Beauty and the Thorns
Stasia Black
Lee Savino
Copyright © 2020 by Stasia Black and Lee Savino
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Jay Adheer
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Also by Stasia Black
Also by Lee Savino
About Stasia Black
About Lee Savino
I never thought I’d see him again.
My first love, back from the grave.
My captor and tormentor.
He holds my past, present, and future in his scarred hands.
He owns me.
No matter how far I run, my path leads me back to that lonely castle.
Back into the arms of the Beast.
One
Present Day
Daphne
There’s an engagement ring on my finger. How the hell did that just happen? I stare down in shock even as the click and flash of a hundred cameras go off, memorializing the moment. One second I was trying to think of how to do damage control and then Adam was down on one knee and then—
Logan. Oh gods. What did I just do? I’m going to be sick.
But Adam’s grabbing my hand and holding it up, grinning at all the reporters. I never actually said yes. Not the words. I just sort of stared at Adam and gave a head bobble and then he shouted to the crowd that I did say yes and put the ring on my finger.
I do my best to keep the horror off my face. How could he do this? How could he put me on the spot like this?
Then I remember: Adam doesn’t know. No one knows I’ve spent the last two weeks falling in l— I mean, becoming extremely close with another man. A man I’ve let master me. It’s not hard to imagine Logan’s fury when he finds out about this.
But that’s not what’s gutting me. It’s knowing that underneath his anger and rage, I’ll have hurt him. Hurt him so deeply.
Panic chokes me. No, I’ll be able to explain it. I didn’t have a choice. If I can just explain it, then he’ll have to understand—
Adam pulls me close and mashes his mouth to mine. His tongue tries to invade my mouth but I seal my lips stubbornly shut. I can only be pushed so far. I understand I lose the company if I don’t go along with this. I understand it might be the last shock that pushes my father’s health over the edge if I don’t agree with the farce.
But I can’t betray Logan any more than I already have. I turn my face away from Adam and pull back, smiling at the crowd and waving.
“We have business inside now,” I call out to the reporters. “Have to share the happy news!” And then I stride as quickly as humanly possible in these damn heels into the Belladonna offices.
Two
Present Day
Daphne
“Oh Mama, it was awful,” I cry, tears leaking down my cheeks. I sit, legs folded, beside her grave and the beautiful statue of her likeness, just like I used to do by her bedside.
Thornhill, my childhood home, looms in the distance like a comforting monument to sameness in the midst of all this change. This small ancestral graveyard is at the east edge of the property.
“I’ve made a mess of everything.” I look up at her, beautiful and serene, the sunshine lighting the cold planes of her stone statue. It’s nothing like her and yet better than anything else I have. Right now I’m clinging to anything of her I can get. I need her so much right now.
“Adam wanted to talk after the board meeting but I ran away like a coward after a few minutes. He’s sincere and nice but he treats me like he’s just going to come in and fix everything. Like I can’t do anything myself. And gods, maybe I can’t. Look at how I screwed it all up when I was CEO.”
“And when I tried to tell him I couldn’t marry him for real, he just said I was exhausted and that he’d take care of everything. Instead of fighting, I said he was right and I was going to go home and sleep. So then I was going to go straight back to Logan’s to explain everything but instead I came here.”
Thunder rumbles in the distance and clouds cover the sun, casting my mother’s beautiful stone face in shadow. Like she, too, is turning her face away from me, wherever she is in the heavenly fields of paradise.
I bend over her grave, my tears falling and salting the ground. “Please,” I beg. “Don’t leave me alone. You always knew what to do. You knew how to handle Daddy when he was being impossible and you always made me feel better no matter how bad things got and I—”
“So now you show up at your mother’s grave.”
I choke out in shock at the voice and swing around. Logan! He’s standing not five feet behind me. I jump to my feet and start to run towards him when I notice his face.
His features are cruel and angry.
He saw. He saw the news.
When he grabs my hand and holds it up, exposing Adam’s ring still on my finger, I know for sure. He throws my hand away roughly in disgust.
“You lied to me,” he spits.
“No, wait, Logan, it’s not what you think—” I start but he swiftly cuts me off.
“Are you engaged to Adam fucking Archer?”
“I- I mean, well, technically, but not—”
Before I can get another word out, though, Logan’s crossed the few feet between us and his hand is at my throat. “Faithless whore,” he spits. “Our bed wasn’t even cold before you were off spreading your legs for him. I was just practice, I suppose, to break you in like a bitch in heat?”
