Her Beast: A Dark Romance (Beauty and the Captor Book 1) Read online

  “Wake up,” I said, none too gently. I wasn’t there to hold her hand.

  She startled awake, but she remained where she was, huddled in the corner.

  “You’ve been a fool and you’re suffering unnecessarily. I’m done tolerating it. Kneel. Now.”

  She acquiesced more readily than I’d expected, though fatigue and hunger could do a lot to one’s resolve—I would know.

  Her shoulders were slumped and her arms hung limply over her body in a half-hearted attempt to cover herself.

  Her fatigue was too pronounced. Something wasn’t right.

  “When was the last time you ate?” I asked, beginning to suspect the cause.

  She stared blankly at the floor.

  “When?” I demanded.

  “Last…last night. At dinner. At home,” she replied quietly.

  But that wasn’t right—her sense of time would have been distorted, so I had to extrapolate what that really meant. Dinner—at home. The last time she’d been home was the morning before her shift on the day she’d been taken. And dinner at home meant the night before that. And that meant when she’d stubbornly refused to submit when I’d come with food yesterday evening, she’d already gone forty-eight hours without food. And now, twelve hours later, the fool had gone somewhere around sixty hours without food.

  I was very particular in the taking of any new girl. She was to be surveilled, and every aspect of the day leading up to the event recorded for me. Vito had reported that she’d eaten at the store where she worked just prior to her leaving work. If the girl was telling the truth though—which by her physical state, it suggested she was—it meant Vito had lied to me. No doubt, he’d lied to punish the girl for biting him. But I didn’t give a fuck what his god damned reason was. The son of a bitch had lied. To me. And I’d make sure he didn’t make that mistake twice.

  For now, though, I had the problem in front of me to rectify. I turned off the shower and retrieved the cart from the other room, actually wheeling it right into the bathroom. The girl needed food, and I wasn’t going to risk her defying me further and having to withhold it.

  With an air of nonchalance, I removed the lid from the tray and proceeded to cut up the food. I shoved a forkful in front of her lips, half-expecting to have to force it into her mouth. But her lips parted and she snatched the food off, chewing greedily. And too fast.

  “Slowly,” I cautioned, and filled the fork again, though with half as much food this time.

  She devoured the entire plate, though it took quite a bit of time since I started to insist she wait in between bits, in part to make her wait, and partly because a stomach that empty could turn quickly—another fact I knew all too well.

  I left when she was done, fully expecting her next feeding to go smoothly after getting past this first battle.

  But I’d expected too much. With her body no longer weak from starvation, the fire in her reignited. She was in her corner in the bathroom with the shower running again when I returned, but the moment I walked in, the stubborn light shined bright in her eyes.

  I didn’t relish the idea of leaving her with no food—she really did need it after so much time without. But when she glared back at me when I told her to kneel, she left me with no choice. So, I held off on dinner as long as I could and wheeled the cart right into the bathroom—where I knew she would be.

  “Kneel,” I said, letting my fingers hover over the belt around my waist.

  She glared at me, but she also did what she was told—a fucking miracle, given the same stubborn light had flashed in her eyes. It seemed then, with the way she’d moved quickly after the threat of the belt, that she feared physical discipline more than starvation. And that meant a firm hand would be what this one needed.

  And I was more than happy to accommodate that need.

  4

  Scarlett

  I had no idea how many days passed. There was no way for me to keep track—no clock, no window to see outside. Nothing. But what I did know with increasing certainty was I had winded up straight in hell. The man who kept bringing me food, making me kneel like an animal at his feet and spanking my backside with a hard slap whenever I hesitated—he was the devil himself. He was cruel, and worst of all, the thing I hated most was that he left me alone in my prison with nothing but the god damned silence.

  I couldn’t stand it. No sounds of cars in the distance or birds chirping outside. Not even footsteps or the low murmur of voices to suggest I was anything other than completely alone.

  I’d debated provoking him over and over again, just to give him a reason to stay, a reason to talk. Hell, the sound of his breathing was better than the utter nothingness that surrounded me when he left.

  During some meals, he would ask me things, questions like my favorite book and my favorite movie, and so long as I handed over whatever he wanted to know, he kept asking questions, staving off the silence I knew was coming. But the moment he ventured into personal territory and I refused to answer, he left. And the world was silent again.

  The shower helped a little. At least, it did at first. But an hour or two of the monotonous sound of running water and it seemed to blur right into the nothingness. I couldn’t keep going like this. It was going to drive me mad.

  Maybe that’s what he was trying to do. At first, when those men had stripped me and the devil had spanked me with his belt, I’d assumed what he wanted was sexual in nature. But now, even though I was forced to remain naked all the time, I wasn’t so sure. In the times he was here, feeding me like a dog and making my blood boil with anger and humiliation, I thought maybe what he wanted was a pet. But then he’d leave and wouldn’t return until it was time to feed me again. Who the hell only wanted a pet to feed it?

  So, all I could conclude was that he was merely feeding me to keep me alive so he could watch me slowly go insane.

