He had still only been teasing, and not in the least put off her refusal. But her response wounded him.
Quickly, Frederick pulled the keys off of the far wall and unlatched her restraints, careful to support her as he set her free. She sank to the floor and pulled her knees to her chest.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You have a choice, Belle,” he said. “With me, with the Beast, you can choose. It may not feel like it, but I care for your happiness. I know the Beast does too.”
“How do you know what the Beast cares for?”
“He could’ve ravished you the moment he had you to himself. There was no need to give you a suite, or time to decide how you felt about things, or any of that. You are his prisoner, Belle. You belong to him until he sets you free. Don’t you see that?”
“Oh yes, I see that quite clearly.”
“And yet, you still remain a virgin.”
A look of understanding crossed her face. “I suppose. But he will take me eventually.”
Frederick smiled at her and sat down on the cold stone floor beside her. “And when he does, it will be wonderful. You’ll want it as badly as you wanted me to touch you just now.”
“When I’m with you,” she said, “that doesn’t seem possible. But when…when I’m alone with the Beast, something comes over me. A strange desire, mixed right in with my fear. Is that odd?”
“Not very, no.”
“Why don’t you escape, Frederick?”
He laughed. “And miss out on getting to know the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen? No thank you.” He stretched his legs out in front of him and wrapped an arm around her slender shoulders. “I’ll stay right here, if it’s all right with you.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Yes. It’s all right with me.”
***
Dawn broke, and with it, Belle discovered she had been broken too. Not broken in a bad way, really. Just…bent. She’d been emotionally bent, her will twisted until she no longer knew what she wanted, what Frederick wanted of her, or what the Beast wanted from her.
What did she want?
(I want to see my Papa)
But that thought, so ever-present and insistent before, seemed submerged now just below the surface.
More pressing issues were at hand. A new world of possibilities had been opened for her, and she wanted to explore them more fully before she went back home. Life with Papa was simple bliss, the warmth of hearth and home, but life in the castle with an intimidating and magnetic Beast and magical fairies and a prince who may or may not be a figment of her imagination…well, it was all a bit too intriguing to give up so quickly.
Especially since she’d come to the castle with no concept of her own womanhood, her own natural ability for pleasure. She had so much to learn, and the Beast had her as his captive student to teach—by any means necessary—exactly what she was capable of.
Today, instead of dreading her training under the Beast’s stern hand, she was almost excited.
Have I gone mad? Delusions, hallucinations?
Perhaps she was locked up with the lunatics herself, humping the walls and moaning for relief whenever an attendant walked by. Perhaps she hadn’t spent the night chained to a dungeon wall, but in a straightjacket. That would almost make more sense than her new, strange reality.
Frederick was nowhere to be found. At some point he’d chained her back to the wall, although the other possibility—that he’d never been there at all, and she’d merely dreamt the entire experience—was also a distinct possibility.
How could she make informed decisions when she had no concept of what was even real anymore?
“Beast,” she whispered to the empty dungeon.
His heavy paws sounded on the long stairway. There was no way he could have heard her speak, she’d barely breathed the word aloud at all. And yet, he arrived before her as if summoned.
“Good morning, Belle,” the Beast said. He nodded his head toward her shackles, and they released.
“Thank you, Sir,” she said.
“Come to me.”
Fear thrummed through her body, but she fought past it and stepped forward to him. What would he do to her?
But the Beast tenderly took her small wrists in his large hands, rubbing away the soreness, and inspecting her skin closely. He turned her around, running his hands along her back and down to her buttocks and thighs. His very touch ignited that same fiery passion she couldn’t deny, even though it conflicted so completely with her fear of him.
“Just as I promised, Beauty,” he said. “You are unmarked from my lash.”
“You are a man of your word, Sir,” she whispered.
“A man,” he murmured, almost under his breath.