Her Beast (Beauty and the Captor 1)

But then he turned and strode right out of the room, leaving me shackled to the post but unharmed. Why? And then his words hit me, “But don’t worry, you’ll have one soon enough,” he’d said. A new master? He was getting rid of me. He didn’t want me anymore—the result of my crazed rant?

I should be relieved, but I wasn’t. Relief was nowhere in the mix of emotions that coursed through me. Bitter anger over what he’d done. Betrayal over who he was. And heartbreaking sadness that he didn’t want me. He was done with me. He was going to hand me over to someone else, and in no time at all, he was going to forget about me.

His face, and all the sides of it—my childhood hero, my captor—would haunt me for the rest of my life while mine faded in his mind until I was nothing more than a fuzzy memory of the pathetic girl he’d humiliated and hurt…and discarded.

Why did that even matter to me? After all, I’d been through—after all he’d done to me—why was that what stayed at the forefront of my mind?

I hated him, even more than before when he hadn’t been the boy I’d looked up to and adored. Why wasn’t I glad that he no longer wanted me?

Because he was still Derek, damn it.

Whatever else he was, whatever he’d become, he was still the face of every fantasy I’d ever had. And he was still in there, somewhere, wasn’t he? There had been something so tender about him all the times he’d caressed my face and ran his fingers through my hair. So many times, I’d actually let myself think he cared about me, that there must have been something that made him this way and it was the only way he could experience affection. I’d wondered what it was that had happened to him, what horrors he’d been exposed to, or suffered himself, to need this.

And then an image of the boy he’d been flashed through my mind—the handsome kid who had no idea what went on in his house when everyone else had gone to bed. He was an ordinary—albeit kind— the kid who’d tolerated me following him around like a lost puppy. My father had come to get me one night, and I’d never seen him again, not in person anyway. I ran to him in my mind often in my solitary life with my father. I remembered thinking a multitude of times that I wanted to go back there, that I’d gladly endure the bad things his father did to me if it meant I could have Derek back too.

But he wasn’t that boy anymore. Something had done this to him, had turned him into the devil who needed to hurt and humiliate. As pathetic as it was, a fresh batch of tears welled up and I cried. Not for me—there would be time enough for that—but for him, for the boy, I’d loved in my little girl way, and whatever atrocities he’d suffered to turn him into something else.

He returned to the room faster than I’d thought he would. Too soon. I was still too caught up, still too confused about how I should be feeling. I couldn’t handle this now. Not yet—not that what I could or could not handle mattered.

He was dressed now, his hair nearly dry, but my mind called up an image of him from not long before, naked, his cock in my mouth, his face contorted with pleasure, so much that it almost looked like pain. I hated the thrill that shot through my body, and I hated, even more, the urge to be there now, on my knees, taking in as much of him as I could, feeling the tension mounting in his body and seeing it in the expression on his face.

What the hell was wrong with me? How could I even be thinking that never mind responding to it, feeling my body revving up in anticipation—I was just as sick as he was.

He walked toward me without a word and I watched him, trying to read his expression, to figure out what he was going to do next. But when he stood in front of me, I looked away, down at the floor. Because I couldn’t look any longer? Or because he’d told me that was what was expected of me? Was I actually trying to behave? Submit to him like a good, little slave? Why the hell was I doing that?

Because I didn’t want him to get rid of me—the answer came to me out of the blue, stealing my breath with the shock of it. Before I had time to contemplate this new and completely insane discovery though, he reached up and unshackled me.

I dropped to my knees, not really because I was supposed to, but because it was the only way I’d be allowed to put distance between us. And I needed distance, now more than ever.