperate grasp. “But,” Ambre whispered, aghast. “But, why? Donatien, the brooch led me to believe that you thought favorably of me...favorable enough even for marriage.” The marquis laughed, and his laughter was so cold that Cher shuddered in the wake of it. “You’re only a merchant’s daughter,” the marquis said coldly. “But besides that, you’re a bitch, Ambre. You have always been a cold and thoughtless cow, as is that cow that lies at your feet. You’re pretty enough, but Emeline is prettier and Cher is prettier still. Without coin, what man in his right mind is going to marry you…especially now, when he can buy you? Which is just what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy all three of you.” His next words were a foul whisper, “And I’m going to make you tell me, in graphic detail, what your sisters pussies taste like.” 12

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There was a subtle, imperceptible change in his voice. It was deeper somehow, terrifying in its absolute sincerity. The sheer animal wickedness in his tone did something to Cher that no book ever had. She felt suddenly flushed like she had a fever. That fever burned within her, setting fire to each and every cell. The marquis had always interested her, despite her decision not to have anything to do with the man. There was the mystery of him to contend with. He had come from nowhere a little less than a year ago. His good looks and obvious wealth had sent the nobles into a fit of preparing their marriage age daughters for the hunt. He boasted an ancient family name and on the first day of his arrival, he had purchased the grandest house in the city. He was a terrible whoremonger and had already deflowered several maidens of the most illustrious houses. He had four duels under his belt in the short time he had been amongst them. There were rumors that he engaged in the most decadent sexual acts… At their feet, Emeline gave up feigning a faint, sat up and screamed in sickened revulsion. The sound of her voice recoiled over the gathering, turning curious heads in their direction. Julien looked up suddenly, his dark eyes narrowing with the promise of violence. As he made to stand, Cher reached out a hand to still him. “Do you truly think,” Cher whispered turning her attention from her shrieking sister and back to the marquis. Unable to help herself she moved in on him. Suddenly her head was by the pale cup of his ear and she felt his body tensed ramrod straight as the hot whisper of her words entered him, filled him, “that you are man enough to do so, Marquis deCarignan?” Near panting, he stared at her; the inky veils of his ebony eyelashes falling over emerald eyes, cloaking what emotion lay in them from her. “You never speak to me,” he said. “In the several months that I have known you, not a word, precious little Cher.” He practically spat the words at her and Cher smiled, enjoying his discomfort immensely. The sheer intensity of his emotion spurred her on. She couldn’t stop. “I am speaking to you now. I asked you a question, marquis. And I expect an answer. You made that foul comment easily enough. What stills your filthy mouth now?” She was nearly breathless waiting to see what he would dare to say. How far would he go in this impromptu altercation between them? Her nipples ached suddenly, the buds drawing tight around the silver-metal that pierced them. She had nothing to lose anymore and she saw no reason to hide her true nature in this exchange. As if freed by 13

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her impending slavery, that thing which she kept locked within her came bursting to the fore. Her back arched, thrusting her full and aching breasts forward, she reached for the sky with her hands, leaning into the smooth stretch. “I’m waiting, marquis,” she said, and her voice was a low husky whisper. “What exactly are you going to do to three helpless women? And do try to be creative. I am so easily bored.” His mouth dropped open and she could see the crisp white of his perfect teeth, the rough pink of his tongue. She longed to kiss him in that moment…to steal his breath away with her mouth. His bottom lip was a little fuller than his top and she longed to sink her teeth into that tender flesh, not enough to hurt him, but enough to capture his attention. “Cher,” he said finally. His voice was a harsh whisper. “Hmmn?” she breathed, raising her gaze from his mouth to the glittering green of his eyes. “You can’t talk to me like this.” “I can’t?” Cher said, her gaze drawn back to the fullness of that tempting lip. “You most certainly can not,” Ambre hissed. “What’s wrong with you, Cher? The marquis was obviously jesting. And although that joke was quite crude--” Delusional, Cher thought of Ambre and then ignored her sister. She was more interested in the fact that the marquis was barely breathing. That, and the bulge she saw rising in his trousers. She leaned into him suddenly. She had never been this close to him before. She found his nearness to be extremely pleasant. She longed to be closer still. She reveled in the deep sandalwood scent of him and the fresh herbs he had used to wash his hair. She marked those fragrances deep in her mind—along with his excitement, which intensified them—as something pleasant. She felt the flesh of his ear beneath her lips when she spoke, gently raked her teeth over that flesh until she felt him shudder with a vibrancy that seemed nearly epileptic in intensity. “Here and now,” she whispered, her voice purposefully low and filled with heat. “Show me what protrudes there beneath your waist. I have taken notice of it. Ah, look, it grows even now. It will be the first I’ve seen, and most likely the best I’ll ever see, don’t you think? Show it me. You know you want too. I know that it wants to be seen. It’s fairly standing at attention and waving at everyone.” “Bitch,” he panted. 14

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“Ah,” Cher whispered. “There’s that foul mouth again. I was beginning to miss it, dear marquis.” She bit his ear suddenly and hard. What issued from him was not exactly a cry of pain. It was a confused thing, so intermingled with agony and ecstasy that it was hard to tell the difference between the two. She liked it very much, even as she went stumbling back into the pond from the power with which he thrust her away from him. Cher hit the water hard and came up a moment later, the rough cotton garment clinging to her form like it had been painted on. Her nipples, chilled by the cool waters stood out hard against the rough fabric. “Touch my sister again,” Julien barked from his place on the ground, “and I’ll kill you.” The marquis glanced at him, his expression was as amused as it was cold. “Haven’t you been in enough trouble, boy?” he asked lightly. Julien grinned. There was no humor in it. It was closer to a grimace than anything and there was absolute murder in his eyes. Cher stood there, practically naked for all to see, and barely noticed. She heard his impassioned cry again in her mind, such a bizarre mix of completely opposite emotions. It stirred something deep within her, and the way he was looking at her—his gaze raking over her, like he had never seen a woman before—wasn’t helping to calm her down. There was something voraciously hungry in that stare. Cher could not help but react to it. Her body was on fire from within, threatening to burn her skin and singe her dark little secret soul. Her cunt felt like it was going to burst into pulsing flames and she had to resist the urge to sit down in the water just to cool it down. “Crazy bitch,” the marquis said with some finality and stalked off. “You just learn to watch your mouth when you talk to me, de Carignan!” Cher yelled at his retreating back.

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Chapter Two.

Donatien de Carignan stalked through the milling crowd in the general direction of his carriage and footman. His mind was a dark thing and one he didn’t dare look into too deeply. He was afraid of what he might see beyond the veils of his shattered memory. The girl had turned him on and the evidence of her effect on him stood out like a spear against the cloth of his trousers. He uttered a string of appalling curses, looking at that evidence and the way that several sets of eyes amongst the crowd took notice of it. He felt no embarrassment for his aroused state. He was above that kind of simpering emotion. What he did feel was anger. Along with that anger came a sense of danger that only a true predator would understand. He felt a hand grasp his arm, the grip cruelly tight. The snarl grew from deep in his throat and erupted from him before he could gain control of himself. He could barely think beyond the hot way Cher had smelled him. He hadn’t looked at her in that moment, she hadn’t given him time, but he could feel the deep intake of breath as she scented him like a marauder, boldly tasting him through the sense of smell. It had been thrilling in a way he wanted to deny. “Get your hands off of me you twisted little fuck,” Donatien hissed without bothering to turn and look at the misshapen man who had grabbed him. “Running away, Master?” the little man growled deeply, using all the strength in his warped, bowed legs to keep up with Donatien’s long, powerful strides. “Leaving,” Donatien replied, snatching open the inky carriage door and sparing a momentary glance to the naked woman sprawled on the plush seat to his right. Capucine’s dark mane of chestnut hair spilled from the seat to the floor in satin curls and her vivid blue eyes were half-closed due to the power of the heady narcotic that swirled through her system. Her small, dark tipped breasts pointed toward the ceiling of the carriage, hardened by the thin wind flowing through the open window. Her hands, gripping the shaft of an intricately carved wooden phallus, were shoved deep within the 16

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crevice of her white thighs. Her thumbs teasing the inky curls of her cunt while she worked the carved cock hard within silken flesh. “Your hesitation in this dire matter is beginning to disgust me,” the little man said. “The girl is perfect. I trained her myself.” He grabbed the sides of the carriage and proceeded to climb in. Donatien had to resist the urge to put his foot in the little monster’s chest and kick him backwards onto the ground. The little man looked at Capucine and there was something fiercely hungry in his jet-black gaze. It was the gaze of someone who had been denied sexual satisfaction too long. “That bitch trained me,” he said, shoving a twisted finger at Capucine. “And you trained her--” As her body bucked with orgasm, Capucine sat up, her slanted, wide, blue eyes focusing on the twisted little creature that was making himself comfortable on the other side of the carriage. A titter of cruel laughter burst from her. “You’re so ugly, Serge. I had almost forgotten!” “And we have done this before,” Donatien snapped dryly. The little man flinched, but ignored her for the most part. His black gaze was riveted on his Master. “I’ve been setting this up for years, Master. Most of Jean Moreau’s riches came from deals I made, or from our own coffers. It was simple to take it all away, simpler still, to secure that greedy magistrate’s cooperation in this farce. The rest was Cher’s foolish sisters doing. They erased all sympathy from the people that mattered. They would not associate with other merchant’s get, and the nobles despise them for their ridiculous arrogance. It’s hard to achieve that much lust and hatred, but those girls managed it. We are here now, after three hundred years of suffering. She is ready. All you have to do is take her.” Donatien’s flesh still burned with the sting of her bite. He could almost feel her hot breath on his earlobe. It caused a sensual rush to go through him and he reached out and grasped Capucine’s trembling thigh and kneaded that flesh hard. Startled, she froze for a moment, not even daring to breath. With a soft cry, she was on him, sliding into his lap, her soft, full mouth seeking his. “It has been so long, Donatien,” she whimpered, “too damn long.” He growled some form of acknowledgement low and deep in his throat. Her fingers worked the buttons on his trousers. When his cock was free, he grasped the silken mass of her hair and bent her head back at the neck, exposing that slender white column. “Hands behind your back,” he managed. 17

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Her response was a low, desperate moan as she did immediately as she was bid. He grasped her wrists and pulled her head back until her body arched. He tied the long chestnut waves of her hair around her wrists in a hard knot. “Yes!” she breathed. “I’ll ask you once more,” Serge said softly, “End this curse, Master. Do it of your own free will.” Donatien hesitated, his mouth poised over one of Capucine’s swollen dark tipped nipples. “She’ll die if she fails,” his voice deep and slightly beyond human. He was barely clinging to sanity beyond lust. It was the voice of a monster, and Capucine trembled in his arms deliciously at the sound of it, her hot cunt rocking above his straining cock, driving him closer to the edge. He lifted her and brought her down on his raging erection—the sheer heat of her, driving him near mad. Hands at her waist, he lifted her again, reveling in the hot silk that surrounded his cock and brought her slight body down against him…hard. The sound she made in response was wild, animalistic—and what was animal in him was helpless but to react to it. With a growl, he buried his face in the plumpness of her breast while pounding into her with wild abandon. Whether the choked half-screams she uttered were for more or for mercy, he did not know. Or care. “She’s your friend, Serge,” his mouth around one dark-tipped nipple, his mind a wash of pleasant white heat as the tight muscles of Capucine’s cunt clamped with well practiced ease around his cock. “How can you condemn her?” “Cher can take care of herself,” Serge said with confidence. “It is the Beast that should fear her. And if you ask me…it already does.” Donatien’s eyes narrowed and something deep within, something that was moving closer to sliding just beneath his skin…raged. “No,” he said with finality. “The girl is innocent. I will not involve her--” “Like you involved us?” Serge, the Inker, spat. Donatien lunged forward—sex forgotten, his mind a wash of rage. He meant to drop Capucine and grab the little man. But suddenly Capucine was free of the bond he had made of her dark tresses. He watched several inches of her hair fall to the floor in disbelief and saw the glint of the dagger in Serge’s twisted hand as the woman wrapped herself around him like a snake. She brought her lips to his, her tongue sliding into his 18

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mouth as their lips met. The kiss was as deep as it was damning. The poison moved through his body like lightning, even as he cast her clinging form to the side. It burned its way down his throat and through his veins. The pain was enough to drive him to his knees. He couldn’t move as she scurried away from him. Agony drove his world swiftly black. Inside him, like a thing gone insane, the Beast raged. Capucine knelt before him, her beautiful, traitorous face inches from his. This time her kiss was feather light. “I’m sorry, Master,” she said softly. She stroked his hair with a trembling hand. “I will understand if you kill me, should we fail.” Through his blackening vision, Donatien watched as Serge banged on the top of the coach for the footman and Capucine hastily covered herself. When the hired man appeared, Serge handed him two letters, one white and one blood red. “Pay careful attention and do as you are told and you shall be handsomely rewarded. These letters are for Jean Moreau. Tell him the ivory seal he is to break immediately. Tell him that the scarlet one should not be broken until he is alone. It is for his eyes and his eyes only. Understand?” With a few more instructions the footman scurried away. Serge turned his attention on Donatien then, kneeling and running his twisted hands through Donatien’s jet-black hair. “We understand that it is not your fault, Master. That the Beast controls you more than you would ever like to admit. It is the Beast that would deny us this chance at freedom. In the girl, it sees the end of its dominance. The situation has been taken out of your hands now. The girl can save us all.” Donatien’s vision went totally black. From somewhere far away he felt his body collapse to the carriage floor. In the back of his mind, beneath the Beast’s howls of wrath and rage fading to dull nothingness, he hoped that he was dead…and that the curse ended with him.

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Taming the Beast

Chapter Three

Cher smiled viciously into the face of the waiting crowd as her father read the letter that freed them from the bonds of slavery. She saw a genuine relief in the eyes of some of the people gathered. In the eyes of the magistrate in particular, she saw darker emotions and the signs of cruelty denied. He read the paper slowly, and more than a little reluctantly, as Cher’s heart beat a wild rhythm in her chest. The crowd was absolutely silent around them. When the magistrate looked up there was anger in his eyes…and a dark resentment. His gaze locked on Julien, traveled languidly from his bare toes to the golden crown of yellow hair on his head. Cher knew that she did not misread the lust in the magistrate’s eyes. Julien didn’t misread it either. Her brother bristled, but did not move. Julien remained silent as that lecherous gaze devoured him with the cold promises of what would have happened had their father not produced that miraculous piece of paper, whatever it contained. The magistrate dropped the paper and the wind took it drifting off underneath the platform erected amongst the roses. He came forward and grasped the chain that held Julien. Her brother moved, grudgingly, until his head was near enough for the other man to whisper in his ear. What passed between them in the seconds it took for the magistrate to draw away from her brother, Cher did not know. What she did know was that Julien had a knack for getting himself in trouble, and the magistrate had a knack for incarcerating, and sometimes even beheading, troublemakers. This new concern rode high in her breast as, red-faced, white wig bobbing ridiculously on his over-round head; the magistrate ordered their shackles removed. Wolfram Shipping had spared them and Cher wondered why. The company had also allowed them to keep the empty mansion. As the magistrate and his men set them free from their chains, Cher eyed the scarlet missive her father held in his hands with a wary eye. The more bloodthirsty members of the crowd, having lost their sport, dwindled quickly, leaving the few wellwishers with their small offers of genuine support. When everyone was gone and a 20

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somber darkness had come to the mansion, as her sisters bemoaned this new form of poverty with this grand and empty house and no way to support it, Cher cornered her father. “The letter, Papa,” she asked. “What does it say?” “To tell you the truth, darling,” Jean Moreau answered, “I don’t know. I am afraid to open it. To have come so close to being destroyed…only to set us free again. It makes me nervous.” Cher took the letter from his outstretched hands and ached to see the gratitude in his eyes as she did so. She peeled the red wax seal with one pearl pink nail. As the letter opened a stunning green rose petal fell from its page. That petal curled and blackened before it hit the ground. The letter shuddered in her hand, writhing, alive and she let out a little squeal of shock and surprise as she dropped it. An azure light burst from it as its page folded back. The light robbed the darkness, turning a throbbing beam from the crimson page, shooting into the sky. A face molded itself out of the blue light. A bovine, animal’s face, horrible to behold on a body that was faintly human…faintly. Rippling muscles corded beneath the things black and hairy chest, yellow lantern eyes, narrowed in the darkness and set upon Cher and the look in them…so debauched so hungry, it set her blood to running ice cold in her veins. Its cock was a monstrous thing. Fully erect, and fat, it jutted out against the edge of the light, swinging pendulous between two heavy balls. Its feet were cloven hooves, rounded and sharp at the tips. “I hail from the Accursed Territory of the Wolf and the Ram and I have come to collect,” it said simply, folding its arms over its massive chest…and waited. Her father’s howl was a terrible thing to hear as Cher looked beyond the creature into the world that stretched out behind it in the blue light—illuminated by the full and throbbing moon above her, the darkness was as deep as a well within. She saw the bare skeletal outlines of a few black trees as they rose to pay homage to an even blacker sky. Grass the impossible color of blood swayed on a thin wind. For an instant, Cher saw storm clouds brewed in the inky firmament as a thin line of tangerine colored lightning streaked angrily across it. In that tangerine light, in the far distance, Cher thought she could make out the lights and outline of an onyx palace. It sat on a gargantuan hill, with inky towers and spires that rose to the jet-black night. “Perhaps this form will be more conducive to speeding up our arrangement,” the thing said, its lips peeling back into a terrible grin. It stepped from within the shaft of 21

