Beauty and the Beast

by guardian46w, 2018-09-13 15:30:33

Beauty and the Beast

by Jeff Sinclair

Illustrations by Tarsis

Originally Published in Bondage Life, No. 36 May 1989

Scanned and Transcribed by guardian46w

Story Codes: M/f, fairy tale, bondage, reluctant, roped gagged, stripped, romantic, X

It is sad but true that fairy tales grow garbled with time. Storytellers, gentle reader, are but human, and each seeks to outdo his fellows. His dragons are a yard longer, his crones a wart uglier, his maidens a blush more lovely, and his villains… well, we all know about villains. Yet sometimes patient research can recapture the true version, and it is often remarkable how little it resembles the tale a close-minded society tells its children. As, for instance in this case…

ONCE UPON A TIME…

There was a wealthy merchant who fell upon hard times through no fault of his own, for, in one disastrous year, all three of his stout merchant ships were reported lost at sea.

Alas, the poor man could barely pay his debts. His fortune was destroyed, and so he had no choice but to retire to the small rhubarb farm which had been his father’s.

This farm lay upon the fringe of the Haunted Forest, a fearsome wood of which many terrifying tales were told, and the only road to the city lay through the forest. The farm cottage was snug, if spartan, but the gloomy wood so near at hand did not recommend itself to the merchant’s, or should we now say farmer’s – three daughters.

The elder two did not, I fear, take their reduced circumstances well. Indeed, they were inclined to bewail their fate and castigate their father, as though he were personally to blame for it.

But the merchant – er, farmer’s, youngest daughter was quite another matter. She was (inevitably) the fairest of the three, and also the most kind-hearted. Indeed, she was so lovely that all forgot her true name (which, alas, was Gertrude – a point you may now forget, dear reader) and called her “Beauty”. Beauty was a gentle maid of nineteen summers, a maiden upon the cusp of womanhood, with a woman’s graceful curves and the lingering innocence of childhood, and all who knew her (except perhaps her sisters) loved her.

Now it chanced that after a year had passed, word reached Beauty’s father that one of his ships had been sighted approaching port… and loaded Plimsoll-down, at that! He set out in the bright, cold morning for the city, eager for news of his ship.

The news, when he learned it, was better than he had dared hope. His ship had been delayed in far Cathay by damage, but her captain had put the delay to good use, haggling right skillfully with the sheiks of the distant East. When at last he returned, his holds bulged with spices, incense, silks, and ivory, and his coffers with pearls (of great price, naturally). Beauty’s father was overjoyed, for this one cargo had returned the profits of a dozen normal voyages, and his fortunes were suddenly brighter than ever!

Indeed, he plunged at once into the planning of new investments, and after his dazzling recovery, he wined and dined – especially wined. When he finally set out to return, it was evening, and a cloudy, blustery evening at that. When he came to the Haunted Forest it was darkest night.

He regretted his impetuosity when he beheld the dark-some forest and heard the wind crashing and groaning among its trees, and he considered turning back. But he had only a few leagues to go and he was eager to tell his daughters of their good fortune. And so, he chose to continue.

Yet no sooner was he well into the wood than (inevitably) snow began to fall, and not just any snow. This was a blizzard, and he was soon hopelessly lost. His pack horse, bearing all the gifts for his children, bolted, ice clotted his beard, his teeth chattered, and he felt especially bitter that he should perish thus at the very moment his wealth had been restored!

But at last, when all seemed lost, he spied a dim light through the blowing snow.

He made his way towards it, and to his astonishment, encountered a castle, rearing against the tempest like a cliff, in the middle of the Haunted Forest! He was mindful of all the horrid tales about this wood, but almost any fate seemed preferable to freezing, and so he dismounted and led his weary horse through the opened gate.

He called out to announce himself, but the roar of the storm drowned his voice, so he led his horse to the stables out of the icy wind, brushed the snow from his cloak as best he might, and made his way to great hall.

A huge table stood before a roaring fire. There was but a single place setting, empty, but the groaning table held food enough for a dozen men, and the poor man was cold and empty, battered by wind and ice. He drifted closer, mouthwatering, and finally, he reached out for a drumstick.

He had just taken a bite when a voice mightier than the storm roared behind him.

