But Beast picked up the fork, and continued to feed me.
It was a ritual.
I opened for him, my lips enveloped the flavor, swallow, repeat, eyes and minds connected the entire time.
“Full?” he asked. I nodded, but I wasn’t even sure. I wasn’t paying attention to my stomach. He placed the silverware down behind me with a clank and shoved the lot of it into the adjacent sink. They landed with a crash and it sounded like something might have broken.
“But you haven’t eaten.” My voice was hardly above a whisper.
“Suddenly I’m not hungry for food.” His lips descended on mine, arms tugging me closer to him. I was pressed so close I was sure my ribs might crack but I found myself thinking it would be a wonderful pain. He lessened his hold on me, running his hands along my back, fingers pressing deep into my flesh. Distantly my mind told me I should stop, that there was a reason I should be fighting, but I couldn’t find the will to make it matter in that moment. All that mattered was the smell of him, rich and spicy, the touch of him, enveloping and demanding.
I could feel him hardening beneath me.
His tongue probed me, as if looking for all of my secret spots, but was somehow also maddeningly teasing. Sweeping and sucking and tracing, only giving me what he allowed, only allowing me to give him what he permitted. I groaned as his hands found their way into my hair, tugging me closer, as if trying to swallow my soul from my body.
Gently he pulled away, and I was gasping, panting, staring at my fingers fisted in his shirt as if they were alien. When had I done that?
“Mio cuore,” He looked deeply at me, almost frustrated.
“What?” I asked breathlessly.
He traced my cheek with his knuckles. “I have to leave.” He gently lifted me off his lap then set me back on the stool. I watched his motions, watched him walk down the hall, enter his room. He changed into a new suit. I watched everything, as if glued to a screen.
I watched him leave.
Yep. I’ve definitely gone insane, but I don’t want to take the pills. I never want this to end.
Some time after the Beast left, I pulled myself off the stool and walked down to my room. I was nearly there when I was tugged harshly to the side.
“Nikolai,” I said, heart hammering. “You really need to work on your intros.”
“You need to be made aware of something,” Nikolai hissed. “Beast is telling the truth about your father.”
“What?” It felt like someone punched me in the chest. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he is telling the truth. Your father was given the option to take you back and he said no, but that’s not what you need to know, Frankie.”
“I…” I stumbled away, my back hitting the door to my room. “I can’t…” My fingers quickly fumbled with the knob to my bedroom door and I pushed it open. I slammed it against Nikolai.
Rude, I know.
But I just couldn’t deal with Nikolai and whatever his manipulations were that day.
I lay in bed, staring at the door, thinking. Sometimes slaughterhouses give the animals a really great last day. Like, their lives are so shitty so their final day is filled with pets and yummy food, a day out in the wild, whatever to-be-slaughtered animals crave. I wondered if that was what today was.
The horrible truth was, the thing I craved was Beast—his touch, his affection. Beast said that by staying here, by not leaving, instead of putting the knife in Papa, I was putting it in myself. Nikolai had confirmed what Beast had said, and I had no reason not to trust him. If I was being completely honest…I had known Beast wasn’t lying.
I just didn’t want to admit it.
I could leave. I could leave and Papa would die…or I could stay. Today had been, well, kind of marvelous. If I stayed, all the days might be like today, but what did that say about me?
I stared so long at the white wood, wondering which person I should betray by staying or leaving, that the wood began to distort. My eyes got tired with unblinking. I worried if I blinked, I would see inside myself.
I couldn’t go inside of myself; there was too much truth.
The door burst open and I jumped, falling back with a scream. I looked up, expecting Beast, but instead Gabby stood in the doorframe.
“Gabby.” I said her name on an exhale. Gripping the edge of the bed, I pulled myself up and continued, “Jesus. You scared me.” Yep, that’s it. I’m not terrified by my inner demons.