I slap him. Hard. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His hand at my throat squeezes and he moves so that his face is only an inch from mine. And I can’t help it. My body is trained to respond to his dominance. I liquefy beneath him. My curves soften to his hard muscle.
And he feels it. For a second, I see a glimmer of Logan, my Logan in his glittering blue eyes before they turn back to ice. “Is this how you were with him? Did your cunt soften and squirt when he touched you?”
He reaches down, roughly shoves up the skirt of my dress, and grabs my crotch. I have to fight my back arching into his touch.
“I ought to slap you again,” I grit out through my teeth.
“Is that a yes?” he all but yells, gripping my sex harder as fury flashes in his eyes.
“No one
but you has ever touched me there, Master!” I yell at him, just as furious. I know it looks bad, but doesn’t he have any faith in me? In what we shared together? He wouldn't even let me tell him my side of things!
He just shakes his head at me. “I can’t believe a word out of your lying mouth.”
I deflate. So that’s how it will be. The truth doesn’t matter to him. Only his stupid, misguided vendetta. I shove him in the chest. “Then let me go,” I shout, rallying again. “If you won’t believe me, then there’s no point in any of this.”
He lets go of me and I stumble back.
“So that’s it?” he laughs. “You and Adam Archer ride off into the sunset together? I don’t think so, kitten.”
I glare at him. “What do you want with me, Logan? You won’t believe what I have to tell you.”
“No.” His dark eyes glare right back at me. “I won’t ever believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth ever again. But that doesn’t mean your debt to me is nearly begun being paid. I am your Master. And I get to say when you leave. Not you.”
What? What does that mean?
“I- I don’t understand,” I say slowly.
“You will,” he says darkly. “You will.”
And then he rushes me, picks me up and slings me over his shoulder.
“Where are you taking me?” I squeal, banging on his back with my tiny fists and kicking uselessly. He locks his thick arm around my legs, holding them down, and walks towards Thornhill manor.
“I’m taking you home.”
Three
Present Day
Logan
She lied to me. She betrayed me. She’s so warm and lithe and alive in my arms.
The fact that I still want her so badly burns worst of all.
I bang the front door to her childhood home open and let it slam into the wall.
“Logan, what are you doing?” she screeches. “Did you break in here?”
I smile maliciously as I kick the door shut. Oh little kitten, I have so many surprises for you. I swing her off my shoulder and down onto the expensive couch in the front sitting room.
“Why would I break into my own house?” I ask.
Her confusion is adorable. Truly adorable. I leave her in her muddle while I walk to the curtains and rip off the curtain tie, first one, then another.
She shrieks in protest. “What are you doing? My mother picked out those curtains!”
I nod. “Guess that’s why nothing in this house has been updated in over a decade. I’ll have to call in my interior decorator. She’s a hot little thing who’ll do anything for a buck. Probably even fuck me,” I shrug.
“Why are you being so hateful? And what do you even mean, your interior decorator?” Daphne sits up and makes like she’s going to stand but I’m on her before she can, pinning her down with my thigh.
I grab her wrists and wrap the curtain tie around them, binding them tightly. Her eyes flash up at me but she doesn’t protest. She knows where this is going and she wants it as much as I do. I guess Adam couldn’t satisfy her like I can. The thought both infuriates and gratifies me at the same time.
But mostly it just infuriates me. She’s mine, but she gave herself to another man.
With a growl, I flip her over and I don’t bother being gentle about it. Her ass sticking out in the air slightly mollifies me. I know there’s only one thing that will truly soothe the beast inside me, though.
I hike her skirt up again. I plunge a finger inside her. She’s wet and she doesn’t protest. So the next second I yank my buckle open, shove my pants down, rip open a condom with my teeth and sheath myself. Then I shove my cock home.
“You bastard,” she grunts, even as her perfect peach ass thrusts back up against me. Lying little— If I hadn’t taken her virginity myself, I’d be questioning whether she’d just been playing virginal the whole time. But that tight cunt wasn’t lying.
Even now, she’s gripping me like a fucking vice. Not long ago she was a virgin and she’s still tight as a drum.
