A Deal to Be Done Read online

  His face was always lost to her, and the particularities of his build. Only his hands she knew, broad and pale, and stained with ink.

  She dreamed herself caught between the two men, caught and held between their warmth and their power, as they took their pleasure from her and delivered her pleasure in turn, while the roses dropped their pinkness all around, petals upon her skin, tangled in her hair.

  One landed on her lips, the barest of touches as the barest of kisses.

  And Nicolette woke in the grey light of early morn with the heat of that kiss still upon her lips. The dream stayed with her on her wakening, such was the power in it.

  She forgot not a single moment. It lived in the core of her, like an ember flaming in the ashes. And all that Nicolette wished was to make that ember flame into fire, wished to make it burn high and hot.

  So, with the dawn, to the rose garden she went. She called forth the castle’s careful, clever hands and bade them to undress her from her nightclothes. She lay atop the grass, still kissed with a morning’s dew, and she touched herself, one finger teasing at the bud of all her hot sensation, thrilling as she made her quim wet and hot and ready for what she knew in her very marrow was shortly to be.

  On a gasping breath, she brought herself to a gentle, lovely release.

  And when she opened her eyes, so awash with pleasure and contentment, it was no surprise that it was to the Beast’s regard. He watched from the gateway, one hip canted there, strong arms folded across the breadth of his chest.

  Nicolette reached her own arms above her head, a luxuriant stretch, the grass a gentle, dewy brush against her skin. “I should like to wear a green gown, Beast,” she told him.

  “And yet,” the Beast said, on the ticking of his brow, “you wear no gown.”

  “And yet,” Nicolette said, arching a brow in turn, “you take my meaning and twist it for your own amusement. It is your very favourite game, I think.”

  A huff of a laugh. “If you were to know me better, lass, you would find that I am awfully fond of games.”

  “Then perhaps we should play a game, for I think I should like to know you better, Beast.” She touched her tongue to her lip then, quite deliberately, and equally deliberately, Nicolette spread her legs.

  She knew the Beast could see her wetness, wondered, fleetingly, on the flaring of his nostrils, if he could smell it too.

  She thought that he might, but still he did not move. Still, he only watched.

  Nicolette bit down on a barely contained whine of frustration — that he was not atop her, or within her, and despite the clarity of her dreams, had never yet been.

  That was intolerable. Unbearable. She could bear it no longer.

  And it was then that she realised: she need not bear it. The Beast would not take her. Not unless she asked him to.

  All she need do was ask.

  So, “Tumble me, Beast,” she commanded him. “For my pleasure.” Then, as an echo of his own words. “And for my hot pleasure alone.”

  A smile was her answer. And though still sly it was warm.

  The Beast came to her, and to his knees he went.

  A flash of disappointment flared deep in her breast, that she would not see him bare again. For though Nicolette had known many a man, she had not known many of them bare.

  They liked to rut with her in secret and in shame, ready to flee should the cost of but a coin prove their undoing, no time for the sweet press of warm skin, for the sharing of breath.

  No, she had not known many of her men bare, and she had known none like the Beast. How she should have liked to know him better. Barer.

  But the Beast soon put a stop to the grey wash of her thoughts. He shouldered his way between her thighs, spread them wide with those same broad shoulders, and put his mouth to her.

  Nicolette gasped — the sound of it, the feel of it.

  Of all the men she had known, none had ever done this to her, done this for her. None had ever thought to give her pleasure in such a way. And such a pleasure it was, for the sensation overwhelmed everything. To feel the Beast’s hot touch so close to where no touch, akin, had ever been so close. To feel the flat of his tongue upon her, the warm, sure press of it through her folds, then within her, then atop her, against her bud.

  So startled and overcome was she that her release shook through her in nary a heartbeat, shook her thighs and her stomach, overpowering, uncontrollable tremors. The Beast held her steady as she quivered through the waning of her high pleasure. Suckled little hot bruises to the soft skin of her inner thighs as she shivered, her nerves still not quite her own.

