“I know you have to,” she gasped. “I want you to. It’s all right, Beast. Take me.”
He groaned and rocked into her over and over, holding her body to his, feeling her slick inner walls spasm around his cock.
“Don’t you dare pretend,” he growled, and moved faster within her, sliding over her clit again and again.
“Victor!” she cried as her orgasm shattered, her legs trembling, spread wide beneath him.
“I’m here, Justine…” I’m still me inside this beast.
This woman made him feel so primal and animalistic one second, and like the man he knew he still was, the next.
They came from such different worlds. He’d grown to hate the privileged class, and she was wary of the common peasants after the Summerset Uprising. The queen had brought them together when nothing else would have—that alone should have tainted everything. Instead, holding Justine in his arms in that moment, it felt like their own form of fighting back, fighting together to find their own happiness.
After years of slavery to the queen, he’d thought he himself was ruined for any woman. Not too damaged for a fling with the milkmaid, sure. But he never thought he’d ever be able to find a wife, have a family. Though he was meant to be ruining the princess’s future, what if that future was…with him? Was it possible, somehow, that their twisted scenario could actually be their chance to have what they’d always truly wished for?
The queen will never let me go.
No. His mistress would never let him leave her. He’d be the queen’s slave until she killed him.
It was better for both him and the princess if he didn’t get too attached. No more playing at love. No more dreaming of happiness. It would only make it harder when the time came for Justine to go.
She gasped in pleasure beneath him, wrapping her arms around his neck.
With a growl, he shook her arms off of his neck and reared up, pounding into her mercilessly. His climax built and he shouted into the quiet night, emptying his seed inside her.
Justine looked up at him, her breath coming hard and fast. “Beast…?”
“Go to sleep,” he said. “It’s better if we don’t pretend.”
****
Chapter 7
The Enchantress Returns
Days spent together went by fast, turning into weeks, then months. The leaves had fallen, and the morning dew froze, leaving tiny ice crystals on the shady forest ground.
“It’s getting colder,” Justine said to the beast, staring out the small cabin window at the clouds forming in the skies. “What if it snows?”
Victor threw another log onto the fire and came up behind her, his head nearly touching the ceiling of the cabin they had made their own.
“She’ll come,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist. “The queen won’t risk us going to the castle to find her first.”
“I felt him quicken within me today,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”
“So it’s true?” he asked, as if he was afraid to believe it. “You’re with child, with no doubt?”
Justine turned and smiled up at him. “I already knew it was true. I’ve told you for two moon cycles now, no bleeding is a good sign. And the nausea.”
“But now you felt him.” His stormy eyes were bright with hope.
She laughed. “Yes!”
He picked her up and twirled her around, her simple indigo-blue dress flowing out like a flower in bloom.
They had to tell the queen. But life without her, without the castle, and the rules and kingdom, had been good. Quiet. Simple. A life that Justine would never have known if she had stayed at the castle and married Prince Frederick.
And if not for the queen, she wouldn’t have her beast. Victor had been her rock, teaching her the day to day things she’d never been taught on how to build a home. Even how to live without a maid to wait on her was a task at first, although she’d adapted quickly to that.
And he’d taught her other things, as well—at night, on the hearth in front of the fireplace. Where to touch him. Where he might touch her.
With no one in society around to cast shame, the only shame she had was what she’d constructed in her own mind. And the beast had stripped her of that, slowly but surely.
It was a blessing.
“What will happen, when she comes back?” Justine asked. They never needed to preface who “she” was. There was only one in their small world.
“She’ll remove the death spell on you,” Victor said, but he sounded uncertain. “You won’t have to fear winter much longer. And you’ll be free. You can leave this place.”
Leave…?
“It’s what you wanted, Justine,” he said. “For me to let you go. Once I know you’re safe from her, you won’t be my captive any longer. You’ll be free.”
She looked around the tiny home they had made for themselves— at the log walls lined with animal furs on the inside to keep it insulated and cozy, at the table where he’d taught her to prepare the food he’d hunted for them, at the thick mattress of leaves covered in fur that they lay on together, whispering to each other into the night.
“Am I still your captive?” she asked.
“Whether we talk about it or not doesn’t change the truth of the matter,” he said. “I’m grateful you’ve given yourself to my care with such grace. That you’ve submitted to me, even eagerly lain with me. But even if you hadn’t, you’d still be here.”
His words hurt her. For some reason, she’d thought they’d transcended the relationship the queen had forced upon them — captive and kidnapper. Virgin and ravisher. Beauty and beast.
But no. As far as he was concerned, she’d made the best of her situation with him just to survive. Maybe that was the case at first, but not now. Not for a long time now.
“You are my captive,” she said fiercely. “I will not let you go. Even if you let me go, I will follow you.”
