by Lucy Leven
The Beast drew her to her feet, and from her shoulders he drew her heavy cloak. She was bare under it now as she had not been bare when they ventured outside.
Claria gasped as the sharp, nipping chill of the air assaulted her. She shivered with it, but her shivers were not just from the cold.
The Beast’s laugh was a low and knowing rumble. He swept her up into his arms and laid her out on the bench atop the furs. Laid her out in the chill, her breasts high and tight, the fire in her core just as high.
He sat at the end of the bench, where she could not see him, and tangled a hand in her hair, tugging a little, making her arch her neck and her back.
“Touch yourself so that I might see,” he told her. He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Touch yourself so that your officer might see.”
Her officer. Her Lieutenant de La Noue.
Clouds were gathering overhead, heavy with snow, but in what little moonlight remained, Claria could see that the Lieutenant was wakened in his britches, so hard with his vigour that he bulged against them. But he did not touch himself. He stood at attention still, his back perfectly straight, his chin perfectly lifted, his dark eyes intent upon her and upon the playing of her hands.
One hand to her breast, where she pinched at her nipples, wonderful shocks of sharpness. The other hand she drifted down between her thighs — the thighs that she parted, the thighs between which her pleasure lay, hot and wet.
Claria touched herself then, in full view of the Lieutenant and of the Beast, of the Castle, and of any very brave gods.
She touched herself as she had in her dream. Gently at first, fingers playing over and upon her throbbing bud. But then rougher, harder, as she thrust her fingers inside of herself and imagined them as the Beast’s fingers — or, daringly, as the Lieutenant’s fingers — touching her so intimately, so attentively, so commandingly.
She watched the Lieutenant’s shadow of magic watch her in turn, watched him watch her pleasure herself as he denied his own pleasure, as his eyes took the sight of her undoing, the sight of the Beast’s hand tangled in her curls, the sight of her little bosom heaving, of her shudderings and shakings, her gasps and her whines.
Claria closed her own eyes as the release of her pleasure came in a sudden hot and wetting gush. She gasped with it anew, those breaths ragged. Her heartbeat thumped and skipped in her ears, pleasure spinning still though every nerve. But even caught so, Claria still heard that telling, whispering shimmer of golden magic at work — the shimmer that told her that if she opened her eyes, the Lieutenant would be gone.
And so she did not open her eyes. Instead, blindly, she reached for the Beast, drew his face down to hers, tangled her hands in the tousled fall of his hair, tipped open her mouth, a silent plea.
The Beast would not see her wanting so, for he kissed her, soft and long and loving. Kissed her in that garden of magic while the snow fell all around.
And Claria was bare to the snow, as she was bare to the world, but sheltered by the Beast’s warmth and by his gentle care, no chill did she feel.
An Unexpected Visitor
When dawn broke anew, the kitchen garden had thawed only a little, but a little was enough.
In a fine, fair mood, Claria hummed to herself as she plucked rosemary for the bread she meant to make to accompany the stew that simmered on the stove.
The cold had withered the plant sure enough, and she had some stalks dried in the store, but fresh was always better. So even burned by the frost, if she picked enough, the rosemary would—
The scuff of a boot behind her announced a visitor: the Beast, come to needle at her no doubt, to make her laugh, perhaps to make her gasp. Either way, to steal a bite of whatever she was making.
But she could thwart him there. “The stew will not be done for hours,” Claria told him, “and as for the bread — I have not even begun to bake.”
No witty retort or grumpy growl. A puzzled silence was her only answer.
Claria stilled as a quelling thought came to her: the Beast only scuffed and shushed when he wished to let her know he was near, as when she had first come to the castle, when he had thought not to frighten her.
Now he appeared wherever and whenever he wished to appear, with nothing and no one to announce him.
And it was so that Claria realised — the man who stood behind her was not the Beast.
“My lady?”
The voice stopped her as the thought had — stopped her hand as it reached for the rosemary, stopped her heart inside her chest.
