Beauty in Spring Read online

  And each time, he dug holes that destroyed more and more of what she’d left behind. Hating himself for it, as I hated him for it.

  Yet still unable to help himself.

  But I will not awaken in her garden on the morning after this next full moon. If she cannot accept us, I will not awaken at all. And the beast will never destroy anything of hers again.

  Those icy, bitter fingers wrap around my heart. I try to warm it with a swallow of burgundy, but wine is still not what I want on my tongue. “You’ve made progress in your garden.”

  “You watched that from your tower, too?” The same cold bitterness clutching at my heart fills her reply. “You should have come down and helped me.”

  After she had avoided me for days? “Do you truly want me so near to you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she challenges. “Will you hurt me?”

  “It is not hurt you have to fear.” Not with me. Though the beast wants exactly what I want, and dreams of what I do.

  Of Cora on her knees. Of mounting her, burying our thick cock in the burning depths of her cunt, and listening to her cries echo through every chamber in the house as we fuck her relentlessly. With me, those cries would be of need and pleasure.

  With him, she would likely be screaming in pain and fear.

  Her mouth set in a stubborn line, she reaches for her wine. “Then why should I worry if you are near to me?”

  “Because every time I come near to you, your body readies to take me,” I tell her harshly. “Because the sweet petals of your pussy open and perfume the very air with your nectar. Because the tight buds of your nipples seek my touch as a flower seeks the touch of the sun. And you have said again and again that you have no wish to give yourself to me with love in your heart, or to allow me the use of your cunt for my pleasure. But if I was so near to you throughout the day, Cora, how long would it be before you were on your hands and knees in the dirt of that garden, begging me to plow my cock deep?”

  Cheeks flushed, she draws a trembling breath. “I would not.”

  No, she would probably not. Not my stubborn Cora. No matter how much she wants, not matter how wet she is, not matter how deep the ache.

  It would be I—and the beast—who would end up begging…or taking. Even now he tries to tear his way through, my fingernails lengthening, my eyeteeth sharpening. But the painful hardness of my cock is all mine, my hunger and need for her endless.

  Yet still he fights to the surface, and my voice is a low, growling rumble as I command, “Marry me.”

  Her steady blue gaze locks with mine and she makes a demand of her own. “Free me.”

  Not yet, I would have said, but instead the beast roars, “NEVER!”

  Cora rears back in her chair, eyes flying wide. Afraid.

  I grip the edge of the heavy oak table, claws gouging the surface, fighting for control. She’s afraid. That is all the beast sees, and he rips at my skin, trying to emerge and protect her.

  He doesn’t understand she needs protecting from this.

  With all of my will, I battle the overwhelming urge to let him take over, to let him shield her, my hands tightening on the table’s edge as I silently wage war against the beast within.

  Then the silence is broken with a great, splintering crack. Cora gasps as the table splits down the center. Her hands fly to her mouth to muffle a disbelieving cry.

  Disbelief and surprise. Not fear.

  The beast begins to recede.

  Cora stares at me over her fingers. “Well,” she whispers shakily, “now I know what happened to all of the furniture.”

  Perhaps because if there was anything left, I would bend her over it and drive the full length of my cock into her sweet silky heat, making her scream in pleasure as I ease this agonizing need—as I fill her womb with my hot seed.

  The beast and I are not always so different.

  And this time I am the first to get up and leave.

  With the beast’s acute senses attuned to Cora’s every movement, I’m always aware of where she is and what she is doing, even if she’s in another wing of the house or at the edge of the estate.

  This morning it rained, so instead of working in the garden, she had retreated to the library and spent several quiet hours. I was aware of her soft tread leaving that chamber and heading toward the southeast wing, but I expected that she would veer toward the family kitchen. Instead she paused at the bottom of the tower stairs and began to climb, her steps steadily rising and the slithering jingle of the chain following.

