A Deal to Be Done

by Lucy Leven

  That motion tore twin moans from the Madame and her husband, and another stifled whimper from Nicolette.

  For Nicolette, she had seen menfolk — visitors, travellers passing through the village — she had seen them tumble together in secret, down by the river in the hot days of summer, and the thrill of that sight had sparked such forbidden pleasure through her. But the sight before her — the thrill it sparked was tenfold.

  For this was no mere summer’s tumble. There was familiarity in it, and ease, and such intent in the Beast’s touch, such sureness and certainty in the casual strength with which he tumbled the Madame’s husband.

  Nicolette burned so hot, watching them, the two of them, all hard and hewn, taking their pleasure from one another, and their pleasure from the Madame, in all her lush softness.

  She pressed her lips together, desperate to stifle a moan of her own. And slowly, with such care to stay so very quiet, Nicolette let her hand drift down to gather up her skirts, to slide her fingers past the banding of her smallclothes, to trail down through her curls to where her quim ached with unfulfilled heat.

  She might touch herself so, and no one would know. The alcove was hidden, the passageway beyond was empty. No one to notice, no one to hear, no one to care if she—

  “My lady?”

  Nicolette gasped and spun away from the door, dropping her skirts.

  Willeme. Oh the gods, Willeme.

  She saw him properly for the first time, her gaze full, not sideways: his britches and jerkin were plain and severe, his cravat a pristine, crisp white. He looked very handsome, and she hated him a little for it.

  Willeme regarded her, his dark brows drawing together. “What are you doing here, my lady? Why are you not at the ball?”

  “I—” Nicolette began, and far too loudly. She cut herself off with a guilty press of her lips. And in a lower voice, she began again. “Why I am here is none of your business, Willeme. Why are you here?”

  “I heard a strange—” But this time, it was Willeme’s turn to cut himself off, when that same sound — the Madame’s moan — broke free from behind them, and another, deeper, and then the pleased, answering rumble of the Beast’s gravelled voice.

  Nicolette could not help it. The sound sparked a thrill of such sparkling want. She cast a glance backwards to the door, to the keyhole she had peeked through but a moment before.

  And so it was that Willeme’s attention caught there, and held. He stepped forward, stepped past her, and bent so that he might look there too. Then he straightened up, his face blotched with a sudden, fierce flush. “They do not know that we watch them so. It is wrong,” he said firmly. “We must leave them be.”

  He took her by the hand then, and tugged her away, back out into the long, low passage beyond. Nicolette had thought that he might drag her all the way back to the ballroom, but there he stopped, casting her hand away, clasping his own behind his back, as if he meant to lecture her and reprimand her, as if it was his place to do so.

  So before Willeme could even draw breath to speak, Nicolette said, “Were you wrong that day in the library?”

  Willeme blinked at her, nonplussed for a moment, and still he had not lost his high colour. “What?”

  “In the library, Willeme,” Nicolette said, blunt. “When you watched the Beast lick my quim?”

  It was a strange thing. Nicolette had not known Willeme could flush to a deeper hue, but he managed so then. “I—do not. I cannot recall what—”

  For the coarsest of tavern tongue Nicolette reached, when she saw how it flustered him so. “When you watched the Beast ruddle me with his huge, hard prick, Willeme? Do you remember? When you watched me moan and whine while he frigged me, and not a word you spoke — were you wrong then, Willeme?”

  For another strained moment, Willeme could find no reply. He simply stared at her, his mouth tipped open. Then, “My lady…” he managed. But that was all. No more words did he speak. All his bitten-down anger had gone from him, all his impotent bluster.

  Nicolette stepped closer. Willeme was taller than her, but if she tipped up her chin, she could just about look him in the eye. “Whatever it is you like to imagine, I am not some timid innocent, Willeme. Nor was I one before I came here. I like to take a prick,” she told him, stepping closer still, so close that her breasts brushed against his broad chest, the stretched fabric of his doublet. “In fact, the bigger the prick the better. Indeed, to take a big prick is one of my most favourite things.” She reached out, trailed her hand down the buttons of his doublet, a nothing of touch, soft, teasing. “And I am so awfully, terribly good at it.”