She knew that voice. And it was not the Beast’s teasing rumble, sure enough.
Confident and kind. Calm and steady. A faint, curling accent of the east.
It could not be, but it was: her officer.
Lieutenant de La Noue.
Claria spun towards him in a swirl of skirts, her hands clasped tight to her breast, and she did not speak, for not a single word could she find.
The Lieutenant offered her a tidy bow, one far more courtly than she deserved.
“My lady,” he began again. “I am afraid I find myself turned around, as I always am in this confounding place.” He offered her a rueful smile. “Might you direct me to the master of the castle?”
He was not in uniform, bottle-green and braided gold.
He wore tidy riding leathers instead, a soft, worn-in brown with jerkin and heavy cloak to match, saddlebags in hand. He was a little older than the man of Claria’s remembering, his skin a little more sun browned, his hair burned bright by that same sun. A silvered scar ran ragged now across his forehead and his cheek, tearing through his eyebrow on its way down his face.
And he was so handsome yet that she could hardly stand to look away — and certainly not to speak to him.
So Claria stood in silence, stock-still and staring.
The Lieutenant’s mouth tipped open a touch, his brows raised in question, and he began again when he realised he was to have no greeting in turn “I apologise for startling you, my lady,” he said. The rueful smile, which had never left him, ticked a little at the edge, uncertain. “I know my appearance can be discomfiting.”
“No!” Claria exclaimed, her voice far too loud. For how could he think she thought him hard to look at? He could not think it! “No, I—I,” she stammered. “I do not think— You did not—”
She cut herself off, halted her ramblings with a sharp breath, and it was no small wonder that the heat in her cheeks felt hot enough to set the whole castle aflame. “I will take you to the Beast, my lord. Please, come with me.”
Off she hurried, back into the warmth of the kitchens, and through them to scurry up the narrow little stairway and out into the castle proper.
“Beast!” she called as she entered the Great Hall, her voice high and creaking with her shredded nerves. “Beast, you have a visitor!”
“So I do,” the Beast said — from right behind her.
She shrieked. Whirled around, hands clasped to her breast anew. She still held a wilting stalk of rosemary.
“The gods,” the Lieutenant muttered. The smile he offered Claria this time was small but equally unpresuming. “How I hate when he does that.”
“And so it is that I must do it all the more, my friend,” the Beast said, laughing.
That earned him a rolling of the Lieutenant’s fine dark eyes. “I would expect nothing less, my lord.”
“Your Grace. Welcome.” They gripped arms in greeting, the meeting of old friends. Then they hauled one another into the strange, one-armed, back-slapping embrace menfolk were so fond of. “I expected you on the morrow, lad.”
“The roads were kinder to me than they should have been,” the Lieutenant said as he pulled away. He pushed his hair back from his face with a casual swipe of his hand, set it gleaming golden in the firelight. “Indeed, one might have thought them cleared especially.”
“One might think many things,” the Beast agreed, his own smile easy and sly. “For thinking is free to do. Now, let me introduce you to the lad
y of the castle.” He spun towards Claria and held out a hand until she took it. “My ward,” he said, offering her hand in turn to the Lieutenant, “the lovely Claria.”
“Enchanted, my lady,” the Lieutenant said. He lifted her hand to his lips, as if to kiss her in that courtly way, but Claria snatched it away before he could.
For she could not let him carry on such a pretence. “I am no lady, kind sir,” she said, then remembering the appellation the Beast had used, added, “Your Grace.”
The Lieutenant twitched a line between his brows. “Enchanted, then, mademoiselle.“
“And this blaggard—” The Beast took the Lieutenant by the shoulder and shook him like a pup. “This blaggard is Estienne de La Noue, late of His Majesty’s Army, now a reluctant servant to His Majesty’s muddled bloodlines.”
At that, the Lieutenant gave a tired snort of a laugh and rolled his eyes again, he and the Beast sharing some private joke.