“Varlet!” it cried. “Who hath bid thee make free with mine supper?”

The merchant choked on his mouthful of chicken and whirled, and his jaw dropped. No man, but a monster towered before him! Seven feet tall, at the least, he seemed, with a hideous, leering face. An appallingly bestial grotesqueness of a face, the brows low and slanting, the chin jutting, the teeth crooked. The eyes were blue, glaring balefully from under beetling brows, and massive arms – enormously long, even for that mighty frame – reached almost to their owner’s knees. The apparition’s hair was course, and more of the same course fur tufted the creature’s knuckles. Large knuckles, the merchant noted fearfully, on hands the size of spades. Hands which opened and closed, flexing as if hungry to close upon some helpless Wight’s throat.

“Speak, thief! Who bade thee steal from me?”

“I-I-I-I…” the hapless merchant stuttered, and the creature advanced. “B-But I meant no harm!” the merchant gasped.

“No harm!” the advancing shape thundered. “When I ha’ goon to such length to find some pitiful privacy? When I ha’ made my home here, hidden from all eyes? Nay, thou hast done great harm, insect!”

“Please! I-I am a father! Would you orphan my daughters?”

“Aye,” the hulking figure said coldly, and the merchant closed his eyes in terror.

“Very well,” he said in a faint voice. “But first, let me tell my children that they are no longer paupers. Allow me only that, and I will return here for you to do with me as you wish.”

“Done,” the voice said. “So, thou shalt have thy chance to prove thine honor. I will spare thy life this night, aye, thou mayst even continue thy greedy feeding at mine table, but thou shalt return in two days’ time to die at my hand. Art thou agreed?”

“Yes,” the merchant said faintly.

“Good. Then I leave thee to thy feeding. Thou wilt find a bedchamber above yonder stair, it is thine for this evening. Now will I take my loathsome face from thy presence,” the master of the castle rumbled, and the merchant heard his heavy footsteps receding.

Only when they faded did he dare to open his eyes. He was alone once more in the splendid hall, but the crackling fire felt suddenly colder than the storm beyond the walls, and the delicious food was ashes in his mouth.

****

The following morning the merchant made his way out into the courtyard. He saw deep footprints in the snow, leading through the gate into the forest and then back to the stable. When he looked into the stable, he found his pack horse with all the gifts for his daughters, but there was little joy in his heart as he mounted and made his doleful way to the farm.

His children rejoiced to see him, and they raced out into the snow to greet him. But their faces fell when he dismounted heavily and told them of his adventure and his promise to return to the castle to die.

The elder girls lost no time urging him to break his word, but Beauty was wiser than they. Though her eyes brimmed with tears, she knew that no argument would change his mind and so she did not try. Instead, she cooked a hot meal and bade him eat it; after, she brought him a cup of mulled wine, and he drank it gratefully. When he felt sleep stealing upon him, he thought it only the inevitable result of his terrible trials, and he made his way to bed, unaware that the wine had been drugged. No sooner had Beauty tucked him gently in bed than she crept out to the stable and saddled her own horse.

She said nothing to her sisters, though she left her father a note… and she turned her horse towards the Haunted Forest as the sun sank crimson in the west.

****

Night fell as Beauty entered the trees, but she had listened to her father carefully and felt certain she could find the castle. Yet she did not find the castle; rather, its master found her. A huge shape shouldered through a screen of brush, sending snow sliding from the branches, and she swallowed a lump of terror. The creature bulked against the luminescent snow, a slab-sided chunk of night grown solid with menace, and the white cloud of his breath plumed above him.

“What doest thou here, girl?” he demanded, and she shivered at his harsh, grating voice. She gripped her reins, straightening her slender shoulders and straining to pierce the darkness.

“I-I have come seeking you,” she said, surprised by the steadiness of her own sweet voice. “If you are the master of the castle in these woods.”

“I am,” the voice rumbled.

“My name is…” she began, then paused, for she had never liked her name (which, if you recall it, dear reader, you quite understand). “They call me ‘Beauty’,” she said instead, “and I have come to plead for my father’s life. I beg you to spare him,” she said softly, but her heart sank as the half-seen head shook slowly. “If… you demand a death,” she whispered, “let it be mine.”

