It aches like a punch in the gut, and I wander the apartment, listless and quiet. I've got no direction and I've got no freedom and I feel like a bird in a cage, beating my wings against the bars that I don't even want to escape.
Beauty watches me with those big brown eyes, quiet and reserved, and controlled as ever, but she doesn't offer any interference and I think that bothers me most.
It takes me three days to determine the routine of the penthouse.
Each day begins when Cook puts breakfast on the table next to Beauty's cup of creamy coffee. She takes a long breakfast and doesn't seem particularly fond of mornings, glaring from behind her half mask, the one she only wears to eat, and snapping at Cook and me until she's had at least two cups of coffee.
It's only then that she'll even consider eating, while she scans emails and news reports, and makes notes to herself on paper.
"Why don't you make notes on your tablet?" I ask curiously the second morning.
She flicks a look at me, mostly obscured by her messy hair and mask. "Because I like to be able to touch it. It feels real when it's in paper and ink in front of me."
I hum an acknowledgment. After breakfast, she vanishes into her room and reappears neatly put together twenty minutes later, a blank white mask on her face, and she sequesters herself in her office until four in the afternoon. Even when I join her for lunch, perched on the edge of her couch and waiting for her do something other than stare at me with that too blank expression, it's not a lot.
I don't fit into her life.
Nor do I fit in with the staff. They treat me like they do her, with carefully maintained deference and respect, even when their gazes are a little bit too judgmental.
I try to not let it bother me, but I've never been really good at ignoring shit like that.
I crave approval too much to blow it off when someone so obviously doesn't like me.
I spend three days trying to figure out where I'm supposed to be—joining her for breakfast and lunch, and spending the rest of the day in my bedroom, working remotely, sitting in the window in the living room, watching Atlanta and waiting to be summoned.
On the second day, I try to befriend Cook, and she watches me make a mess of her kitchen with resigned patience as I attempt to make cookies.
When I've finished, and there's a huge mess on the counters, she gives a raised eyebrow and says, "You know I could have done that in about half the time with no mess."
"But where's the fun in that?" I grin, and she huffs.
"For me, the fun is not having this as a byproduct," she says, very dryly.
I laugh and sit at the counter. "C'mon. You enjoyed my company, Cook. Don't lie to me."
"You're entertaining, if nothing else," she mutters, dumping dirty dishes into the sink and setting about wiping down the counters.
"Think that's why I'm here?"
"I think why you're here is between you and Beauty, and none of my business." She says it sharply enough that my eyebrows go up and I lift my hands in silent surrender.
"Sorry," she mutters. "I—sorry." For a moment, she scrubs angrily at the counter and I watch her until finally she tosses the rag down and props her hands on her thin hips. "What?" she snaps.
"You don't like me," I say firmly.
"I don't like anyone who hurts her," Cook shoots back, fierce.
Interesting. "Do you think I will? That I've got a chance in hell at hurting her?"
"I think Beauty can be hurt a helluva a lot easier than you or any of your kind remembers. She's difficult and she's got secrets and people write her off because of it, and then you leave, and you aren't the one who picks her up and puts her back together."
"You are," I murmur and Cook nods, glaring at me.
"How long," I ask, "have you been with her?"
"Since she was fourteen. I've been with her a lifetime."
No wonder the old woman is so protective.
"Why is she—"
"No, sir," Cook snaps, turning away. "If you want to know, get to know her, not just what she shows you in the black bedroom when I'm not here. Get to know her during the day. Stop dancing around her and get to know her."
She gives me a fierce look, almost disgusted, and then she brushes past me. I have been summarily dismissed.
I decide to try something new.
On the fourth day, after three days of figuring out Beauty's routine and realizing I fit nowhere in it, I make my move.
There is our usual breakfast, and this morning there's extra bacon on my plate, a silent apology from Cook. Beauty eyes us like she realizes something happened but doesn't press. I begin eating and ask her, "Anything interesting today?"
She makes a dismissive noise in her throat. "No. It's quiet in the world today."
I shrug. "Well, maybe we'll find something at dinner."
Her gaze skates over me, all curious and assessing, and her messy hair falls in her eyes, impatiently brushed aside.
I've decided I quite like Beauty in the morning—she's still sleep soft and mussed, her control and perfection almost gone as she purrs over her coffee and glares weakly at me from across the table.
She’s fucking adorable.
Breakfast ends and Beauty retreats to her room. I stand, toss Cook a quick smile, and go to Beauty's office. I situate the blanket I brought from my room into a neat little nest and go to my knees on it, hands at my back, head dropped.
There is no collar around my neck and that bothers me. I miss my collar.
When heels clack down the hall, I go very still, waiting patiently. Beauty stops in the door, and I feel the spike of curiosity and indignation in the air as she watches me.
Then she steps to her desk, seats herself neatly, and goes to work.
I chose my place carefully, and even with her attention focused on her computer, she can see me from the corner of her eye, which is all I want.
For today, all I want is for her to remember that I’m here.
I smile into my chest as I lower my head and wait, quiet and submissive and close to her.