“Come, Your Grace,” the Beast said, using his grip on the Lieutenant’s shoulder to tug him away. “Come to the library. We have much to talk upon, I believe. Most of it regarding the heavy purse of coin you want from me.”
“Yes, sir,” the Lieutenant said on a playful salute. Though there was nothing playful about the bow he offered Claria on the taking of his leave. He would not be dissuaded from such courtesies, it seemed. “Mademoiselle,” he said again. “It has been nothing but a pleasure.”
Together, the Beast and the Lieutenant left the Great Hall. Claria watched them go, then she pressed her palms to her hot cheeks, and with a quiet, dismayed little moan, she ran all the way back to the kitchens and hid her face in a damp dishcloth.
The time came to dress for dinner.
Claria’s heart thundered in her chest like the waking of some ferocious summer storm.
The gown the castle chose for her was simple, the cut plain and decent, the skirts not plumped by a thousand useless petticoats.
But it one important way, it was different. No expanse of plain fabric. Instead, deep pink flowers picked out a faint pattern on the pale muslin.
The castle presented the gown to Claria with a disgruntled sort of hesitance, ready for her to disagree, ready for her to demand something simpler, something plainer.
But disagree Claria did not. For perhaps if the Beast meant to entertain a guest, she should make some effort about her appearance. She was the lady of the castle, after all, by dint of being the only lady in the castle.
And so she held her silence while the castle did up her laces and set her curls to fall at her ears and across her brow, and while it cajoled her with teasing nudges until she took her reflection in the conjured looking-glass.
And Claria — she looked herself, but just a little more. And strange how little that unsettled her. Or perhaps it was not so strange…
She was braver now, after all. The Beast had made sure of it.
In the Great Hall, the great table had been set — set with places for the Beast and for Claria. And for no more than that.
“Your guest will not join us this evening?” she asked, taking her seat.
The Beast shook his head, too busy spreading butter on the bread Claria had brought from the kitchens, still warm from the oven. “No,” he said, “the Captain’s ride was long and the ground hard. I imagine we shall have the pleasure of his company tomorrow evening, but not before.”
“Oh, I see.” No surprise in that, a hint of relief perhaps, but faint disappointment nonetheless. “Captain?”
“Hmm?”
“Captain,” Claria said again. “Not Lieutenant?”
Oh, I take you meaning. A promotion for bravery,” the Beast explained. “And right it was. I have never met a mortal so stupidly brave.”
As the Captain’s handsome, scarred face would attest. “Oh…”
Silence fell between them, and that silence felt brittle — or it did to Claria at least.
To the Beast, it seemed only a source of amusement, if the smile playing at the crooked corner of his mouth was enough to tell.
He was waiting for her to speak, she knew. And how she did not wish to indulge his silliness, and his trickery, but she would have no answer if she did not.
And she wanted an answer.
So, “You did not tell me you knew him,” Claria said, and her hot irritation was clear in her voice. “The Lieutenant. Or — the Captain, I mean.”
“I do not know him,” the Beast said. His mouth quirked all the more, and when Claria met his gaze, it was no surprise to find his eyes sparkling with golden amusement. “The man of your remembering is not the man I know.”
Claria fixed him with a narrow, pointed look. “You take your words and you play with them for the sole purpose of your own amusement.”
The Beast snorted. “I have been accused of such trespasses before.”
“I have no doubt.”
The Beast threw back his head and laughed. It was a joyful, unrestrained sound, like the pleased roar of some beast in the forest.
And Claria could not help but smile at the hearing of it.
“Are you angry with me, lass?” the Beast said.
“I could never be,” she admitted with reluctant honesty.
The Beast harrumphed, pleased, and set back to his bread.
“Why did your castle…” Claria cleared her throat as her cheeks heated. “In the rose garden,” she said, “why did the castle — conjure what it conjured? Whom it conjured?”
The Beast set down his knife, his attention all to her. “I knew that the Captain was to visit soon, and if I knew it, my magics knew it, and so the castle simply wished you to remember what you were all too ready to forget.”
