Beast: A Hate Story, The Beginning

Funny thing is when terror takes hold, thoughts sometimes don’t come out the way they should. What you’re trying to say and what you actually say start to drown in the icy terror filling up your brain. Images and ideas flashed through me only to sink beneath the frigid water.

He picked up the pendant from my neck and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. “Pretty necklace.”

Hope flashed inside me.

Then it died forever when he ripped it from my neck and pushed up my yellow chiffon dress.

“You go where I tell you to go,” he growled into my ear. “Frankie.” My eyes widened at the way he’d snarled my name. For a brief instant I tried to make eye contact. There was something in the way he’d said my name, something that belied his intent and had me hoping if I could just make eye contact, I might just stop this madness. I heard in his voice—briefly, fleetingly—not anger at me but at himself, some kind of wretched hopelessness, and I wanted to latch onto that—then he spun me around and lifted up my brown hair, biting at my neck.

I screamed and that made him push me harder into the glass. I may have been crying, but I wasn’t sure—the terror had made me numb. My thoughts were nearly completely drowned.

Later the moment would play on a loop, over and over and over again, like a resurfaced bloated body. For now, though, it was buried beneath a ton of ice-cold fear.

“You are nothing,” he snarled, “except for what I give you.”

Tears obscured the glass. I was definitely crying, but the sound was muffled. I was going numb. I was numb to everything around me. I could feel his rough, callused hands on my inner thighs, feeling the private flesh.

I screamed out, though I knew no one heard me. I couldn’t focus on being strong. I couldn’t focus on anything. My worst nightmare was happening. That thing I’d watched on TV while thinking Oh, that won’t happen to me was happening. I always said I would fight back, would kick anyone’s ass who tried to hurt me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t fight back. I just lay slumped against the window as he undid his pants behind me.

When I realized my screams were doing nothing to dissuade him—if anything, they were pushing him harder—I froze. I resigned myself to my fate. I focused on the way my tears traveled down the glass and the way my heated, humid breath fogged the picture below. Then something terribly amazing happened.

He stopped, but he didn’t move away. There was a horrible stillness between us.

Afraid to move.

Afraid to breathe.

Afraid to blink.

I just felt him behind me, his chest rising and falling heavily, up and down against my back. I could see the throbbing vein on his forearm just next to my head as his hand splayed out on the window, a promise of what was to come.

“Go away,” I whispered. “Please.” My voice disappeared into the awful quiet engulfing us. I was so acutely aware of how terrified I was, how calm he was, and just had to listen to my heartbeat ratchet faster and faster in my ears. I thought it was going to burst from my chest.

Then his lips came to my neck, slow and so miserably gentle. He kissed me over the spot where he’d just savagely bitten me, licking the skin, sucking it. Before, I had thought I couldn’t stand it—the savagery, the quiet—but I’d had no idea how much worse it could get. I tried to fight the wash of feelings that came over me, the wave of heat that consumed me.

No was on the tip of my tongue, a whisper just ready to pass from my lips, when his grip on my hip tightened, his other hand weaving its way into my hair. He made a knot with the strands, pulling my head to the side so he could get a better angle on my neck. The No transformed into a sigh.

I was starting to like it.

I pushed myself back at him. I told myself it was to get him off and run away, but I knew I was just angling to get more of his lips on me. If I refused to say it

with words, then my body would for me. He continued to kiss the same spot, somehow driving me to madness with just one kiss on just one spot on my flesh. My lips parted, this time not in a scream, not in a sigh, but in a groan.

His hand moved from my hip to between my thighs, and my breath hiccupped. Somewhere in my mind I thought I should fight it or scream, but his lips intoxicated me. He still hadn’t moved his mouth from that one spot and it was the most wonderful frustration. Then he pressed his palm between my thighs against me and the fabric of my underwear was too much separation between us.

The heel of his palm moved in a strong, delirious rhythm. I pressed my face harder against the window until I felt pain, until I was sure the skin would be blanched, because something awful was happening. Moans were coming from my body without my warrant. My limbs were moving against him though I hadn’t given them permission to do so.

My body had become a traitor.

He made a low sound in his throat and spun me around just as he ripped the lace of my underwear—the only thing I’d still been wearing from home—and cool air licked my lips.

“No,” I repeated as tears streamed down my face but I reached for him. I was crying uncontrollably now as he thrust his tongue into my mouth. So many emotions were flying through me. He’d stopped palming me and was stroking me. God I’d never felt anything like it before. Ever. It was magnificent and awful and so, so mind-bending.

But I didn’t want my first time to be with him.

I wanted champagne and rose petals—or hell, I’d even take an awkward prom scenario—anything but this. Still, my fingers were curling into his hair. One arm was pulling him into me, nails scything into his neck. The other hand splayed behind my back, fingernails scratching at the surface of the window. It was like there were two Frankies—one yelling stop and one pulling him closer.

He entered me and it was rough and brutal and beautiful. I cried out, though it was possible I was already crying too hard. Exquisite and cruel, it was agony I never knew existed the way he twisted pleasure inside me. I wouldn’t wish it on the deepest of enemies. It was art the way he transformed my pain into lust.