by Lucy Leven
She knew where she was: the hall of mirrors.
“I cannot think of anything worth seeing in a room such as this,” Claria said. She made to pull her hand loose from the Beast’s gentle grip, but he held her close still.
“But I can think of many things,” he said.
Into the magic-lit room he went, and Claria was left with little to do but let him tow her to the centre of that room, where all the mirrors looked, and there he stopped and faced her.
Claria stood, her eyes fixed on the Beast’s hands, on his chest, on the floor. Anywhere but her many selves.
But the Beast thwarted her pitiful cleverness. He let go her hand and stepped away, around, until he stood behind her, watching, she knew, their reflections in the glass.
“You do not like to look at yourself so, lass?” the Beast asked.
Claria shook her head, and the motion sent some of her shorter curls tumbling about her face, hiding her eyes and the fierce flush upon her cheeks from view.
“Why ever not?”
She did not answer, only shook her head again. She did not wish to answer. She could lie — tell him that she did not know, but that was not true. Claria knew. She had always known.
The Beast slid a hand around the column of her neck, slid that gentle grip up so that he might tip up her chin, might make her look at him in the glass.
And so she did.
“Why, lass?” the Beast asked again.
Claria could have laughed, for how could he ask such a question when the answer was so very obvious?
“I am nothing to look at,” Claria said. She made a stilted, stilling gesture to herself, to her pallor and proportions. “I have no womanly attractions. I am small and scrawny and lacking. No bottom or bust. A thick waist. Hair the colour of dung. Eyes like pond water. A face like the wrong end of a pig.”
And there they were, the long list of insults that had been thrown her way over the years, all of them more than once, and all of them that day, summers ago, on the road back from the soldiers’ camp.
The Beast watched her for the longest of moments, and he did not reply. He simply tipped up her chin again, so that he might look deeper into her eyes while the golden shimmer played atop his.
“I want to undress you,” he said. “Can I, sweet lass?”
Claria was helpless to deny him, even when he asked such a shaming thing. She wondered that she would ever deny him.
And so, wordlessly, she nodded.
The Beast let go her chin and turned her gently to face him. With quick, clever fingers he untied her apron strings and the laces of her dress — slid the cloth down her arms as he had that delicious morning in the kitchens.
On his face, as he did so, was a look of studied seriousness, only lightened a little by his soft, sly amusement.
Claria’s chemise and stockings and smallclothes followed, until she stood as bare as the Beast was clothed. She dipped her eyes and stared at the flagstones again, stared at her knobbly toes and her bony ankles.
The Beast reached around and unpinned her hair, shook out the knot of it, the coiled plait of it, sending her dark curls spinning free.
Claria felt the length of them as they brushed a shivering touch against her lower back, against the top, meagre curve of her bottom. And the Beast’s touch soon followed. He passed it with a shivering lightness up her arms, from her wrists to her shoulders, leaving gooseflesh in his wake. With a gentle touch to her neck, he turned her until he stood behind her once more. “Look at yourself, lass,” he said. “Take your reflection in the glass.”
“Please,” Claria whispered, shaking her head, shaking the curtain of her curls to cover her flushed-hot face. “Please, I do not wish to.”
“But I wish you to,” the Beast said. “And I would never ask of you anything hurtful.”
That Claria knew — the Beast had never hurt her, would never hurt her, would never ask her to do anything that hurt her.
And so…
She dipped into the well of her bravery. Claria looked up, met the Beast’s eyes in the mirror — only his eyes, hers to his.
The Beast smiled at her for the doing of it, gentle in his slyness, praise in that sharp grin. His grip left her neck, her shoulders, and he slid his warm hands down around her waist, then to her front, slid them upwards to cup her breasts, to lift them a little, plumping them. “A fine handful,” he said watching her carefully still, and closely. “Just enough. And these,” he said, with a startling flick of his thumbs across her nipples. “So pretty and pink and pert.”