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light. It’s cloven hooves made the transition from crimson grass to green and it howled suddenly and sharply in pain. It was a very human cry and its body arched in the moonlight, muscles shifting beneath the slight fur on its form. Its bones seemed to writhe beneath its skin. Cher stared in mesmerized horror as it gave up its animalistic form and became a man. The change was agonizing and she watched the creature fall to its knees, its fists beating a dull tattoo on the grass and ground. It looked up at her when the change was done, smooth white skin glinting in the moonlight. “This I do for you, beautiful mistress,” it whispered, “to make the crossing easier for you. Only the nobility is allowed out of the Territories and even them not for long. Our very king is only allowed a year of freedom out of every one hundred. And he spends the dark half of that year as a beast. For me, a simple court guard, each breath here will be an agony.” He glanced at her but once before bowing his head subserviently. He was a handsome man with a long mane of thick red hair and dark eyes the color of the shadows in the twisted vision behind him. There was the tattoo of a raven inked across his chest in intricate detail. “Merchant,” he whispered in a choked voice, “our bargain is a simple one. The queen must come of her own free will. In order to achieve that end, we have brought you riches untold, gold beyond measure.” “No!” Cher’s father gasped. He reached for her. As Cher watched, bodies stirred in the dark vision, and a procession of creatures seemed to spring forth from that amber illumination, their outlines make clear by the moonlight, which filtered from her world into theirs. Swan headed women, naked, milk skinned, with long white-feathered throats caught Cher’s immediate attention. She gasped at the impossible sight of them. The nipples hardened on their heavy breasts, they came toward her in the night, moving toward the gap between her world and the strange black one that the letter had opened. Thin chains marked tiny waists, binding the creatures together and they stared at her with large black eyes, devoid of the white. Delicate yellow beaks curved on their odd feathered white faces. They swayed in unison, moving with a strange grace. Their bodies were decorated with strings of pearls and glittering gems of myriad colors. Between them lay a large drape of silken cloth and in it were more jewels. Beside these strange creatures, beings that were distinctly male strode in a line. They carried large golden coffers heavy with gold and jewels. Dazzling items of gold and silver spilled in the red grass. The males were goatish beings, with long carved horns that twisted above their animal heads. They moved forward on a slight winding path in 22

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that other world, their black, horror-filled, awestruck eyes on the light of the moon as if it were a threat. “Would you spiral down into poverty, merchant, when there is so much gold at your fingertips?” the red haired creature asked, looking up, his black eyes burning…and desperate. “Monster! You can not have my daughter!” Jean Moreau screeched. A wind poured out of the vision. It was terribly cold, icy. Cher shuddered in her father’s grasp. The red haired man looked up. His black eyes narrowed. “The order for your salvation will be recanted and your children will be slaves tomorrow.” Its voice was as cold as the chill wind blowing from its twisted world. “You expect me to give you my daughter in exchange for gold?” Her father’s hands were claws upon her flesh. “I expect you to give us one of your children in exchange for saving the rest,” the red haired man-thing said simply. The goat horned males shoved chest after chest of gold from the other world and into the moonlit night. The swan headed women grasped handfuls of jewels and tossed them through the blue light; they fell like rain onto the green grass. The red haired creature moved a little to accommodate the coming chests. He would not look directly at Cher, only brief glimpses, but he stared at her father relentlessly and cold until something else captured his attention behind them. Cher turned to look at Julien, Ambre, and Emeline as they rushed from the house. She felt the cold, tentative grasp of the creature at her arm. He pulled her and a scream welled up in her throat. “Mistress,” he said in a plaintive whisper, “you must come.” She looked at him and he bowed his head before her as if he did not dare to look at her for too long. There was a calm, accepting subservience in his manner that appealed to her. Her gaze swept over the hard muscled perfection of his back. Her hand strayed to his crimson locks and she twisted one around her finger, making a curl out of the straight red hair. He trembled a little in reaction to her touch and his labored breaths quickened. “What is happening?” Julien demanded and his voice seemed very far away, as did her sisters’ frantic screams. Her father’s touch was equally as distant. Cher gently shrugged off her father’s grasp and knelt before the creature. “What do you want from me?” she asked. 23

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“It is not what we want, Mistress. Ah, if only it were as simple as want. Want is a funny thing and can so easily turn to need. We need you…we who dwell in the Territories amongst prowling inter-dimensional beasts, we the pathetic followers of the howling wolves that used to be our masters…we need you. For they have become lost in the darkness and barely remember what it is like to be human beings.” “Why?” Cher asked, running her hand along the smooth flesh between his shoulder blades and feeling him tremble in reaction to her touch. His body bent so easily into her hand, seeking more of her. “Because we are animals that were once men, because until the Beast is tamed we will be eternally hunted and devoured by those which owned our terrible black world before we came to it. Because we long to be men again. That is all I can tell you. Saying anything else is strictly forbidden. No one in the Territories can tell you anymore, not even the king himself. I will tell you this mistress, the light of the moon is killing me, cursed thing that I am. It is killing me as I dare to kneel here and yet, I am desperate enough to kneel here.” Cher’s mind raced as she looked at the many coffers of gold lying on the lawn. So much gold to purchase her. Her family would be taken care of forever and if she did not go, then Wolfram Shipping, so obviously associated the bizarre and impossible Territory of the Wolf and the Ram would take back the freedom they had afforded her family…would make slaves of them all. Do I accept slavery for my entire family, Cher thought, or do I go boldly into the unknown? What is my sacrifice in the face of the security of all I know and love? She thought of Julien and the magistrate and whatever dark mystery lay between them. The gold would keep Julien out of the magistrate’s dark, dank prison, the man’s lustful clutches, forever… She drew her nails across the creature’s back and he uttered a sound that was so completely willing, so utterly desirous, that it caused her cunt to go instantly wet, and an odd hot fluttering in the pit of her stomach. She knelt close to the thing, her mouth inches from his bowed head. “I wonder,” she whispered, “ if I accept your offer and save my family from this predicament that you have set upon us, will you eat me, monster?” He looked up at her then, his black eyes lit with the fiery light of desire. Between his legs, his cock was rock hard and twitching. “If you would have it so, Mistress. Your wish is my command.” 24

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Cher sighed, and the sound came from deep within her. She looked at the coffers of gold laid out so carefully before her, a treasure trove fit for a king. Her father was that king and her family would be safe forever, no matter what happened to her. There was fear in her heart, for although the nightmare creature excited her beyond measure, it scared her just a much. What did it really matter what it wanted from her with all its talk of mistresses and kings and desperate need? It was then that she caught the scent. It drifted on the chill wind escaping the dark place she was staring into. Suddenly, she was drowning in the familiar smell. The scent masked the fear in her heart and replacing it with something…else. A thing that was bold chained too long, and in need of satisfaction. Did it make my sacrifice any less, she wondered, if I am drawn to the outlandish place? If I feel it’s calling in my loins like the eager, repetitive stroking of an old whore’s young lover? She did not give herself any more time to think, but leapt into the blue light, with the hot wetness between her thighs and her father’s horrified scream as inspiration. She turned as she hit the blood red ground. Turned in time to see the red haired man step quickly into the light behind her and to watch him give up the appearance of humanity and assume again the shape of the beast that had first greeted her. Behind him in the rapidly closing blue light, she saw Julien beating frantically on some invisible boundary there, striking the light as it refused to give to his furious fists. She saw her father’s agonized visage for but a second before the light closed in on itself and she was draped in the somber darkness of a black world without moon and stars, surrounded by animals with the faint essence of humanity in their forms. The bull creature reached down to her and grasped her tiny white hand in his, helping her to her feet then stepped respectfully away from her. “Welcome, Beauty,” he began and then the others, their odd animalistic faces framed in torchlight, joined him, “banish fear. You are queen and mistress here. Speak your wishes, speak your will. Swift obedience meets them still.” “Here are your ladies maids, Mistress,” the bovine creature said softly, “you have but to ask of them and they will obey. They have no form and, therefore, nothing to fear from the light. They are ghosts now, shadows, shades, but once they were our kings favorite flesh toys.” Cher felt other hands on her…hands that belonged to no one and nothing at all. Soft, soothing voices echoed in the night around her, distinctly feminine whispers soft as 25

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the chill wind. Satin hands removed her clothing, even as she struggled against them. The gravity of what she had done had stolen her voice—the reality that she was in a dark world inhabited by strange monsters—and so she did not speak as they stripped her in the cold night. Hands touched her breast tentatively, teasing the nipples into fleshy stones, nails tugging on the heavy rings that marked that sensitive flesh. She felt a gentle stroke between her legs. More hands sought that dark hot place as they discovered the wetness there and the tiny ring that speared her clit, teasing the golden hairs with soft strokes that caused her body to shudder. Whisper-giggles filled the night. Cher felt some small shame amidst the horror at having been stripped before so many pairs of eyes and she made to cover herself with her hands. Her hands were grasped tightly and pulled behind her back. The action was abrupt and done by more than one of the supernatural creatures. She cried out in slight pain and heard more soothing voices, more gentling whispers as they coaxed her to lie down amongst the blood red grass. “Beauty, Beauty, Beauty…” they whispered over and over again as she felt many unseen lips pressed against hers, feather light across her cheeks, across her eyelids. Unseen hands squeezed her breasts, some hard some soft. Fingers stroked the flesh at her ribcage, traveling down to meet those entwined in the silken hair of her cunt and then delved deeper, parting the lips, sliding amongst the hot moistness within. Fingers teased her asshole, causing her body to buck wildly with the strange bliss of the invasion. “It has been an eternity since we have seen such beauty,” they finished. They turned her over on her stomach then and she could smell the oddly earthy scent of the red grass. Her ass cheeks were kneaded like bread dough and then smacked gently, and not so gently, until they throbbed. Her legs were pulled wide apart and something warm and wet darted between the spread lips of her cunt, lightning quick. Cher cried out in shock against the sudden swell of gluttonous warmth. She arched against it, tried to defy it, and was held down, her arms pinned firmly above her head. The sound of howling wolves threatened the night, immediately invoking in Cher’s mind the memory of the night that she had wandered too far from home with her book. A new fear coursed through her at the memory of the great wolf that she had barely escaped alive. Her terror was heightened by the sight of the torchlights winking out one by one in the darkness, leaving the space, the world, around her totally black. 26

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“It will try and frighten you,” she heard the softly dissipating voice of the bovine creature call into the fathomless blackness. “It frightened the two that came before you. They fled the palace and roamed into the blackest night until something born on this dark plane of existence devoured them. You are Mistress here, Beauty. You must know that above all things. Above all things.” His voice was gone and Cher found herself released and alone into the black night. She sat up, all her senses on overload as the howling of the wolves came closer. She got to her feet, her breath hitching in her throat. The orange lightning illuminated the black sky with its obscene unnatural light. Her eyes did not want to adjust to the darkness. It was so relentlessly black. A snarl, very near, caused a scream to lock in her throat. She ran, naked, toward the only light left in the onyx world to which she had willing come. She felt the moment when the wolves scented her, heard their feral snarls as they gave chase. Cher ran toward the palace on the hill.

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Chapter Four

She reached the massive doorway just ahead of the creatures and found it open. She rushed inside the amber lit outer chamber and prayed that they would not follow. She turned in the doorway to see incandescent eyes glowing in the darkness, standing at the height of men in the shadows, bulky bodies swayed in the onyx night. What were they? Her mind screamed. Not wolves but something else, something aberrant that stood on two legs with eyes that glowed with the intelligence of men...evil men. “What have I done?” Cher whispered, thinking of her family and the empty mansion she had left, sacrificing herself to the nightmare world around her. She backed away from the door, as one of the creatures lunged at her from outside. Its gaping, snapping jaws clicked just outside the light. “You’ve killed yourself, you stupid cow,” a familiar voice said mockingly. “That’s what you have done. Don’t worry…they won’t come inside. They do not like the light. Neither do I for that matter. But I don’t have much choice now do I?” Cher turned her gaze from the dreadful things stalking the doorway, their howls almost musical in the darkness to the great chamber behind her. An elegant marble column dominated the chamber. It rose in the air and reached the spiraling heights of the high domed ceiling. The column was embedded with many thick iron rings. Lengths of metal chain, some thin, some thick were intertwined among the rings. Several of them met at the form of the man chained to the column. A fire roared in a large, opulent fireplace beyond the column and lit the impossible figure in golden amber light. He was wearing the same clothing he had been wearing when she had decided that the most appropriate thing to do was bite him. The outlandish hat was gone and the satin waves of his jet-black hair spilled down his back in a tangles mess. His emerald eyes were on her as he strained against the silver metal collar around his throat. His arms were bound at the wrist, his legs at the ankles. He stood slowly before her and pulled against his chains to no avail. “Donatien?” she whispered. It was your scent I caught on the wind, it was 28

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you that drew me here, she wanted to finish, but didn’t. The amber lit chamber was a wonderland, and it took her breath away, made her forget for the barest instant the monsters prowling just outside the open door and the impossibility of the chained marquis. The bed that stood just to the right of the fire was made of a wood so ruddy the color was like blood. It was unlike any bed Cher had ever seen before for it had been crafted with dark wooden rings to hold chains from its headboard. Each foot of wood contained an opening in which to slide metal, to bond, to capture and subdue. Several lengths of chain and leather slid within its massive frame. Beyond the bed, the walls held treasure, riding crops hung on leather hangers. Inky cat o’ nine tails hung beside them. The walls were made of polished gold, but she only caught the barest lengths of that luminescence because there was no space available where some implement of torture did not hand. Paddles and feathered whips and lengths of smooth silken rope hung above the fireplace. The floor she walked upon was studded with metal floor mounts on which to readily attach lengths of chain and rope. A leather holster swung above her head, suspended from the ceiling and beside it another and another. She moved forward. “What manner of place is this?” she murmured. “It is a personal hell,” Donatien spat. “But once it was my playroom.” She looked at him then, and it occurred to her that she should probably unbind him so that they could get out of this nightmare. The sandalwood scent of him drifted toward her across the chamber, striking that pleasant memory she had stored away. Her breath quickened. Her body trembled. They should escape, they should escape…they should escape… But something else occurred to Cher as well. The marquis was at her mercy. He who had sought to buy her and suffer her though innumerable indignities by his own words was helpless before her. She shuddered with the thought of it. And just then, the things skulking outside the door howled in eerie unison, setting the hairs on the back of her neck to standing on end. What was she thinking? She was in a world of monsters and she had to get away. Had to return to her family and the life she had so casually tossed aside in brutal sacrifice. The marquis was trapped as well. How and why didn’t matter. They had to get out of this dreadful place. As she neared him, she stopped suddenly. His glittering green eyes, lit with some strange heat that bordered on fever were locked on her, traveling languidly over her body, 29

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taking her in as if she were air and light. She blushed. She could feel her skin turning red beneath the lechery of his stare. There was a madness in the way he was looking at her, a hunger that was almost ravenous. It was unnaturally ardent and it gave her pause. Her hands drew up to cover herself and then froze, for at that moment his gaze locked on hers. She could not look away. There was a challenge in the madness of his stare and it was unmistakable. She let her hands drop to her sides. His gaze left hers, traveled over her again, leaving a blazing trail of heat wherever his eyes speared her flesh. She trembled, confused and yet strangely aroused. “Do you not want me to let you go, Donatien?” she asked softly. “Of course, I do,” he snapped, his gaze devouring her cunt. “Be quick about it.” Her eyes narrowed. “And what will happen to me if I free you?” His grin was chilling and his eyes glowed with a green preternatural inner light that had nothing to do with the fire. “I will take you home, Cher. Home to your precious father and the mindless clucking hens that are your sisters.” Cher moved forward again, driven by the angry fact that she didn’t believe a word he’d just said. There was something so malevolent in his tone that it caused goose bumps to rise on her flesh. She was close to him, so close she could feel the heat radiating off his body and it warmed her chill skin. She drew closer still and he strained against his chains to meet her. Her lips were inches from his. “You’re lying,” she whispered. His shirt was open from collar to the waist, smooth tanned skin visible beneath, the hard honed muscles of his stomach, standing out in lines at his stomach. Her fingers strayed to that flesh. It was hot and burning beneath her touch, the muscles jumped beneath her skin, seeking more of her hand. A ragged sigh escaped him and he flinched away from the contact suddenly, pressing his back against the column, the eerie luminescence in his eyes flashing panic. She instantly missed the warmth, but made no move to follow. “Beware, Cher,” he said, “there are monsters at the door. Have you so quickly forgotten them?” She had not. Even as he spoke the words one of the creatures outside emitted a dog like whine. Still, Donatien didn’t seem worried overmuch about the monsters and that gave her some comfort, considering that he was, at the moment, far more helpless than she. 30