Victor smiled and shook his head sadly. He kissed her lips, the scratch of his whiskers against her cheek so normal now as to feel like home.
“The queen may not set me free, Princess.” He sighed. “My time with you has given me a taste of freedom, of life without shackles or degradation.”
“You can’t go back to being her slave after this—after what we’ve built together. A home, a life inside of me!”
How could she have let herself be lulled into feeling safe? The queen would find a way to win in the end. She always did. That’s what Victor had told her, time and again. And if anyone knew the queen best, it was her beast.
“Don’t go back with her,” she said, tears of frustration brimming in her eyes. “I don’t want freedom from you. I’m yours. You promised, Beast. You promised to protect me to the death.”
He pulled her into his embrace, and she laid her head below his chest.
“You were asleep,” he whispered. “Every night, every time I said the words, from the day I took you.”
A knock sounded at the cabin door.
She knows. The enchantress was back.
****
Victor pushed the princess behind him, trying to shield her from the queen. The ceremonial knock on the door was just for show—she waltzed right in.
“It is done, Your Majesty,” the beast said, struggling to maintain his composure. The queen fed off of fear. He wouldn’t show her any. “The princess is now with child. She is no threat to you.”
“Why else do you think I’m here?” the queen murmured. “Stop hiding, girl.”
Justine stepped out from behind the beast, but he put his arm around her shoulders, keeping her close. Just in case.
The queen stepped forward to put her hand on the princess’s belly, but Victor caught the queen’s wrist in his iron grasp.
“Do not touch the princess,” he growled. “She’s mine.”
The air in the room became thick with the enchantress’s anger. She straightened and glared at Victor.
“No. You are mine, Beast. Make no mistake.”
“We did what you ordered, your highness,” Justine said. “You wanted him to ruin me, and he did. I am no threat to you. I do not want to marry the prince. I only want for you to keep your word now, and set me free from your spell…and from you.”
Victor let go of the queen’s wrist, and she laughed.
“The spell was broken when you got pregnant,” the queen said. “That’s how death spells work. Only life can counter them. You broke my spell yourself over three months ago, you stupid slut.”
Victor exhaled a breath of relief he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. The first fat snowflakes of winter fell outside the window, but melted on the ground. The queen was telling the truth.
His princess was safe.
“You’re so pleased with yourself,” the queen sneered at Victor. “Aren’t you? I bet you’ve enjoyed your time off, with nothing to do but fuck the girl.”
“Your Majesty, we will never bother you,” Justine said. “We’ll never set foot in your kingdom again.”
“Well, I’m satisfied then,” the queen said.
It was too easy. Something wasn’t right. The queen was never so acquiescent.
“So…we’re done?” Victor asked. “You go your way and we go ours, never to cross paths again?”
The queen sneered. “I never promised that.”
“You did so,” Justine said shakily. “You promised us.”
“I said I’d let her live if she was no longer a threat to me,” the queen said to Victor, as if the princess was not a part of the discussion. “But you don’t get to stay with her and live happily ever after in the woods, Beast. Not at all.”
Justine clung to his arm as if she could hold him there.
“Beast, you come with me now,” the queen said. “Your job here is well done. If she ever does wander into the castle from the forest, the king will never allow her a place in the court, much less as Frederick’s bride. As I said, I’m well satisfied. And I’ll reward you for that.”
“Will you change me back into a human?” The words escaped his mouth before he’d realized he’d spoken them.
But he didn’t even want to change back, not if it meant leaving Justine —and the babe growing inside of her—all alone in the woods.
“Or course,” the queen said.
“She lies, Victor,” Justine said. “You already know she can’t reverse the spell, she told you that herself.”
“Darling Victor,” the queen said softly, “my sweet young man. I have to kill the girl. You know I do. Any fool can see that is the only way you’ll come back with me and stay.”
No no no no no no —
“I won’t let you kill her,” he growled.
He pushed Justine into the corner, getting her out of the queen’s line of fire, perhaps harder than he meant to. The princess fell to the ground with a cry of pain and fear.
“Don’t you miss me, darling Beast?” the queen said. “My bedchamber has been lonely without you in it. Will you throw away our years together for this girl?”
“Our years together consisted of you raping and abusing me,” the beast said. “I have never been happier than I have been with Justine.”
“And what about her?” the queen asked, her face alight with rage. “She is merely surviving her ordeal with the beast until she can escape; how can you not see that? You kidnapped her. You tied her up. You raped her, and raped her again. You are no better than I, Beast. Let her go.”
Victor cried out as if he’d been punched in the gut. The queen was right. How could he have thought he was fit to be with a princess—or that being with the queen for so long hadn’t poisoned him after all?
He looked over at the girl, huddled in the corner, at the defiance in her face. Pregnant with a child he had forced upon her.
“Oh Lord in Heaven,” he whispered. “Oh God, what have I done to you?”