Claria saw the top of his head then as he dipped it, so that he might put his face to her neck, breathe in her scent, his hand tangled in the curling mass of her hair. “The colour of good, rich earth,” he said, “and just as thick.” The Beast glanced up suddenly, so that Claria could not help but meet his gaze again in the glass. “Eyes like a summer storm,“ he said, tipping up her chin, his thumb a gentle caress across her cheekbone. “A face of character and kindness. Look at yourself, Claria,” he said. “Look at yourself, lass. Look, and see.”
Claria looked. She saw herself flushed so with the anticipation of pleasure. She saw her eyes heavy-lidded and darkened. She saw her mouth tipped open as the little ragged breaths she drew set her breasts to bounce.
And she saw them — the Beast and her both.
Oh, the contrast they made. His height and breadth, and her so small. The strength of him and the softness of her.
The crisp darkness of the curls at her mound, and of his fingers sliding through them, slipping down into the close and welling heat between her legs.
Claria would have looked down, but still the Beast held her head steady, his hand gentle now around the stem of her throat. If she wished to watch him at work, she would have to do so in the looking-glass.
And so she did.
She watched him teasing there at the entrance to her heat, slipping his finger in a tiny, torturous circle. Felt that circle just the same.
Then the Beast dipped his finger, just the slightest of touches. “Can I, lass?”
Claria swallowed against the firm, grounding grip he held yet around her throat. “You can.”
The Beast’s finger slipped inside of her, any resistance her body thought to offer made inutile by the warm, sliding slick of her blooming pleasure.
Claria keened, high and ragged, the sensation of his touch within her familiar and foreign as one. Then she cried out at the soft, sliding press of his hand against her bud as the Beast pressed his touch deeper.
She ground down upon the heel of the Beast’s hand as his finger crooked inside of her, pleasure blooming everywhere he touched, but blooming most so deep within, in that soft, secret place she had guarded for so long.
Again Claria cried out, but in surprise and in shocked pleasure when a second finger joined the first.
The gods, his fingers were so thick, so big — how well they felt inside of her, how well they filled her. Filled her has nothing had before.
The feel of them slipping into her, then out, the sensation of fullness and of grasping release: just as that dusking day in the rose garden, it was maddening. She could hardly stand it but yet, she wanted it never to stop.
She could feel the Beast through his leathers, pressed tight against her lower back, so hard in his vigour that she wondered that vigour did not pain him. Hoped that it did not.
But the Beast paid himself no mind. His attentions towards her were unceasing and unrelenting. He intended to undo her.
And undo her he did. Claria cried out with her pleasure, loud enough to wake the gods. She came to her release clenching so hard around both the Beast’s fingers — and oh, the feel of it. The glorious, full feel of it. It completed her and made her yearn for more all the same.
The Beast slipped his touch from her with gentle care, and Claria shivered anew at the calling sensation. On shaking legs, she let the Beast turn her once more. She clung to him as her pleasured nerves shook and shimmered. Leaned her flushed cheek agains
t his broad chest, against the soft linen of his tunic, and let him hold her close, basking in the nearness of his power and his strength.
“What is to happen now?” she asked — whispered more than not — when she had come back to herself from that place of pure, fluting pleasure. Something was to happen. She knew it. Her heart beat faster with anticipation. “What, Beast?”
The Beast tipped her head up and kissed her. Spoke his words against her lips, a whisper of his own. “I am to spill my pleasure, lass.”
“Where?”
“In your soft hand, if you will let me.”
Her bravery was fading. Claria could do nothing more than nod against his chest, but that seemed to satisfy the Beast. “Touch me then, lass,” he said.
“I — I do not know what I am to do,” Claria whispered, feeling so terribly foolish and naive.
The Beast pushed her hair back from her glistening brow and looked down at her with his golden eyes aglow. “Then may I teach you?”
A hitching breath and another nod were the only answer Claria could give. But they were answer enough.