  She let her touch trail lower, and lower still, down to the front of his staid britches, where she cupped her hand around him and found Willeme hard and waiting, just as she knew he would be.

  For a hot, sparking moment, Nicolette fought with the sudden urge to go to her knees and take him in her mouth, to give him pleasure that way, in the manner all men seemed to love so much.

  But then the thought — why must she fight? This was her ball, and she might do just as she pleased. So to her knees she went, but they had barely touched the flags when Willeme caught her and pulled her up again.

  “Not here,” he said, his voice urgent. He looked back the way they had come, and down the long length of the shadowed passageway. “If we stay, anyone might happen upon us, my lady. Indeed, my master and his guests might do so.”

  “Oh, how thrilling,” Nicolette said, for she knew now it would make Willeme’s face flame hotter still.

  And it did. “My lady.” Willeme cast another desperate glance to the door of the Beast’s chamber. “My lady, please.”

  It was with a sudden, surprising little curl of distaste that Nicolette found she did not care for Willeme’s scant pretence at respect. “You may call me Nicolette. I am not your lady.”

  Willeme, his pale eyes gone dark in the shadows, was all but unreadable. “Nicolette, then,” he said. “Please.”

  And it was with an equally surprising sense of distaste that Nicolette found she did not care to distress him either. So she let him take her by the hand and followed where he led.

  Back to the ballroom, but not down the grand stairway. Instead, to a long passageway which led, at its end, to the high balcony from which the musicians spun their tunes.

  But a few footfalls down the passageway’s length, Willeme pulled her into a nook half-covered by a heavy hang of velvet, and there, in the close and quiet dark, it was Willeme who went to his knees.

  “Willeme, what do you mean by—”

  Willeme did not answer. Or no — in truth he did, but by action not word.

  He lifted and hefted and crawled until his form was lost beneath her many skirts and petticoats, and his intention became more than clear. For though she could not hear it, Nicolette felt the fine fabric of her smallclothes tearing all the same. And then she felt — that wet, warm press, the flat of his tongue against her, licking into her folds, sliding unforgiving against her bud.

  A long, blunt finger slid into her quim, and another. They began a steady, methodical, maddening rhythm, stroking up into her, matched by the equally maddening and suddenly circling touch of Willeme’s tongue upon her so-sensitive bud.

  For a time that rhythm seemed to match the beat of the swirling music that came from so close by. But only for a while. As Nicolette’s pleasure grew, as her excitement hotted, as Willeme’s must have just the same, his touch became unpredictable. Sparking. Sparkling. Harkening.

  And of a sudden, it harkened her pleasure just the same. She felt herself clench hard around his fingers. Felt Willeme’s groan against her pulsing bud far more than she heard it. Felt the shiver of sensation as Willeme gentled her through the aftershocks and withdrew his clever touch.

  Nicolette collapsed against the wall behind her. Let it bear her weight as Willeme had just a moment before. Her legs felt like a posset pot, her heart beating out of turn.

  From out under her skirts Willeme ca
me. He looked up at her. “Nicolette,” he said. And in the shadows of the nook, the hang of velvet still covering them so, Nicolette could not properly see his eyes. But to her ears, his voice sounded odd. Broken. Cleaved open. “Nicolette.”

  “Willeme.” She reached for him desperately, pulled him to her. Kissed him so hard and well. Showed him every particle of her joy and her gratitude and her lo—

  Footsteps. Coming their way. A familiar tread, and light despite the might of the being they bore.

  The Beast.

  Nicolette and Willeme broke apart with twin gasps. “My lord,” Willeme said, sketching a hasty bow.

  The Beast looked between them, a turn of soft amusement to his gaze.

  “I would have your hand for the last dance of the evening, at this ball in your honour,” he said to Nicolette. Then, with his familiar sharp smile, to Willeme, “If, that is, that gentle hand is not already taken?”

  “It is not,” Nicolette began, “but Willeme and I are—”

  Willeme interrupted her. He drew back, dropped her hand, and a dark shade of shadow crossed his eyes.