The night froze. Even the wind seemed muted as the implacably looming shadow stared at her. The pause stretched out agonizingly, and Beauty’s heart raced in the silence. And then the rumbling voice came again.

“How now, girl? Wouldst did in thy father’s place when thou art young and beautiful and thy father hath grown old?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I love him.”

“Then thou art a fool,” he sneered. “Love is a lie. It doth vanish when most sorely needed.”

Beauty drew a deep breath, longing for light to see. There was something about his voice, something different…

“If you truly believe that,” she said very softly, “I pity you.

“PITY ME!” he roared. “And who art thou to pity me? Ha’ I asked for thy pity? Nay, keep it for thyself, for I shall show none! Your father hath done me the greatest harm e’er man could do,” he said bitterly. “He hast intruded into mine isolation and made me think…” the voice cut off, and Beauty heard a snarl in the darkness. “Nay, enough! He hath made his bargain and let him keep it!”

“He will,” Beauty said sadly, “but I offer you another. Take me, instead.”

“So,” he said after another long pause, “thou wouldst truly did for love?” Beauty nodded and he gave a harsh laugh. “Very well, girl, thou mayst prove it. I will take thee in his place, doth that please thee?”

“No,” she admitted softly, “but it pleases me that my father will live.”

“We shall see.”

Beauty caught her breath as he waded towards her through the snow. Her horse tried to shy, but a huge hand caught the bridle. “Get thee down, girl,” he commanded coldly.

Beauty obeyed, though her trembling, half-frozen legs would scarcely bear her. She stood in the deep snow, then gasped as another hand caught her shoulder.

“Turn,” he ordered, and she obeyed once more. Indeed, resistance would have availed naught, for he was terrifyingly strong, yet she bit her lip and shivered with cold and fright as his massive paws pulled her wrists behind her. She closed her eyes in terror as cord circled them, binding them tightly, then hissed in surprise as a second cord girt her elbows.

She leaned against her horse, trembling as the elbow cord sank into her through her heavy clothing, yet a corner of her brain seemed to stand back and watch what was happening. And that bit of her realized that for all his terrifying voice and the terrible fate he had promised her, he did not jerk at the rope, nor did he knot it as bitterly as he might have. It was tight, yes – secure and inescapable, stealing her arms from her – yet there was only discomfort, not pain.

“Art still of a like mind, girl”” her captor demanded, and she nodded. He laughed again. “Art thou, indeed?”

She gasped again as arms like tree trunks lifted her effortlessly. She squirmed as he laid her across her saddle on her belly, but it was for balance, not to escape. She had struck a bargain, and she was her father’s daughter. She would keep it, and she lay still, even when his powerful hands lashed her booted ankles tight. Then rope went about her knees, the cord from her wrists knotted to it like an anchor, and she was lifted back down to kneel in the snow before him.

“’Tis thy last chance, girl,” he said, but she only closed her eyes and shook her head. “As thou wilt,” he rumbled and Beauty coughed in surprise as a wadded cloth was thrust into her mouth and bound tightly in place. Yet that same watching corner of her mind recognized the fabric swelling her mouth as the finest silk, and the hands which gagged her were no more violent than those which had bound her.

She knelt before him helplessly, and her eyes were wide as she stared up at his dimly-see shape. He loomed over her like the solid shadow of death, and yet her terror was less, somehow. She knew it was mad, but it was true. She had offered herself in the certainty that he would kill her, and yet fear was only a part of what she felt.

She tried to understand, but she could not. There was something here for which she had no name. it was a quivering fire in her chilled flesh, a sense of having been taken as a helpless prize, and there was a strange, perverse sort of pride to it. Pride that she had found the courage to do this thing, perhaps, but more. Her captor had called her beautiful, and he seemed almost displeased by her surrender to him, as if, she thought, she was too sweet a morsel for even such as he to slay.

Her thoughts broke off as he lifted her once more, throwing her over a shoulder like an oaken beam. She gasped through her nose as one huge hand splayed over her bottom, balancing her, and he walked away as if she weighed nothing.

“Shalt have thy chance to save thy father, girl,” he rumbled, his harsh voice almost soft, “and we shall see how thou likest it then.”