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“I have not forgotten, marquis,” she said, her finger straying to one of the ivory buttons on his shirtfront. “But you said yourself that they can not come in, that they do not care for the light…that you do not care for the light. I’m certainly not going out there. They cannot come in here. I do not see the problem. This bizarre little sanctuary will protect me, I think.” Her nails grazed his flesh as she toyed with the button. A strangled cry escaped him at the contact. “What strange manner of female are you, Cher the merchant’s daughter,” he breathed, “that you do not fear monsters?” Cher thought about that question as excitement built in her veins. It was a good question and she thought that it merited an answer. She searched her heart and mind in an effort to give him an honest one and found only the low licking flames of desire where the answer should have been. “Donatien,” she began instead, “who chained you here to this whipping post?” “Traitors!” he exploded. Outside, the beasts howled mournfully in answer to his cry. His chest rose and fell with the fury of his outburst. His glowing monster’s eyes lost the white, so deep was the sheen of radiant green in them. Cher had seen those eyes before and her hand burned suddenly where the monstrous wolf had taken it into his mouth. “You,” she whispered, “are no prisoner here, Donatien de Carignan, but the King of the Beasts!” His smile was cruel. There were too many teeth in it and the light seemed to be changing his face in little ways where the shadows hit. “I am,” he said. “King of the Territories of the Wolf and the Ram, Lord and Master of all you see in this hellish darkness.” “Owner of Wolfram Shipping,” Cher said softly, understanding coming quickly now that she stared deeply into his glowing monster’s eyes. “You tried to destroy my family.” Before she knew it, she had slapped his face. The sharpness of the sound echoed. His eyes widened, the green glow in his eyes dissipating slightly…and then he roared, lunging against the chains with bone breaking intensity. She took a single step back out of his reach. The metal screamed as he pulled and for an instant, Cher wondered if he would break free. Mercifully, the chains held. 31

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She stared at him, lust and rage warring in her. Slowly her gaze swept the chamber, taking in the weapons of sensual torture available. “Whoever chained you to the whipping post must have wanted you whipped, my Lord King,” she said softly, gaining inspiration from the shock slowly spreading across his handsome, monster’s face. “It would be a shame to disappoint them. And seeing as I’m going to die, I don’t see why I can’t have a little fun first.”

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Chapter Five

Donatien watched her rounded hips, the cheeks of her ass swayed, as she walked away from him, intent on the walls where a multitude of whips, floggers, and crops hung on leather straps. Her silver-white hair hung to her tiny waist in a tangled mass. He had never seen a woman as beautiful, or as insane. In three hundred, years two other women had come before her. Women that Serge had found. Women that the wizard had thought would be capable of lifting the curse on the Territories of the Wolf and the Ram and those that occupied those dark places. Women that Serge had trained in the same manner that he’d trained Cher Moreau. Those times Donatien had gone willingly to the chains and the rings of the whipping post. For she who had cursed him had left him a way out. And that way was laced with pain and disappointment. Enraged and afraid, the women had taken to the lash quickly enough, bent on avenging the wrongs they’d considered he’d done them. But soon after his punishment began, those former women had been quivering balls of horrified screaming, so terrified of him, the thing he’d become, that they’d fled into the black night beyond and into the arms of the predators that waited there. There were subtle differences in the situations, and he considered them. Never before had he watched the Chosen One so long. He had spent several months watching Cher, mystified by her quiet beauty, entranced by her stony refusal to have anything to do with him. He was not used to being ignored and it struck a chord with his arrogance, immediately marking her as different from the other women in the little town. No other of the chosen had seen him in his wolf form either. He had only been half in control of himself when he’d decided to follow her that day. When the moon and darkness had come, freeing the Beast, the thing had continued to follow her, its curiosity as piqued by the quite beauty as his own. The Beast had surprised him that night. Donatien had feared its violence, and his own inability to control that violence. The whole of the pack had been near that night, 33

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running the woods, chasing down small animals and reveling in the light of the moon that was otherwise denied them save for this time of careful choosing. The Beast had obeyed her impossible command not to follow her. He had sensed fear along with the preternatural burning desire of the thing that inhabited him. He had not had to fight hard to make the thing give up its chase. It had been content to sit in the forest and watch her go, licking its chops as she went, tasting her over and over again. And he had always chosen his chains before, never left helpless, betrayed by his own kind. Fear stirred within him and he couldn’t tell if it was his own fear, or that of the Beast. Wherever it came from, the fear was deep, well versed in pain and very understanding of the possibilities as she ran her hand over the hard leather of a particularly nasty looking riding crop. She looked up at him as she lifted the crop from its place on the wall and fit its handle into her palm. His gaze locked with her amethyst one, and he nearly stopped breathing from the burning desire he saw in her eyes. His cock hardened instantly in the face of the hungry stare and he felt its confinement and recognized the implement of torture that had been placed on him while his body recovered from the treachery of poison. He could feel each one of the four rings that surrounded the shaft of his cock as well as the first ring, which was wrapped around his balls. The rings grew consecutively smaller and the last squeezed at the head of his cock. The harder he got, the more torture would come as his throbbing flesh swelled against the relentless steel. The cruel contraption was as much a part of the curse as the eternal darkness and the uncanny prowling night creatures that the Beast’s wolf pack hunted and that hunted the Beast’s wolf pack. Arousal was as big an enemy to him as the pain Cher threatened to inflict. He tried to calm himself, tried to think of something else, but the situation was too real…too right now and his gaze feel on the perfect swell of her breasts, the pink nipples pierced with cold metal. He followed the thin chain that connected them to the center and then his gaze dropped still following the chain, past the ruby embedded in the roundness of her navel, to her cunt where the chain buried itself between the folds of her cunt beneath golden hair. His breath caught and locked in his throat. When Serge had said that he’d inked her, he’d never mentioned such intimate piercings. Most women wouldn’t allow the twisted little man to touch them, let alone spear their most private parts with hot metal. 34

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The thought excited him and he felt his cock swell against the hard metal confining it, and he groaned, gaining her complete attention. “This one then?” she said, a grin pulling against her full lips, exposing perfect white teeth. Donatien felt the Beast stirring beneath his skin, fighting to get out and save itself. She wouldn’t survive, he was sure of it, for once she saw him as the cursed animal he really was, she would flee. All her bravado and wicked determination lost in the horror of facing a monster on its ground, in its territory. He mourned her already—for she was brave and he admired that, vain as that bravery was. Still, there was a side of him…what was human in him that was prone to hope. He was prepared to face his punishment. And it had been denied him so long that he actually ached for it. Ached for an end to his suffering and the suffering of his people. He felt the Beast surge forth within him and his thoughts threatened to scatter and he fought desperately to pull them together. He recalled the face of the exotic witch, Yasmine, in detail in that instant. She had been a beauty, with red-gold hair and laughing gray eyes. He recalled using her cruelly, every breathless instant of it, and mocking her confessions of love. He remembered the day that the sky turned black…the day she had killed herself in unrequited love of him. She had cursed his people with her last gasping breath. She had damned them all and the very land they trod upon to an alternate dimension to become the very manifestations of the debauched animal she had seen him as. The part of you that is Beast will reign, And the three suns will never come again Darkness, cursed shadow over all you know And on four legs in blackness go A virgin human you must find With stalwart heart who’s quick of mind She must be cruel but kind as well To save you from this inky hell Her love cannot be for one, but two She must love the Beast in you.

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The only thing that could save him was love—love so great it defied the terribleness of the appearance of the thing he could and would become. It could not be an ordinary kindness, but be born of cruel desire that Yasmine had wanted from him—a passion formed in whips and chains and hard restraints. Cher did not feel love for him. In fact, she hated him for what she thought he was responsible for doing to her family. What she did to him now would only be vengeance and the Beast was a master of vengeance…the thing had been wreaking a dead witch’s vengeance for three hundred years. Donatien screamed as his mind shattered. The shattering was not a complete loss of himself, but an agonizing flip in the ever blended of consciousness between man and beast. They were together always and the battle for dominance within the flesh was both excruciating and hard won. Triumphant, raging, the animal within him burst to the fore.

*** Howling in agony, trapped in the shifting skin of the man, the Beast considered the woman and the riding crop that she wielded. He felt the man’s excitement in the woman, in her manner and in the masterful way she held the black leather in her hands. The Beast also felt the tiny morsel of hope in the man breast…the kernel of hope that the petite, fearless woman could end the curse and the Beast’s three hundred-year reign. The pain hit only a moment later as he gave up the illusion of humanity, muscles bugling beneath the man’s tanned skin, bone’s cracking, lengthening. Another pain hit on top of the changing of his body. He did not like the light of the fire…or any light for that matter, save for the light of the moon in the year that it was free to roam the nights of the human dimension in that dangerous time when the man sought a Chosen One with the bravery and compassionate love to free him. The Beast craved that light and the freedom that came with it…and drunk that pale earth moonlight like a sweet elixir. But the moonlight had its time and that time was nearly gone. After it had passed, the Beast would spend another ninety-nine years in the darkness of the Territories, hunting, conquering it with snapping teeth and cruel paw. The man would be a small thing within the monster, insignificant, barely remembered as the Beast led the wolf pack, and the odd human-animal creatures that followed him, to discover more territories in their dark little world, slaughtering the inter-dimensional monsters that would dare threaten his reign. 36

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Occasionally, would the man fight his way to the front of their joint consciousness. In those rare times, the man would lead the Beast back to the palace, where the firelight ever burned, force him within the walls, skirting the agonizing light, roaming the immense halls, remembering mournfully when they had been different…when they had been whole…singular…and the sky above was often amethyst with three balls of burning gold…when the blackness of night held the silver glitter of a million stars…when the twin moons had filled the darkened sky of the Territories with smooth ivory light… The firelight was as potent as the poison that the traitors outside had used. He understood their feral cries as if they were spoken words. They wanted the Beast to suffer. In the throes of his anger, he turned his lantern gaze to the threat…the woman…the woman that acted like no other woman that had come before her. She was watching him change with an intermingling of horror and fascination in the purple of her gaze. He snarled at her, putting all his fury and pain in that ferocious cry. She flinched, but did not falter, the slow dawning determination in her eyes never wavered. “Donatien?” she whispered softly, and there was compassion in the sound. The Beast rejected that compassion, wanting familiar fear from her…demanding it. “I am not he!” The Beast snarled, the words coming out terrible as his vocal chords gave and changed, his jaw distended and terrible fangs rose in his mouth, the muscles in his arms strained against the chains where the silver gray hair burst out of his skin. His ribs cracked, heavier bone growing over the lighter ivory of the man’s ribcage. He doubled over in agony. The light was unpleasant—not unbearable for one as magnificent as he, only peasants could not bear the light at all, but decidedly unpleasant—and the Beast screamed, the man-like sound converting midway into a wild and demoniac howl. “I am the Beast! And you are in my territory, you pretty little bitch, and I will rend you…I will tear you apart--!” The sound of the riding crop hitting the firm meat of her thigh choked off his rant. “What did I tell you about your foul mouth, Donatien de Carignan?” she asked and her voice was cold as ice. “I have slain a dozen Koth Nuaha’s,” the Beast snarled, straining against its chains, his jagged teeth snapping against the empty air, “vicious fiends over twelve feet tall with hydra heads and teeth like dagger blades, do you think I fear you, little female?” 37

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“And I have nothing to loose,” she whispered, turning and replacing the riding crop and grabbing a slinky black cat o’ nine tails instead. “Out there is a ferocious pack of monsters ready to kill me. In here, there is only you…and you are chained. I think that it is they that want you whipped. They could have caught me out there. They could have killed me. They wanted me here. I think that if I appease the night things, I might manage to save my own life. What do you think happens next, Beast?” He stared at her as she made her way across the chamber. His body felt strange and unnatural, stringy in some places bulky in others, his transformation hampered by the light and by an intense fascination with the gorgeous silver white creature approaching him with such determination. He looked at the red place blooming on her thigh where she had brought the riding crop down hard. Why was she not running? Why did she not flee as others had fled before her? Her scent was hot, the mating scent, much like the scent that had drawn him to her that night in the forest when he had tasted her. Wild animal lust clouded the strength of his convictions. His nostrils flared, and he leaned into her with salivating jaws and panting tongue to get a deeper whiff of her. He could smell the sweet scent of her cunt, fear, and the hot odor of her animal need. His cock strained painfully against the metal rings that encompassed its length. The head, surrounded by the tightest, most unrelenting ring, felt as if it was going to explode. Frustrated beyond rationing, uttering a sound that was as close to laughter as a half-turned creature of darkness could make, the Beast lunged for the woman. Shock and pain drew him back mid-lunge, when she took a step toward him, raised her hand and brought the many heads of the cat o’ nine tails down across his chest.

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Chapter Six.

Cher was afraid…and excited. But she knew what she had been brought here to do, if not the why of it. The arrangement and tone of the chamber told her all she needed to know. “I don’t need to understand,” she told the Beast softly, deciding. “Let’s get on with it then.” She listened to the excited calling of the wolf creatures outside, the tone of their baying had changed, was less menacing and more eager. Also, she had seen something in Donatien before he had changed into the thing standing before her…a flicker of hope in the shining, uncanny emerald of his eyes…a hope that was totally human and defied the monster thrashing around in the silver chains. He needed her and that thought was more compelling than any vengeance could ever be. Besides, what could she possibly do to him that could be worse than the change that had overtaken him? He had screamed and howled in an agony she could scarcely begin to imagine. The half turned wolf thing was watching her warily with narrowed ferine eyes. His gaze fell on the hand that wielded the whip…the same hand that he had licked so carefully in the forest. Her flesh seemed to burn under the intensity of the monstrous creature’s gaze. A pleasant sensation slid from that hand, up her arm over her shoulder and into the heaviness of her breasts, causing the pink nipples to harden to fleshy stones. A slight moan escaped her at the titillation, and the sound was half bewildered as it echoed beneath the sound of the Beast’s panting. She knew what Donatien wanted, beast or no beast, she had learned to recognize it in a thousand tomes and volumes. She swung the whip, listening to the crack of leather on empty air. The chained creature flinched and that excited her. She recalled the forest and when she had told him, when she had commanded him not to follow her. He had obeyed then. She pressed the head of the whip with its long inky black lashes into the flat of the creature’s belly. He snarled softly, but made no other move, his gaze following the whip 39

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head as if by simple touch, the whip could bring pain. Emboldened by his lack of action, Cher slid the whip head down the open V of the shirtfront, blazing a trail across the creature’s skin. His entire body shuddered at the contact and panic lit the glittering green glow of his eyes. Carefully she used the whip head to pull the shirt out of the waistband of his trousers on both sides and let the material flow free. Thin silver hair covered his chest and stomach. He was no longer changing—his metamorphosis somehow arrested in a bizarre half-state—and still looked at least part human. The muscles in his stomach jumped as she prodded him with the leather, and then she drew the rough material over the swollen bulge at his crotch. He let out a soft cry that was between a dog’s whimper and a man’s groan. She looked up unflinchingly into his monster’s face, into the glittering green pools of his eyes and searched them for the man she knew was in there somewhere. He snarled at her again. His mouth moved as if he were trying to form words but no words would come—only the thick animal growling, enraged. Donatien was lost somehow, lost in the monster. Her heart went out to him. “Don’t bark at me,” she said. She raised the whip lightly, brought its mean little heads down on the swell at his crotch—not as hard as she could, but hard enough. She watched the pain course through the creature, rocking his whole body. She brought the whip up again and down again, before he had a chance to truly react to the first blow. He stumbled back into the whipping post. Cher steeled herself and then took a shaking step forward. Her body was a heated, fiery thing, drawn to the monster despite her terror. The baying of the things outside was nearly musical to her ears. She almost felt sorry for him. He looked so confused, so utterly confounded by her approach. Clawed hands pulled at the chain, and she knew that more than hurting her, he wanted to grasp at his aching crotch. The chains prevented that however, just as they prevented him from grabbing her. The Beast was bigger than a man and as she slid against him, feeling the softness of the silver hairs that sprouted from his chest, feeling the warmth of the man flesh beneath that hair, the top of her head barely reached the place where ribs began above stomach. She rested her head against that chest and heard the rapid fire beating of his heart, the low growls of his deep animal breaths. Beneath the low animal scent, she could smell the scent of the marquis. Her free hand slid over hard stomach muscles of, drawing her nails over that hard flesh until her fingers came to one flat male nipple. She flicked her thumb 40