“Gabby?” Her eyes were red and puffy, so swollen, and her face was splotchy. She looked like an absolute mess. I was grateful for her tears, and that sounds so shitty, but her problems provided an outlet for me to forget about mine. I just could not process what was going on with me. I couldn’t think about Papa, couldn’t start to wrap my mind around it, so I focused on her.
“Gabby, what’s wrong?” I climbed back up on the bed and crawled over to where Gabby sat. She hiccupped a cry, as if unable to talk through the pain. The last time we’d met, we’d talked about that stupid flyer and Levi.
Everything had been really good for her.
“I learned something about Levi today,” she said, her words breathless with pain. I paused, prepared for the worst. “The Pavonis…” She swallowed. “They sold his mother to The Institute.”
“The Institute?” I questioned. The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“The Institute,” she said, taking a deep breath. “It’s, um, it’s like…” Her eyes filled with tears. “They buy women and they sell them to others. They’re like a middleman. Women get sold to them and then they have auctions. If no one buys the woman, then they, um…” She choked up. “I can’t.” She stood up off the bed and paced. “I can’t believe this is happening.” Now I remembered, from that night at the club, when the assholes had talked about how I was going to be sold to The Institute.
I shivered slightly but refocused my attention on Gabby.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I mean, it’s really awful—terrible—but why are you so upset?” It was kind of par for the course. Gabby had grown up with shit like that happening.
“I asked him to run away with me,” she continued. “To get out.” Gabby paused for a moment when she said that, her eyes betraying something to me, something that didn’t need to be said. I understood it clearly. Given the chance, I would run away too. At least, I used to think I would.
Shaking my head, I asked, “What did he say?”
“That’s when he told me about his mother.”
I frowned. “Oh.”
“He said he would get me out,” Gabby said. “That he would help get me out, get me in WITSEC until he could take them down, but…” She trailed off and we both stared ahead, the conclusion bright as a neon sign in our brains. There was no taking them down. Levi would die first, and Gabby would be forced to watch.
Suddenly Gabby turned to me, filled with eagerness. “Look I’ve been doing some research about the Pavoni Princess. Maybe you can help. You can take them down.”
“What?” I asked, actually throwing my head back. “Gabby I’m sorry, but no. I’m not a princess.” Her brown eyes were so big and beseeching. I felt like such a tool, but me take down the Beast? Was she insane? Her entire body deflated, sadness filling her up like toxic gas.
I quickly changed the topic. “Can you explain it to him? Explain what’s really going to happen?”
She threw up a hand in frustration and walked away. “He just kept repeating witness protection, witness protection. He doesn’t understand there is no hiding from the Family, at least not with the government. He’s so determined to get his mother back.”
“Did you tell him about The Institute?” I asked. “Tell him that…that his mother is probably dead?” A long, painful silence followed my question. When she spoke the shame and sadness in her voice was so deep the word sounded like the death howl of a dying dog.
“No.”
My face twisted in a sorrowful grimace. “Gabby…”
“How could I?” She rounded on me. “You try being the one to tell your boyfriend that. It’s the one thing he has of his family, and my family took it from him.”
“I know.” I sighed. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve stopped returning his calls, stopped seeing him.”
“That’s not going to stop him.”
She fidgeted with her coat. “I, um, I made a call to his original precinct, to 69. I, um, I told them he’d been compromised.”
My hand flew to my mouth in a gasp. “He’s going to hate you.”
“He won’t know it was me for awhile.” Gabby tugged hard on the edge of her coat. “And it’s better than him being dead.” Silence fell again. She walked back and forth, pacing across the floor. I waited for her to share more information, or for her to come over to me. It was like she didn’t want comfort, like there was a war going on inside her head.
I understood that.
All at once Gabby stopped her pacing and looked at the clock on the wall. “I have to go. I only had thirty minutes.” She didn’t say anything else, we didn’t exchange hugs.
When she left, sadness clung in my gut like a dead weight. I wished I could help her somehow. I wasn’t a princess though. When she closed the door, I was back to staring at it, but this time my thoughts weren’t about myself.