****
Justine shook her head. “I want to be with you, Beast. You are not like her—”
“Will you ever forgive me, Princess?” he choked out.
At that moment, the queen pushed her hand forward with a battle cry. Lightning bolted from her palm toward Justine.
ROOAARRRRR!
The beast jumped in front of the princess before she could even flinch. The lightning bolt meant for her instead hit his massive chest, and he fell to the ground with a mighty thud that made the walls shake around them.
“No, Victor, no,” Justine said. Her voice caught in her throat. “Please get up, Beast, my love, get up.”
He didn’t move. No breath rose in his chest. The princess flung herself across his body and hugged as much of him as she could fit in her arms.
“What have you done?” Justine cried out. Her tears fell on his face, and she dropped her lips to his. “You can’t die. I love you, Victor. I need you here.”
The queen could kill her now, for all she cared. Let them be together if only in death.
Instead, the queen stood back, watching silently. The air turned electric, and Justine knew her end was near.
But her death did not come. In her arms, the spell that had turned her stablehand into a beast was falling away, dissolving like salt in the sea.
His fur—gone as if it had never existed. The claws, the mane, everything went back to his human state. Within minutes of his death, Victor Gerard laid in her arms, naked, human.
Alive.
“Oh my Lord, let it be true,” Justine prayed fervently.
Victor opened his blue-grey eyes and stared into her face. “Are you all right?”
“You saved my life,” she whispered.
“What happened?” He sat up, staring at his human limbs in disbelief.
The queen collapsed to the floor, her skirts flowing out around her. “How did he do it?” she asked Justine softly. “How did Victor get you to love him…when I could never get him to love me?”
For a moment, Justine felt pity for the woman, whose power had been stripped away by the one bit of magic she could never obtain—love.
“Only true love’s kiss can break a spell as powerful as the Beast Enchantment,” the queen whispered. “I never thought…”
Victor stood slowly, as if testing his strength. He was whole, and uninjured.
“Love brought me back from the dead,” Victor said. “It is stronger than any magic you may have. So leave us be, forevermore — or I will hunt you down and destroy you, my Queen. I know how to; I’ve learned from the best.”
The queen stood, her face a mask of shock. “So you have, Victor. So you have.”
Justine nestled against Victor’s tall, naked form. At six foot two, he still towered over her, but in a much more reasonable way than at ten feet. His muscles seemed even more well-defined than they did before when they’d met in the stables. All of the hunting and working in the forest had affected his human form beneath the beast.
“Very well,” the queen pronounced, as if she didn’t care either way. “Fine. Go be a little happy family off in the woods. You’ll never live in a grand castle again. You think you are special? Something that legends are made of? A mighty beast, a beautiful princess, and an evil queen. You are not special.”
“I don’t need to be special,” Justine said, finding her voice. “I just want to be happy.”
“And you,” she spat at Victor. “You will never find greatness here. Not like when you were mine.”
Victor smiled. “I’m all right with that.”
“No one will ever remember you, or talk of you,” the queen pronounced. The temperature in the cabin rose, and the door behind her flew open. “Your story shall remain untold, forever. Let the Devil hear my words: as I say it, so be it!”
With that final spell, the enchantress walked out of their lives, never to return.
And that is why, even though the story of a beast kidnapping a princess on her wedding day surely should have become a great legendary tale, no one ever recalled it had happened, or spoke of it.
Two years later,
when the king passed on, the queen turned Prince Frederick into a beast when he refused her advances. Even he had no recollection that he was not the first.
THE END
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About the Author
Shoshanna Evers, New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author, has written dozens of sexy stories since her debut in 2010, including Beauty and the Beast (an erotic re-imagining), The Man Who Holds the Whip, and I Am Not Your Melody, all of which hit the bestseller lists in box sets. Among her most popular books are The Tycoon’s Convenient Bride...and Baby, Overheated, The Enslaved Trilogy, How to Write Hot Sex, and the controversial novella Held Captive by the Cavemen.
Shoshanna Evers has been listed on Amazon as one of the "Most Popular Authors in Romance," as well as on the Contemporary Romance, and Erotica "Most Popular Authors" lists.
Reviewers have called Shoshanna’s writing “fast paced, intense, and sexual…every naughty fantasy come to life for the reader” with stories where “the plot is fresh and the pacing excellent, the emotions…real and poignant.”
Ms. Evers is also the cofounder of SelfPubBookCovers.com, the largest selection of instantly customizable, one-of-a-kind, premade book covers in the world.
Shoshanna used to work as a syndicated advice columnist and a registered nurse, but now she’s a full-time smut writer and a home-schooling mom. She lives in the mountains of north Idaho with her family and three big dogs, and loves to connect with readers on;
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For more information on other books by Shoshanna, visit her official website: www.ShoshannaEvers.com.
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