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across that hard nub of flesh and he gasped and that sound was all human male. His cock jumped against her stomach. Her hand slid around his back, feeling the ridges of transforming muscles boiling along his spine. The Beast did not move under her ministrations, seemingly enraptured by her touch. She liked that, as her hand slid into his waistband, undoing the several buttons there. She wondered how she was going to get his clothes off and she looked up and around its heaving chest. She spied a small table by the bedside. On it she saw ink well, a black feather quill, several sheet of pale white parchment and a sharp looking little dagger for opening letters. The dagger gleamed in the firelight, and she left the Beast, compelled by its silver-gold glow. She crossed the chamber and picked up the letter opener, testing its sharpness against her thumb and drawing a thin line of blood on her pale skin. It would do. She returned to the creature and he snapped at her, eyeing this new weapon with a suspicious eye. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “This is not the bad part.” She moved behind the creature stepping within the mass of silver chains, her back to the marble column. She slid the letter opener over the silken material of the shirt he wore, and watched his muscles tense as she slit the fabric down the middle. She cut carefully, mindful of he skin beneath the cloth. The Beast turned on her suddenly, his positioning was awkward—arms crossed above his head in a way that looked near painful—but the length of the chains allowed him some maneuvering room. He pressed against her, smashing her backward into the marble column. The breath escaped her as he leered down at her menacingly. His hot breath and snapping jaws only an inch from her face. His eyes gleamed triumphant even as the rock hard heat of his cock pressed into the hollow of her stomach. His teeth clicked dangerously as he shoved his head toward her throat. Fisting the knife and the whip, Cher wrapped her arms around the monster’s throat quickly. She pulled herself up and against him, wrapping her legs around his waist pressing the heat of her cunt against the hardness of his massive erection. Her mind registered the pain as he slammed her back into the column again. Her body was a screaming, writhing thing without any sense of pain beyond the thrill of the close contact. The Beast’s cock was between her thighs, just beneath the core of her that burned for him. The head of it teased the crack of her ass and she was sitting on it to some extent as 41

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she pressed her body closer and felt the breath leave her in a shaking gasp as the monster did the same. She felt his teeth on the flesh of her shoulders as he shoved his shaggy halftransformed head in closer. He could easily bite out her throat, she knew. She could almost feel the thing considering that option. The letter opener fell from her hands and clattered to the floor as she grasped one of his pointed ears and bent it back painfully. The thing shuddered, his body surging forward, teeth clamping down painfully on her flesh, just short of breaking the skin. “Do you want to kill me,” she breathed into the captured ear, her voice soft and dark with the power of her own longing, “or do you want to fuck me, Donatien?” His body shook with the strength of his dual desires. He wanted to kill her, she was sure of it, but he wanted to fuck her too. She used his moment of indecision to let go of her grasps on his neck and hips. She dropped to the ground. His head ducked down after her, his snapping jaws closing in the empty air as she rolled to the side and out of his reach. He threw back his head and howled, the sound a long low keening, then flew into a fit of rage. She watched him for a little while from her place on the floor, then, cat o’ nine tails in hand, she stood. His trousers had slid down past his hips, his engorged cock the only thing holding the material up. She could see the cut of his pelvic bones and the tanned flash of his hips beneath the thin coating of silver fur. She cracked the whip to get his attention and he paused, glaring at her with narrowed, savage eyes. She met that gaze boldly as she neared the creature. When she was standing directly before him, she touched the material of his trousers, grasping the cloth. She let her whole body go with pulling those trousers down, ending in a squat on the floor. She looked up to see his straining cock bobbing above her head, straining in a contraption made up of leather and five steel rings. The flesh was swollen against the tight rings. It was a merciless device and it fascinated her. She reached out and touched the purple swollen head of his cock, running her fingers over that smooth, tortured flesh. The Beast stopped breathing as she did this. She hardly noticed so enraptured was she by the contraption on his monstrous erection. Her finger strayed to the first of the five rings, grazing over the smooth silken flesh engorged around it. The creature whined as her fingers skipped to the second ring and the third, trailing down the hard piece of leather that connected them all. The leather bound the rings and Cher saw the 42

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series of five small metal buttons that would release the contraption, ring by ring, freeing the flesh within. “I imagine this is extremely uncomfortable,” she said to the Beast. She made a ring of her thumb and forefinger and slid it over the erection. The Beast whined as her hand founds its way to the crisp black hairs just beneath his stomach, feeling hot flesh and cold metal intermittently. His legs shook. Cher moved her hand back up the length of the engorged cock, relishing the feel of the slick flesh beneath her fingers. Her finger slid across the button then commanded the ring on the tip of his cock and she brought her finger down firmly. She heard a strange metallic click as the lock gave. The ring disengaged, the metal sliding to the side and releasing the flesh within. The Beast sighed and the sound was very human. She enjoyed the sound and thought to undo another lock just to hear it again, but then reconsidered, her hand just above the button. He had not earned such release. Donatien had not earned such liberty. The bovine creature’s warning of fear being used against her rode high in her mind. He was still trying to frighten her, to terrify her with this hideous guise. The Beast whined pitifully as she withdrew her hand completely from his engorged flesh. “You want it off,” she said softly, “on your knees. Do it because it is my will, Beast. And my will is now your will.” The sound he made was a garbled sort of laughter, born on his transforming vocal chords. More animal than man, it came out in a series of abrupt barks. He stopped laughing, however, when she flicked her finger hard across the tip of his cock. He went to his knees then, though not of his own accord. She knelt down quickly, before he could recover enough to stand, snarl, and snap at her. She pressed her finger against another silver button in the cruel contraption that encircled his cock, heard the mechanical whirl as the device gave and another ring slid away from the tortured flesh. “See what you get when you obey?” she asked softly. “It’s not that hard.” She pressed a shaking hand against the terrible face of the thing, and an awful sympathy ran through her as she traced the distended muscle and bone beneath his skin. Where her hand cast shadows over his face, the skin rolled, threatened to change. Cher drew her hand over his face again, watching the muscles roll beneath the shadow her hand created. “Ah,” she said softly, as the beginning of understanding came to her. She looked around the chamber and spied several ornate torch pits placed at intervals in the wall. As 43

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if it had lain in patient wait for her to notice the torch pits, a hand stroked across her ass. “Speak your will, Beauty,” a soft female voice whispered. “Light,” Cher said, staring at the Beast, “I want this whole chamber to be filled with light.”

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Chapter Seven

Cher watched as the Beast changed into a man before her eyes. The silver hair slid back into his flesh. His muscles, over-corded and horrible, slid back into their even, natural state. Smooth, tanned skin glinted in the amber glow of the chamber. His hair blackened, and he slumped in the chains between intervals of terrible screaming. As his body arched in the chain in the midst of a particularly pain filled scream, Cher went to him. Pressed her body against his tortured flesh. She let the cat o nine tails go, as she pressed her body into the chained and writhing form before her. He was hot, his flesh slick with perspiration and fevered. She grasped his thick, black, sweat slick hair in her hands and brought his mouth to her own, swallowing his scream, filling herself with it, taking that agony for her own. His kiss was savage and she closed her eyes against the sheer ferocity of it. Even as his body shook with agony, he kissed her, his mouth devouring hers, plundering it wildly. Their tongues met and it was electric, sending wild currents through her body and setting off every pleasure sense she had within her. Her body shuddered and she twisted her fingers in his hair, drawing him even closer. His cock throbbed against her stomach, the cold metal encircling it driving her wild with its chill against her hot flesh. He tasted good. Extremely good. Kissing him was like biting into something hot, delicious, and absolutely forbidden. She caught his bottom lip between her teeth and bit it and he groaned, the trembling in his body quieting underneath the fury of her sexual assault. He strained against the chains, trying to get closer to her as she bit his chin and let her lips trail under it to the pulse that throbbed at his throat. All her life, Cher had studied to give pain and it shocked her that she did not want to give pain now. She wanted to give comfort. Her shock was tempered by her own, very real need, the wild lust that coursed through her body—the mad desire that drew her nails down the flesh of his back and caused him to buck against her, the heat of his cock setting off fire in her cunt. 45

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“Donatien,” she whispered, marveling at the way the very sound of his name drove her closer to the edge of sanity. His reply was little more than a grunt of acknowledgement as she wrapped her lips around the tight, flat nub of his left nipple. Her hands went to his cock, her fingers flying over the rings of the device that cruelly encircled it, touching each button, listening to each one give beneath the sound of Donatien’s panting breaths. “I want him free,” she breathed to whatever nightmare might be in the chamber with them. “Mistress?” a voice whispered, and there was a warning in the sound. Cher didn’t care. She had completely lost her mind. It had become enslaved to the molten lava fire that twisted and swelled within her body. That fire was centered between her legs and raced across the aching swollen tips of her breasts. She heard the rolling of the chains as they moved in obedience to her command, but this time there were no giggles to accompany her orders. Her mind registered the warning and the danger but she was beyond that. Her body demanded a satisfaction she could only almost understand…a satisfaction that she had only read about in books…a satisfaction she longed to experience. She felt his arms close around her, his fingers kneading her flesh. She looked up into half-veiled eyes. A wild thrill of fear ran through her, but she met that gaze boldly. “Get out,” he said suddenly, his eyes searching the chamber, his voice a barking command. A wind seemed to stir around them as the impalpable creatures departed. The large door swung shut loudly, seemingly of its own accord. “You are a foolish woman, Cher Moreau,” he said, his attention turning back to her. His arm coming to slide around her waist, his free hand resting on the flat of her stomach above the glittering crimson jewel that rested at her navel. “Don’t you know how foolish it is to play with wolves?” “I played with a wolf once before,” Cher breathed. “Or rather, a wolf toyed with me.” “You ran then,” he growled, his impassioned stare roving over her body, his hands sliding to her hips. “I’m not running now,” Cher whispered. “You should,” he said, a terrible hungry grin crossing his handsome features. 46

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“I know,” she whispered and stood on her toes. Her whole body was trembling. Waiting. Though her books had explained it to her in graphic detail, she still was unsure of what she was waiting for. All she knew is that the were-man in front of her excited her more than any man ever had. And she wanted him. Had always wanted him. Even though she had done her level best to ignore him in polite society. Even though she had run terrified from the wolf thing that he became. She rested her head on his chest and listened to the mad beating of his heart. His hand came up and flicked the ring in her nipple. Pleasure coursed through her so great, she had to bite her tongue to suppress the moan that came unbidden to her lips. “Beautiful,” he growled, and she didn’t know if he was talking about her or the piercing in her flesh, but his head followed his finger, his lips grazing her erect nipple. This time she could not suppress the animal moan that came from deep within her. Her cunt was instantly wet and the shaking of her body increased until she thought she might shake herself apart, limbs going here and there on the smooth golden floor. He clamped down on her nipple, drew it into his mouth and let his teeth graze gently across the rose colored tip. Her eyes closed, her mind screamed and lightning seemed to dance across the insides of her eyelids. In an instant he had lifted her up into powerful arms and crossed the chamber in long strides. His tongue raked over the flesh of her nipple, driving her into a kind of desperate madness unlike anything she had experienced before. Even her wildest selfinduced orgasm had felt nothing like the wild abandon that coursed through her body now, setting each and every cell in her body afire. Her entire world centered on the breast he had captured and possessed. Her every breath was dependent on the roughgentle flick of his tongue and teeth. He was relentless in his attack, working that swollen bit of flesh until she could not think beyond the pleasure radiating from him, consuming her. She panted delicately as he deposited her amongst the deep red silken covers of the immense bed. Twin mahogany rings hung above her head, and she grabbed them unthinkingly, pulling her swollen flesh from his mouth, and herself deeper into the tangle of coverlets, disrupting the bed’s well made perfection and setting the series of chains hanging with the rings to rattling. “I’ve never done this before,” she breathed. “You’re going to have to be gentle.” 47

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He laughed. It was a husky sound, deep and symphonic in its lust. “I’m not quite sure I know the meaning of that word.” He grabbed her ankles, attempted to pull her back to him. Cher clung tenaciously to the wooden rings. Her ass left the bed—between the strength of his pulling and her own—and she hung suspended over the silken covers. It was a breathless pleasant sensation as she rocked there and she enjoyed it for a moment, her focus on the heat of his flesh on her ankles. She let go suddenly and he pulled her forward over the silken sheets quickly to him. His hands slid from her ankles to her knees, his fingers dipping into the soft spot behind each knee and stroking there. Such a simple touch, and he was doing it almost absently, and it drove her mad. Her books had tried to describe this feeling or one like it. The books had failed miserably. There was such a concentration of ecstasy, she wanted to scream with it. The intensity of his stare captured her attention, and she tried desperately to focus on the handsome lines and angles of his face, the drape of his jetblack hair, because he was speaking to her. “Why didn’t you run?” he asked, a hint of impatience in his voice. “You fascinate me,” she said, unable to think well enough to tell anything but the simple truth under the assault of pleasure running through her. “You’ve always fascinated me, Donatien.” A beautiful smile flickered across his face; it even reached his much too shadowed eyes. It occurred to her that this was the first time she had ever seen him smile without the benefit of arrogance and contempt to accompany the action. It was a lovely thing. He didn’t give her a whole lot of time to contemplate it. He drew her closer until her ass was almost hanging off the edge of the bed. He slid her knees apart. It occurred to her, as her body blushed under his exquisite scrutiny, to draw her legs back together. His grip, however, was firm and ungiving. She really didn’t feel like fighting him on the issue anyway, mesmerized by the way he examined that most secret part of her. He leaned down toward her—entire upper body going with the fluid movement—and smelled her cunt. There was something so utterly erotica about the way he smelled her that it stole her breath away to watch it. It was the sniffing of a man who had somehow come into possession of the last steak in the world. He would never see, never taste another one. 48

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He wanted to savor the juicy meat—to enjoy it in every way, to devote the whole of his concentration to devouring it. With the same liquid motion, he buried his head in the golden haired mound between her legs. He did it so quickly, so very smoothly, that she was utterly unprepared for the surge of white-hot pleasure that washed over her as his lips made contact with the aching lips between her legs. It was a strange kiss, and one she was wholly unprepared for. Her body bucked wildly as his tongue slid between the lips of her cunt and made lightning contact with the sensitive flesh in between. His name came out of her mouth in a jagged scream. Her fingers dug into the silken bedcovers as her body spasmed wildly. Her books had described this, she thought brokenly, but every volume, every tome had missed the primal nature of what they’d described. It was blinding, and the chamber flickered before eyelids that didn’t know anymore if they wanted to be open or closed. Her own body was completely out of her control, her legs shaking as if she were in the throes of some great and violent agony. She was begging before she knew it, her words coming out in fragments, ridiculous as they reached her ears. The shame of begging was lost to her as his tongue and teeth raked over the tiny button of her clit, teasing it until is throbbed and sang a wild and primal tune that her moaning voice tried to match note for note. His teeth did terrible things to her responsive flesh, raking over it with a careful and practiced knowledge that spoke of a sensual wisdom beyond anything she had ever even imagined in her wildest fantasy in the woods. His hands slid down her thighs languidly, massaging the trembling flesh as he went, setting off little forest fires in her blood wherever they lingered for a time. And then his hands were on her hips, sliding beneath her, grasping her ass cheeks and drawing them apart, lifting her ass up and off the bed. Cher forgot how to breathe properly, what came out of her were half said phrases that began with please and ended in the breathless gasp of his name. He paid her broken pleas no attention, lifting her body off the bed at an angle, until she had little choice but to wrap her trembling legs around his head to gain some balance. She fought for some semblance of sanity, to stop her body’s violent jittering and resorted to crossing her ankles, her thighs pressed hard against his head as he forced his face deeper, with no thought to mercy. His tongue and teeth became weapons, alternately cruel and kind, nipping and pulling and tugging and sucking until she was a quivering thing in his grasp 49

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with little thought but for more. Even when she begged, helplessly pleaded for him to stop, she wanted more. Suddenly he drew her deep into his mouth, all the hot wet flesh of her cunt all at once and his tongue slid deep inside her. It was a sensual invasion that stopped her breath completely. Her whole body tensed behind it, and then bucked as he drew away and his hot tongue invaded again and again. She found herself moving with him as a pleasure frenzy built up inside her. She tossed and turned on the bed like a thing possessed. His fingers slid within the crack of her ass, teased her asshole with light gentle strokes. The contact sent fierce joy-spasms throughout her body that built upon the violation of her cunt, stoked the flames of wanton desire until she thought she was going to explode trying to take it all in at once. When the explosion did come, it threw her back on the bed with such force the frame of the thing rocked beneath her. Above her head, the assortment of chains jinglescreamed to match the wild breathless cry that burst from her lips as her world drew bowstring tight around the frantic rocking of her hips. She came in a hard flood and the world grayed with the power of the eruption from her core. She slumped on the bed and he let her slide gently away from him. She looked at him as she tried to will her body to stop twitching, her limbs experiencing after burst upon delicious after burst from the sizzling attention paid to her cunt. He studied her intently, every twitch, every helpless reaction, a sardonic little smile curling on his perfectly sculpted lips. His face was wet from her and she watched her own juices glitter in the torchlight. More, Cher thought, her mind a rabid thing devoid of anything beyond desire. The word erupted from her lips and in it was a demand that was undeniable. A growl issued from deep within his throat as he came for her. The sound sent shivers down her spine. She met him halfway, gaining her knees. Suddenly her aching breasts were pressed against his chest, her hips at his hips. She looked up into his eyes and saw nothing but lust there…and that lust was so raw, so strong, that it was beautiful. When his lips met hers, her mind shut down of everything save the experience of his mouth on hers. Drunk on sheer desire, she wound her fingers in his inky black hair and ground her body into his, trying to melt into him, to become one with the fiery heat that radiated so strongly from him.