****

The journey to the castle was long and miserable. The night grew ever colder, and Beauty could not move to hold the chill at bay. It invaded her, congealing her blood, and if her cords were not cruel, they were certainly tight, biting insistently into her soft, frozen flesh.

She dangled head-down over her captor’s shoulder, acutely aware of the heavy hand cupping her bottom, and her icy face blazed with mortification. She had never before been manhandled, far less bound and tossed casually over a shoulder and borne off! That she had traded herself for her father did not alleviate her outraged sense of propriety. It was foolish to worry about such things when she might die so soon, she thought, yet she could not help it… any more than she could help the other things she felt.

She was a maid, but she was not quite so innocent as her father believed and she recognized the hot, prickling tingle in her belly. She recognized it, but she chose not to notice it, for if she acknowledged it, she would have no choice but to wonder why she felt it, and that was a question she was not prepared to answer.

Her captor’s silence both frightened her and piqued her perversely. She was his captive, to deal with as he chose and though her father had called him ‘beast’, he was a man. Surely finding such a dainty morsel as she in his grasp should have provoked some comment, if only to gloat!

She swallowed painfully, brown eyes anxious, for his silence offered her uncertainty, no solace. She had sold herself to him for her father’s life, yet he had not said how he would collect his price. Not really. She had assumed he would slay her, but… what if he did not?

She closed her eyes, biting her gag, afraid to believe he might spare her. Yet was ‘spare’ the proper word for all the other things he might do? The true totality of her helplessness was suddenly clear. She had assumed that if she took her father’s place she would suffer his fate, yet now not even that choice was hers! She had given herself over to her captor, and she was powerless to influence him in any way. He would deal with her as he chose, and the nobility of dying in her father’s place could so easily become something far worse if he was truly cruel.

Her mind raced down ever more terrifying avenues as she was borne helplessly away and she shivered convulsively with far more than mere cold.

****

The journey seemed endless, yet at last the huge, beast-like man who had bound her strode under the arch of his castle gate, and Beauty whimpered through her gag. Journey’s end portended her doom, and her eyes were shadowed and dark as he carried her into the great hall.

She recognized it from her father’s description, but he did not pause. He turned aside, carrying her down a winding stone stair that grew narrower and narrower until it ended at a heavy, nail-studded wooden door. He drew the bolt and flung it open with a crash, carrying her into a windowless room of hewn stone.

There was wood laid ready on a hearth, and her captor dropped her roughly on the bed in one corner. She curled up on her side, watching fearfully in the light of the lamps as he stooped to light the logs.

It was the first time she had seen him clearly… and he was even more hideous than she had feared.

Beauty had never imagined such ugliness. He looked like a monster from myth and yet there was strength in his ugly features and also a sense of control at odds with his fury against her father’s ‘crime’. She blinked in consternation at her own thoughts, then choked back a gagged whimper as he finished lighting the fire and rose. The wood crackled behind him and she felt the first ripple of heat caress her frozen face as he loomed against the flames like a titan.

“I wax hungry, girl,” he grated, “yet must I bestow thee properly to await me while I sup.”

She curled into a tight, involuntary knot as he came closer and he smiled, showing huge, crooked teeth.

“How now, girl? Art less sure of thyself?” he mocked, and she burned crimson, eyes closed as she remembered how proudly she had answered his aspersions upon her honor and made herself uncurl slowly.

“Better,” he rumbled, and she opened her eyes fearfully, watching without truly understanding as he looped a stout rope through a ring in the ceiling. He adjusted it with some care, then turned to her without a word and she gasped as he turned her urgently face-down on the bed. Her cheek pressed the coverlet and a corner of her whirling brain noted that it was satin – scarcely the proper fitting for a cell! But the observation meant nothing beside her sudden, sharper stab of panic as he snatched away her cloak and freed her wrists from her knee rope.

She trembled in terror, but she made herself lie limply obedient even when he untied her ankles and wrenched off her heavy boots and thick woolen stockings. He tossed them aside and her bare feet were cold as he untied her knees, as well, but not to free her.