  But as she came back to herself, one fading tremor of light after the other, the Beast propped himself up on his elbows and smiled at her, sharp, his chin wet with her pleasure.

  He reached out to settle a hand over her then, over her soft mound and her golden curls, reached to brush his thumb against her bud, to squeeze at her softness as though taking the ripeness of a sun-warm peach. “So pretty,” he said, “and so plump.”

  Nicolette sighed a little at the gentleness of his touch. It felt strange to her. Men were not gentle things. She, as it went, was no gentle thing. And yet that delicate touch, even as it set her nerves ablaze, made her feel delicate. And wanted. And treasured.

  “Please,” she said, hating how raw her voice sounded but speaking her words all the same. “Please, Beast. I wish to feel your skin upon mine. I want to know your warmth.”

  The Beast said nothing. But upwards, back to his knees he went. He pulled his soft tunic over his head, setting his long, dark hair to riot, then stood. The sheer height of him unfolding was a pleasure itself to behold, and behold it Nicolette did, letting her fingers drift downwards, trailing across the curve of her breasts, the softness of her stomach.

  She watched as the Beast toed off his boots, watched the flex of his corded forearms, his muscled chest, his taut, defined stomach, as he unlaced himself and stepped clear of the soft riding leathers he wore. Stood before her bare, his prick hot and hard and all for her.

  And Nicolette touched herself then, upon the thrill of his wonderful, tempting unveiling.

  “Enjoying yourself, lass?” the Beast asked, his lips shaping an amused smirk.

  “Perhaps,” Nicolette said. She lifted her hand from her quim, held it out to the Beast, spread her legs anew so that he might see how very much she enjoyed herself. “But still — I think I could enjoy myself all the more.”

  The Beast smiled, though it was still more smirk than not, and let her draw him down. He spread himself over her, his warmth and his presence all encompassing, the press of his skin and muscle maddening, his face so close to hers that they shared but one breath.

  “Are you ready for me, lass?” he whispered.

  “More than ready, Beast.” For she was, and the sudden, silken smoothness of their joining made that plain.

  The Beast took her slowly at first, at the soft edge of too gently, but soon — deliciously soon — he took also the truth of her words, for she, in turn, felt all his power begin to swell, around and within, and felt all that power come to bear on her.

  Nicolette gathered her breasts in hand, feeling their lush plumpness, feeling their weight and their heavy heft as they moved in time with the rhythm of the Beast’s hips, the relentless thrust of his glorious prick within her.

  “Oh, you feel so well,” she told him, her voice a thready, whispered thing. “You take me so well.”

  “And you are pleasure herself, lass,” the Beast said, his dark eyes tinged warm and golden as he regarded her, fond.

  Fondness overtook Nicolette too. She reached up so that she might cup his cheeks, might feel the prickle of his dark stubble under her palms, so that she might draw his face even closer to hers. “Please…” she whispered, though she knew not what she asked.

  But the Beast knew, for he leant down to kiss her. Their lips met, that first touch like fire across her pleasured nerves, then their tongues touched, and he took her
mouth, took her long and well just as he took her long and well with his big prick.

  But Nicolette — she wanted more.

  Oh, how she wanted. She thought she might well burst with want.

  She dug her heels into the Beast’s back and, moaning sharp and sudden, urged him be quicker, harder. He obliged her readily, moving within her then like the beast he so truly was, his power barely contained. She felt magic flicker across her skin, felt it tweak at her tight nipples, felt it shiver a trail down between her breasts, dipping into her navel, then further down, and down until—

  Nicolette gasped against the Beast’s mouth as his clever magic played upon her bud, spinning her to the most dizzying height of pleasure. She came undone a thousand times: a night sky of stars behind her closed lids, caught in the sweet smell of the roses, and in the rich scent of the grass crushed beneath them with the vigour of their tumbling.

  But even that — even that sweet release — was not enough.

  “More, Beast,” she moaned. “More. I want more.”

  “So greedy,” the Beast said, but he did not sound censorious. Only indulgent.