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Their tongue’s fought for dominance in the joined caverns of their mouths. She gave as good, as she got, reveling in the beautiful sounds of his breathless gasps as the matched her own. “Fuck me, Donatien,” she gasped, snatching at his hair, surrendering completely to the desires of her body. “It’s going to hurt,” he growled in warning. “Good,” she whispered. He lost his mind at that single word. His hands on her ass, he backed off the bed until he was standing, lifting her in the air, onto the hot head of his throbbing cock. The contact was electric and she threw her head back and moaned, need coursing through her in riotous waves. He shook with the power of trying to ease into her, to go gently and spare her some of the pain he’d warned of. She looked into his eyes and wrapped her arms and legs around him, preparing herself. Using his neck for leverage, she forced herself down on the rock hard cock beneath her. The pain was phenomenal, and she cried out. He cried out with her, the whole of him suddenly buried in her hot flesh. That was it for the extent of his kindness and control. He pressed her against the blood wood bedpost. He captured her further cries with his mouth. Cher’s mind wallowed in a soft confusion. The pain had been great, but not wholly unwelcome. As he pounded into her roughly, the pain righted itself, swelled and throbbed within her. She clung to him, her legs locking around his waist as he devoured her mouth and captured her sighs. The pain began to turn to something else as her muscles clamped around his invading cock. The friction was maddening, sending dark tendrils of delight dancing throughout her body. She could feel it in her hands, her throat, her toes…everywhere, this slow building that was so reminiscent of the thing that he’d done with his mouth, but so different…so utterly pleasantly primal. Suddenly he began to move and she tore her mouth away from his, sinking her teeth into the flesh of his shoulder blade. “Damn you woman,” he breathed into her ear, “I’m trying to be nice.” “You’re not nice, Donatien,” she giggled, “why pretend?” And then they were at the whipping post with all its many chains and metal rings. “You’re right,” he said lifting her to the very tip of his cock, “turn around and hold those.” 51

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She looked up and saw the twin silver rings he indicated. She let him go as he helped her turn in the air. Her feet touched the floor and a ragged gasp tore from her as he buried himself in her from behind. “Is this revenge for what I did to you when you were chained here?” she gasped, turning her head to look at him. He grinned. “Yes.” “Do you remember the things that happen to you when you’re the Beast?” His gaze darkened. “Everything.” “And you think to punish me now? “Uh-Huh.” His cock throbbed within her and she squirmed, forced herself to think beyond that insane throbbing. “You realize that I will seek revenge as well…man or Beast…you will pay.” He thrust himself into her hard enough to make her forget about anything other than the tumultuous sensation that came with that action. She pressed her face up against the cool marble and used the rings for support as he pounded into her with a merciless fury that did, indeed, bespeak of vengeance. He touched parts of her within that she never knew existed, riding so deep within her that she was sure he was touching her very soul, spearing it and binding it to him so skillfully and effectively that she thought she was going to lose her mind as well as her body to him. She gripped the metal rings as if they were lifelines as a wildfire built in her ravished cunt and spread through the rest of her body ferociously, the inferno grew with his every relentless stroke. Her legs gave out on her; the muscles and bones within seemed liquefied in the molten lava that ran through her veins. His grip on her hips was the only thing keeping her from crashing to the floor. Pleasure became her world and that world was dark, primeval and ruled by a terrible wolf-god. She bit her bottom lip until she tasted her own blood. Her cries became musical to her own ears and soon enough she heard the monsters beyond the door lend their feral calls to hers. She came so hard that her world went stunningly black a final scream was torn from her—beneath that blackness a cool unconsciousness laid and she welcomed into it. In that instant, distant as the moon from the dark world to which she’d come, she heard him cry out too, felt a final thrust as he gripped her hips hard and filled her with fire. 52

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ChapterEight

Cher awoke to the feel of soft fingers flicking hard over the flesh of her erect nipple. Eyes stubbornly closed, she shifted in the satin covers that surrounded her, unwilling to let go of sleep, her body sated in such a way that every limb and muscle was completely utterly relaxed. There was an ache between her thighs but even that was wonderfully pleasant, the slight pain and tense muscles bringing hot flashes of what had passed between her and Donatien. “Stupid girl,” a soft feminine voice whispered close to her ear, “he’s going to kill you now. You didn’t tame the beast; he tamed you…like he tamed me and the other poor intangible wenches like me…like he tamed Yasmine, the witch, who cursed us to this eternal and dark place. He didn’t even scare you away like the two that came before you. He fucked you into submission. What did Serge see in you, I wonder? Wake up. It is time to die.” The sound of a low growl accompanied that voice, as the teasing of her nipple turned to a hard resentful pinch. Cher sat up, wide-eyed, into fathomless darkness. What had happened to the light? “Donatien?” she whispered. Her reply was a bestial snarl. The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. Heart pounding, she slid back in the bed until her back touched the headboard with all its many chains and rings. “I want light,” Cher called to the wraithlike creatures. “I want light to flood this chamber.” Tears filled her eyes when nothing happened. She heard sudden padded footfalls from across the chamber. They were closing in quickly. The panting of the Beast filled the chamber. Silently, Cher moved to the edge of the bed and dropped her legs over the side, when her feet touched the floor she slid into a crouch. What am I going to do? What am 53

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I going to do? What am I going to do? The question repeated in her mind, increasing in terror with every repetition. She had never been so afraid in her life, but something told her that it was far too late for fear, that Death was stalking the chamber around her and that it was coming in for the kill. The bed rocked as something leapt upon it, its heavy body causing the wood to scream and give underneath its immense weight. The bed crashed to the floor beneath a fit of feral snarling and Cher scrambled away from it, fear stealing her breath so that a scream locked in her throat finding no avenue to echo in the darkness. She moved quickly and silently, no destination in mind to her blind eyes. She simply sought safety. She crashed into the whipping post, setting its many adorning chains to jingling damningly. She heard the long low snarl of the Beast and his claws clicking on the floor, coming closer, eating up the space between them. A terrified wail escaped her and her hands danced across the cold floor searching for a weapon, anything. Her fingers touched the cool leather of the cat o’ nine tails, locked around it and she drew it against her chest, her eyes wildly searching the black nothing of the chamber. The Beast had gone silent, stalking her like the animal that he was. He could be anywhere in the darkness, moving on padded paws, masking the sound of his nails clicking on the floor by moving with animalistic stealth. Fear tore at her chest and shaking she stood against the whipping post, her back to its smooth solidity. It occurred to Cher that it…he had tricked her, had seduced her from the purpose for which she had been herded into the chamber by the other night things. In her lust for him, in her pity for his terrible agony, in her need to comfort him and satisfy herself, she had forgotten that the chamber had been decorated for punishment, that Donatien had been chained like the animal he sometimes became and that she was the one chosen, for whatever reason, to deal out that punishment. It occurred to her that she had been handed every dark fantasy she had ever had and the man of her dreams…and she had thrown it all away. And she was about to die for it. And her death would be as unrestrained and all consuming as his lovemaking had been. A sudden surge of anger surged through her. She couldn’t tell if that anger was at herself or at the man-thing that had so easily tricked her. Her body still stung of him; her lips and nipples were still swollen from his kisses. Her well-ravished cunt still ached for more of him…at that very moment…even as he stalked her in the darkness. 54

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Damn him, she thought, eyes narrowing in the inky blackness. They were one and the same; he and the Beast and they had tricked her. The more she thought about it, the more enraged she became. Panting, she brought the whip down hard across the flesh of her palm. The sting was enough to bring new tears to her eyes. She hardly noticed. Who did he think he was fucking with? Welcome Beauty, she found herself mouthing in the darkness, banish fear. You are queen and mistress here… “Okay,” she whispered. A terrible snarl, too near, followed the sound of her voice. Cher slid along the whipping post as quietly as possible, trying to avoid the noise of the chains. Speak your wishes; speak your will, swift obedience meets them still… Her orders to turn on the lights were not obeyed, even though she knew the ghostly women were in the chamber. She had failed them and now they were only waiting to watch her die. “One light,” Cher called out to them. “Disobey whatever order he gave you. Give me one light and I’ll make it right.” A single torch flickered on immediately. Its tiny glow barely dented the vast darkness. The Beast snarled in rage, so close to her, so terribly near, that the breath from his cavernous jaws blew her hair back. Cher screamed and stumbled backward, a part of her mind conscious of not losing her footing beneath her horror, knowing that losing her footing meant losing her life. The thing before her was nothing like the wolf-like creature that she had seen that day in the woods, though her mind recognized the silver fur and the familiar luminous green eyes. He was bigger, at least seven feet tall and he stood on two legs like a man. His fingers were elongated claws with sharp and wicked tips meant for rending flesh. His cavernous jaws pulled back in a snarl over long, jagged teeth. His green lantern gaze flicked momentarily to the cat o’ nine tails she clutched in one desperate hand, then turned back to her with menace. “Donatien, don’t,” she said as it took a step toward her on too long legs. His silver fur glittered in the thin amber light cast by the single torch. Cher could swear she could hear her heart beating frantic terror loud in the chamber beneath the sound of the monster’s horrifying growling. Rage and fear warred within her. Fear sent her scurrying backward over the golden floor, step after shaking step trying to put some distance 55

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between her and the monstrous thing her lover had become. Rage caused her grip on the cat o’ nine tails to intensify until it felt like part of her flesh. Her sweat slick hand seemed to meld with the leather, to become one with its power to dispense pain, its design to distribute punishment and be obeyed. And she needed the creature to obey now. Her command was simple. Don’t kill me. He threw back his head suddenly and a sound issued from him that caused the hair to stand up on the nape of her neck. The howl filled the chamber with savagery. Outside, answering howls, so very, very sad, erupted in answer. The Beast, Cher understood, was announcing his triumph to the rest of his pack and their answering cries were sad acknowledgement of fact. Bastard, Cher thought suddenly, resentfully, I’m not dead yet. And I’m not going to die. Resolve stopped her shaking, backwards flight. Her hand clenched the whip in a death grip. I am not afraid of him, Cher told herself. What occurred between us was beautiful. Her body flooded with heat beneath the fear at the thought of it. That heat made her bolder…made the chamber less dark to her mind…made the Beast less a beast and more the man that had thrust his face between her thighs and taken her to the brink of ecstasy and then cast her, headlong, into its orgasmic depths. Orgasmic depths that she had suspected from the moment she’d met him that only he could take her to. It comes down to this, Donatien, she thought, her eyes narrowing, her blood pumping not fear but determination, what I want versus what the Beast wants… “And I want you,” she said, unaware that she had spoken aloud until the whisper of the damning words were dissipating in the chamber. Her mouth was moving, but Donatien couldn’t hear her, so great was his struggle with the skin of the Beast. He held the monster barely in check. He fought for Cher’s life and he worried that he was going to lose this battle as he’d lost the one before it—that battle had been for the lights in the chamber. The Beast had asserted its will over his own and Donatien had found himself giving the order to a dozen phantom lovers that were over three hundred years old to put the lights out in the chamber…making it dark as the inky Territories around it, and therefore, the Beast’s domain. It’s hunting ground.

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I have to get out of here, he thought. Out of here and into the blackness of the Territories. She can bar the door behind me if I can make it outside. She will be safe. There will be other beast’s to fight and blood to let. It will forget her…for a while. But what, he wondered, what happened when it remembered her? There were magical means to escape the palace for one who did not suffer the curse, but would she find them in time…find them before the Beast remembered the threat she had been to it, remembered and sought vengeance? He decided to deal with that possibility when it occurred. What was important now was getting the hell away from her. With heightened senses, he could smell her fear beneath the scent of her delectable flesh. The smell made him hungry, but it was an appetite of the loins instead of the mouth. He wanted to devour her sexually, to taste every part of her, to be inside her. His lust was a rabid thing now that he had tasted her, knew how delicious it was to have her tremble against him and cry out with matching need. The need to protect her was as wild as the creature within him. He refused to fail, refused to give in to the monster within him. If he gave in to the Beast again, it would kill her. And he would be part of that. The thought was so terrible that the reality of it was nearly beyond him. Looking at her trembling like a frightened rabbit before the hideous thing that he’d become, Donatien knew true fear for the first time in his long life. “And I want you,” she said again and this time he did hear. Her demeanor changed with the words; fear running off her like water off the marble statue her body had become in its sudden confident stillness. The Beast went wild with the words and Donatien almost lost control of the creature so shocked was he by the utterance. “Did you think that because I showed you mercy, Donatien de Carignan, that there is no cruelty in me?” she continued and actually took a step toward him. Deep within him, Donatien felt a sudden thrill of absolute panic run through the Beast, and because they were a conjoined thing, he felt it too. It consumed him for several seconds, racing though his veins, finding an exit in the head of his cock, which it left rock hard and wanting. “I told you to fuck me,” Cher said, her voice a sensual husky whisper as she advanced another step. “Did you imagine in there somewhere that I cared what you got out of it? My command was to fulfill my need, which you did quite well, thank you. Are you listening, because I have something to tell you?” 57

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The arm that clutched the cat o’ nine tails, descended sharply forward, the leather heads cracking in the empty air inches from his flesh. Both man and Beast flinched at the sudden sound. He was listening. He was absolutely mesmerized by the delicate roll of her hips the predatory stride with which she approached him. The torchlight flickered against the sudden hardness in her amethyst gaze. He watched as that gaze dropped languidly down to his cock—took in his aroused state and a slow, triumphant smile slid across her face. He took a step backwards towards the door, because the Beast raged against the mystifying coup in her bold expression. It surged forward within him and tried to devour his hold on consciousness. “This,” Cher said, and her voice rose in tone and authority, it was cold as ice, “is the bad part, Donatien! I am Mistress here and I say to the howling night creatures beyond the door…Aid me now and gain your fondest desire! The Beast has turned out the palace lights! Enter now and kill me or enter freely and aid me in ending your suffering.” The Beast went for her, enraged and it took every ounce of Donatien’s will to keep it from killing her in that instant. Its claws raked the air for her flesh and she wielded the whip like it was a sword cutting it twice across its arms as she danced desperately out of its way. His control flickered. His mind screamed with the need to maintain control. Behind him, he heard the door swing open on hinges that hadn’t been oiled in three hundred years. The big bodies of thirty-four werewolves filled the doorway, his entire noble court. Their demeanor was hesitant and they looked from their master to the tiny pale woman with something like confusion in their luminous eyes. “I-I just need you to hold him,” Cher breathed. “I can do the rest.” Within him, the Beast roared for the interlopers to leave. Donatien saw a shudder of fear go through several of them. He understood the desperate inner-battle that they were going through, loyalty to their king versus a powerful need to be free. A slinky black wolf separated itself from the others. She dropped on all fours, a savage snarl shaking her whole body as she transformed from the Were state to something more like a wolf from Cher’s moonlit world. 58

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It was Capucine. He whirled on her as she attacked him. His mind consumed with the Beast’s rage at this new treachery. And then, as if her new betrayal gave the others leave; the pack was on him, their heavy bodies and ferocious teeth driving him to the floor. “There,” Cher said, and Donatien thought that her voice was amazingly calm as he fought for his life against the unprecedented act of full-scale mutiny. Wild and snarling, he was dragged back to the whipping post. He felt Cher’s human hands on him amongst the claws and teeth of the creatures that sought to hold him. Rage and panic limited the part of him that was Donatien de Carignan, masking it in the fury of the Beast. He slashed and tore at those who sought to oppress him. He felt the sting of their teeth and claws. He felt Cher grasping at his wrist, forcing the heavy metal of shackles around it. He fought to allow her to do it and when he heard the click of the metal and both his hands were bound, he allowed himself a brief respite, a moments rest in his endless battle with the Beast. And then he heard Cher give the insane command to turn even the single amber light out. He wondered if the chains would hold.