She felt the sweat of anxiety bead on her forehead as he crossed her delicate ankles and re-lashed them. The new binding was even tighter than before, and she had lost her boots’ protection. She bit her gag as he strained the knots tight, then looped the end of her wrist rope through her ankles and pulled it taut. Her knees bent, feet lifting to touch her hands, and her face flamed as her gown fell back, baring her calves and thighs.

She made a small sound and blushed darker at his deep knowing laugh. She closed her eyes again, trembling, then gasped as he scooped her off the bed. Her gown fell modestly about her legs as he set her on the floor upon her knees, and she felt a flush of relief she knew was irrational.

She felt him towering above her, and then he touched her elbows. She closed her eyes even tighter in fearful anxiety as he knotted the hanging rope to her bound elbows, then squeaked in shock as he pulled on it slowly.

Her arms rose behind her, but the cord to her ankles snubbed them. She squirmed on her knees, unable not to as she felt her balance shift. He went on pulling, raising her arms higher and her feet tried to rise in response. She whimpered, teetering on the brink of overbalancing and falling forward and then he stopped lifting. But he didn’t lower her! He simply tied the rope and she moaned at the strain.

“Fear not, girl, shalt not fall,” he rumbled and she cried out in gagged protest as leather touched her slender throat, twisting and fighting to squirm away from the humiliation despite her bargain. No! she was no pet to be collared! She wasn’t! She wasn’t!

But she was, a cold inner voice whispered. She had given herself to him, and her struggles slowly died as he buckled the tall collar tight. Tears dewed her long lashes like diamonds, but she had mastered her struggles and did not resist as he corded the back of her collar to the ceiling rope. It drew her head back, arching her throat and spine and thrusting her ripe young breasts against her blouse, but it also shifted her center of balance back again, and she no longer felt as if she must fall forward at any moment.

But he was not done yet and she stared up tragically as huge, hairy fingers dipped into her bodice. They were shockingly cold against the soft satin of her breasts and even as she flushed with shame her nerves tingled at the touch. Her eyes plead with him, but he ignored them, and a single tear trickled down her cheek as the fabric tore.

He ripped her blouse and chemise, shredding them to hang from her bound arms and her face was scarlet above her gag as the soft, firm mounds of her maiden bosom leapt to her panting breath under his eyes. Cold air touched them, yet she hardly felt its chill, for her skin was fiery with the mortification and frightened anticipation of captivity.

Then his hand went to her skirt and she closed her eyes. She was to be spared nothing, she thought, and yet a thread of fire wove through the heart of her misery. She had thought to surrender to a beast, but the beast was no beast, but a man. A man whose eyes were hot irons on her delicate skin, and whose hand wrenched her skirt apart and tore her warm, flannel petticoats, as well. They were like paper against his strength and her round young hips twisted as they ripped.

And then she knelt naked in her drawers, eyes closed, waiting for him to tear those away, as well. But he stepped back a pace and her eyes opened slowly, unwillingly, or was it willingly? Their gazes met, and she moaned softly at the bright desire burning in his like a hungry flame. Death, she realized with final, absolute certainty, would not be her fate.

“There girl,” he grated. “Wait thou for me. ‘Tis cold for such sweet flesh, I know,” he touched her smooth, naked belly almost caressingly and her skin jerked at the touch. “But ‘twill grow warmer as thy fire burns. And thou…” he withdrew his hand and laughed his harsh, grating laugh once more, “…wilt grow still warmer soon. Bide thee.”

He vanished through the door, and Beauty heard the bolt shoot.

****

The closing door was like a signal, and Beauty wrenched frantically at her bound limbs, though what good it might have done to slip her cords locked in this windowless room she could not have said. Yet reason meant little. Her struggles were born of irrational panic, and who shall blame her, for she was young and a maiden, and she had never counted on this!

But struggle as she might, there was no escape. Her captor had bound her too tightly and shrewdly for that. She fought the cords like a webbed moth until her breath came in jagged, panting gasps and her smooth flesh was slick with sweat, and all she did was overbalance after all, gurgling in her collar until she could wiggle her knees back under her.