When the door opened again, I was still thinking about Gabby.
Beast walked over and scooped me up off the bed, carrying me out of my room. At first I stiffened, fearful of the new way he was holding me and certain it was going to end badly. Then my fear transformed into complete shock.
He’s carrying me?
“Did you enjoy your friend?” he asked as we walked down the hallway like it was perfectly normal for him to be carrying me this way.
“You sent Gabby?” I immediately wished I could take it back. At the shock in my voice, he narrowed his eyes.
“Who else would have?” he asked. I had assumed it was Nikolai, that he was thrusting us together again. I should have known Beast wouldn’t have known that. He kicked open his bedroom door and walked us both inside.
“I was just surprised,” I said, changing the subject. “Thank you.” He set me down on the bed then kneeled between my thighs.
He touched my cheek. “You look upset.”
I leaned into the embrace. “Gabby was having a hard day.” The cameras had recorded our entire conversation, crying and all, so I had to come up with something. Gabby had been too upset to think about them, and it was all on tape. Beast nodded, stood up, and began taking off his suit jacket. He stretched out his tie and pulled it over his head. Next, he unbuttoned his cuff links, then he began unbuttoning the shirt itself. I realized what was happening: Beast was undressing in front of me, and not in a sexual way.
Well, it was sexual in the sense that everything with Beast was sexual, but he was clearly just undressing, just coming home from whatever work he’d had to do.
I was mesmerized.
It was like I was witnessing something special, like I was let in on a secret, as if I was witnessing the Aurora Borealis, or something even more rare, like those meteors that only come every hundred years or so.
When he was finished, he was shirtless but still in his pants. He came over to me. “Your mouth is open.”
I blinked, shaking my head and closing my mouth. Then I glanced at his pants, at the massive tent that had grown in them, and swallowed. He gripped my lip between his thumb and forefinger, nudging my mouth back open. I obeyed. My gaze shifted from his, back down to his pants.
It was so hard. Demanding.
I found myself reaching for his trousers. In seconds I had unzipped them and reached inside. I’d never given anyone a blowjob before—remember how I’d never even really been kissed before? Yet I was in some kind of trance, filled with an insane person’s courage and boldness. I grasped his cock. It was so hot and smooth and the feel of it in my palm felt like victory. I looked for a sign that what I was doing was okay. His gaze was intense, burning like molten liquid, scorching me to my core. I parted my lips, needing a breath just from looking at him. Everything about him was so feral, as if he wanted to tear into me. Beneath all that intensity I saw a need, a burning need that matched my own. I pulled him out, my fingers not even fitting around his cock.
His fingers whispered against my neck, gently clasping my hair from the base and gathering it into a ponytail. At the same time, I opened my mouth, ready to take him in. I was so ready, I throbbed at the sight of it. He was thick and veiny and somehow so soft. I lifted his cock, guiding it toward my mouth. The Beast emitted a low, virile moan when my lips met the hot skin. The hands that had once gently held my hair wound themselves in a knot.
My lips smoothed along his shaft as I sucked him in, my tongue twirling and licking him. I took in as much of him as I could at a time, attempting all the tricks I’d seen in porn and read about in books. I looked up to check that I wasn’t completely screwing it up and the way he looked at me, with such intensity and adoration, did something to me. It awakened something primal inside me and it made me do something bold—I lightly grazed my teeth along his shaft.
The shift was instantaneous. The fingers in my hair tightened, the grip sharp and painful and so good. He commanded me. I no longer fucked him, but he me. It was a fast and hard and unrelenting rhythm. He plowed into my mouth and his groans grew louder.
I snuck a peek at his face. He was totally losing it. I felt a wash of something new: power. I had power over him. I snaked my tongue lightly against him. He groaned, his whole body tensing. This was new. I actually had power. All my earlier hesitations vanished. I grabbed his ass and pulled him closer, sucking hard on his cock. He pulled my hair hard and his cock throbbed dangerously in my mouth. He was about to come.