Cook freezes when she enters the room with Beauty's lunch. Beauty finishes an email she's working on before she turns her attention to Cook.
"Please bring James' lunch here as well, Cook. I'd like him to eat two slices of bread, ham and cheese, and a sliced apple."
Cook nods and hurries out of the room. Finally, Beauty turns her attention to me.
"Come here," she murmurs and I rise, gritting my teeth as I fight not to stumble. Her eyes narrow as she watches, like she can see what I'm struggling with and choosing to let me continue, to let me come to her on my terms.
When I reach her side, I go back to my knees and she makes that noise, the one that I’m quickly becoming addicted to.
"What are you doing, Beast?"
"Didn't want to waste my day waiting for you," I murmur, my head down again. "Thought I'd wait on you."
There's a subtle difference, and from the tension in her, she knows it.
"You like this, don't you?" she whispers.
It's the first time I've heard real emotion in her voice, both shock and wonder, and it drags my head up, startled, to meet her wide, marveling brown eyes.
"Like what?"
"This. Being here, with me, like this."
I hesitate for a moment, considering the question, and she lets me. Something I've figured out about Beauty is she would rather I take my time and sort through my thoughts so I can give her an intelligent answer, rather than blurt out the first thing that pops in my head.
"Yes," I answer, finally, simply. "I want to be here, sweetheart."
Her breath catches, and her eyes close for a moment, before she straightens away from me. She begins her lunch, not looking at me as she eats, not even when Cook delivers my lunch and carefully avoids looking at me on my knees next to Beauty.
After she's finished eating, she feeds me tiny bites of bread and cheese and meat, methodical and almost clinical. When I’m done, she runs her
fingers through my hair and breathes softly, "Good boy."
I stay there, leaning against her thigh, the rest of the day.
Chapter 9.
The nights are different. Cook leaves a meal on the table at five thirty every day and vanishes, taking her daughter—a girl named Elsa who cleans and assists Beauty—with her. It leaves me alone with Beauty in a big empty penthouse.
The day I spend on my knees at Beauty's side seems to shift the evenings too. Before, she was tense and nervous, watching me with big dark eyes as she picked at her dinner and I ate. She never seemed to care if I was rambling, which is part of why I did it—the silence was deafening, and it seemed to amuse her to listen to me. But when she pushes my shoulder lightly away from her thigh and says, "Shower before dinner, James," I go without a word and try not to think too much about what the new normal will be.
I enter the dining room at five twenty-eight. It’s empty and quiet, dinner sitting there for us in the low light of the room.
There’s a plush pillow on the ground next to Beauty's chair.
I force my smile down and move to it, kneeling and waiting patiently for her to enter.
This time, there is no pause. She enters like a quiet wind, stirring through the room and filling my senses. I feel her hand brushing along my shoulder in a quick, almost involuntary gesture of approval before she sits down and quietly begins her dinner.
Even though the silence has returned, it doesn't bother me. I fight down my smile and wait patiently for what she will require from me next.
It's easy, falling into this new rhythm together. It feels natural, to kneel at her feet, quiet and attentive to her and what she might want from me.
It feels just as natural for her fingers to sift through my hair when she's still, silent, and thinking, before she pulls away and goes back to work, a new tense excitement in her.
Breakfasts are still quiet, lazy, and relaxed—the first morning when I walked into the kitchen and didn't see the pillow at her chair, I felt a pang of loss that was quickly lost in the quiet snarl of Beauty growling at Cook over her oatmeal. It’s there by her desk and at dinner, and I can accept that.
Maybe it's best to not slip into that headspace when she was so grumpy.
What surprises me about Beauty is how easy it is to be quiet with her.
When I'm with Wolf and Charm, it's constant motion. They're frenetic energy building and playing off each other, all coiled tension that inevitably sparks and explodes, and I’m just part of the fallout.
With Mal, I can sit in silence. He's like the eye of their storm, the destructive, still peaceful center. It's why Mal and I work—why we can keep the club running so smoothly, because I can sit with him in his office and work through schedules and inventory and payroll without needing to break the silence.
It's the same way with Beauty. It's easy to be quiet and still with her, to enjoy the presence of her at my side without needing to know everything she's thinking or doing or fill up the room with meaningless noise.
I thought this would be hard—when the penthouse was a mess of tension in the first few days and Mal’s quiet disapproval hung over me, I thought this would be impossible.
Now there’s this, and it’s easy, and that fucking terrifies me.
The only place where things aren’t easy is when we're in the middle of a scene.
No, that’s not right. It’s hard when a scene ends.
The scene itself is always easy. Beauty demands trust, and I give it. She gives me pain and I take it. It doesn't matter if it's the dark side of her voice against my skin or the tight restraint of a cockring as she beats me. When I’m bound to the cross and she moves, supple and sure behind me—this is easier than even the quiet we share during the day.
I've spent most of my adult life on my knees, bending to the will of a dominant. I like it and I'm good at it. I earned my nickname because I can take almost any type of bondage, any sadistic shit a Dom can dream up. In the ten years since I started this, I have used my safeword only once, and that was with Charming—something Mal is still pissed about.