She stopped at last, hanging on her elbows and panting in exhaustion. Her sweat was chill despite the fire, but the cell was far warmer than it had been. He had said it would grow warmer, she thought miserably, and it had. But he had also said that she…

She crushed the thought or, more precisely, she tried to crush it, for it refused to die. It burrowed through every barrier she erected against it with a blind, terrible persistence that mocked her effort to evade it and she trembled as the totality of her fate enveloped her.

It had seemed so simple. There had even been a sort of grandeur to it, she admitted sadly, a sense of exaltation that cast her as the heroine of some romance, to perish in her father’s place like a gallant martyr. But this! To be bound like this her garments wrenched away to bare her body and to be promised that… that…

She closed her eyes, crimson to her breasts, as the terrible thought touched something deep inside her with a curious, shameful fire. She fought to deny it, but she was a truthful girl, and she knew. It was the worst mortification of all, yet her nipples slowly hardened and a warm, liquid pulse throbbed damply between her maiden thighs. She felt it burning at the core of her and some of her terror faded as she faced it squarely. It was shameful of her, reprehensibly so, yet it was true, and some inner part of her accepted it almost gladly.

A hopeless, captive opulence enfolded her like a wayward freedom. She was helpless. What would happen would happen and she was free to savor a strange sweetness, free to admit that she felt a certain pride in being found so desirable by her hulking captor. And, perhaps to admit, shameful though it might be, that there was an excitement in her captivity, a burning arousal in being pent and pinioned.

She blinked as she considered that concept, yet it was true, she thought wonderingly. It was exciting, and knowing now that she was not to perish, whatever else happened, was a vast relief. Indeed, her mind felt clearer even as it hazed with her first true taste of desire. She could think without panic as the voluptuary she had never know lurked within her tasted the fiery arousal wakened by her plight.

She knelt there, bound and gagged, waiting, and thought. Pondered long and deeply in a drifting, almost dreamy way, and a new light glowed in her soft brown eyes.

****

The cell was quite warm by the time her captor returned. The bolt clashed and the door boomed open, but she did not even jump. She only turned her head slowly, her eyes almost dreamy, as if the violence of his entry was but a charade which could no longer deceive her.

Her captor paused for a moment, eyes narrowing, and then he stalked in, his brutish features wrapped in a ferocious scowl. He towered over her and she looked up at him, no longer seeing the bestial exterior but the man, the all too human man, within it.

His blunt, hairy fingers were rough in her hair, turning her head urgently to jerk at the knotted gag. It came loose and he plucked out the wadded cloth and allowed her to straighten her head. It was a handkerchief of clean white silk and a wise little light glimmered in her eyes. Of course, it was, she thought.

“How now, girl?” he growled. “Dost repent thy madness? Shall I free thee that thy father may suffer his rightful fate?” his harsh-edged, grating voice was cold, yet it was also different. Questioning, she thought. Almost puzzled.

“No,” she said simply, staring up at him and this time she did smile. “I promised to take his place, and I will.”

“Thou art indeed a fool!” her captor grated. “Thou knowest now what can happen to thee in my power, or dost thou think to escape me?”

“If I wanted to escape, I would have taken your offers to change my mind,” she said and it was his turn to blink in confusion. Her smile grew. “And if you were the monster you try to play, you would never have made them,” she added softly.

“What foolishness is this?” he managed at last.

“Only yours,” she said in that same soft voice. “You’ve been trying to frighten me home the whole time, haven’t you?”

“Thou art moon-struck,” he muttered. “Let thy father pay his own debts, girl!”

“I could,” she said and his eyes narrowed under his slanting brow. “I could, because I know now you never meant to kill him at all.”

“What brain fever aileth thee now?” her captor demanded. “Whyfor else did I demand his pledge?”

“I wondered why,” she admitted, “until I realized. He did intrude on you. You were hidden here, hiding your ‘ugliness’ from the world, and he brought the world in on you. So, you were angry. Even furious. But if you truly meant to kill him, if you could be cruel enough to slay him simply for seeking shelter from a storm, you would never have let him leave. You were simply testing his word, weren’t you?

It felt insane to speak so as she knelt all but naked in his ropes and yet she knew, knew on a deep instinctive level, with a knowledge too profound to question, that it was true.

“Whyfor should I do that?” he asked, but his grating voice was lower and his gaze was more intense.