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Chapter Nine

The Beast was in a full-blown panic and that panic had given him the power necessary to subdue the consciousness of the man and turn the lights off before the Chosen One gained any more control over him. He decided in the heated depths of his newborn and voracious lust…to fuck her again while she lay so sweetly unconscious amongst the crimson, bed silks. He had thought insane things watching the woman. Her golden hair reminded him, in its platinum-gold glory, of both the three suns and the twin moons of Lythos at once. The ivory of her skin was also like reflected moonlight, just as perfect and flawless. With a terrible claw, he had reached out and stroked the flesh from her ankle to the small of her back. She had emitted little sigh from pink rose bud mouth and turned over amongst the covers until one pink nipple peaked at him from the swirling mass of red she had wrapped around her self. A shot of lust had gone through him that was complete and undeniable. In that instant, the Beast knew the woman had to die. He understood with a predator’s inherent perception that she would be the death of him or he would be the death of her and that there could be no in between. He had endured such pain to have her, cooperated willingly with the man in a way he had not done in three hundred years. They had been in hot, hungry agreement. They both wanted to mate with the pretty, silver haired woman with eyes like the purple sky of the world that had been lost to them. In the forest when he had followed her that day, he had wanted to taste her then too. And he had. The flavor of the woman was as familiar to the Beast as the silken feel of his own fur. And when he had buried itself deep inside her, he had wanted to live in that space forever. Bound, on his knees, his face turned to the whipping post; the savage creature thrashed in his chains and craned his neck to watch as his traitorous pack slink back to 60

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the ink filled shadows of the black chamber. He heard the low hiss of the lash moments before the stinging leather met the flesh of his back. In his lunatic rage, he barely felt that pain, but it was only a moment before the woman delivered another and then another— these blows were only to get his attention. “Good,” the woman said, softly. The breath it took to make up the word was a harsh pant, half excitement and half fear. Her foot came up onto his back, square between the shoulder blades. She pushed forward and the Beast found itself pressed hard against the marble. Shock and indignation riveted him to the spot. The heat of her flesh pressed so intimately, so cruelly against him drove his cock rock hard despite itself. “I was my dear sweet Inker’s best student,” the woman said. “So he told me and he was far too demanding a teacher to waste time on pretty lies.” The cat o’ nine tails fell across the flesh of his ass. The pain was shocking and caused the Beast to move forward still, seeking the smooth, cold marble in an attempt to escape the sudden pain. She leaned into him, her lips inches from his ear. “Does this somehow prove that I belong here?” she asked. “Can I keep you now, Donatien?” He felt her hands in his fur, stroking the top of his head—this part far from punishment, but unmistakable seduction. The touch was strangely gentle as the rest of his flesh sang with the agony of the lash. The Beast found himself enjoying the feel of her hand. It was such a great relief from the pain and utterly confounding. Why should he feel anything pleasurable from this woman, this woman whose sole purpose from the moment he had laid eyes on her, was to slay him? But her touch was pleasant and she was soft and even when the lash fell in her hands to meet his flesh, he detected the wristflick of mercy in each blow. He longed to be half changed, so that he could use the man’s human vocal chords to speak to her, to tell her of the million ways she was going to suffer if she continued with the lash. Beneath his rage, he felt the first stirrings of an odd pleasure and he rejected that along with the enjoyment of the stroke of her hand. The blows fell in a rain, quick, with the tip of the lash, grazing his ass with a merciless intensity that was utterly rhythmic. His heart beat to the mad painful time of that rhythm as she fell stroke after stroke on his aching flesh. 61

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“You will learn to obey me,” the Chosen One whispered in the shadows, each word punctuated with a hellish blow that set his back to arching. “Even in the deepest darkness, in his home, in the blackness that is his territory, the Beast will obey.” And the blows continued to fall, dancing against his flesh with a severity of concentration, sometimes rising sometimes falling in harshness and cruelty. The Beast shook with the pain as it invaded every part of him, spawning like a hot spring from the flesh of his tortured ass. She did not miss a beat, striking the same place again and again with precision until his mind opened up and saw something pleasant in the pain, something delicious in the throbbing of his flesh. He began to look forward with a fearful intensity to each new blow, wondering when it was going to fall and if it was going to match the ferocity of the one that came before it. His cock was like a throbbing stone, his body so tense and confused by the utterly separate sensations coursing through him that the Beast thought he might go mad. He threw back his head and howled and heard the answering howls of the things that waited in the chamber around it…waited for his submission. The flaw in their plan was that the Beast did not know how to submit. Humiliation coursed through the creature in sinuous waves. The entire pack was watching this, watching their master being brought down by a madwoman with a cruel streak that defied even the savagery of the Beast. She had used his own trick against him, turned his own pack to a body of mutineers. There was nothing left to do as the blows fell, but surrender. She was leaving him no other option. No! He braced itself against the marble. Hands spread flat against the cool surface. He had suffered worse, near mortal wounds, at the hands of the King Koth Nuaha and its ocean of offspring—he could take this pain. He could defy this torture. She could not beat him forever. Eventually the bitch’s arm would get tired. And even if she did continue on with her cruelty for all eternity, the silent throng of watchers would never get the satisfaction of hearing another sound from him. He would endure. “Do you think I want to break you, Wild Thing?” the Chosen One whispered, “You are wrong. I just want to make you mine…my Wild Thing.” She was a liar or she didn’t understand. It made no difference to the Beast. He meant to kill her, the first chance he got. 62

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“Now change for me,” she said, bringing the lash down across the flesh of his ass with such violence that the Beast had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out. It is dark, he tried to say but the sound came from his throat in the Wolf’s Tongue she couldn’t understand for her humanity. The dark is my time. The lash came down across his tender flesh again. His world washed white against the backdrop of his closed eyelids. His cock throbbed as if it were still wearing the awful contraption of rings that had bound it earlier. The pain was maddening, but her delivery was arousing. “Don’t pretend like you can’t change in the dark, Donatien,” she said and the words held a warning. “You changed in the light, well enough. There was Beast in you when you lay with me. There was Beast in you the day you said that foul thing to my sisters and I. And there was man in you that day in the forest.” He shifted form because it amused him to do so. He found the pain minimal compared to the torture of the lash. He caught the glittering reflection of its luminous eyes on the surface of the marble whipping post. “I am always with him,” the Beast growled from the man’s throat. “We are always together. That is what you do not understand, stupid cow.” The punishment was instantaneous. “Silence!” she demanded, with the confidence of a creature that had changed his entire world. He turned narrowed eyes to her, hating her and wanting to fuck her at the same time. “What is it that you fear from me?” she asked. Her voice was soft. “Pain,” the Beast growled. “And death.” “And is there any way to prevent your dying, Beast?” You must love me too, the Beast thought, and that thought was laced with enough longing to make him uncomfortable. He cannot exist without me. Yasmine managed to separate our minds, but you cannot separate us any further. We are one being. One heart. One soul. But he didn’t dare say those words—as if words could make her love him, all of him—or all would be lost and he and the man and all that had once been human-like in the Territories would simply cease to exist. Such was the curse of the witch. When he didn’t answer fast enough, Cher tapped his abused ass with the head of the cat o’ nine tails. The only answer that got her was a very bestial snarl of annoyed 63

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pain, which brought a smile to her lips. She got down on all fours, oblivious to the watchers in the room, those that were hulking terrible and visible and those that were not. “They said I only had to tame you,” she tapped his sore ass again with the whip, watched him flinch. “Not kill you. Light.” Amber torchlight flickered around the fringes of the room, each one lighting seemingly on its own in answer to her breathless command. She had started a full, blown mutiny and there was no going back now for her or for the odd assortment of creatures that the beautiful animal before her, his body outlined in the amber torchlight, commanded. He was magnificent. She saw no hint of the Beast now, save for the preternatural green flicker of his eyes. The animal was in his voice too…and the sound of that voice went straight to her cunt, each word inviting a spasm from deep within her. “You can’t tame me, stupid woman. I am the Beast,” he scoffed, and her cunt sang. Didn’t he have any idea what he did to her? What he had always done to her? “Your best bet is to grab that letter opener there on the floor and shove it in my throat,” he continued. “Save yourself, and the people of the Territories. Set them free. Because despite it all. They still love me. I may have been hard to take down, but as you can see, my death by their hands was possible.” Cher pressed her face into the smooth skin at his side, just above his hip. “Shut up,” she whispered and inhaled him. He froze as her tongue snaked out to taste the salt and sweat of his flesh. His whole body went chain-rattling tense at the action. “What are you doing?” She brought the head of the whip down across his ass again. At the same time, she drew her tongue and teeth across his pelvic bone. “What--?” he began again and then lost the words. “Taming you,” she told him. “I wouldn’t kill you, Beast. I am intensely fond of fucking you.” She tapped his ass again and he cursed her as she drew the flesh of his hip into her mouth and sucked and bit it simultaneously. A deep groan issued from him and Cher decided that she like the helpless intensity of that sound as she slid forward—her lips grazing over the silken hairs that marked her target. She touched his cock with the tip of her tongue and the first stroke was hesitant. His violent intake of breath, however, made her bolder. The flesh was slick underneath 64

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her tongue and she followed the long length of it until she came to the head. She found herself in an awkward position then—and put her hand in the flat of his stomach to move him back from the whipping post and make room for herself between his body and the post. Her tongue slid over the head of his cock, teasing that silken flesh until his breaths came in dull pants above her. She slid her hands up his thighs and cupped one ass cheek, while rubbing the whip, like a constant threat over the flesh of the other. She drew his cock deeper into her mouth, marveling at the feel of it against her tongue. The chains rattled wildly above her and sometimes he was breathing and sometimes he wasn’t. The sensation of power was heady and she drew him into her mouth, her throat, in order to gain more of it. He began thrusting against her, treating her mouth much like he had treated her cunt. She matched each thrust on pure instinct, driving her face forward, never letting him fully escape her, dragging him into her deeper and deeper, trying to suck him dry, to swallow him whole. He came and she found herself drowning in the salt sea of him. She looked up in time to see the rage and absolute fear on his face before the transformation took him. He did not become the seven-foot monster, but the thing she had met in the forest that first day instead. This new creature easily slid out of the chains. The thing she had recognized even then was something more than an ordinary wolf. He was bigger. Bolder. Than any wolf had a right to be. He snarled at her. And just as she had done that first night, she reached out to touch his shaggy head. He backed away from her as if her touch carried the plague. And fled. Like an extension of the creature, the other wolf-things followed it into the black night. Cher drew her knees to her chest and knew that she had failed. She had lost him. Tears stood out in her eyes as she peered into the fathomless blackness beyond the door for a hint of anything silver. When he did not come back, she gave those tears leave to slide down her cheeks.

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Chapter Ten

The sound of someone else weeping stirred her from her own misery. Cher listened to the soft and frantic sound for a long time before she got to her feet, her back pressed against the whipping post. There was an open door on the other side of the chamber and that was where the weeping came from. “I’m sorry,” Cher said, going toward the door and who or whatever was crying beyond it. “I failed…and I’m sorry.” Along with the weeping, came a soft but stern whispering. As she drew closer ,she could make out some of the words. “It’s too late, Laure, what good is telling her now?” “Her brother is still alive. He is beautiful like an angel, Brigitte. How can we not tell her?” Cher’s footstep increased at the whispered words. She entered the darkness of the new chamber, her heart near bursting with fear. For some reason Julien came to mind and the fear for him would not leave. But they couldn’t be talking about her brother, could they? What would these strange creatures from this terrible black world know of Julien Moreau? The darkness of the new room was all in encompassing, but the terrible fear in her heart caused her to follow the whispered voices, the incessant weeping. “What is it?” she whispered to the blackness. Her voice sounded desperate and terrified to her own ears. Her heartbeat was a frantic echo in the sudden silence. “Oh, Mistress,” the weeping one whispered, her voice a flood of tears and tortured emotion. “What?” Cher practically screamed. “They’re torturing him,” the voice whispered. “And he is so beautiful.” “Torturing who?” Cher asked. 66

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Torches came to life all around her and suddenly she was standing in the ornate main hall of the great palace, ivory stairwell to her right and left lead to the upper rooms, a grandiose chandelier hung from the ceiling, its glittering diamond lights dark. A humongous arched doorway made of solid gold and littered with diamonds stood as another way to enter the nightmare palace. Massive furnishings, covered in silk, sat untouched, strewn about the gargantuan chamber. An enormous mirror stood in a stunning silver frame as the centerpiece to the room. Its silken cover had been pulled away from its shining glass surface and images cavorted in the crystal-silver surface. It took her mind several moments to wrap around the horror of what she was seeing reflected in the glass. She moved without thinking, her mind frozen, her eyes devouring the image. She had touched the chill glass before she realized it and her hand seemed to dissolve into the glass, the silvery surface parting like liquid beneath her fingers. Julien was naked and bound in chains like an animal in a grimy cell. His brilliant golden hair littered with filth. “No,” Cher whispered in dismay. She stepped closer to the mirror, her mind taking in intricate details of the horrid picture. His hair was too long. How could it have grown so long in a single night? His handsome face was masked in a beard. There were bruises on his face; deeper bruises on his body and the mark of a terrible lashing covered his legs and thighs. “Julien,” she whispered and he stirred as if he’d heard her. His swollen eyelids fluttered, but did not, could not, open. The image stirred slightly, liquidly, and then changed completely. She saw her father standing in the empty Moreau mansion. His clothes were ragged and tattered. His white hair stood wild on his head. He sat before a fireplace without a fire with coffers of gold scattered on the floor around him. The image flickered again and she saw her sisters, each one in turn. Emeline sat at the feet of a man like a dog. She wore fine clothes as the man spoke cruel words to her that Cher could not hear. Ambre danced with a man underneath moonlit stars. Her gaze was flat within his grasp as a glorious party went on all around them. She looked hopefully up into his eyes as he stroked her back gently and winked at a pretty black haired serving maid, who blushed hotly under the intensity of his stare…Cher watched Ambre’s heart break and a coldness enter her sister’s eyes that made the former flatness seem like the burning of deep passion. 67

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“No,” Cher said again. She had only been gone a moment in time. How could such horror have happened to her family? “I want to go home,” she said. “You can not,” the weeping voice said forlornly. “I must,” Cher cried, turning to the empty room. “But the Beast--” came a soft whisper. “To hell with the Beast!” Cher screamed. She didn’t mean it, but her family needed her and she was beyond all rational thought. When the room grew obstinately silent around her, Cher turned on the mirror. “Let her go, Brigitte,” the weeping girl whispered. “He’ll kill us,” Brigitte said. “It is preferable to me than another hundred years of this misery! We could do this one good thing. The Beast defied her. You saw it. There’s no hope for us. But we could help her…like she tried to help us. She’s wholly human. She could pass through the mirror.” “Are you out of your mind, Laure?” Brigitte said. “Capucine and the rest of the nobles will gut us like fish. Or feed us to the damn things that roam the blackness. No other girl has been returned--” “They ran away,” Laure said. “This one did not run. Perhaps the mirror exists to return the girls should they fail. What other purpose does it serve other than to torture us with memories of the light? Let her go, Brigitte. You’ll return, won’t you…in seven days time on your world? You can try again. It won’t be too late…almost, but not quite, too late. You came willingly, Mistress. They will spare my life if I tell them that you will return.” Cher would have agreed to anything. She nodded absently turned back to the mirror. And she felt hands on her, caressing her boldly, toying with the silver ring in her nipple. Helplessly, despite her distress, that nipple bloomed under the gentle caress. She didn’t even look down when the article was pressed into her hand. She just grasped it. “Only let fall a single petal and you will return to us, Mistress. You will return home.” She was pushed hard, forward and she went crashing into the mirror, a scream on her lips. The glass broke around her, but there were no shards as she expected. The glass seemed to melt over her and she found herself suspend in the silvery liquid. 68

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“Sympathetic little fool,” Brigitte whispered cruelly. “They’re going to eat you…and not in the good way. She is meat for the night things like the rest. Tried or not, the bitch failed.” And then Cher could hear no more. She was drowning in the mirror’s cold liquid and panic set in. She thrashed frantically and saw a light above her. She moved toward that light, fighting the panic, swimming with purpose and the light drew miraculously closer. When she crashed through the surface, air felt good to her tortured lungs. She gasped with want of breath. The light she had followed was the moon. She was in her father’s pond. Golden fish flickered around her in irritated welcome. Cher scrambled out of the water underneath the garish silvery light of the moon and made her way to the house. Entering, she snatched a crimson curtain from the wall and wrapped it about her nakedness. And then she went to the place where the mirror had showed her father. “P-Papa,” she whispered when she found him sitting still as a statue amongst the richness of a king. He turned to her, his stricken face cavorting with a thousand emotions, the most overwhelming disbelief, and absolute joy. He crossed the room in seconds and wrapped her in his loving arms. “I’m okay, papa,” she whispered. “I’m okay. I’m home.” But it didn’t really feel like home anymore. Even wrapped in her father’s love, she missed Donatien, missed the Beast and the black world she had sojourned into. She drew her hand up, her grip on the article within it hard. Opening her hand, she saw an impossible emerald rose. Even as she gazed at it, one of the seven crushed leaves that graced it blackened and died.