Claria shook her head, wondering. “Why?”
“You do not think yourself worthy of him,” the Beast said plain. “The castle disagrees. As do I.”
“Worthy of him?” Claria echoed, utterly aghast. “I would not even presume to think such a thing, Beast. For of course I am not worthy of him. He is an officer — and a duke now too, if I understand his title correctly. I am but a baker’s lass, low and base.”
“There is nothing low about you, lass,” the Beast said, none of his usual teasing. “Nor anything base.”
Claria’s cheeks went hot. The words he spoke felt truthful to her, and the flattery in them was a fierce sort of kindness, one that stirred a notion of bravery — the same bravery that had brought her here to the castle, to the rose garden, and to the heights of pleasure that the Beast had taken her and taught to her.
And so, “If you are the only guest for our evening meal,” Claria said, “then you should have my attention, Beast. All of it.”
She stood up then and went to him. The Beast slumped back a little in his high-backed carver, watching her approach. His eyes sparked with golden amusement as she cupped his cheeks in hand and dipped her head for a kiss.
Though only one kiss — no more than that.
But with their mouths so close that Claria could feel the Beast’s smile as much as she could see it, she traced her touch down from his face to the hem of his tunic, where she pulled and tugged until she had him bare in that way.
She stepped back so as to see him better and, quite unable to help herself, she reached out to feel the muscled strength of him, the sheer overawing power of him.
Lower her touch ventured, until she came to those supple, taunting leathers and the rising bulge beneath them. Her mouth watering of a sudden, Claria reached for the laces and tugged them loose and free, tugged until she had room enough to reveal the Beast in his most primal visage.
The breath she took at the sight of him was unsteady but it was not afeared. Though she wondered that it should have been, for though the Beast was not yet awakened to his full vigour, even only plumped as he was by his rising pleasure…
The gods, how she longed to touch him.
And so — she did.
Claria took the oil meant for the table, cupped her hand, and poured a small measure ther
e, gleaming and slick. To her knees on the flags she went, tight between the muscled strength of the Beast’s spread thighs.
She touched the girth of him, spilled the oil in her hand, and watched in fascination as under that hand, under its slip and its slide, the oil spread — and the Beast grew. Blood-hot, the Beast grew, thick and hard and full of power — and entirely at her mercy.
Claria dipped her head and put the tip of her tongue there, right at the head of him, and lapped, small and uncertain, unsure of what to do save what her instincts told her.
She flicked a glance the Beast’s way, searching, perhaps, for his guidance, for his warming approval. And Claria found that he watched her fondly, his chin in hand, that warm, welcoming hunger clear in his gaze. He tipped his chin then, with the approbation she so sought, and the feel of it made her cheeks flush and her heart pitter and patter.
So with a breath to steady both it and her touch, Claria took the girth of him tight in both her hands, slicked the Beast a time or two anew, and then with one more steadying breath, she brought him to her mouth and sucked upon what little she could — sucked like he was a dripping dipper lifted straight from the honeypot — and she did not look away from him. Not at all.
All at once, the magic in the Beast’s eyes flared so bright a gold that the room seemed lit with that very same light.
Claria gasped and pulled back, the flare of magic fading from her vision just as it dimmed in the Beast’s eyes. She licked her lips, tasting the fruity tang of the oil and the sharp salt of the Beast’s welling pleasure.
Gently, the Beast reached out, cupped her head with his hands, his fingers caught up in her curls, and just as gently, he guided her back down to where he waited, slick with oil and glistening with the touch of Claria’s tongue.
Gladly she went, and keenly she tried, but no matter how much she did try, the girth of the Beast was so that Claria could do little more than simply suckle at the fat, thick head of him, her lips barely covering but half the tip.
But if that was all she could give to the Beast, then she would give to him her best. And so Claria set to it, hollowing her cheeks and swirling her tongue, tasting his pleasure as it leaked from him with abandon.
