Beauty and the Beast (Not Quite the Fairy Tale #3)

by May Sage

  Duh. She was a librarian, not a cleaner.

  “I’m a house servant. Not a bartender, not a server, and certainly not a whore. Besides, don’t you feel sorry for the girls here. No one forces them to do it: they love sex, and they definitely love the money they make.”

  Belle was pretty sure her face was the picture of disapprobation.

  “Whatever. Feel free to judge them. Just try not to insult the eighty employees here who don’t open their legs for money. Eighty employees who certainly will judge you.”

  Direct hit; but she’d had a point. Belle had insulted her, after jumping to conclusions.

  Vera worked in silence and left.

  ♦

  He’d sent Vera to her at five o’clock, leaving Belle a good six hours to reconcile herself with his demands.

  Aiden had personally chosen the clothes. He recalled liking shopping; not for himself, perhaps, but he’d always been more than willing to take a woman out with his credit card – and not only because they liked to show their appreciations in the most pleasing ways.

  There was something decadent about picking out which piece of fabric a woman would wear for him, right down to the underwear.

  He hadn’t had the leisure indulging in that pleasure for years, so if she didn’t like it, Sibelle had to suck it up and deal with it.

  He’d gone for a dark yellow mustard corset and a long velvet skirt. Because he wasn’t a saint, there was a huge slit on her left leg, and he’d bought fishnet stockings. She was also to wear a black collar similar to Adler’s.

  The ensemble would be stunning on her tall, classically beautiful frame, but more to the point, it would be screaming one very clear message out loud: that she was his toy. A very classy, exclusive toy, but a toy nonetheless.

  He’d chosen underwear, too. They weren’t suggestive – a simple strapless red bra and a matching silken pair of boyshorts. He knew she would have thrown a crotchless tongue at his face, but he liked to think she’d choose to wear those.

  At five twenty-five past, he received a little note, written on one of his elegant guest cards embodied with “The Nest” at the front.

  “I see I’m not required to breathe,” she’d written, with an underlined “asshole” underneath.

  He laughed and spontaneously decided to reply with an invitation to join him for dinner, making it clear that there was no obligation.

  She was summoned at ten downstairs tonight, and he knew she’d turn up, for her brother’s sake – but it would have been nice to get to see her outside of the whole charade.

  Sibelle refused.

  Of course she did; he didn’t know why he’d asked.

  Aiden closed the curtains to escape the reflection the window threw back at him. He really didn’t need the reminder.

  ♦

  During school term, she visited them three, four times a week, max, but the schools had broken up for the summer and the kids had asked for extra lessons; she’d said yes. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do.

  She sent a text to the few amongst them who owned mobile phones, asking them to spread the word: she wanted to see them earlier today.

  When she made it to the skate park at six, the eighteen teenagers were on the ramp; they stopped skating as soon as she glided down towards them, converging around her.

  Belle wasn’t helping them because of their unbounded adulation, but she had to admit – it felt pretty damn good.

  They didn’t admire her because she was attractive, they didn’t give a damn about the surface. No, to them, she was it, because many moons ago, she’d pulled off the craziest stunts any street kid had ever attempted, and had gotten away with each one. There was a pair of boobs still painted over the portrait of Prince Aiden Archer in the City Hall attesting to it.

  Ok, it had been childish and needlessly dangerous, she’d never encourage anyone else to try – as unlike her, they weren’t practically bulletproof – but at the same time, that had given everyone who entered the Hall a reason to smile for eight years, so whatever. Totally worth it.

  Belle had gone shopping; she had things for every girl, and giving them clothes without passing anything to the boys would have been incredibly dumb and unfair; borderline cruel, really.

  Saying that the kids didn’t have much was an understatement. Three of them were emaciated, and worked hard to feed themselves; six were residents of the orphanage where she’d grown up – which meant that they worked harder yet, and very rarely went to bed with a full stomach. The rest had various sob stories – she didn’t know them all. All she knew is that she’d seen them in the streets at some point, doing what they needed to survive, and she’d stepped in, because surviving was what she did best.

  She’d met Tim, first; the stupid, reckless twat had actually nicked an aristocrat’s wallet. She’d seen it and laughed, simply observing.

  The noble hadn’t seen a thing, but unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for his guards: they’d gone for the kid, metal batons in hand.

  The kid was good – he’d skated between them, heading for the market where he would have managed to evade them, if he’d seen the forth guy who’d tailed him. He hadn’t; Belle had.

  She might not have intervened, if the guy had just asked for the wallet, but he actually used the baton, hitting the helpless child straight in the stomach.

  She’d kicked his ass, grabbed his wallet as well as his employers, before getting Tim out of there in record time.

  A map of Archange City highlighting every hideaway, potential escape route and shortcut was firmly implanted in her brain, so it had been a piece of cake.

  Belle couldn’t give them much – predominantly because she wasn’t loaded, but also because none of them would accept actual charity; when she’d been in their shoes, she wouldn’t have, either.

  She knew they’d take what she’d brought today, because most of it was second-hand handouts, and they’d understand why she’d bought the rest.