*** Cher stood in the courthouse draped in a crimson cloak and hood. The magistrate glared down at her from his high seat. His eyes were cruel. “I will pay whatever it takes to see Julien free,” she said loudly enough so that her voice rose above the den of those who had come to watch the proceedings that morning. “Your father already tried to pay me, wench,” the magistrate said, his voice cold. “Julien Moreau is a criminal. Money cannot take the place of justice, not in my courtroom. He is three months into a five-year sentence. That is the long and short of it. 69

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He burned down Wolfram Shipping in fit of drunken rage. That kind of behavior will not be tolerated.” “And I told you,” Cher said, trying desperately to maintain calm, “that he thought that the proprietors had kidnapped me. And they had.” “You’re here now, aren’t you?” the magistrate said. “They let me go,” Cher said. You heartless bastard. His laughter was arctic. “Leave my sight, girl, before I lock you away with your fool brother.” Shaking, hands clenched into fists, Cher turned and fled the courtroom under the multitudinous stares of all attending. Her mind was a black rage. Outside, she practically barreled into Emeline and Ambre. She was surprised at their sudden appearance. She had been trying to see them for five days, and they had been too busy with balls and other luxuries of nobility to answer her polite calls for their attention. “Sister,” Amber said, a soft smile curving her pretty lips. “I apologize for our neglect, but you know how the whirl of polite society can be. We just came back from Papa’s and he informed us of the terrible mystery inherent in your impromptu return to us. We haven’t seen him so happy in a long time. He is actually spending some of that treasure outside of what he gave us for our dowries. You were gone so long, dearest Cher. Where were you? Papa said it was for you to tell us.” “I was in a very dark place,” Cher said. She was chewing her bottom lip and eyeing the court building where her brother was being kept…and tortured. She began walking around the building, checking it for flaws, for the potential of being broken into. Her sisters followed her but she barely noticed them, her mind was on the task at hand. If the magistrate wasn’t going to let Julien go, then she had little choice but to break him out. And she had to do it quickly. The evil little man had made her wait five days for a court audience. The emerald rose had lost five more leaves. She had watched them die and felt a terrible sadness for each little death. Darkness or no darkness, she knew she didn’t quite belong in the light anymore. Her body ached for her savage lover. Julien just came first. Julien needed her and her own wants and needs were meaningless in the face of his suffering. “What a cryptic answer,” Emeline remarked. “Papa showed us that sad strange little rose that you brought back with you. I had no idea that roses came in that color, Cher. Where did you get it? Where were you? Was it terrible there? We were so 70

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worried. Ambre’s marriage to the Count Voiget was so tainted with her fear for you that she wept on her wedding day. And my marriage to Baron Bordeaux was no less an occasion saddened by imaginings of your terrible fate.” “Donatien was pleasant enough,” Cher said without thinking, her mind on a low window where the bars looked ragged and ready to fall. “When he wanted to be. Which, truthfully, was not often.” “Donatien,” Ambre hissed. “He did disappear when you disappeared, sister. Donatien was in that monstrous black nightmare that you walked into?” “He was,” Cher said, traveling the alleyway behind the court building. “He is. Can you tell from here which room Julien is kept in?” “Papa already tried to get Julien out,” Ambre snapped. “He is lost to us.” Cher’s eyes narrowed at Ambre’s callous words. “He is not. You have been to see him, both of you. Now think! Which room?” “There,” Emeline said, pointing to a room in the uppermost part of the building. Cher’s heart sank. How was she going to get way up there? Her mind worked furiously, frantically. Desperation was her key. The impossible question of how was diminished in her mind by the simple fact that she had to get up there. She needed help though. And there was only one person in the world that she told all her secrets too. She hugged each of her sisters in turn, taking note of the stiffness of Ambre’s shoulders within her embrace. “Donatien would not have been right for you, Ambre. You need tender loving. And Donatien is a Beast. You saw the creatures. You know what I’m saying to you is the truth.” “Of course, Cher,” Ambre said with a frozen half-smile. Cher became lost for a moment in the coldness of her sister’s gaze. There was a new hardness in Ambre’s stare. The terrible thing was that Cher knew where that harness had come from. She stroked her sister’s golden curls softly, not knowing what to do or say to make the pain in her go away. When she managed to break away from that awful chilling glare, she continued down the street toward the Inker’s Shoppe.

*** “You won’t help me, Inker?” Cher said in disbelief.

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“I didn’t say that,” the Inker spat. “But you shouldn’t be here, Cher. You should be…elsewhere. The fate of an entire people rests in your hands. And I made sure that your hands were quite capable.” She stared at the twisted little man. “You know.” “Of course I know,“ he said, his voice was tired and sad. “The Territories of the Wolf and the Ram is my home, Cher, and I haven’t been home in three hundred years. The witch, Yasmine was very powerful. She made the mistake of falling in love with the Master, and he was always more wolf than man. She changed him, separating him from the animal within him.” He ran his twisted hands absently across his face, his chest. “She changed us all, the entire kingdom. But Donatien’s curse was the worst of all. He is constantly at war with himself now, for the Beast is truly a Beast. Wild. Free. Feral. Territorial. An animal. Before the witch, there was harmony between man and animal. He was born thusly. We all were. That is the way of us.” “Why didn’t you tell me?” Cher almost shrieked. The Inker laughed. There was bitterness in the sound. “What sane human girl would go willingly into the arms of otherworldly monsters? We are the predators of our world…wolves through and through and only sometimes men. Those of us amongst the lower classes Yasmine changed into mockeries of what they once were…cows and sheep and pigs. Food. The witch’s wrath was cruel and complete. To speak of her curse to a Chosen One is to doom the Territories of the Wolf and the Ram.” “But you speak of it now,” Cher whispered, a subtle fear growing in her breast. “Because we are already doomed and it doesn’t matter anymore.” “I don’t understand…the phantom women said I could go back…that I could try again.” “I was a wizard once, extremely powerful, devastatingly handsome in my way. Look at what she turned me into…a little freak…less than a monster. But she couldn’t take this away from me. This magic has sustained me for three hundred years. Little more than parlor tricks from what I was once capable of. Behold, darling Cher, the end of it all. This happened before you ran into them in the town square. Yes,” he said to her startled gasp, “I know that too.” He waved his hand in front of her and the air visibly stirred. Cher heard voices in the twisting air…voices that she recognized. “What are you going to do with it?” Emeline whispered. 72

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“Burn it,” Ambre answered. “It is a shame. It is such a sad and pretty little thing.” “It is a terrible thing,” Ambre said coldly. “A black magic thing. Evil. It should not exist.” “She’ll know we did it,” Emeline said. “She will hate us. She came back with nothing else. She keeps it in glass. It must mean something to her.” “I don’t care if the little bitch hates me,” Ambre said, then paused. “Actually, yes I do. I want her to hate me. She took everything from me. On the day she was born, she took Papa’s love. Every suitor that came here sought her hand first. What makes her so perfect? Why did Donatien want her instead of me, Emeline? Or you? Why does everyone love pretty, perfect little Cher so? Well, I don’t love her. I hate her.” Emeline was silent for a moment. “Do you know what Pierre said to me?” Her voice was soft, cold. “He said that he wanted her…that he only married me because he couldn’t have her. When I wept, he beat me. Ambre, he…beat me.” “Bring the candle, Emeline. It’s a little thing. But let us take it from her.” Cher cringed at the sound of breaking glass and her sisters’ delighted laughter, so cruel, drifting in the empty air. Tears rolled down her cheeks, tears of rage and pain. The Inker waved his hands and the sounds went away. The room was silent around them as he wrapped his stunted arms about her waist, rested his warped head against her breasts. “Don’t weep, sweet,” he said softly. “It doesn’t become the likes of you. I crafted you strong, and there is nothing we can do about what has come to pass. We can still help Julien though. We must think about that now. In two days time, the time of the Choosing will end, so will the Territories of the Wolf and the Ram and so will I. Let us see your brother safe before that time comes.” Cher stroked the Inker’s stringy black hair, her mind a confused jumble of emotions, the most dominant being rage. Emeline and Ambre had destroyed her little flower, her only link back to Donatien. Her heart cried out for him and she wanted to collapse and simply cease to be in the face of that terrible betrayal. And she thought that she might collapse…would simply give up her life and cease to exist for the loss of him. But Julien had to be freed first. “Yes,” she said softly, her voice a ghost of its former self. “We’ll need a plan.”

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The Inker looked up and smiled at her, the smile reached his tired, ancient gaze. “I’m good at planning things,” he said. “I’ve done nothing but plan for the last three hundred years. It’s carrying out the plan that’s the bitch.”

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Chapter Eleven

The moon hung full white and pregnant in the midnight sky as Cher and the Inker made their way down the cobbled streets that led to the town square. Her blood stirred with fear and excitement and that overload of emotion dulled the pain in her heart to tolerable levels. She knew that she could not stop moving, could not take the time to think, because if she did she would simply give in to the agony of her terrible loss. So Cher moved, with determination and purpose toward the dark lair of the magistrate. The dueling pistol felt cold in her hand. She only had a rudimentary idea of how to use it. The Inker’s instructions had been swift and complete as possible in the short time that they had allowed themselves between the planning and the deed. The pistol carried one shot and was more a threat than an actual instrument of death. She hoped the threat was enough for the guards. Cher stood against the wall of the building as the Inker knocked on the heavy wooden door. She heard the flat metal panel—eyelevel for an average man—slide back, and a voice called, “Who the hell is it? Do you know what time it is?” “I’ve come to inquire about a prisoner,” the Inker said. “Stand back,” the guard growled. “Are you a fairy or a sprite? Because I am talking to shadows.” The Inker stepped back and was draped in garish, silvery light of the moon. “What do you want you twisted little freak?” “I want to inquire about a prisoner,” the Inker repeated. His voice was amazingly causal, while Cher’s heart beat to the wild rhythm of a tom-tom drum. “Get yourself gone from here, little monster,” the guard said, his voice sounding both irritated and amused. “Before something terrible happens to you. I’m in no mood for--” “Oaf,” the Inker spat, his bulging eyes narrowed and the distain in his voice was palatable. “Lumpish ogre.” 75

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There was shocked amusement in the voice when it spoke again. Underneath the shock and amusement though, there was a growing anger. “What did you say you little mutation? I know you. You run the Ink Shoppe dead center of town. I am not opposed to bashing your ugly little face in…some more.” “Your wife sat on my face once,” the Inker said calmly. Cher heard locks sliding back quickly at that remark. The door slid open and a cool white light danced at the darkness near her feet. She steeled herself, drew in a deep calming breath, and slid the pistol from its hiding place within her cloak. “I don’t know why you chose me to be the instrument of your suicide, monster, but I’ll be glad to kill you,” the guard said, barreling into the night. “Hell, I was bored anyway.” Cher leveled the gun at the man’s head, pulled back the trigger until she heard it click. The echo of that sound caused the guard to freeze in his tracks. “Back inside,” Cher breathed. With legs that seemed to be made of wood, the guard did as he was told. “How many more guards are here tonight?” she asked, as the Inker shut the door and pulled out his own pistol. “F-Four,” the terrified man replied. She nodded, scanning the darkened public area of the courthouse where she had pleaded her brother’s case that morning for any sign of movement. All was still. They were all right…so far. “And where are they?” “Two upstairs and two below in the dungeon.” “Okay,” Cher said, inclining the pistol in the direction of a dark stairwell that led upwards. “We want Julien Moreau. Take us to him. Don’t make me kill you. It’s simple really. Understand.” “Yes.” “Good,” Cher said, “now move your ass.” Any hesitation from the man was due to the fact that his legs seemed stiff and wooden with fear and hard for him to manipulate. The Inker went ahead and Cher followed closely behind the guard, the nose of her pistol in his back. They made their way up the short stairwell and came to a dimly lit hallway. A man slept half in and half out of a chair at the end of a hallway painted in metal doors. The Inker went for the 76

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sleeping man, running faster than she thought possible of his short twisted legs. He brought the butt of the pistol down on the man’s slumped head; so hard Cher would have sworn she heard something in his skull crack beneath the power of the blow. The man eyes shot wide open as he slumped to the floor, then they closed again. The Inker rifled the limp form for keys, while Cher eyed the man’s chest until she was satisfied that it still rose and fell with steady breaths. “Julien’s cell,” she hissed. The guard began to move down the hall. A sudden and terrible scream rose from behind one of the locked doors. The sound sent a violent shudder all the way through her. The guard touched the door just as another hideous wail issued from behind it. “Open it!” Cher snarled as the Inker handed the terrified man the keys. He only fumbled the keys a little and then the door was open, swinging inward on creaking hinges and Cher gazed at a scene straight from Hell. Her brother was chained to the wall in hard metal restraints that stretched his arms so far above his head that simply resting there had to be a constant agony. His body was covered in dark bruises and open wounds. His feet dangled several painful inches from the floor and the whole of his weight rested on his arms. The magistrate, shirtless, head bobbing rhythmically, knelt between his legs, her brother’s limp cock in his mouth. Several implements of torture littered the straw covered floor. Cher’s frantic gaze locked on the whip and she moved for it without thought other than to dispense pain. She grabbed it just as the magistrate tried to stand. The pistol in her hands clattered to the floor as she lashed out at him with the whip. The whip curled around his chest, leaving a harsh red mark across his white flesh and a terrible mewl escaped his lips. It was not enough for her, not enough to even come close to quieting the rage that stormed in her heart and she lashed out again and again, taking no pleasure in the man’s screams but getting tremendous satisfaction as he cringed away from her and retreated to a far corner of the filthy cell. She followed him, wielding the whip with a vengeance, trying the strip the skin from his body. Suddenly, it was not rage that drove her anymore, but this man’s utter relentless humiliation and breakage. She began to time her blows, to strike where she had struck before, to set his skin of fire with her wrath. She wanted to mark him permanently, so she did not stop in the instances when the whip cut flesh. 77

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His breath grew hoarse with his vain cries and then he was reduced to nothing more than a red ball of flesh that wept. No guards came in answer to his cries, most likely because they were used to terrible cries coming from within the prison. Time seemed to stand still for her. Everything that she had learned, everything that the Inker had so carefully taught her came to the fore and she concentrated on breaking the man on the ground in a way that she had never even considered breaking Donatien and his Beast. “You want to get off, fucker?” she hissed. “I’ll get you off!” She aimed and timed her blows carefully, lashing at him with a steady rhythm and feeling nothing but disgust as she did so. She did not stop her special brand of hurt until he was a quivering, blubbering red ball, clenching at his swollen cock with claws gone arthritic from the pain. When he came in a weeping, jerking, breathless rush, her stomach rolled. “Cher, it’s time to go,” the Inker said, his voice breaking her out of her appraisal of the cruel mess she had left on the cell floor. In all her life, Cher had never wanted to kill anyone, but she wanted to kill the magistrate. Instead, she crossed the room and kicked him in the face. His head snapped back on his neck, with that shocking pain, combined with the rest of the pain he was in, he lost consciousness. She turned her back on him then, crossed the room, and picked up the pistol that she’d dropped. The guard had already helped Julien off the wall. He supported her brother under the constant behest of the Inker’s pistol. Cher grabbed her brother’s filthy golden hair and pulled his head back to stare into his beautiful face. His eyes flicker open, feverish. There was horror in them. The horror was not directed at her…but a general horror of a mind that had been stretched to the breaking point through torture. Cher’s breath hitched in her throat, staring into those eyes, a sob escaped her, and suddenly she felt the Inker’s gentle caress. “I can make him forget,” the little man said. “I can make him forget all of it. Perhaps all my enchantments aren’t parlor tricks after all.” Stifling a sob of gratitude, she took off her cloak and wrapped it around Julien’s naked, shivering form. Shoving the pistol in the guard’s nose she said, “You’ll help us carry him, won’t you?” she asked. The man nodded, looking at her as if she were a nightmare made flesh and Cher thought that after what she had done to the magistrate, perhaps she was.