  It was almost time for another feeding. I could tell by the way my stomach had begun to rumble. He must come at regular intervals to have my stomach so well-trained. It irritated me that any part of me had come to submit to him, but my stomach had willingly gotten on board that train.

  No other part of me had though. It was still a humiliating struggle every time to go down on my knees, to open my mouth and let him feed me like an infant. The worst was when he did touch me, not sexually—aside from swatting my backside, he never did that—but intimately.

  He would stroke my hair or caress my cheek. And what made it so horrible was that not once had I ever pulled away. His touch felt…good and I hated that. But after so much time with no sound, no new sights, no anything, my body seemed desperate for sensation. And the touch of my captor’s hand against my face was better than the nothingness. I was ashamed to admit it, but there were times when I’d secretly wished he’d touch me more, in new places. A hand on my arm, or his fingers on the back of my neck—new sensations to hold me over during the times when there was none.

  Still, I wanted to scream at him—for humiliating me, for touching me, for not touching me, for asking me things and never sharing any answers of his own—and I nearly had so many times, but I held myself in check, knowing at any time he could stop coming back. The food would be gone and I’d starve to death. Much longer here though, and that might not be such a terrible thing.

  I heard the slide of the lock and the door opened. It was him. Of course, it was him. Nobody else in the world existed anymore, not in my prison. I was irritated—more than usual—probably due to the compounding effect of so much time here.

  He wheeled in the cart and closed the door behind him, and I watched him from the corner of the room. I’d long since abandoned the bathroom. The shower did little to curb the silence anymore. And at least the other room’s carpet wasn’t as hard against my backside as the cool, tiled floor in the bathroom.

  I’d thought for a while I could gauge the approximate time of day by the type of food he would bring, but then he’d brought breakfast two times in a row, and two dinner-like meals after th
at, blowing that theory out of the water. It was the same foods though—three different meals rotated in some random order.

  Crepes again, I could tell, when he’d lifted the lid. Maybe it was all he could cook, but I’d gladly take a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for a break from what had once seemed like sinfully delicious food.

  He left the tray against the wall near the door and retrieved the chair from where he’d left it the day before. This was new.

  He sat down against the wall and eyed me expectantly. I pushed away from my corner slowly and rose up onto my knees.

  He nodded, but I was confused. If he planned to start throwing food at me and having me catch it in my mouth, he could kiss that idea goodbye. It was bad enough I had to kneel. I wasn’t going to do tricks, too. And as much as I hated to admit it, if he was going to stay over there, if he was going to stop touching me, I’d rather him just stop bringing me food, too.

  I’d never imagined how dependent on sensation I was, especially when the only consistent in my life—my father—never touched me. He didn’t hug me, or pat me on the back. He never kissed me good night. But there were always at least other sensations—the sound of his TV murmuring the news or some cheesy sitcom; the smell of the alcohol he drank or the pungent aroma of his cigarettes.

  And then at work, there were other sensations—people talking, the photo machine whirring, the scent of perfumes, colognes, and food from the restaurant down the street. There were children to watch playing along the sidewalk and the brush of the breeze against my skin when I walked home.

  Here, there was nothing. If there had ever been a scent in the room, I’d long-since acclimated to it. And there was nothing else. No people, no sounds, no scents. There wasn’t even a single book to read.

  My books—I missed my books. I had hundreds of them, most of them passed on to me from customers in the store, like Mrs. Jenkins, who forever saw me with my nose in a book. Mysteries, romances, crime thrillers, biographies, even an old nursing textbook from Mrs. Jenkin’s college years. What I wouldn’t give for any one of them now.

  But the only sensation I was allowed was my captor’s brief touch. I hated him; I hated him even more for making me crave something I despised, but I did crave it. If it was gone now, if he wasn’t even going to touch me during the brief time he was here, then it was only fair he put me out of my misery—not that I expected him to be fair.

  “Come here,” he called, startling me out of my dark thoughts. I hesitated for a moment, but if it meant we could circumvent the whole trick-performing plan and he wasn’t intending to deprive me of the sensation I desperately needed, then it probably wasn’t so bad.

  I moved to stand, but he shook his head and I stopped. What did he want then? It didn’t take me long to figure it out. Kneeling was no longer enough. He wanted me to crawl.

  No. I wasn’t that hungry, and it really was ridiculous to be so dependent on his touch. And if he retaliated by making me skip a few meals, I’d get over it. And I’d find some way to deal with it when he took away his touch, too.

  So, I lifted my chin higher and shook my head.

  He sighed and stood up. I thought he was going to bring over the tray of food or else leave, but he approached without it.

  “I have been more than patient,” he said when he stood in front of me. “I’ve been lenient, giving you the opportunity to make the necessary changes to your character on your own. But you’re not going to do that, are you, Pet?”

  Necessary changes? Of course, I wasn’t going to change for him. Had he really thought I would? I shook my head, apparently not quite brave enough to spit out the words.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said with a sigh. It sounded like a sigh of relief though, not resignation, and that confused me.

  Before I could respond, he yanked me up off the floor and flung me over his shoulder. As he started toward the bed, I realized I’d been foolish to let myself forget about that first day with him, when he’d pulled off his belt and spanked me with it, shackled to the bed. Is that what he had planned to do now?

