by C. E. Murphy
The Beast's laughter, from this close, shook the petals of my rose. "Do I?"
"Very. And if your eyesight is poor, I think they would support glasses very nicely. Have you ever asked the servants for any?"
His incredulous look said he had not. "My face is hardly shaped for them."
"If we trimmed this up," I said, not quite touching the longer fur at the bridge of his nose, "I think they might work fairly well. And this only needs trimming so the glasses don't push the fur into your eyes."
"Amber," the Beast said after a pause, "are you proposing to barber me?"
A flush ran through my whole body. I said, "I suppose you could ask the servants," stiffly.
The Beast ducked his head, making his bulk as small as it could be compared to mine, and leaned forward toward my hand, like a dog seeking forgiveness before he seemed to remember himself and pulled back again. His voice, though, was low and remarkably apologetic. "I would be honored if you were inclined to do so."
"Very well," I said, wondering what I'd gotten myself into, "let's go see if we can make you presentable."
A downright genteel barbering area awaited us in the sitting room beyond the foyer. A copper bath large enough for me to swim in and filled with steaming water sat in front of the fire, with bath sheets big enough for most beds hanging nearby to gather the fire's warmth as well. The Beast's usual chair, which was of preposterous size and allowed him to curl up in a variety of cat-like positions, had been replaced by a proper tilting barber's chair, which made me laugh. "Can you even sit in that?"
"I believe so," the Beast said dubiously. "Whether I want to or not is another question entirely. And then there is the bath."
I regarded the bath, which had to weigh two or three hundred pounds empty. "Do you suppose invisibility lends unexpected strength and efficiency to the serving class?" I expected, and got, no answer, but the comment avoided the topic of the Beast bathing in my presence. He was a Beast; it should not, in any meaningful way, matter. But he was also, it seemed, a prince, and he was certainly a thinking being either way, and also male. I was not unfamiliar with either male anatomy or—the phrase that leapt to mind made me wince—animal husbandry, but somehow the entire activity seemed fraught. "Perhaps there could be bubbles."
"Bubbles," the Beast echoed so swiftly that I thought I wasn't the only one finding the situation questionable, and shortly thereafter I politely turned my back while the Beast settled into a tub full of bubbles.
I turned around again when he gave an unusually human-like groan, and found him jaw-deep in the foam, with his mane floating around him like spiderwebs. "I'd forgotten what a hot bath felt like. I don't usually bathe," he said. "Beasts…don't."
"No, I suppose not." He didn't, as I'd half supposed he would, smell of wet dog. His usual muskiness was strengthened, but not unpleasantly so. I smiled suddenly. "You soak there for a few minutes. I'll be right back."
He gave an agreeable grunt and sank a little farther into the bubbles. I hurried off to my room, there to test the khemet perfume on my wrist and to think of its spicy warmth melding with the Beast's scent. Yes: I thought it would do nicely. Pleased with myself, I returned to the sitting room, where the Beast was now little more than a blunt face ringed by bubbles, and on impulse put my fingers in the water to touch his mane. His eyes opened, meeting mine, and I asked, "Will I wash it for you?"
I believed that for a moment he actually stopped breathing, though it was hard to tell with the bubbles. Then he nodded, and sat up with a minimum of spillage. I found lightly scented soap and worked it to a lather before sinking my hands into the warmth of his mane. A quick laugh caught me off-guard and shattered my self-consciousness. "And here I'd thought my sisters had a lot of hair."
The Beast breathed laughter, but said nothing. His skull was huge and heavy under my fingertips, like a mastiff's, and the sheer mass of fur meant it took a long time to massage soap through it. The water never got as dirty or as cold as I thought it should. Nor did the bubbles fade, which I found both considerate and vaguely annoying. I was certainly not peeking, but neither could I deny a certain prurient interest that slowly intensified as I washed and rinsed and combed his mane with my fingers. My mouth was dry and my cheeks hot as I went through the ritual again, working my way from his scalp through to the ends. Coarse strands clung to my fingers and floated in the water until I captured them into a snarl and set them aside. A jug of warm lemon water appeared at my elbow and rinsed his mane with it, working it through to remove the last of the soap. When I was finally done, I set the jug aside and lowered my mouth to beside his ear, where I murmured, "Are you purring, Beast?"