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The night was an inky cloak and Cher felt that she wore it well as they made their way to the Inker’s waiting carriage. Inside, her father waited nervously. “My God,” he breathed, staring at his son. “What did they do to him?” “He will be okay, Papa,” Cher said. “The Inker is going to help him.” A confused Jean Moreau cradled his son’s limp body like Julien was an infant again, as the Inker climbed into the carriage and began the incantation that would help Julien forget. With her pistol leveled at the guard’s head, Cher listened to the alien words that came from the Inker’s mouth in a quiet rush. There was obvious power in them and lightning crackled across the sky in response to that power. A quiet rain began to fall as storm clouds gathered swift and sudden in the night sky. Thunder boomed—a scream of the gods as the Inker seemed to be calling on all of them to give them the aid they needed so desperately. “Go,” Cher said, softly under the thunder. “You can tell them I did it if you want. I don’t care anymore. Do you understand?” He nodded too swiftly, and it was obvious to her that he hadn’t understood a thing she’d said beyond the command to leave her presence. He sprinted away and she climbed into the driver’s seat of the carriage and whipped the horses into a frenzy that was compounded by the sudden storm. The carriage raced over the cobbled streets as the screaming guard woke the town behind them. Cher gave the horses freedom enough to run as fast as the furious thunder inspired them too. When they reached the woods that surrounded the town, she turned the horses into the greenery, taking paths that were familiar to her in her many sojourns therein. The plan had not extended to where they would go when they had freed Julien and her mind simply told her away…as far away as possible. She went with that. She didn’t see the inky black wolf until she nearly crashed into it on the road, the horses shied, went wild and the carriage careened behind them. It was all that Cher could do to keep in her seat and the carriage jumped and jittered on the rocky path. When the inky black wolf began to transform on the rocky road before them, the horses went absolutely mad. The carriage tilted and the wheels lost their grip on the path. Cher tumbled from the carriage as it spun off into the woods and crashed against a tree. She fell nearby, the power of the fall jerking the breath out of her. 79

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The wolf thing howled and came at her fast, half-transformed and fully enraged, its snarls echoing in the forest around them. She couldn’t even draw enough breath to scream. “Bitch,” the thing managed as it leapt through the air and onto her. Long chestnut hair sprouted from her wolfish head and then that changed with a terrible cracking of bone until Cher was looking into the face of an incredibly beautiful young woman. Her ice blue eyes glittered with preternatural luminescence. “He’s gone to kill himself for you! Even now, he battles the King Koth Nuaha to the death! Why did you leave him?! Why?! Are we so abhorrent to you, human bitch?! He refused to let me come here and drag your ass back by your hair…and I defied him…again…though it hurt my heart to do so. I got sick of waiting on your honor to bring you back to us, bitch! The sky cracks and falls and Donatien fights! And now I’m going to take your face back to him and throw it on his funeral pyre!” Cher felt dangerous claws along her cheek and jawbone, pressing just short of clawing off that part of her face. With her free hand, she dropped something soft onto Cher’s face, she felt its smooth flutter touch, but it was too dark to see what it was. “Couldn’t you just love him?” Capucine snarled, and the pressure of the claws in her face intensified. “I had to leave!” she cried. “And now I can’t go back! I love him, you stupid creature! I love him, do you hear?!” The words had been torn from her, but they were so true, so real that they almost stood out solid in the darkness. The woman’s glittering blue eyes flickered with measured confusion, but the dangerous claws pulled away from her flesh. “Capucine!” the Inker’s voice was a quiet bark. “It too late. Cher had the petals of the emerald rose. Those petals have been destroyed. She can’t go back. As you well know, another rose from our world won’t grow for ninety-nine years.” “Serge, you have always been a fool!” Capucine snarled. “Do you really think that I would let something so important, the only thing that grows of Lythos, exist where any fool could lay hands on it? Each time the rose grows, I take one petal for myself.” Cher’s face tingled where the smooth thing lay and she felt its little death on her face. The familiar blue light shot up into the sky and beyond it. Cher saw the blackness of the alien world. The sky in that world was cracked, pulsing with blue, orange, and gold light in the ragged places opened up in the darkness. 80

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“I told her everything,” Serge the Inker said, coming forward to stare at the horror of the trembling, heaving sky within the black world beyond the blue light. “This is Yasmine’s wrath.” “And I’m telling you, it is something else,” Capucine said, moving away from Cher to stare into the harshness of the heaving sky. She tamed the Beast before you told her anything. He loves her. All of him. Even now he is dying for her, Serge.” Serge the Inker turned to Cher. There was both terror and a terrible hope in his eyes. “You must go willingly, and if you do and the world dies, you die with us, do you understand, Cher? Either way, you will never return to this world.” She got to her feet and watched her father and her brother come to her. Julien walked with his arm over his father’s shoulder, using the older man for support. When he looked at her, his eyes were blissfully unaware as if he were suffering the effects of some intensely pleasant and heady drug. Cher smiled. “I won’t go without them,” she said, “there’s nothing for them here. They will be hunted. It’s better if they come with me, no matter what happens.” Cher reached out her hand and when the trembling hands of her father and brother touched hers, she stepped willingly into the light…and the dark.

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Taming the Beast

Chapter Twelve

The ground rolled beneath Cher’s feet as she stepped onto the blood red grass. Sheer fright drove hordes of strange creatures toward them and she felt her father’s grip on her hand tighten to near painful as he watched men with the faces of pigs and huge hairy things that looked something like brown bears—albeit too thin and too distinctly humanoid to actually be brown bears—fly by them in full panic. Capucine stepped through the light behind them, but Serge remained where he was, that bittersweet look of sadness mingled with hope etched so deeply onto his face that he looked like it had been drawn on by a crude hand. Capucine blended back into her wolf form in the darkness and walked on all fours. She uttered three short barks and a centaur came riding out of the blackness. It roans skin was like blood in the dim light from the barrier between worlds. Its mane was composed of black and curling hair that traveled all the way down its back. Its black eyes met Cher’s underneath a terrible cracking sound that roared from the sky casting the world, for a moment in a sheen of orange light. Everywhere, every being within the place seemed to be screaming, keening, shrieking, braying all at once. “I will take you, Mistress,” the roan centaur said. Cher turned to Capucine and the wolf’s luminous blue eyes lent some light to the meeting of their gazes. “Protect them,” she told the creature, nodding her head toward her father and brother. The wolf dropped her head in acknowledgement of the command. Cher climbed on the centaur’s back, wrapping her fingers in its thick mane of inky hair. The creature flew over the bucking, throbbing ground, tearing through the inky nightscape. Cher closed her eyes. It didn’t matter; save for the occasional burst of light from the twisted sky, she couldn’t see anything anyway. She leaned into the centaur, resting her face in its curling mane as the wind whipped at her. They seemed to travel forever in the limbo-like vein, until Cher heard the ferocious and condensed howling of many wolves. Above the heaving world, the sky 82

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cracked open with a feral sound and her eyes snapped open to see chunks of it falling like rain to shatter like grass on the ground below. An orange light was born from the tremendous crack in the sky, and the Centaur screamed once in shock and pain at the sudden infusion of tangerine light, but continued on valiantly, dodging the glass-like chunks of sky. To Cher the light was a blessing because she could see. There were mountains in the near distance and beneath those mountains a gulfing cave of fathomless darkness even darker than the blackness that had existed around it before the sky shattered. The mouth of the cavern was littered with the cringing bodies of wolves writhing in the orange light. Their mournful howling drowned out every other sound as Cher grew closer to them. She no longer heard the shaking of the angry ground, the glasslike cataclysm of the sky as it fell. All she heard was the sadness of the wolves and she understood that sadness was not for themselves, for whatever suffering they may have been going through with the sudden coming of the light, but for their king. The Centaur dove into the cavern and black things—black shadows that lived— skittered along the walls around them. It plunged on, and Cher clung to it as hideous serpentine heads with jagged jaws snapped at her from above. And then they were deep within the cavern and the orange light from the sky outside ceased to matter. They burst suddenly free of utter darkness into a wide cavern that was littered with throbbing emerald stones. The stones gave some muted light to the inky blackness and Cher could make out the terrible battle that was going on before her. The monsters battle savagely, the otherworldly werewolf in his massive two-legged form and the hideous mutant thing it fought. The creature seemed to be composed entirely of blackness and blood. Its gargantuan body was a grotesque mass of no real identifiable shape, and from that mass jutted nine heads and eighteen slanted eyes. A mass of writhing tentacles rose from its grotesque form and danced in the open air. It had many wounds, and those wounds leaked brackish blood to the floor in a half congealed pool strewn with severed tentacles at its hideous base. From its tentacles, stingers rose, dripping with some viscous liquid. It took only a second for Cher to realize what that liquid was. Even as she watched, the thing speared the Beast in the thigh with one terrible stinger and that came away dripping with his blood. 83

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Enraged, the Beast went berserker. He became a silver blur of whirring razor sharp claws and vicious teeth. He was everywhere at once; moving so fast Cher could barely keep up with him. When he leapt back from the creature, one of the gargantuan monster’s yellow lantern eyes was nothing more than a ragged, weeping socket. The creature’s pain-filled roar—a terrible shriek that issued from nine mouths at once—was enough to make the cavern quake. Cher slid off the centaur’s broad back and moved closer to the brawl. She felt the moment when the Beast spied her. The thrill of his gaze moved through her like a lightning strike, touching every part of her from the inside. She shook under the intensity of that gaze. He was wounded…so very many wounds. There was blood everywhere. The walls of the cavern shook as the ground rolled and cracked beneath their feet, dislodging the green jewels, dimming the smooth green light. And the gargantuan monstrosity struck—spearing the Beast through the flat of its stomach to the music of the quaking ground and Cher’s horrified shriek. It lifted the Beast’s writhing form on black inky tentacle, the twitching barb protruding from the werewolf’s back. Blood rained to the ground. Cher was running without thinking, her mind her…heart a frozen scream just as the monster drew its tentacle from the gaping wound in the Beast’s flesh to the very tip, with that tip it slung it’s writhing, roaring victim into the wall with bone breaking force. He didn’t move and her mind rebelled against the thought that he might be dead. He was all that she could see and even at a distance, she measured the hitching rise and fall of his chest to see if it was steady or faltered—and then the Beast’s chest stopped moving entirely. His body shuddered once and grew very still. The ground screamed and tore beneath her scrambling feet, a gulf opening before her and the object of her every desire. She did not think, she just leapt, her legs dancing in the empty air, eyes closed against the fathomless chasm that had abruptly opened before her. The hideous black nightmare shrieked nine separate screams as it tumbled backward into the rapidly stretching abyss, its limbs thrashing in the empty air. Cher landed on the other side of the gulf on her knees. The pain that exploded in her tortured limbs was non-existent as she scrambled to her feet. She could only think of one thing, that the Beast was not moving, had not moved in fact, since he had been thrown into the wall. 84

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She darted the short breathless distance to the limp, broken creature, the ground shredding like paper behind her. She threw herself upon the Beast as if he were a life raft in the world dissolving around them and wrapped her arms around his shaggy silver head. “Donatien, please,” she whispered brokenly, looking into the terrible wolfish visage. “I was going to come back to you, but then they stole the rose and destroyed it and there was no way back…” Her voice was wretched and forlorn in her own ears. It echoed, even as the cavern rumbled and fell down all around them, chunks of rock falling from above like deadly rain. Cher didn’t care. A rush of stinging tears slid down her cheeks, wetting the silver hairs on his face, coating them with her agony. When she threw back her head and screamed her loss, the sound was much like the mournful howling of the wolves outside that had marked the way to the cavern. And then Cher buried her head in the Beast’s chest and waited for the falling chunks of the cavern walls to end her misery and simply kill her. “By the Seven gods of Lythos,” the Centaur voice called in an awed whisper. “Look, Mistress! Look at the light!” Cher looked up to see that the whole top of the mountain was gone. She craned her neck, looking at the brilliant, blinding light that throbbed from up above. The sky was still edged in fathomless black around three throbbing balls that raged in the center of it. The darkness broke and fell…less like glass now and more like burnt paper drifting in a cooling wind. Where the blackness fell away, a brilliant amethyst sky remained. The body beneath Cher stirred. She looked down to see the Beast’s preternaturally emerald eyes on her. She watched in breathless disbelief as the silver hair that coated his body faded, drawn back into him. She felt the shifting of bones underneath where she lay as he made the transition from Beast to man. The luminous green eyes did not change, even when the transformation was complete. And then he was kissing her. His mouth was hot as it ravaged hers. Cher’s surrender to the kiss was almost complete…almost. Her shaking hands flew over his chest, searching for the horrible wound that she had been so sure had killed him. The wound was not there. Her hands traveled over the rest of his naked form and found nothing but smooth flesh and hard muscle. Her fingers wrapped possessively around his cock as she became lost in him. 85

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“Welcome, Beauty,” he whispered hotly into her mouth, “banish fear. You are queen and mistress here. Speak your wishes. Speak your will. Swift obedience meets them still.” She looked deeply into the strange and beautiful luminous pools of his gaze. “Will your eyes always be like that now?” she asked. “Yes,” he said, his hands hooking in the bodice of the plain gown she wore. She jerked forward as he ripped it. “And Cher,” he said, burying his face in the twin globes of her exposed breasts. “Hmmn?” she whispered as the stirrings of pleasure ran through her under the assault of his tongue and teeth. “The whole obedience part of that little speech may not be entirely true.” She laughed, delighted, as he bore her to the ground.

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Epilogue

Donatien stood in a garden of emerald rosebushes beneath the glittering light of the twin silver moons of Lythos. The Territories of the Wolf and the Ram, his lands, his kingdom, stretched out before him. In the twisting distance, at the heart of the red forest that bordered his holdings, he saw a twisting wave of black smoke rise in the air. The palace had been too much for Cher’s father—men shifting at will into beasts went beyond his ability to cope. He had moved to a quite cottage in the nearby forest. He contented himself writing tales of the world that he’d been born too. There was a great demand for these tales and Jean Moreau had achieved a modest level of fame in the Territories and beyond for his otherworldly stories. Cher spent a great deal of time with him. But she wasn’t with him now and that was what worried Donatien. He heard a stealthy sound in the darkness and his luminous gaze turned toward it. She was hunting him and she had become a skilled hunter in the year that she had been Queen of the Territories. He had to be careful of her, for she had dire things in mind for him if she caught him…exotic torturous things. He shifted into the form of the four legged wolf utterly free of the pain that had accompanied such transformation in the three-hundred years he had been prisoner to the black dimension into which Yasmine had cast him. He ran, sure-footed over crimson grass of the ornate palace garden, mindful of her ability to suddenly spring at him from anywhere. As he moved, he took note of the other players of this particular game. Lady Capucine had already captured Julien. Donatien cringed as he watched her outfit him with the infernal device of rings that she was so very fond of. He moved on, too worried about his own ass to waste much time concerned with the trials of Cher’s brother. Capucine was intensely fond of the young man. She wouldn’t torture him beyond what he could endure…and enjoy. “Running away, Master?” Serge asked smugly. Six feet tall, Serge wore the white robes that denoted his wizard’s status well. His blue eyes sparkled with cool mockery. 87

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“Leaving,” Donatien replied in the Wolves’ Tongue. “Not fast enough,” Serge said and the mirth filled giggle that slid from his lips was decidedly feminine. The vision tore apart like paper before his startled eyes and Cher stood before him. She was wearing a short, sexy blue tunic that immediately set the blood rushing to his loins. In one hand, she carried the very clone of Capucine’s favorite ringed toy. “Serge, you treacherous bastard!” Donatien growled. The wizard’s laughter floated around him as Cher tackled him. He shifted again underneath her slight weight, abandoning the wolf form. “It’s been a long time since we’ve played with this, my king,” she whispered hotly. “And it’ll be a longer time still,” he growled. Her nails trailed along his flesh and down his stomach, setting of heat stroke explosions in him that went straight to his cock. “You think so?” she breathed. She was good at seducing him—so good at it in fact that he found himself glancing at he monstrous contraption of rings and wondering if it would really be so bad to wear it…once more…to please her. He arrested that thought. He had fallen for that trick before. He hated the damn thing and there was just no getting around it. He hated it. Almost as much… Almost as much as he loved her. “Let’s play another game, Beauty,” he said. “What game?” He sat up and pressed his mouth to her ear, his tongue flicking at the sweet lobe gently. “Let us pretend,” he said, “that you are a girl wandering in the forest meaning to deliver a basket of goodies to your poor ailing grandmother…and you run into a wolf…and he eats you.” “Oh,” she whispered, “I think I’m going to like this game.”

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About the Author

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