  But when he reached the bed, he didn’t put me on the floor like I’d expected. Instead, he sat down and pulled me into his lap. I struggled weakly to escape, but I was so confused I didn’t really know what to do. He held me tight with one arm while the other stroked my cheek, and I sighed inside. A change from the nothingness. I welcomed it, though I was careful to keep my expression from showing it.

  After a moment though, I couldn’t help but lean into it, absorbing the sensation after too much time without. But this new position made me painfully aware of my state of undress, somehow more potent now on his lap than it had been on the floor.

  “I knew it wouldn’t be enough, Pet, but I had to give you this time to realize you’re never going to become what you need to be without my help.”

  What I needed to be? What was he talking about? Somehow I doubted anything he could do could be constituted as help.

  “You have to let go of this stubbornness and pride,” he said as he continued to stroke my cheek, and then moving lower, across my jaw, down to my neck.

  My body hummed in response to the new sensation. He hadn’t touched me there before, and it seemed to awaken a plethora of nerve endings. Through my haze of sensation bliss—as wrong as it might be—I was vaguely aware of his words. The tone of his voice was soothing, particularly heaped upon the touch of his fingers, but there was an undercurrent running through him that was slowly breaking through the haze. I knew somehow that it should be setting me more on edge than usual.

  And then there was an expectant silence as if he was waiting for me to say something. Was I supposed to apologize? Agree with him? Did he really think I was going to do either? I sat there stiffly, trying to ignore the sensations that came from where he was touching me.

  “All right, let’s get started, shall we?” he said, leaving me just as confused as I’d been since the moment he’d come in and sat down across the room.

  All of a sudden though, he flipped me over, laying me out on his lap. I flailed, trying to scramble down onto the floor, but he held me tight against him, pressing the small of my back down firmly, which pressed my most private place hard against his thigh. A sizzle of a different kind of sensation spread out from there, and I flailed harder, twice as panicked, and infinitely more disturbed than I’d been when my body had responded to his touch on my face or even my neck.

  But he just pressed down harder, almost as if he was deliberately trying to grind my clit against his thigh. And whether it was intentional or not, that was precisely what he was doing, and I needed him to stop. It was wrong. Disgusting. How could my body be responding like this to anything he did?

  I felt his other hand against my backside, grazing over my skin. It amplified the sensations between my thighs and made me want to press firmly against his hand. I sobbed at my own depravity. What the hell was wrong with me? What had I become in my desperate need for sensation?

  His hand disappeared and I let out a small sigh of relief. But before the breath had escaped my lungs, his hand came back down with a stinging slap.

  I cried out in response to the pain, and to something else. It was sick, and it made me question if I’d already taken a leap into insanity. There was no other explanation for it. How else could it be possible that his cruel slap could send a jolt of arousal through me?

  He spanked me again, this one harder than the last, but the response was the same.

  Again, and tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I clenched my thighs tight, fighting against the ridiculous sensations that had begun to set my sex on fire. “Stop. Please, stop,” I cried, but he ignored me, spanking me several more times in quick succession.

  I struggled to get away, but it only rubbed my clit against his thigh, making it worse. So, I fought to remain perfectly still as he rained down another onslaught of stinging slaps.

  It didn’t help. The fire had already been set. Nothing would put it out, and every s
lap and every rub only made it burn brighter. What the hell was wrong with me?

  Eventually, he was done—twenty-five slaps? Thirty? Every one of them had added fuel to the fire, and now I was throbbing, desperate for anything that would quench the fire.

  Instead of pushing me off, he held me there and rubbed my stinging flesh. The need to press myself harder against him was nearly overwhelming. I took slow, deep breaths, but somehow the oxygen in my lungs wound its way through my body to between my thighs and fanned the flames brighter.

  His fingers skimmed down the backs of my thighs—a new sensation that shot directly to my throbbing clit. But on his way back up, he brushed over my exposed sex and his fingers stopped moving.

  I redoubled the effort to get free, but his hand on my back held me there.

  One finger stroked me, and I sobbed hysterically. His finger had glided far too easily, and that meant there was no denying what his spanking had done to me.

  “You are very unique, aren’t you, Pet,” he said as he glided back and forth across my lips.

  “Let me go. Please, just let me go,” I cried over and over again, but of course, he ignored me. His torment wouldn’t be complete until he’d turned my whole body against me.

  He slid a finger to my clit and my body jerked against him. No matter how much I flailed, or how much I didn’t want my body to respond, I was helpless to stop it as he started to rub the sensitive bundle of nerves. He moved slowly at first as if he were testing my body’s response.

  I kicked and tried to reach back to swipe at him, but all I met with was air. He knew exactly what he was doing because he had me pinned perfectly. His finger increased its pace on my clit and I couldn’t stifle the moan that traitorously escaped from my lips.

  He chuckled, and I couldn’t possibly have been more mortified. He found it amusing, the way my body had betrayed me.

  “Stop resisting, Pet. It will be over quicker if you don’t fight it.”