Laurent looked up, frozen to his spot on the sofa. “E-excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Beast said, approaching in stiff, aggressive steps.
“I… don’t understand your meaning,” Laurent left his coffee on the table and got up quickly to not be at a disadvantageous position if Beast became violent. He wouldn’t admit it, but it had given him a thrill yesterday to see Beast deal with the rude man at the escalator. However, he’d hate to have that kind of force targeted at him. He was sure Beast’s strength easily outweighed William Fane’s, and Fane had already been an adversary at whose hand Laurent could had died.
Beast barked out a laugh and tightened his fist over an invisible shape. “No? I’ll tell you. You take a man’s cock, you put it in your mouth, and you suck on it,” he explained, bringing his hand closer to his lips and pressing on the inside of his cheek with his tongue, as if something really were inserted.
Laurent’s face went aflame. “What a rude insinuation! I am appalled!” He turned around to avoid seeing Beast repeat the movement. Even his neck went hot when he thought of Beast—
Laurent stomped off to his room, but he could hear Beast follow. All he could now think of was Beast’s lips around a prick, moving up until he kissed the tip. This wasn’t good at all.
“Dress in something suitable. If King wants you down with the others, then you’re going. You have fifteen minutes,” Beast said, standing in the doorway as Laurent stumbled into his room.
Laurent pulled off the sleeveless top he used for sleeping but then stilled, looking back at Beast. “Some privacy, please?”
“Now you want privacy? So I’m now banned from even looking at you?”
The question left Laurent more nervous by the second. How was he to answer? It wasn’t like Beast hadn’t seen him naked before. And yet after the attempted kiss everything felt different. “Weren’t you the one to say you didn’t want to look at my face?”
An unpleasant smirk twisted Beast’s features. “Who says I want to look at your face?”
This time even Laurent’s ears got hot. To think that Beast had ogled him before when Laurent thought they were just two men whose nakedness had no consequence. He stepped toward Beast and, despite the man’s towering size, pushed on his stomach, trying to shove him out of the room. “I am not a piece of meat to be chewed on.”
Beast looked at the watch, which was attached to his wrist. “Now it’s ten minutes, so better hurry, or I’m going to haul you downstairs in your pajamas.”
Laurent huffed in exasperation and backed off from the man-mountain. It was surely not beneath Beast to humiliate him that way in front of other people, if this was the way he acted after being denied pleasures of the flesh.
Laurent stepped away and pulled off the pajama pants, all too aware of the eyes on his backside, and afraid that their presence could make him too excited for polite company. But when he glanced back, just to make sure there was no encroaching danger, Beast wasn’t there.
Laurent exhaled deeply, and yet instantly missed the imposing presence. The revelation that Beast was like him, ‘gay’ as they called it nowadays, had sparked a fire somewhere underneath Laurent’s skin that wouldn’t stop smoking up his brain, no matter how hard he tried.
With Beast gone, dressing was a quick affair, since all the modern clothes were simple, and easy to put on, to the point of Laurent considering them ‘simplistic’, but he would fit in at all cost. He took a deep breath and stepped out, feeling much safer in the leather jacket than in the pajama pants that were so tightly fitted they left little to the imagination. Laurent now wondered if that was why Beast chose them.
Beast lay on the sofa with the huge dog spread over his legs. Both their gazes darted to Laurent as soon as he emerged out of the hallway, dressed and with his hair combed with the new hairbrush. Grooming was much easier now that he could actually see himself in the tiny round mirror they purchased at the store.
Hound smacked his jaws lazily and rolled to his back, but Beast gently pushed him off and got up. “Take the tray,” he said, gesturing at the leftover food.
Laurent frowned. “Don’t you have servants to do that?”
Beast grinned. “I do now. Take the tray.”
Laurent pursed his lips and counted the passing seconds to calm himself. He’d escaped that life and was not indentured to follow orders anymore. He couldn’t believe that even here he was being ordered around. He fought the itch in his eyes, the memories of a birch rod against his back, and picked up the tray without another word.
“Since King allows you to leave my room, eat in the kitchen. You two left crumbs all over my sofa,” Beast said and called Hound over, leading the way to the door.