“Because you're lonely,” she said softly. “What was that you said in the wood, that love is a lie? Who hurt you so badly you could believe that?”

He turned away with a stifled groan, mighty shoulders bowed, standing thus for long seconds and she stared up from his ropes with compassionate eyes. He turned back at last, sinking to his knees before her, bringing their heads almost on a level, and his eyes were almost desperate.

“How didst thou guess that?” he asked softly.

“You were too gentle,” she said simply, lips trembling in another smile. Her hands shifted behind her, wrists turning slightly in their tight cords. “You bound me tightly, but you were careful not to hurt me. You gagged me, but with a clean, silk handkerchief. You tied me here and…” she blushed rosily, “…stripped me to frighten me, but you lit the fire before you left. And when you came back, you gave me still another chance to run away.

“Yet thou didst not,” he said, more softly than she had dreamed he could speak. “Thou didst guess thy father stands in no danger, yet still thou didst not run. Why?”

“Because,” she said, barely above a whisper, “I don’t want to.”

He stared into her face for several seconds, and she wondered why she had not noticed how beautiful his eyes were. Perhaps it was because they were set in such an ugly face, she thought, but they were beautiful, especially now, glowing with question and surmise, all pretense of anger and ferocity abandoned. One huge, hairy hand rose and caressed her cheek with consummate gentleness, and she pressed trustingly against it.

“Thou art indeed a fool,” he said gently, but she only smiled and gave her head a tiny shake. “Yes, thou art,” he told her. “Thou art young and beautiful, and sweet. What may a brute so ugly he must hide his very face from the world offer such as thee?”

“Now you're the fool,” she said quietly, “Did you think I could not guess what you truly hide from the world?”

“And what do I hide?” he asked softly.

“Your heart,” she told him gently. “Only your heart.”

“Art serious?” he demanded, his eyes curiously vulnerable, almost frightened as they met hers. “Couldst thou indeed care for such as I?”

“I could,” she said simply, and leaned forward against her collar, tensing her arms to support her. He started to draw back, then froze like a man steeling himself for the surgeon’s knife, and her lips touched his like the brush of a moth’s wing.

For a moment, his mouth was cold, unresponsive and stiff with the armor of his long despair. But then, slowly, it softened and warmed, clinging to hers and when her daring tongue probed gently his lips opened and their tongues mated in liquid fire.

A bright, convulsive shock echoed in Beauty’s bound young body as a brilliant spark danced between them. It burned in her flesh like glorious acid, and she sighed, leaning into the kiss. It was he who finally drew back, and she stared into his eyes, trembling like a captive fawn.

“Thou dost mean it,” he whispered.

“For a fearsome monster, you can be a bit slow,” she said with daring sauciness, and his lips curved in the first smile she had ever seen from him. It transfigured his ugly face and for a moment he looked almost handsome in its radiance. Then he shook himself, and a look of embarrassment, almost shame, crossed his face.

He raised his hands and released the ceiling rope, and Beauty sighed with relief as the tension in her arms vanished. She sank back on her heels as he untied her collar from the rope and her wrists from her ankles, then her ankles as well. She rose unsteadily, leaning against him for support and his touch was infinitely gentle, as if she were the most precious, fragile thing in the universe.

He turned her and started to untie her wrists, but she stepped suddenly away, turning with a head shake to face him. Her ripe young nipples were as hard and high as ever and she blushed delicately as she smelled the musky perfume of her own arousal.

“No,” she said softly, and his eyebrows rose.

“But…” he began.

“No,” she said again. “Don’t untie me.” She backed away with hip-shot, sinuous grace until the backs of her bare thighs brushed the edge of the bed. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.” She sat slowly and he stared at her wordlessly, mesmerized as she collapsed onto her back with laughing, teasingly wanton gracefulness and wiggled into the center of the bed.

“What…” he began again.

“You also talk too much, Sir Beast,” she teased him, ablaze with awareness of her own loveliness as she watched his face. She stretched like a cat, arching her spine, and her dainty feet parted slowly, opening her lovely legs invitingly. “When the maiden is in your clutches is no time to hesitate,” she said gently, heart brimming as his eyes turned suddenly, incredulously warm and tender. “Come here and claim your prize.”

He did… and they lived happily ever after.