His breath caught, putting a hitch in the purr, and I straightened with a smile. "You were purring. I didn't know you could."
"I don't often have reason to." His voice, for a Beast's, was very soft, as if the edges had been taken away by the purr. He shifted, but before he decided to rise, I cried, "Oh, wait! I forgot!" and withdrew the khemet perfume from my bodice to tap a little onto his own wet wrist. He cast me a curious glance, and though I doubted he needed to to catch the scent, lifted his wrist to his nose to inhale.
"You make perfumes?"
"I'm surprised you don't smell my room from half the palace away. Do you—do you like it? It's an ancient recipe, one I found in the library, and I thought—I thought of it, and you, tonight. I thought…I thought of you."
The Beast, smiling as best he was able, took the vial and pressed the perfume's liquid over his palms before raking his huge hands through his mane, scenting it with my perfume. Then he lowered his hands into the water, washing away the excess scent as I, half trying not to be seen, ducked my head to catch the mixture of his scent and the khemet's. It worked even better than I'd imagined, deep and rich and delicious, and I was dizzy when he turned his dreadful smile toward me.
I looked away while he stood, then shrieked with laughter as he shook himself just as any animal would do, spraying water everywhere. I turned with an accusing smile to find as guilty a look as his face could produce writ large across his features, and a bath towel draped around him like a toga. "Well, go on." I turned away again, still smiling, and a few minutes later he cleared his throat, suggesting a reasonable level of decency had been achieved.
A modest amount, at least: he wore trousers and nothing more, as he'd done the first time I'd seen him. Then, though, he had been full of lashing anger, streamlined and dangerous, and now he was distinctly…fuzzy. His mane, though clean, was a tangle from having been shaken, and toweling had rendered the heavy fur on his shoulders and chest fluffy, without enough time having passed for it to lie down again. I went around the tub to run my hands over his shoulders, smoothing the fur, and he lifted his great paws to just barely capture my wrists as he gazed down at me.
My heart lurched so hard spots danced in front of my eyes and desire stung all the way through me. The Beast was not, perhaps, human, but he was very male, and very close, and wearing the scent I had made for him. Confused, I took a short breath and stepped back. He let me go with such grace that he might not have been holding me at all.
He seemed more like a man to me, somehow, than he had before, although I couldn't convince myself that his form had in any way changed. I whispered, "I should comb your mane before it dries," and he gave the most acquiescent of nods before going to the barber's chair.
My hands, cold with barely acknowledged anticipation, trembled for a long time as I worked a comb through the thick fur. More of it came away, creating shaggy tangles on the floor, and when I noticed a pair of scissors that hadn't been there earlier, I trimmed the ends until they were no longer split and raw. A leather tie came to hand just as I thought I might want one, and I combed his mane back to tie the upper bulk of it in a tail that revealed those unexpectedly elegant ears. All that was left were the eyebrows, which I couldn't reach without tilting the chair back so he would lie beneath me. I worked out how to—a handled gear did the trick—and cautiously tippe
d the Beast back toward me. He looked up at me a little cross-eyed, murmuring, "I confess I find the idea of scissors near my eyes slightly alarming."
"So do I. I'll be careful." I couldn't, though: my hands shook too much each time I came near his over-growing brows, and I finally tucked the scissors into my bodice and breathed deeply. "I can't. I can't do it upside-down. I'm not sure enough of myself."
"You could," the Beast began in a tone that suggested he was about to say something amusing. He stopped so quickly, though, and looked so distressed, that I was all too easily able to follow his thought, and why the humor in it had gone suddenly flat.