But Beauty, she's something else entirely. She's a kind of brutal that sets my skin to humming even before she picks up her whip. She's cold about it, clinical and distant until something flips, and then I hear the warmth in her voice that says she's right here, right in this scene with me.
The problem isn't that—it's that as soon as I've come, as soon as she is breathing steady again, she pulls away with a suddenness that leaves me...not frightened, not really. But bereft. I feel like I'm missing something.
I am missing something.
Some people like to think aftercare is snuggling and whispered confessions, all the softness after a hard scene. And it is, but it also keeps me grounded, connected to my Domme, aware that even though she just beat the shit out of me, I'm still ok.
There's also the whole practical side, that someone aside from me is looking after the pretty heavy beatings she's giving me. Making sure I'm ok.
I've been with Doms who skipped aftercare before. It never worked for long because I need that, but Beauty—she doesn't.
It takes me about twelve hours in her penthouse to realize that skipping aftercare isn't an insult, that it's not me doing something wrong. It's just that when a scene ends, Beauty's mind shifts to the next item on her daily agenda. Sometimes that includes me, sitting us in front of an old black and white movie that she watches with almost unnatural stillness.
Sometimes that means a long shower before she slips into her bedroom and locks the door behind her.
It never means curling next to me on the bed in the black room and feeding me cookies and juice.
And that's ok. This is about what she needs. Not what I want.
I can be what she needs.
Maybe more troublesome than that—I want to be what she needs.
Chapter 10.
I'm sitting propped up against the couch, my legs stretched in front of me. I’m close enough that if Beauty wants, she can play with my hair, but not too close—not enough that it's a demand.
My back aches where I lean against the couch, sore still from the caning two nights ago, and I swallow my hiss when I shift, dragging a raised welt over the rough edge of the couch.
I feel her watching, but she doesn't address it, just returns her attention to her book like I am not sitting at her feet, aching and wearing her bruises.
If I know Beauty's routine (and after two weeks here, I am very aware of it) she will read for a while longer and then retire for the night. There won't be a scene, not so soon after a caning. I'm vaguely annoyed by that. I want the fresh pain, the bright hot splash of bruises against my skin that reminds me I'm hers and what she wants.
Her fingers sift through my hair, digging in a way that has my eyes rolling back. "Something on your mind, Beast?" she murmurs and I shiver. Her voice might never change, but she only calls me Beast when we're in a scene or headed there. I swallow and she tugs on my hair, pulling my head back so that I meet her eyes, exposing the long line of my throat.
"When did you first know?" I ask, the words coming as more of a gasp than anything.
Beauty smiles. "When I was fourteen."
I stare at her, a little shocked. That's fucking young.
"There was a girl, Krissy. We went to school together. She was a natural submissive—God, she was the best. Almost as good as you are. And we...well, we learned with each other. It was so easy to be me, with her."
I shove down the ugly spike of jealousy at that because there's literally no place for it here. I knew long before I agreed to this that I wasn't Beauty's first, that I wouldn't be her last. I'm just the one here now.
Something like a smile, fond and full, touches her eyes and not for the first time I wish that she'd take off that damn mask.
I want to see her smile, the one that would curve her lips up and brighten those big brown eyes. "It wasn't sexual, with her. She just needed—she need direction. And I needed to
control. We fit together, that way. It was good for us."
I nod and let my eyes close as she plays with my hair. It takes longer than I realize before I figure out she isn't turning the pages of her book. When I open my eyes, she's watching me with a heavy, considering look.
"And you, Beast? When was your first time?"
I shrug. "When I was eighteen. Mal and I fumbling around, hurting each other until we figured out what the fuck it was we were doing. God, we were idiots."
Her eyes frown, and her grip on my hair loosens until she is almost not touching me at all.
"I did not think you were that close to Mal."
I shrug again. "No one ever thinks we're that close. But, I mean, yeah. We've always been close. The four of us went to school and grew up together, in the way that really matters. It makes sense that we figured this out together too."
She's quiet for a moment, then says, "You love them a great deal."
I frown. "Well, yes. I mean, they're my brothers, Beauty. Of course I love them."
Something about that makes her sad, because she's pulling away, that frown in her eyes that I hate and I want to fix it.
I want, always, to see her smiling.
Fuck, I’m in too goddamn deep.
"Hey," I murmur, catching her hand and tugging her back to me. Pressing a kiss to it, I glance up to find her gazing at me with that curious indifference that seems to be her standard when she's trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing. I put on my most winsome smile. "Watch a movie with me?"
For a long moment, I think she'll refuse me, but then she gives a tiny sigh, like I am the most ridiculous thing she has ever seen and gives me look full of exasperated affection.
"Yes, James. That sounds...nice."
I grin and count it as a victory that she stays here, pressed close and warm near my head, for another two hours.
“So, is it still complicated?” Grace asks.
Lainey is coloring in the background, and my sister’s face fills the screen of my tablet, all grinning and knowing, and I groan. “Why the hell do I tell you anything?”
“Because who the fuck else are you gonna tell?” she demands, all too rationally.
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