Beauty in Spring (Beauty #1)(7)

His cold laugh in response to my flinch is a hateful sound. “So you can not bear the thought of this touch?” He looks down at his bloodstained hands. “No matter. I have almost a month to persuade you to become mine in another way.”

“What way?” I cry in frustration. “What are you talking about?”

He moves so fast. Abruptly his fingers are twisted in my hair, and he’s kneeling in front of me on the bed, drawing my upper body against his chest, his mouth so close to mine.

“Cora Walker.” My name from his lips is a low, thick rumble. “Will you get down on your hands and knees—and with love in your heart, offer the use of your cunt for my pleasure?”

My breath catches, and I stare at him in disbelief—and growing anger. “Why are you being so cruel?”

His cold green gaze searches mine. “I wonder if I am more cruel to you or to myself, to beg for your heart when I know you will deny me? And yet I cannot stop it. So I will ask this, as well, and we will see who is most hurt by it.” Wrapping the gold chain around his bloodstained fingers, he gently tilts my chin higher, as if to ready my lips for his kiss. “Cora Walker…will you marry me?”





2





Gideon




The next evening as I sit adjacent to Cora at the dining table in the family wing, I ask her again.

“Will you marry me?”

Her answer is the same as it was when I asked her in my bed. Yet this time, her tears do not spill down her cheeks to land on my chest, each one like molten lead that blistered the surface of my heart.

Instead she calmly sips mushroom soup from her spoon before replying, “Release me from this chain, and we will see.”

We will see. What I can see is Cora searching for escape. Even now, her beautiful blue eyes never meet mine, always looking elsewhere as if imagining herself away from me.

I could release her from the chain. Then she would run away from me, beyond the borders of this estate.

And I would die the moment she passed through the gate.

The curse that afflicts me and the magic that forms her chain make no logical, scientific sense—yet they are still governed by rules. My parents spared no expense, seeking answers…and a cure.

Answers they found. Rules were part of those answers. That there is no cure was another answer.

The beast is within me. Always, it will be within me.

Yet although there is no cure, there is control, for the heart and the soul of man and beast are one and the same. So if a man’s heart is strong enough, if his will is great enough, he can control the beast…almost always. No matter how I fight, no matter how great my will, I cannot prevent the beast from emerging on the full moon.

But there is another way to tame the beast. For when it comes to love, the beast knows no reserve. A man might protect his heart; the beast does not. And a man’s control over his heart is nothing compared to the power of a woman who owns it.

Just as Cora Walker owns mine. As she’s owned it for the longest time.

The beast has always known of her, as if sensing her presence in the heart we share. He has always searched for her. Yet we’d kept her away, fearing the beast would find her.

Because that is another part of the curse—if a promise of love and marriage has been made, then the woman only has to draw near and she will be bound by that promise. I didn’t know what form that binding would take, but it is the necklace I gave to her. Trapped by an innocent gift, given with the purest intentions.

Now my vow to marry her will destroy either her or me. Because the beast has scented her now. He’s tasted her skin. She fills his heart as fully as she does mine.

Now he will fight to possess her. Yet if she gives herself to us in love, if she consents to be ours, then he will be content, and lie tame beneath her hand, only emerging if she is in danger or needs protection.

But if she leaves and shatters the heart we share, the beast will die.

And I will die with him.

If Cora ran from me, I would welcome death. Better than living with the scent of her always filling my lungs, better than living with the taste of her skin always upon my tongue, better than living without her. But I am not ready to die yet—and she will be safe here until the next full moon, when the beast within me will not give her any choice.

And if he takes her through force, forever will I remain the beast, because he will always struggle to possess her and will never relinquish control to me again. For now, I can keep him leashed. Yet if I should change forever, a beast driven by desperation to possess her…

Better for her that I will be dead.

I can feel that death approaching, bitter and cold. For years, living here alone, I thought I’d known bitterness, coldness. But they were nothing compared to having her here, knowing she will never be mine. Knowing the end is coming.

“So will you say yes to the other, then?” I ask of her. “Will you give yourself to me with love in your heart?”

Her baleful gaze meets mine. Flatly she says, “So that you may use my cunt for your pleasure?”

Her fragrant, juicy cunt. So wet and hot to the touch. Wetter and hotter than even in my fevered dreams. And the honeyed flavor of her juices that I licked from my bloodstained fingers was the sweetest heaven.

I would rip apart mountains simply to have one more taste. I would drag a star from the sky just for the chance to sip directly from the well of her cunt, to tease her clit with my tongue.