Without giving myself time to think, I said, "I could," and came around the chair to climb onto it, too. To climb onto the Beast, though once I set myself in motion it was less a climb than a lift: he caught me with one tremendous hand and scooped me into the chair with him as if I weighed as little as a pillow. Heat flushed through me, coloring my cheeks and speeding my heartbeat until I could hardly breathe, and even so, I couldn't help but be aware that our shared thought had been predicated on the Beast being a man.
He was not. Had I been lifted so easily into a man's lap, I would have been in his lap, even if the nominal goal was to trim his eyebrows. The Beast was too much larger than I for that, and to make things more difficult, he was lying back thanks to the barber's chair. In order to put our faces near to one another, I ended up more across the sharp angle of his ribs than his hips. I doubted my weight bothered him at all, but I felt uncomfortable and absurd.
He dropped his hand and released the chair's catch, sitting up to let the chair move beneath him, and then I was in his lap, with his warmth and bulk and the spicy depth of his scent surrounding me. He had a beast's ability to smell. I was quite certain of what my own scent told him, and wondered if my too-fast heartbeat gave me away as well. I felt wild, as if madness had overtaken me, and as if I had no wish to be brought back to sanity.
His mouth was not made for kissing. Nothing either of us could do would change that, but our foreheads touched and I closed my eyes, listening to the tandem harshness of our breath and searching for just a little more bravery. He whispered, "Amber," precursor to a familiar question.
Somehow it gave me the courage I sought. I whispered, "Beast," in return, swiftly curving in on myself to find his jaw, so I could kiss that, at least.
The scissors I'd put in my bodice jabbed my belly, and I flinched back from the Beast with a bellowed, "Ow! Stars and stones and by the dying mother sun, fuck, that hurt!"
The poor Beast elevated from the chair, setting me on my feet and backing away with the haste of a creature who thought he'd damaged me. I withdrew the bloodied scissors, still cursing, and pulled my bodice out so I could see how badly I'd hurt myself. Badly enough: blood oozed from a hole beneath my breastbone, and I pushed the bodice against it again, both to staunch the small wound and for the pain-easing relief of pressure. By then the Beast had retreated halfway across the room, and I snarled—unfairly, but pain brought out the worst in me— "It wasn't you. I put the sun-blasted scissors in my bodice so I could trim your eyebrows and then forgot they were there. I jabbed myself."
Halfway through the explanation its absurdity began to strike me, and although it still hurt like the moon's broken heart, I concluded with a reluctant laugh. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you. It wasn't your fault."
The Beast passed a hand over his eyes in the most human gesture I'd seen from him yet, then threw the motion away. "The servants had better take a look, then. Clean it, heal it if they can. I'll leave you to it."
"Beast," I said in a smaller voice, as he left the room, "will you—will you be at dinner?" It wasn't the question I meant to ask, but I lacked the boldness for the other, though only a minute earlier, the other's answer had been at hand.
He stopped at the door, looking at me. Studying me, as if he'd heard the question I hadn't asked, the one he asked every night, before shaking his great head once. "No, I don't think so. Not tonight. Good night, Amber."
I waited until he was gone, then let out a bereft little laugh, and let the servants tend to my injury.
They gave me a potion so potent I didn't care that they also gave me two stitches, or that each breath stung a little. I kept my eyes closed through all of it, conscious that I believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was easier for the invisible staff to do their jobs if I wasn't trying to watch them do it. Their humming and fussing seemed less muted than usual, as if the drink had rendered me closer to their state. I found the consequent higher pitch of their buzzing disturbing, even upsetting, and as soon as they seemed done with me, fled the parlor-cum-bathing-room.
In my altered state, I was not at all surprised that I could not find my rooms. I marched down the hallway, occasionally bumping off the walls and equally often picking myself up from the floor, and waited for the enchantment to take advantage of my muddled head. Even expecting it, I still didn't quite notice when the visions began, perhaps because they entwined nicely with my half-acknowledged fantasies of the Beast. They faded together, blood-heating images of my great Beast with my knees over his shoulders and his tongue between my thighs, and equally aching visions of my hands knotted in a dark-skinned woman's hair, urging her tongue to carry me to ecstasy. She crawled up my body, burying her fingers within me, a thing even fevered imagination admitted the Beast and his claws could not do, and lingered at my breasts until I cried with need and pleasure. She covered her mouth with mine as I broke for her, and she whispered, "How could I go on without you, my Nell?" as I shuddered and gasped and sank back into the sheets.