  None of the things in her tattered suitcase were fancy; hoodies and jackets, trainers, headphones, old music players. But they were more luxurious than what they could afford.

  Belle didn’t especially like posh clothes, but she bought quality and purposefully changed her wardrobe often, knowing that everything she purchased would have one or two other owners six months down the line, when she replaced it.

  They spent a good hour raving about her gifts, and then, they started.

  Tim taught the young Larry and Ken, making them spar against each other and helping them perfect their movements. They were both a step above the rest of the "class," so the warm up Belle was leading was below their skill level.

  After the kata, Belle set up a little game: a race without rules, offering a dinner at a posh pizzeria as the prize.

  The kids were ruthless. Biting, pushing, tricking, flashing boobs – nothing was forbidden.

  The plan had been to spar with Tim during the race, but it had just been too fun to watch: after a couple of attempts at concentrating on their duel, they gave up, taking the spectator seats around the ramp and watching the little gladiators going at it.

  She took them all out in the end, but gave Ruth a whole pizza to herself, proud as a punch that the smallest, youngest, shyest amongst her recruits was also the most frighteningly cunning little shit.

  God knew what the waiter thought when she walked in with almost twenty sweaty, dirty, beaten up kids and asked for ten pizzas, thirteen cokes and six beers. But she paid cash straight away, so he shut his mouth and got her order going.

  Belle was having an awful lot of fun, until she looked up at the clock; then, she ran all the way from the restaurant to the Nest, making it just before ten.

  After the quickest shower in the history of female ablutions, she started cursing the Beast. Of course he’d picked a freaking steel boned, lace up, waste training corset and not something a girl could casually slip into.

  She’d just tied herself in when she realized she hadn’t
put her knickers or tights on. Shit. No time to squeeze them under the long bodice, now. She put the skirt on and worked on her make up as quickly as humanly possible. She looked down at the collar and laughed. In his dreams.

  Watching her reflection in the mirror, she blanched, just like she had that afternoon. Not a lot of things frightened her; that did.

  The only reassurance was that no one she knew would ever see her look like that. Her life was downtown, a world away from the most exclusive neighborhood in the capital…

  But still.

  She was sexy. Belle avoided looking pretty; sexy was ten, fifteen times worse.

  To be entirely honest, she rocked the look. She would have loved to live in a world where a girl could get away with wearing that sort of get up just because it was fun, without every guy around taking it as an invitation for calling her names, stalking her or trying to rape her, but her life was no fairy tale.

  There had been a time when she’d worn skirts and little blouses, done her hair every day and put on scented gloss. She’d liked the looks, compliments and the attention it brought. She’d never been slutty, or even sexy, but it hadn’t mattered. Jason Fairin had decided that she was his to take as he pleased.

  Somewhere around the first week of her freshman year at college, he’d invited her to look around campus. She’d been flattered; he was popular, gorgeous, and a senior, too. However, she’d turned him down, because she wasn’t stupid: she knew what looking around campus stood for, and she hadn’t wanted it; not with a stranger.

  Belle had realized it had been a great decision when he hadn’t taken no for an answer; he was asking her out practically every day, and turning up everywhere; her friend’s parties, her regular coffee place, her dorm. It had been uncomfortable.

  Then, after a party, she’d woken up in a strange place; every single one of her muscles ached and she didn’t recall a thing about the previous night, past the one drink she’d sipped.

  The police hadn’t helped; they hadn’t even accepted her request for a restraining order. In Jereena, influence, connections and money counted more than truth in the eyes of the law.

  She had been told that there had been a time when things had been different; not so long ago, just a little decade.

  Sibelle didn’t recall it. In this day and age, being beautiful was a weakness she couldn’t afford.

  However, there was something else she couldn’t afford: one hundred thousand marks. So she moved her ass downstairs.

  Looks like Vera was right after all. Everyone had a price.

  Chapter Five

  Chill Out

  Belle made it ten minutes late; the doors opened in front of her without a question, and then, she entered another world.

  Fucking hell.

  The principal room was full; every one of the humongous seventeen tables was occupied by ten people, at the very least. There were piles of chips in front of them, and they pushed them eagerly, without a care about the fact that the smallest one represented more than what Belle made in a week.

  The waiter and waitresses were easy to pinpoint; while they had no uniform, they wore the mustard yellow Aiden had clothed her in – his trademark, she guessed.

  Choosing that shade had been wise: no guest was likely to wear it. It wasn’t a very popular color, as it matched the Jereenan flag, and no one was overly fond of the unconcerned government.

  Her eyes took it all in, before going up to the platform in the center of the place.

  She didn’t know how she could have missed it, at first.

  There, above everyone else, were shadows she mercifully couldn’t completely make out. They were doing exactly what she’d imagined, though; only, it was worse.

  It wasn’t a show, with actors exaggerating every movement to make the scene seem sexy. Oh, no. it was very real.

