Laurent and the Beast (Kings of Hell MC 1)

Tears filled Laurent’s eyes, and he wasn’t even ashamed of them. Who wouldn’t fear those jaws so close to their face? He would die eaten by a dog after escaping a long and painful death at the hands of William Fane. How pathetic was that?

He whimpered, stiff as a piece of wood and curling his hands into fists.

Hound leaned in, causing Laurent to close his eyes as the huge teeth came closer, and the animal’s putrid breath teased his nose. The dog sniffed him, rubbing its hairy muzzle against Laurent’s cheek, as if probing which piece of flesh it wanted to bite off first.

But then it laid its full body weight on top of Laurent and placed its head on his chest, watching him with large brown eyes.

Laurent didn’t dare look back, but he exhaled deeply. At least his throat was still intact. But then minutes passed, and nothing changed. The moment he tried to move even an inch, the heavy lump of dog let out a growl of warning, which was convincing enough to make Laurent lie still.

All that was left for him was to try and bear the weight and watch the sun come up outside the window with steel bars in it. By the time he heard steps and voices behind the door leading out of the apartment, he was dying to get out from under the dog that would have surely suffocated him at some point with its weight alone.

The footsteps ceased somewhere by the door, and Laurent’s heart fluttered with gratefulness when he heard the lock budge. He glanced to the door in time to see Beast enter in the company of a slightly shorter man with handsome features and wavy black hair.

The newcomer’s eyes glinted, and he laughed out loud. “Oh, no. Did you leave him like this?”

Beast’s lips thinned as he walked farther into the room, letting through a young woman with distinctly foreign features and full cheeks. She reminded Laurent of the Chinese he’d seen sometimes in the harbor, only unlike theirs—her hair was pale as beach sand. She wore a blue garment so tight and short her body looked like wrapped with bandages, and her entire legs were on show, so perhaps she was a woman of ill repute. That was the only explanation for wearing undergarments when men were present.

“This was an accident, and won’t happen again. I’m sorry. Please, he’s so heavy.”

“Oh, wow! Is he French?” The woman said in the same accent that Beast and the other man had. She did not sound Chinese at all. It was all becoming too confusing, and he was out of breath because of the dog.

The handsome man grinned widely and scooted by Laurent. “Are you actually from France? What’s your lineage?”

“Knight, you’re scaring him,” the woman said, putting a stack of cloth on one of the chairs. When she bent over to do so, the bandage-like garment trailed up her thigh, revealing the bottom part of her buttocks along with—Laurent looked away, flushing furiously—a piece of pink cloth between her legs.

“I’m pretty sure he’s scared of the big bad dog,” the handsome man, Knight, said. Had people in the future adopted common words as names? Laurent would assume nothing and follow the lead of his hosts.

Beast loomed over Laurent, glaring at him with his pale eyes, yet not asking Hound to set Laurent free. “Good. Maybe he’s ready to talk now.”

Now that Beast was here, Laurent was more confident about actually trying to push at the dog’s paw, but he quickly abandoned that idea when Hound frowned at him and made an unpleasant grunt. “Please, Mr. Beast, I’ve done nothing wrong. This is a misunderstanding.”

The woman laughed out loud and looked at Beast. “Mr. Beast! Oh, my God! Did you make him call you that?”

Beast put his thick arms across his chest and leaned down his head, making some of the dark blond hair that grew only on top of his skull slide over his forehead. He combed it back with an annoyed sigh. “Don’t be silly, Nao. I just want to know where he’s come from. It’s not my fault he refuses to answer.”

Knight pushed at Hounds body, but the dog growled at him too. “Oh, come on, Hound. I’ve known you since you were a puppy!”

Laurent sniffed and looked up at Beast. “Because I don’t have the answers to those questions.”

“How can you not know?”

Nao approached, and as she kneeled on yet another side of Laurent’s body, her face morphed into a blur of color. She was even wearing face paint, it seemed. No one’s lips could be that particular shade. “Maybe he has amnesia, or something?”

“Thank you for the understanding,” Laurent said, eager to please her. If he couldn’t have Beast like him, he needed to endear other people to himself. “All I wanted was to go to the bathroom, Mr. Knight, and I misjudged the doors when this monster attacked me.”