Page 94 of Fated Obsessions

Maybe being soft or gentle and giving her space wasn’t the right move. Maybe she needed to see that my desire for her was a living, breathing animal within me?

Perhaps she needed the dominance of my touch and words to bring her to me?

And the sooner I claimed, marked, and knotted her, the sooner she would be filled with my seed and grow big with my young.

And then she would be irrevocably mine.

Chapter 5

Belle

I’d walked the countless corridors, snooping into various rooms.

I touched every vase, ran my finger down every picture frame, and walked the halls over and over again. I was starting to lose my mind.

It had been days upon days that I’d been at the Beast’s castle, and the heavy loneliness was starting to weigh down on me. And although I was used to being by myself, this place was different. It was too grand, too vast.

I only saw the Beast at dinner, where he required me to eat with him nightly. And I was starting to look forward to those moments.

Because as the days passed and I would stare at him across the table, I started to see he wasn’t as frightening as I had first assumed.

Sure, he was massive and scary in appearance, with his hairy, animal-like body and his horns and fangs, his hands that weren’treally hands at all. And I wasn’t ashamed to admit I’d thought about what they’d feel like touching me.

Was his fur soft or coarse?

Could he be gentle touching me with those deadly claws?

More and more, I thought about such things, my curiosity rising as I caught myself staring at him for long moments over the dining room table.

I didn’t think about my father much, because I knew whether I was there or not, his life would still be the same. He would live it exactly as he had, probably still gambling, going into debt, and not thinking about how I was.

I found myself wandering into the kitchen, where I could hear pots and pans banging and Cook shouting in French to Sous Chef.

Because I didn’t know the names of anyone aside from Madame and Pierre, I’d gotten used to just calling them by their household titles. They didn’t seem to care—that was, if they bothered to address me.

I stood in the entrance of the kitchen and glanced around the corner, seeing Cook, a robust man with a shock of white hair, a big potbelly; rosy, rounded cheeks, and the most sour expression on his face that made you second-guess approaching him.

Sous Chef was the complete opposite physically, a willowy man with long dark hair he kept in a braid that hung down the center of his back. He had a milky white complexion, bushy dark eyebrows, and the most infectious laugh I’d ever heard.

Despite Cook’s terse words and sour attitude, I’d seen them joking, and whatever Cook said could make Sous Chef laugh hysterically until he was doubled over and gripping his belly.

I watched as Cook pulled out two roasted game hens and started displaying them on silver platters. Then Sous Chef finished dressing the platters as Cook prepared dessert, whichI could see was a homemade peach cobbler with fresh whipped cream.

I turned away before they saw me, before Cook scolded me for snooping. I often wondered if Cook liked the dinners to be a surprise, or if he just had a perpetual attitude.

I started aimlessly walking around again, having a little bit of time to kill before I was supposed to meet the Beast for dinner. I stopped and looked at a landscape painting, the brush strokes precise, the color vivid.

A smile tugged at my lips as I felt this warmth fill me. I wondered if Beast had done this, and I laughed softly because I couldn’t see such a big monster painting something so delicate. And then I felt unfair and bitchy to think such an awful thought.

He hadn’t hurt me, hadn’t purposefully frightened me. My fear seemed for the unknown and his visage, which he couldn’t help.

I was so lost in looking at all the paintings that it wasn’t until I felt a tingling on the back of my neck that I realized I wasn’t alone.

I looked over my shoulder and for a second didn’t see anything, but then my gaze landed on a darkened corridor that forked off of the hallway. It was there that I saw the glowing eyes of the Beast, his huge body filling up the entryway, his shoulders nearly touching the edges of the doorway, his head having to be cocked to the side so his horns didn’t take out the top of the frame.

His eyes positively glowed this otherworldly shade, a red hue that seemed to illuminate the small space before him.

I couldn’t see his visage very well, just the overall shape, and the very clear fact he was staring right at me.