  Cora has almost reached the tower chamber before I accept that she truly is coming to see me. Not hesitating, not retreating. Hurriedly I drag on my jeans, and the beast is so excited by her approach that he does not even protest the confining cloth.

  The heavy wooden door to the tower chamber is always open, so I see her the moment she ascends to the top of the spiraling staircase. She’s dressed in her own beauty, her pale blond hair in a loose braid over her shoulder, her full lips pink, her narrow feet bare. The skirt she wore the day she arrived conceals the long, taut muscles of her thighs, the hem kissing her knees with every step. A sleeveless shirt hugs her ribs and full breasts.

  I do not bother with my own shirt. I barely bother with the zip of my jeans. Instead I quickly comb my fingers through my hair, and greet her with a smile that cannot hope to tell her how much pleasure this unexpected visit has given me.

  The sky blue of her gaze does not lift to my face, however. With warm color staining her cheeks, she glances at my abdomen before quickly turning away, indicating the stairs with a sweep of her hand. “I’d forgotten how many steps there were! Do you remember when we used to race up to this chamber?”

  I remember everything about her. “Yes.”

  Her gaze is unfocused and her smile is sweet, lost to those memories—then abruptly it sharpens.

  “Did you let me win?”

  “Sometimes.” And sometimes jostling against her in the narrow confines of the stairwell aroused my teenaged body so much that running had seemed an agony.

  My teenaged body knew nothing of agony. For nothing I felt then could compare to now.

  “Until the day I tripped and twisted my ankle.”

  “And I carried you down to the solarium.” Feeling like a hero…and hating myself for letting her be hurt in the first place.

  “Then refused to race me again,” she says with her eyes narrowing on me—then she abruptly stops at the entrance to the chamber, wonder filling her expression.

  For an endless time she does nothing but look, her bare feet carrying her farther into the chamber, slowly turning so that she can see the canvases hanging from every wall.

  “Gideon,” she breathes in awe. “Did you paint these?”

  “I did.”

  In disbelief she shakes her head. “You were never this good before.”

  “I’ve had more opportunity to practice.”

  She pauses in front of a landscape—the gatehouse, as it had looked when she and her father had lived there. Before the gates were closed and chained. “So this is where you spend most of your time?”

  “Yes.” This chamber soothes me…and soothes the beast. For he is often content to be surrounded by reminders of the love I’d known instead of searching for what is no longer here.

  Not content today, though. Not with Cora here. Instead our need for her rages hotter than ever, the scent of her filling this chamber, the sound of her soft breaths in our ears, the taste of her skin only a step and a lick away.

  She smiles over a portrait of herself, looking fierce and determined, a cricket bat at ready in her grip. And another of her bulging cheeks full of Mrs. Collins’s stolen scones, wide-eyed and tight-lipped from the effort of trying not to laugh, and with crumbs clinging to her shirt.

  “Was that the day we received The Great Lecture?” she says it in the same manner the lecture had been delivered, as if state secrets were hidden in the scones we’d stolen.

  “It was.”
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br />   “Oh,” she exclaims quietly, standing in front of another painting. “Your dad and mum.”

  As I remember them best—walking hand-in-hand through Cora’s garden, with the sun upon their faces.

  She glances back at me, at my face and lower, then quickly away—and abruptly stills with her gaze arrested by the large painting on the east wall. As if in a trance, she moves closer, whispering, “What is this?”

  “A dream,” I tell her.

  Unlike all of the others, not something from my past. Simply Cora, lying upon a bed in a room filled with sunshine, her body soft and supple…and waiting for me.

  “This is in your bedchamber—as it used to be?”

  “Yes.”

  Puzzlement creases her brow and she glances back. “Why was your bed not destroyed? Everything else was.”

  Because the bed was the only thing in my bedchamber that she’d never been in. Everything else, she’d touched—the desk, the chairs, even the wardrobe, on those days when our adventures would leave her in desperate need of a clean shirt to borrow.