  “You must go back to the ball, my lady,” he said, his voice gone horribly blank. “You should already be there, indeed. For there is — there is nothing here worth having. Nothing worthy of you. Not at all.”

  With that he left, and despite the pleasure they had shared, he did not come back.

  In the silvered light of dawn, the ballroom lay empty, the tinkling glasses no more, the beautiful flowers gone, and the guests spirited away in their fine carriages, back to their fine townhouses and finer estates. The castle was quiet once more, save the hum of magic woven through every flagstone, carved into every grain of wood.

  Nicolette’s feet ached, but it was a pleasant ache in its way. One that reminded her that what had seemed almost a dream was as real yet as she was. She toed off her dainty slippers so that she might stand barefoot on the cool stone of the flags.

  “Well then, lass,” the Beast said, and how handsome he looked in his doublet — yet, still a little out of place, for there was always something of the wild about him, no matter how fine his dress, no matter how civilised his deportment. He pulled her to him, spun her a time of two, a dance made of no music, before he spun her back to the start, to a stop, and held her close. “Did you enjoy your ball?”

  “Oh, very much!” Nicolette exclaimed. For she had, so very much — up until that very last moment with Willeme. And she knew that the Beast had enjoyed the ball too, so she could not help the crook to her smile when she asked, in turn, “Did you, Beast?”

  “Oh, very much,” he told her, a teasing echo of her own breathless pronouncement. His familiar smile somehow turned all the more sly. “As did my guests, I think. But perhaps this little mouse might be able to tell me just as well, from what she saw while peeking through cracks.”

  Nicolette’s breath stuttered on a gasp. “You knew?”

  “Of course we did.”

  “All of you?” And still her breath was not her own.

  The Beast tipped his chin in confirmation, no reprimand in it, but Nicolette felt her cheeks warm just the same, shame and excitement and pleasure made one.

  Chuckling low and rumbling, the Beast reached up to cup her hot cheek. “Despite this guilty flush, you look well pleased, lass.”

  “Your castle is a clever thing,” Nicolette admitted, though not without some reluctance.

  For, “Ah,” the Beast said on a knowing breath, “a heart’s desire, hmm?”

  Nicolette tried to summon up a glower, but she could find no fire to fuel it. “Hmm,” she said on a breath of her own. Not knowing. Considering. “He is not rich, nor handsome.”

  “He is kind,” the Beast countered, “not cruel.”

  “But gruff and rude.”

  The Beast acknowledged her point with another tip of his chin.

  “He would never drape me in jewels and silks,” Nicolette carried on. “I think that if he ever had coin enough for firewood, that he might spend it all on papers and pamphlets instead.”

  And the Beast’s quirked brow did not deny her. “But you are my ward,” he said. “You have coin enough, and more. Might you not drape yourself in jewels and silks, like the rich young widow you are?”

  “Madame de la Roche said something of the sort,” Nicolette said, absently, as her thoughts drifted back that way.

  “And Madame de la Roche is a lady most sensible,” the Beast said.

  It came to Nicolette then: a vision through the keyhole, of the Madame’s head thrown back in ecstasy as the Beast took her and her husband just the same.

  That, to Nicolette, seemed a strangely daring definition of sense. But still, “Yes, she did seem so.”

  The Beast saw the turn of her thoughts, saw, perhaps, the sudden, hotter flush upon her cheeks, for he drew her closer still. He kissed her, let his leg slide between hers. Nicolette sighed her contentment and pressed her mound against his hard thigh, feeling that pleasant little muted thrill of pleasure.

  “But all our talk of coin and jewels is worth nothing, Beast,“ she said, “for when he had the chance to have me, Willeme ran away. He took me with his clever tongue, and then he ran like a coward. Like an awful little milksop.”

  The Beast kissed her, so long and so well she felt almost dizzy with it. “You stand so far above him, lass, with your riches and your pedigree. Perhaps he thought he caused offence.”