The Beast pulled his tunic over his head, setting his hair to a tumbling riot, filling her gaze with his sun-warmed strength. And in his wonderful, shivering rumble of a voice, the Beast said, “Loose me from my leathers, lass.”
Claria’s fingers shook as she reached for the laces of his soft leathers. They were loosely tied and pulled away with ease. She need only shift the edges of his flies but a little and—
The Beast’s length sprang loose, a lazy, languorous unveiling.
Claria’s eyes widened, and her heart seemed to skip a beat in her breast. He was so big — so thick and so big. Surely not all men could be so. Surely this was only the Beast.
The sight of him awakened so set her skipping heart to trembling. Was it fear, she wondered? Some of it was fear. But the rest of what she felt…
Anticipation. Longing.
A puff of a laugh against her hair made Claria glance up. The Beast was watching her still, another laugh playing at the edges of his smiling mouth. “Touch me, lass.”
“Touch you…” Hesitantly, carefully, so softly her touch was hardly a touch at all, Claria let her fingers skim the length of him. She could scarcely make sense of the sensation. The Beast’s skin was softness itself, like the finest velvet, but the hardness of him, the strength that lay underneath was steel.
She had thought the Beast fully awakened when first she unveiled him. And Claria could not fathom how he could possibly grow in girth and vigour, but he did. Beneath her hand, beneath her hesitant touch, he did.
And the welling of the Beast’s pleasure was clear, beginning to glisten at the thick tip of him.
“How— How am I to do this?” Claria asked, and from a little far away, it came to her how unsure she sounded, how breathy her voice had gone.
But there was nothing unsure about the Beast. He reached down, as if to wrap his hand around hers, as if to guide her so.
And that was when a fresh little bloom of bravery came upon her. “No, you must tell me, Beast,” Claria said, pushing his hand away. “I wish to learn, and learn well. Tell me how to please you, as you have pleased me.”
She risked a glance up at him then, and found him smiling soft.
“Then make your grip firmer, lass,” he said. “You cannot hurt me. You need have no fear of that.”
Claria did as she was bid, firm and true, and felt the power in the Beast’s length as she felt the power in him, felt it as if that power was hers. Pleasure slicked the head of him, leaking freely, as she worked him from root to tip. And at the tip, Claria rubbed the flat of her palm across it a time or two, gathering the slickness there, making him glisten with his pleasure.
The hot wetness of it made the slide of her hand upon his length more free, but with that slick, slipping slide, Claria could see that she left so much of the Beast uncovered. So with both hands she began again, working him, a twisting, tempting motion, circling up and down his length, again and again.
With a strange fascination that made her mouth water like the sight of some sweet treat fresh from the oven, Claria watched the tip of him emerging from her grip, glistening, tempting with it. She teased at the slit there with the tip of just one finger — again when it made the Beast growl.
Then, ducking her head so that he could not see her smile, she worked him again, harder and firmer and faster, knowing that the Beast’s pleasure must crest in some manner, as hers did, all shivers and shakes.
And there — the Beast’s grip went tight upon her shoulders just as he tightened under her hands, just as the taut, ridged muscles of his hard stomach pulled tighter all the same.
With a sound like a bitten-down roar, the Beast came to his completion. Claria felt him pulse as he spilled high and long across her stomach and up under the small curves of her breasts, as he spilled hot and tempting upon the pale skin of her forearms and delicate skin at her wrists. As he spilled until his breath came like the panting of some wild beast rutting in the dark, and then he reached down to still her touch, to lift her hand to his mouth.
He kissed her palm, her brow, the very tip of her nose, the very edge of her smiling lips. He drew her down to lie with him. And the wide, smooth flagstones should have been cold, just as the night outside was cold. But they were warm instead, warm against Claria’s bare skin.
The Beast crouched over her, eyes alight like the beast he was. He cleaned her of his pleasure with sharp, sucking little kisses, with careful laps of his tongue, as if she were fresh from the kitchens and dripping with honey anew.