  The shape of a female – a well-proportioned woman, with the tiniest body, and the largest breasts – was bent over a table, and while silhouettes often obstructed her from view, she caught the form of a portly guy fucking her from behind; he moved to the other side of the table, climbed on and sat just in front of her, pushing her face down on his short, but thick dick. In the meantime, someone had replaced him at the rear.

  No one forces them to do it: they love sex, Vera had told her, and Belle had come to believe it, and to feel a bit ashamed for her snap judgment. To be frank, it added up. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine that the Beast, who’d immediately respected her refusal, when he’d suggested a rump in the sacks, would take anyone’s free will away.

  Taking it as something consensual, now, she found it strangely disgusting and enticing all at once.

  Sure, the idea of that girl doing that of her own volition made things far, far less sordid, but she still despised everything attached to it.

  Despising it didn’t stop her crotch from getting uncomfortable.

  Damn. Belle reluctantly averted her eyes and closed her legs. Never had she wished she’d worn knickers quite so bad. She might have enough time to nip back upstairs and put some on, if no one had seen her…

  “What time do you call this?”

  Dammit.

  The Beast didn’t sound as displeased as she’d anticipated, but he wasn’t happy either, so now wasn’t the time to run upstairs.

  She took the arm he lent her and followed him to a poker table.

  Getting bored took all of twenty minutes; she’d people-watched, entertaining herself by trying to guess the occupation of each player, but that only distracted her for a while; then, she noticed that no one talked to her or even looked at her. What were they so afraid of? The Beast? Ha. Ha. Ha. What a bunch of cowards.

  They were in front of a tableful of guests playing the roulette when the first person acknowledged her existence; an older man, perhaps still handsome, but also slimy as fuck, eyed her appraisingly, openly, as though she’d been a piece of meat on display, before glancing back up to the Beast.

  “A new one of our daily delight?” he asked, licking his lips.

  She was going to be sick.

  “Afraid not, Marcus. This one is just mine.”

  “An exquisite acquisition, Beast. Where have you dug her from?”

  “You may have heard I had an issue with a hacker, not so long ago. Let’s just say it’s sorted,” the Beast said, pulling her towards his hard frame to punctuate his meaning.

  Belle dropped her eyes to the floor and blushed appropriately, while cursing the said hacker in her mind.

  “How delightful. Send her my way when you’re done.”

  Who was he and how could she make his life a living hell?

  A beat passed during which Belle had to do her utmost to prevent herself from throttling that prick; the Beast better pay her double for dealing with that shit.

  “Afraid she isn’t that kind of woman, Marcus. There’s no price tag on these legs. Normally.”

  This directed the old sleaze’s gaze back on her, along her thighs. It stopped at the top of the slit and his eyes narrowed. Belle shifted uncomfortably. It was almost as if he could tell there wasn’t anything underneath.

  “That makes you one lucky man,” he finally said, returning to his game.

  The Beast was soon moving along, to the next table, directing her with a hand behind her back.

  “What a prick,” she murmured.

  “A prick with a very good sense of smell,” the Beast responded, clipped, obviously pissed off. “There are a few fay descendants here; you may want to go refresh those thighs of yours before we get to the next guests.”

  She stopped right there and pulled him until he was looking straight down at her eyes.

  “Are you saying that it’s somehow my fault that that disgusting friend of yours took me for a prostitute, when you’re the one who dressed me liked that?”

  “I gave you panties, Sibelle Thornton. Be so good as to wear them, next time, and we won’t have any issue.”

  His face was very close and she could see his nostrils f
laring. Well, get in line, big guy. He wasn’t the only pissed off one.

  “Look down,” he ordered her, slowly enunciating each word. “Now.”

  Everything in her rebelled against that, but over the course of the next sixty seconds, she recalled what she was here for; her pride wasn’t worth it. She relented and her eyes dropped to the floor.

  “Good girl.”

  While she didn’t respond to that out loud, she couldn’t help but stomping on his foot at the next step. Hard.

  “Oops,” she apologized, grinning away.

  Dickhead.

  ♦

  Painful. It was just fucking painful. The fragrance was still dominated by honey and cinnamon, but underneath it all, there was a layer of bittersweet spices, a raw carnal, feminine and alluring scent he – just like Marcus – had no problem recognizing. She was very wet, more so every time she looked up towards Julia and her guests. It might have been bad in any case, but as she’d decided to refrain from covering her damn pussy, it was all he could smell.

  He lasted exactly thirty-seven minutes.

  Aiden didn’t spend more than a couple of hours in the casino each day – his actual job was running it behind the scenes – but tonight, he couldn’t manage even that.

  He’d turned caveman and suddenly grabbed Sibelle’s hand, dragging her out. Everyone would assume he was about to take her to the first available room and rip her clothes open; hell, for a minute, he even thought he might.

  Then, he turned to her, met her tantalizing amber eyes and remembered.

  He was a Beast. She looked like that. Even horny as she was right now, any kind of move on his part would have ended in an embarrassing rejection.

  “Is this where I practice screaming your name?”

  Fuck. Those sweet lips were delicious, but it was when they opened that they became dangerous.