But what if he was inside her, too? What if he tasted this sweet little cunt that’s mine? If she shared herself because I never mattered more than a passing novelty, someone to get her off—
I fuck her more furiously but it’s not the same. The condom is more than just a latex barrier between us. It’s what it represents. I can’t trust her anymore. What if she didn’t use a condom with him? If my perfect, pure girl is now diseased because of that disgusting fuck?
My dick starts to lose its hardness and I yank out of her, breathing hard. Which only makes me more furious. How could she ruin everything like this?
I tear the condom off and throw it to the floor, then pull my pants back up. She looks over her shoulder at me but I grab her head and force her to face front again.
“Are you done?” she asks, more confused than mocking.
“Not nearly,” I growl. I grab her and lift her, setting her on her feet at the side of the couch. “Bend over and grab the side.”
She glares at me. “Go fuck yoursel—”
“Go ahead,” I dare her darkly. “Finish that sentence.”
She gulps and instead, lowers her head. Submitting. I breathe out, barely keeping my temper under control. “Grab the edge of the couch, ass out.”
She stands still for a long moment, indecisive.
“You said you were only going to check on your father’s well-being. Instead, you got engaged to another man. A man you know I hate. Don’t you think you deserved to be punished for that?”
Her back goes ram-rod straight and I know she wants to say something. She wants to sputter her lies again, her fake ‘explanations’. But she finally chooses to do the smartest thing she’s done all day.
She bends over, wrists still bound.
I flip up her skirt.
“Logan, I—”
I bring my hand down before she can finish. And then I pull my belt out of the loops and snap the leather in the silence.
“It’s time to begin your punishment. Count, kitten. Count and beg me for more.”
Four
Present Day
Daphne
He’s infuriating. Why am I going along with this? If he’d just listen to me!
Thwack.
“Ow!” I screech and look back at Logan furiously. He just spanked me. With his belt. And he has the gall to glare at me.
“Count. And then say, may I please have another, Sir?”
He’s stoic. Furious. But not out of control. And underneath it, or maybe I’m imagining it, but underneath all of that, do I glimpse a glimmer of hurt?
What must it have been like, seeing me on TV like that? With Adam of all people, the man Logan considers his mortal enemy? Getting engaged?
Logan’s not the sort of man to be able to listen until he feels like he has a measure of control back. And this was how we’ve always been able to connect—this lightning shortcut to intimacy that made two weeks feel like a lifetime.
And I trust him. Even in his ice-cold anger. He might not trust me right now, but damn him, I trust him and I’m going to show him.
So, even though my ass is on fire, I don’t drop his gaze as I say, “One. May I please have another, Sir?”
His arm moves back and he releases another smack.
Motherfu— My fingers dig into the fabric of the couch and I clench my stinging ass cheeks.
“Count,” he demands ruthlessly.
“Two. May I please have another, Sir?”
The third follows before I’d barely gotten the words out. I dance in place at the pain. Ow! Fuck. How many of these does he have planned?
“Look how pretty your little ass is when it turns so pink. And it jiggles so good every time I smack it.” He sounds mesmerized, then his voice turns dark. “Count for your Master. Count because I own you. Count because you’re mine and I own this little pink ass. It’s mine. Count for me.”
I nod and for some reason, I don’t think it’s the pain, tears start
to course down my cheeks. He’s hurt and I’m hurt. I am his but everything got all messed up and there’s nothing I can do to fix it. Nothing except count and beg for this punishment.
“Four. M- May I p- please have another, Sir?”
There’s a pause, and then another thwack, up higher this time, not in the same spot as before. My breath hitches and I blurt out, “Five. May I please have another, Sir?”
But then comes the touch of his large hand, hot but not harsh. He probes my no doubt pink flesh. I start to turn my head to look over my shoulder but he orders, “Eyes forward.”
I obey, dipping my head down to the arm of the couch, feeling more completely exposed than I ever have before in my life. Logan could destroy me if he wants. He always could.
But his touch...he’s caressing me. Why is he caressing me?
“You’re doing so well, kitten. Taking your punishment so well. Just five more. You’re going to give me five more. Tell me you understand.”
My lip trembles, but I nod and then manage a watery, “Yes, sir.”
“Feel your Master’s touch. Memorize it.” His fingers move from the heated flesh of my ass cheeks down, down, down between my legs. In between. Skirting by my asshole, massaging as he goes. My breath hitches as he begins to tease at my sex.
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