And when he was done, Claria reached for him, pulled him to her, curled up beside him, her head tucked into the crook of his neck. And lying there, she caught his gaze in one of the many gleaming mirrors.
“Beautiful,” the Beast said. “You look so very beautiful, Claria.”
Claria hid her face against his chest and laughed a little, quiet and suddenly shy. But her laugh was a laugh that warmed her cheeks as it warmed her heart, and it brought with it no flair of horrid shame.
None at all.
A Dream Long Ago
Winter came, fierce and fast.
The world outside the castle froze under a hard fall of snow that soon enough turned to ice. But it was warm in the Beast’s lair — always warm — sometimes, it seemed to Claria, too warm, like bathing in the embers of a fire.
She often ventured outside, no matter how fierce the weather, for she enjoyed the chill in the air.
It chilled her dreams too, in the most delicious of ways.
Claria dreamed that she lay on the furs atop the stone bench at the heart of the rose garden. She dreamed herself bare, and touched herself in all the ways she had learned, in all the ways the Beast had taught her.
And all the while, the Beast watched her every move, her every shivering caress — and someone else watched too.
In the slipping shadows, a figure without form watched her as she pleasured herself. And the attentions of that unknown being made her pleasure tenfold, for she felt so wanton and so wonderfully sinful, to touch herself so brazenly and be watched in the doing of it.
Claria woke before the grey light of dawn had broken. The fire in the hearth of the Beast’s lair never truly slumbered, but even it was low in the grate, the glow of it burned down to an old, warm gold.
But little did it matter. Claria did not need the fire’s warmth, for the Beast lay beside her, asleep yet, his arm a heavy grounding weight around her middle — and his heat was undeniable.
Always undeniable.
And yet…
Her nerves felt afire with a heat of their own, the same heat swelling between her legs, a restless, harkening sensation.
She had kicked away the furs some time in the night, when another kind of heat had overtaken her. Now she lay only on silks.
Claria wiggled a little, and the smooth slide made her shift ride up, left her bare bottom pressed to the silks.
; Oh, how soft they felt against her skin, how pleasing — how teasing.
How tempting…
Her breath left her in an unsteady puff. She scared herself these days with her bravery, but brave she was then. For it was hardly any effort to slip off her shift entirely, to leave herself bare and on display — though with no one to see.
But she could imagine yet. She could still feel, indeed, the touch of her dream upon her. She could feel the Beast’s eyes upon her, and the eyes of that intriguing, watchful shadow of smoke, just as she could feel the warmth of the Beat’s skin against her own — the heavy possessiveness of that arm slung around her, that arm that had slipped lower with her wriggling, so that his fingers just brushed the outcrop of her hip.
But he lay there asleep yet, unaware of what Claria did, of how she touched herself and of how he touched her.
Claria bit her lip to stop her whine as she reached up and took her breasts in hand. Squeezed and kneaded them, pressed them high and took the lightness of them, so tender and sensitive to her touch.
How she had yearned, as a younger lass, for a bosom like a milkmaid, all heavy and creamy soft. The type of bosom men leered at and longed to touch. But as she had grown, Claria had learned that it was better not to be leered at, for seldom did anything good come from the attentions of men who leered.
And no man had ever leered at Claria, and for certain no man had ever longed for her.
Never Armand, never his eyes drawn to the line of her chemise — not even on the time or two when she had pulled that line lower, hoping that she might draw his gaze.
For she should not have minded if he had looked at her so, with a coveting in his eyes. She should not have minded if he had coveted her body.
But he had never wished such things from her. And now he never would. Claria would never feel his strong, work-roughened hands against her soft skin and her delicate places. She would never feel the strength of his arms around her, holding her down or hauling her up. She would never feel the heavy, muscled weight of him upon her as he took his pleasure from her, and he made her his.