  “The only offence he caused is with that tongue of his,” Nicolette muttered against the Beast’s soft lips, then flushed anew, oddly out of keeping, when she took the double meaning of her own words. “It is — I mean that a man so blunt-spoken and—”

  “And clever-tongued?” the Beast cut in, and the cocking of his head and the arching of his brow were affections too hard to resist.

  Nicolette kissed him again, past the sharp nip of his teeth, until she set their tongues to a wonderful tangle. When she pulled away, sated, she ran an idle thumb across his lower lip, feeling the softness there, seeing the bitten redness her teeth had bestowed.

  With a sly little quirk of a smile, the Beast flicked out the very tip of his tongue to lick against her thumb, a teasing touch. Nicolette laughed at him, and her laughter, it brought to mind—

  Oh, Willeme.

  Willeme again. Always Willeme. “Oh, but he is so clever-tongued, Beast. I hate him for it.”

  “And yet, hate is not all you feel for him.”

  “No, not all.” She sighed, loud and gusty. “Hate is hardly anything that I feel for him.”

  “Quite the conundrum,” the Beast said. There was a smile on his face and a smile in his voice. “To be blunt yet clever-tongued. These are qualities to admire in a man, one would think.”

  Nicolette narrowed her eyes at him. “There are other qualities I admire equally.”

  The Beast’s smile did not dim. He gathered up her skirts and slid his hand past the banding of her smallclothes. For a moment he simply cupped her, as though enjoying the feel of her warm plumpness against his hand.

  But when Nicolette began to shift restlessly, the fleeting sparks of pleasure too much to stand, he shifted too — down, taking her lush wetness, then up again, brushing against her bud, his touch deliberately aleatory, no certainty in it, no sure release to be found.

  “The solution to your conundrum, as I see it, is simple,” the Beast said. “If you wish to have Willem, if you wish to have him and keep him, then you shall have to tempt him back to you, lass.”

  “Tempt— tempt him?” Nicolette gasped. She tried to calm her breath but the Beast’s fingers were clever indeed, and ill-behaved. They interrupted her thoughts with another little slide of pleasure, before they slipped away just as quickly. “What do you—” Again those fingers tempted her, their torturous slip and side, and again they gave her no release. Simply set her at the edge of completion and danced away again.

  She slapped an ineffectual hand to the Beast’s broad shoulder. He moved not an inch. “O
h, frig me or do not frig me, you utter beast!” Nicolette exclaimed. “But stop your awful teasing!”

  The Beast laughed. It was a laugh of such joy and unfettered amusement that it took Nicolette’s breath as readily as the Beast’s fingers. She looked up, found his face as warm as his golden eyes. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, Beast.”

  With his other hand, the Beast reached up to cup her cheek. “You only had ask, sweet lass.”

  No more teasing, only hot intent. His fingers within her, working her to a frenzy, his thumb upon her, slick with her wetness, spinning her to highest pleasure. And his mouth, taking her as her release took her, unforgiving and so very right.

  Nicolette clung to him, her strength stolen by her completion. She clung to the Beast as he withdrew his hand from her skirts and held her tight through the calming of her pleasure. And still he held her when her breath evened and her eyes grew heavy.

  “Deep thoughts,” the Beast commented, a rumble across her ear.

  “I have thought on it, indeed, and you are right,” Nicolette told him.

  “I often am,” the Beast agreed. “But about what am I right this time?”

  “I wish Willeme to touch me again,” she said, for that was right in every way, “and I wish to touch him. I wish always to touch him. But I cannot touch him if he hides like a mouse in the store. And so I must tempt him out,” she said. “Bait him out with some sweet and pretty treat. But for that, Beast, I shall require your assistance.”

  The Beast smiled, and that smile warmed his face as it warmed his golden gaze. “With deepest pleasure, lass,” he said.

  A Lesson to Be Learned

  A fire burned high in the hearth. Nicolette’s skin glistened in the heavy heat, and with the oil the Beast had poured over her, the oil he had rubbed into her skin, with sly intent and meticulous attention.

  The moon was full and bright and plain to see through the window of the Beast’s chamber. And thus Nicolette could see it, from where she lay, her head tipped backwards off the Beast’s high bed.