  And so it was that he did indulge her. With a strong arm under her back, he lifted her, rolled them both and set them both to rights, so that her weight was fully atop him, straddling his hips. With a pleasured hiss, Nicolette sank down on his mighty girth again and rode him as she had wished to, unleashed and unbidden.

  When the Beast saw how she meant to have her pleasure from him, with no quarter given, with no sweet gentleness required, a bestial, guttural growl broke from him. He took hold of her bottom, squeezing the plumpness there with the firmest of grips, taking her weight and lifting his hips to meet hers. Their bodies came together, again and again, a hard and heavy slap of slick, pleasured skin. The sound of it made Nicolette wild with want, drove her wilder in her riding, tumbling the Beast as she wished to be tumbled.

  Her next release took her just as wildly, shuddering and shivering and long. She fluttered hard around the Beast, so wonderfully full. And that rippling release harkened the Beast too. With another gravelled growl, he pulled himself from her, a shiver of wonderful, grasping sensation. But he did not pull away; instead, he urged her down to lie atop him, a press of sweat-slick skin, and he held her close as he reached his completion, striping long across her stomach and between her breasts.

  Nicolette lay with him as they both found their breath again upon breathless laughs, her face tucked into the crook of his neck, her lips to his skin. But when her treacherous heart drummed a steady beat once more, she sat up, tossing back her hair as she straddled the Beast’s hips anew.

  She smiled down at him, some play at coy, and reached out to squeeze the hard, full muscles of his chest, each a glorious handful. “You took me well, Beast,” she told him, “but I dare say I took you better.”

  No rebuke for her lack of womanly manners. Only another laugh, warm and amused, and a laugh that seemed to light Nicolette from within, the ember at her core firing high and hot.

  “You took me well, indeed,” the Beast agreed. He swept a broad hand up the length of her back, across the span of her sides, to brush grass from her skin where it clung to her, a vibrant lacework of green. “And you took the garden just as well, it seems.”

  Nicolette smiled down at him, as sharp a smile as his own. “But you must see, Beast,” she said, “now I wear a gown of green.”

  “A gown of green indeed.” The Beast plucked a rose in fullest bloom from the nearest briar, tucked it behind her ear, tangled in the wild tumble of her hair. “A gown of green,” he said, “and a crown of pink.”

  The Library

  Nicolette had stoked the ember of her fire, and that fire would not quench.

  She tumbled often with the Beast, and such pleasures he gave her. She tumbled with the castle’s clever hands, and such pleasures they gave her. She tumbled herself, when occasion called, and was always sure of her own pleasure.

  Until, that is, the morn she awoke from another of her wondrous dreams — a dream where the Beast and Nicolette’s smoke-shadow lover had tumbled her together anew, as one, a torment of pleasure. And on that morn, Nicolette found that, despite her attempts, her own hands could give her no satisfaction, and she found that the castle seemed suddenly deaf to her calls — or perhaps it had simply, finally, taken pity on her.

  So to the Beast she went. She searched him out with the thought that she would pester him into ruddling with her, as she often did. It was one of her most favourite things, to annoy him until his attention caught on her, and held, fast and hot and long.

  And so it was that she found the Beast in the castle’s forbidding library, and found him intent on the letters he was writing — with his left hand, of course, like the demon he was — and with no thought to stop until his work was done, no matter how prettily she tormented him, no matter how coy her practiced pestering.

  With a sigh, Nicolette sat back in her chair, let her stockinged foot drop from his lap, and thought it was a good thing that the library seemed less awful a place when the Beast was in it.

  She watched him a while at his work, idly turning the gold band upon her wedding finger. But her eyes lost their focus soon enough as her gaze shifted to the shadows and her mind wandered. And for how long it wandered so she did not know, but when she came back to herself, she found that the Beast had set down his quill and was watching her instead.

  “Are you finished with your letters?” she asked.

  He cocked his head, in that way of his, like some overgrown pup. And he did not answer her question. Instead, “I have never been given a widow before.”