  She does not wait for my answer but studies the painting again. “Have you watched me sleep?”

  I have. But—“This was painted before you came.”

  A bitter smile curves her lips. “So that is why you do not show me chained to that bed.”

  A growl rises from my chest. “And because the woman in that painting has already given herself to me with love in her heart. So I would have already released her.”

  “Then how can you be certain it was love and not desperation that drove her to accept you?”

  “Because she stayed,” I tell her. “Would you?”

  “You’ll have to release me first to find out. Will you?”

  “No.”

  Eyes glittering, she turns away from me—away from the painting. She pauses over a portrait of herself, standing in the moonlight, her lips freshly kissed. A new diamond pendant shines from the hollow of her throat. Her blue eyes glittered with tears then, too. But they were joyous, hopeful.

  Cora’s breath shudders and she moves quickly on. The silence between us deepens as she continues studying each painting, yet her attention on them seems more and more unfocused as she goes—her gaze straying to me often, the flush never leaving her cheeks.

  Because I’ve been aroused since hearing her first step at the bottom of the tower stairs, and I hardly bothered to zip.

  “If you want to look at my cock, then only say so,” I tell her. “And I will give you a better view than this.”

  Her blush deepening, she freezes in place—her eyes closing.

  That won’t do.

  I stalk closer. Her eyes fly open again at the short rasp that sounds as I unzip the few inches I’d fastened in haste. She takes a quick step back. Not far. Her shoulders press up against a painting of her garden, a canvas bursting with light and color.

  She goes utterly still as I take the aching length of my cock in my right hand, her gaze fixed on my fist. Bracing my left palm against the wall beside her shoulder, I watch her face and slowly stroke my straining shaft, a rumbling groan reverberating in my chest.

  “Gideon,” she breathes. I cannot tell if it is supposed to be a protest or shock or encouragement, but the sound of my name upon her tongue is like fire over my skin.

  In a voice roughened by need, I tell her, “Did you think I would react in any other way when you are so close? Just as your cunt blossoms for me when I am near.” And she has been near me so long, the scent of her arousal is in full bloom. “Now watch me come for you.”

  Breasts lifting as she drags in a ragged breath, she watches me, her tongue darting out to moisten her parted lips, her own hands fisted.

  “Do you imagine what I do?” Gritting my teeth, I stroke harder. “That this is not my hand, but instead your wet pussy rides my length. That my cock fills your hot cunt and we are racing together, trying to come.”

  Softly she moans, her back arching against the canvas, her hips canting toward me. Her fingers flex.

  “Come with me, Cora. Rub your sweet clit, as I know you do in your bed.”

  Her gaze flies up to mine, but instead of the outrage I expect, there’s only hot temptation in the blue flame of her eyes.

  Arm rigidly braced beside her shoulder, I bend my head closer to hers, my chest heaving with deep breaths that match the long stroke of my hand. “The first time I ever did this, I thought of you. The last time I did this, I thought of you. I have only thought of you, Cora. Never another woman.”

  Her breath catches. “Never?”

  It shouldn’t even be a question. “I vowed to marry you. What kind of man would ever look at another?”

  Even the beast within me would not.

  Her gaze falls to my cock again. “No one else has ever touched you?”

  “Never.”

  She bites her lip. “May I?”

  Ah fuck. At that shyly spoken request, my cock pulses hard in my grip. Quickly letting go, I grit my teeth and fight the need to come before she even touches me. “You need not ask permission,” I growl softly. “I am yours to use for your pleasure.”

  Hesitantly she reaches for me. A tortured groan rips from my throat at the first soft touch—her fingertips gliding up the underside of my straining shaft.

  My head bows, exquisite agony drawing every muscle tight as she takes a firmer grip, stepping closer to wrap both hands around the base of my throbbing length.

  “Like this?” she asks breathlessly, stroking from root to tip.

  My response is a hiss of breath through clenched teeth. “Yes.”