The Beast sensed it as well and tugged me off him by my hair. I looked up at him, my lips drenched in saliva and his pre-cum. He growled, his face masked by too many thoughts and feelings. I raised my brow, head slightly cocked.
I tried to reach back to suck him back in, and in that moment, I realized something. The realization broke through the lusty trance.
I wanted his come in my mouth.
I didn’t have a moment to analyze, to freak out, because he came. Hot spurts splashed on my chest, and then I was in his arms.
He opened up the window and the frigid air was a chilly whisper on my neck. I cuddled deeper into the blankets. Naked, he looked out over New York City. Sweat glistened on the muscles of his back. His muscles were like steel wrapped in velvet. Everything was perfect, from the curve in his shoulders, to the faint spirals of scars on his skin, down to his dimpled ass, and his thick, roped thighs.
I sighed.
It wasn’t his beautiful body that had me staring, though. It was like he’d gotten hit on the head or something these past twenty-four hours. He was a completely different person. There was absolutely no fucking way I was calling the doctor, though; this person was kind and gentle.
I rolled away from him, dragging the blankets with me, and stared up at the ceiling. He hadn’t let me clean off, hadn’t cleaned me off either. Afterward he’d pulled me up, smashing against him in a sticky, hot mess. Now I was dry and caked but I didn’t feel gross; I felt so good. My limbs felt warm and used, like after the gym. I couldn’t help from flexing and releasing my toes beneath the blankets and a stupid, dopey smile was on my face.
“What does mee-oh kwore-ay mean?” I asked, still staring up at the ceiling. I tried to say the word he’d been using but exaggerated a bit and failed to roll my R properly.
“What is this?” he asked. I rolled over on my stomach to get a better look at him. Was it possible that I was actually happy? No, that was dumb. I couldn’t be happy. It was just that he had been treating me so well the past day. It was crazy, like some light switch had been flipped in his head. I had this stupid, insane thought that maybe I could have my cake and eat it too. Papa could go on living his stupid, as
shole life and I could live here, with Beast.
What was the harm?
Papa would get to live and I would get happiness. I’d never had happiness before. I realized that now. You don’t really realize you don’t have it until you do. It’s like being in the dark and suddenly having the lights turned on. In the dark you’re used to the black, but now with the lights on, I realized how dingy everything was before.
“What is what?” I asked.
He held up a pink flyer.
My eyes widened. I knew what that flyer was, but it wasn’t the flyer. My flyer was safely tucked away in Sofia’s journal, so what the fuck was that flyer doing there?
“I don’t know,” I responded, trying to stay cool. “What is it?”
“Are you telling me you have no idea what this is?” he replied. His voice had gone cold, cruel, like the first night and nearly every night after. I sat up and grabbed the sheets, pulling them up past my breasts. He stalked over to me, keeping the window open behind him. His gaze had gone dark, like the midnight sky. I looked beyond him to the moon outside then back.
“I don’t know what that is, but you’re scaring me,” I said. He leaned over me, menacing, towering. His arm shot out and his hand gripped me by the throat in a flash. I grappled with the sensation, his grip closing tighter as he lifted me up off the bed by my throat.
The sheets fell from my body, my legs slipped against the bed, and I grasped his hands. My eyes were probably wide, but everything was dimming as my breath got weaker. Then he chucked me to the ground.
Like garbage.
I had seconds to feel hurt and broken before he was advancing toward me again. Naked, I scrambled away as he stalked closer. I stood up and ran to the door.
“Get the fuck out,” he growled. His low voice had gotten even lower, and it warbled with the bass and intensity. I rushed outside into the hallway and the door slammed shut behind me.
Never again, I vowed. I will never again let myself be this vulnerable.
Sixteen
Never again, Anteros thought, taking another shot. He would never again let himself be that exposed. He would never turn into that person. He was The Beast, not some fucking pussy.
Beast: A Hate Story, The Beginning Page 26