"You would find a new king," I murmured, when I could speak again. "A new man to pleasure you in bed, while I stood by and went mad with jealousy."
"Never."
"But you would." I rolled my queen onto her belly, stroking her thighs until they began to part. "You miss a man's touch. You still say his name at night, sometimes."
"Your touch is all I want right now." The queen's voice was ragged, and grew more so as I teased promises from her in the pursuit of satisfaction. Then, because I could, I refused to finish her until she had brought me to a head again, and her desperation to please made my release all the sweeter.
She went away often, did my queen, and I could never quite forgive her for it, no matter how important the treaty, no matter how necessary the war. I would dress her in her armor and leave her wanting, so she would remember to come back to me, and I recalled her sensual, shameful flush when her desire was so great that mounting her horse cascaded her into release. I teased her mercilessly when she returned from that campaign, urging her to admit to the thrill she'd felt with a beast between her legs. "No one," she promised me, "no one could ever love a beast as I love you."
While she campaigned and I sated myself with her love, the prince grew from a child to a youth, always standing at my side as his mother rode away. "Why does she always go?"
I put my arm around his shoulder, kissed his hair, and replied, "Because she doesn't love you like I do, my sweet." He turned a gaze on me that would have broken his mother's heart, but I was not his mother, and never had been.
Time passed: Irindala came and went, her son growing in leaps and fits from a youth to a young man. He had his mother's look about him: large dark eyes and curling black hair, and in time, I saw all that I desired about her reflected in him. He charmed and flirted, delighting the ladies of the court, and though I taught him to dance and seduce with his gaze, he never turned that sweet look on me. A worm of envy began to grow in my breast, that others should have what I did not. Irindala returned home and to my bed, and for a little while I was satisfied, until late one night, our limbs tangled together, light and dark, she murmured to me that she would bring her son with her on her next campaign, so he could begin to learn politics in the real world, and not just from books.
My heart cracked, not with fear, but with anger. "Are you sure he'll want to go?"
"It's his duty."
<
br /> "And you'll leave me here, alone, with neither of you?"
"Who better to watch over my kingdom while we're gone?" She put herself above me and showered me with kisses, but even her hunger to satisfy me could not thaw my anger. I would not be abandoned by both for the sake of politics; the son could be sent to try his uncertain hand, or Irindala could go alone, but I would not lose them both. They belonged to me, Irindala because she loved me and the boy because I had raised him for her sake. I would have no other answer but that one of them would stay and be mine. But Irindala was accustomed to leaving, and I knew I could never keep her. The boy, then, would stay, no matter what enchantment I had to work to make it so.
I had done no magic since giving Irindala the boundary spell that she had worked with her husband's bones and her own blood. I had not needed to: she had been willingly seduced, and the power of being the queen's lover and confidante was stronger in human courts than almost any faery magic could ever be. We were creatures of magic, shaped in form by our desires, and the longer we went without using our power, the stronger it became, distilled in our blood. The boy did not see me with a lover's eyes, and so I made myself into a thing that he would: sweet and bosomy, with hair like his mother's, and a boldness that would run suddenly dry and require coaxing to be brought again to the fore. I let him seduce me, leaving him never knowing that it was I who seduced him.
I came to the court by day a precious creature lost in wonderment, even foregoing the roses I so often embroidered into my clothes, so that I might not be measured against my other self, Irindala's lover. By night I went to Irindala's bed, more passionate than ever from the pursuit of her son. The same touches that brought cries from her throat elicited shudders in the youth: teasing lips plucking nipples, curved nails scraping sensitive centers. No faery was ever more sated by love and desire than I, but rage clouded my joy whenever the queen mentioned her next journey, and her intention of taking her son with her. "The courtiers say he has a mistress, my queen. Perhaps he won't want to leave her."