  “I am hardly a widow,” Nicolette said. “I was married but half a day when my husband keeled over dead.”

  “And yet, you wear his ring still.” The Beast’s words were tinged with his usual slyness. “You must have loved your husband very much.”

  “There is no sentiment to it,” Nicolette told him sharply, even though she knew he spoke in jest. She held up her hand so that the thin band glinted more clearly in the sharp light, no warmth to it. “I had thought I might sell it. Get some coin for the gold.”

  The Beast huffed a laugh. “You would get but half a coin, lass, if even that. Not all that glitters is gold.”

  “Truly?” Nicolette said. On her finger, she held more gold than she had ever known, ever owned — or so she had thought.

  “Truly,” the Beast said. “It is a nothing of a thing. A pretty bauble.”

  And now Nicolette felt nothing but a fool. “Oh, I see…”

  For she knew why she had been forsaken, given to the Dark Forest as tithe, sacrificed to the Beast: her awful husband and his awful sons, who thought she would steal their father’s coin, to live as a rich widow.

  But the ring…

  Even as they tied her to the stake, they had not noticed her band of gold, and even amidst the torrent of her fear, some small, vindictive part of her had thrilled that she had stolen their ring from them as they had stolen everything from her.

  But now, it seemed, she had stolen nothing.

  The Beast interrupted her sour thoughts. “May I?” he asked, holding out his hand, and Nicolette took his meaning. She slid the ring from her finger and placed it upon his open palm.

  The Beast considered the ring for but a moment, then the air shimmered with a golden haze, and where once sat her little wedding band, now lay a beautiful posy ring, one cast of rich, old gold, formed from a chain of tangling roses, each bloom a diamond of palest pink.

  “Much more befitting of a beauty such as yours,” the Beast said with his sleek, sly smile.

  “And worth far more coin,” Nicolette said. She heard her own sudden breathlessness as she plucked the ring from the Beast’s hand. “Enough to buy a castle?” she asked.

  “Not this castle,” the Beast said, amusement in his voice. “But you might try your luck with another.” He took the ring from her again and slid it onto her finger, where it made a perfect
fit. “It looks well on you,” he said.

  “It does.” Nicolette held her hand up to the light again, watched the diamonds glitter and the gold gleam. “Expensive things all look well on me, I have found, Beast.”

  “Have you now?” The Beast cast a lingering gaze across her skin. “And that is true enough, lass. But perhaps…”

  Nicolette breathed deep against the sudden rushing of her heart, excitement and anticipation as one. “Perhaps?”

  Another smile. “Close your eyes.”

  She did as she was bid: the Beast’s warm hand wrapped a gentle grip around the stem of her throat.

  Nicolette gasped, low, upon the thrill that possessive touch sent through her, then gasped anew at the sudden shiver of magic upon her skin, the heated, heating shimmering of it.

  “What—” she began, but the Beast bid her to silence.

  From her neck his hand slipped, and wrapped instead around her wrists, where magic flickered and thrilled once more, but almost as soon as it had begun, it stopped.

  “Look,” the Beast said.

  Nicolette did look, and what wonders she saw — diamonds sparkled at her wrists, and from her neck they fell like a waterfall, a sparkling glimmer of pink, fractured light. The jewels lay heavy against her skin, cool but warming already to her touch, no warmer than the Beast’s gaze, regarding her from where he sat, his chin upon his upturned hand. “Tell me, lass — how did your husband die?”

  Nicolette turned herself towards him more fully, leaned towards him but a touch to display her new diamonds and her full, glorious décolletage. “The memory escapes me, Beast,” she said, a lie. For she felt unsettled in those memories, and unsettled in another manner altogether, from the power of the Beast’s attentions. “But…but perhaps,” she said, an attempt at slyly coy, an attempt at something approaching her normality. “Perhaps he drank something he should not have drank. Or perhaps he fell and hit his head. Perhaps a kitchen knife found its way through his scrawny ribs. Who is to know?”