  “Good.” Her soft pants punctuate the rise and fall of her hands. The fragrance of her arousal deepens, thickens, until I can almost taste her pussy juices with every breath. “Because I haven’t done this before, either.”

  Head jerking up, I stare at her flushed face. She’s watching her hands working the ruddy length of my erection as if mesmerized by the sight. “You haven’t what? Wanked a man’s cock?”

  I can’t stop the deepening rumble of my voice at the thought of her with someone else. But that was the price of protecting her, sending her away—knowing I would not be her first. Knowing I would not be her only.

  And I survived these years by never imagining her with another man.

  “Touched anyone else,” she whispers. “Only you.”

  Only me. The knowledge burns through my brain like a lightning strike, the beast rising so hard, so fast, his triumphant roar filling my chest and my cock spasming in her grip. The orgasm blazes through me, my teeth gritted as every muscle in my body stiffens, her gasp of surprise joining the hot splash of cum against my rigid abdomen.

  “Oh,” Cora whispers, staring. “Oh my—”

  She breaks off with a strangled cry as I drop to my knees and shove her skirt high. My claws shred her panties, her luscious scent filling my nostrils. Maddened by lust for this cunt, this cunt that will only be mine, I take my first taste, spreading her labia with my thumbs and licking those glistening pink lips with a roughened tongue.

  Body going rigid, Cora makes a thick, guttural noise low in her throat as her sultry flavor explodes through my senses. Her fingers fist in my hair.

  Groaning as her delicious juices fill my mouth, I lick deeper, parting those sweet petals, seeking the source of her nectar, thrusting my stiffened tongue past her virgin entrance.

  Legs trembling, she whimpers softly, rocking her pussy against my mouth. “My clit. Oh god, my clit.”

  I would tease her longer. I would savor this first taste. But the beast is desperate for her release, to give her anything she needs, everything she asks for.

  Ravenously I latch onto her slick bud, sucking and licking, her wild moans of pleasure echoing in my ears. With one broad finger I tease at her entrance, until she cries out “Please!” and I breach that untouched channel, her inner muscles clutching tightly as I push deep.

  Raggedly moaning my name, she stiffens and rises onto her toes. I fo
llow her up, feasting upon her clit, gently fucking her virgin cunt with long, slow thrusts of my finger.

  She comes silently but her body is a riot of pleasure, her muscles shaking and her pussy convulsively grasping my finger, her clit throbbing against my tongue and her nectar flooding my mouth. Growling against her sweet flesh, I devour the juices from the well of her cunt before hungrily returning to her clit.

  And demanding more.

  Her breath shudders in sobbing gasps when she comes again. Her body sags back against the wall, and she weakly pushes at my head after I lap her up and return to her clit. “No more. I can’t.”

  I could, forever. But now there’s more that I want.

  Gripping her tight bottom, I rise to my feet and lift her against me. Automatically her long legs wrap around my waist, and I deliberately rub the seed from my stomach against the wet heat of her cunt, until our scents are melded into one.

  Marking her as mine. Marking me as hers.

  Twisting my fingers in her hair, I bring her passion-spent gaze to mine. “Marry me, Cora.”

  On a soft sigh, she wreathes her arms around my neck, burying her fingers in my hair—as if to make certain I can not look away. Her blue eyes slowly clear as she searches my face. “Do you mean, marry you and stay here forever in an empty house, with a husband who hides away all day?”

  Her words are like fangs tearing open my throat. “I do not hide. With these paintings, I can hold on to everything that has gone. I can keep alive everyone that has gone.”

  “And in the meantime, everything they left behind—and everything they built—falls to ruins, destroyed by your neglect.” She releases her grip on my hair and gently traces the line of my jaw. “Is this what you offer me, then? A husband who remains mired in the past instead of looking toward the future?”

  I have not much of a future to look toward. But perhaps it is not my future that matters. With a burning lump lodged in my throat, I ask, “So if this estate were as it was before, would you marry me then?”