PETALS AND THORNS (6 page)

petals gleamed with the moisture the Beast had taunted her with, like a glossy tropical flower her father had once brought home.

The Beast stood behind her again, watching her closely.

“Soon we shall eat, as you will need your strength tonight. But I wish to show you something first. Oh, and to be clear, you must leave your legs open like this until I give you permission to close them.”

Amarantha didn't tell him that her legs were too spread for her to move at all unless he untied her.

The Beast reached over and plucked one of her makeup brushes from the table. Making sure he didn't block her view, the Beast trailed the long-handled brush over her belly and through the black hair surrounding her sex. With delicate precision, he drew the brush's tip across the topmost part. Amarantha shivered.

Repeatedly he drew the brush tip over her flesh as if painting her. Dipping it into the well of moisture that seemed to bubble out of her without end. She squirmed and panted as he continued. Unable to tear her eyes away, she watched as he drew the silky bristles through the valleys and tickled the peaks.

“A lesson,” the Beast murmured in her ear. He pointed the brush's tip into the little hood near the top of her sex, and Amarantha cried out. “This is your pearl. The seat of intense pleasure.” He drew the brush down and swirled it in the font of fluid below. “This is the portal of love, which guards your virginity and which I may not breach until you beg me to.”

“Unless I beg you to,” she gasped.

She heard the smile in his voice. “
Until
, my bride. This,” he continued, drawing the brush down between her splayed cheeks, “is your nether passage.” He reversed the brush in his hand and slid the rounded end into her puckered opening. “This, Amarantha, has been mine to take from the moment you vowed to obey me.” He pushed deeper, and Amarantha moaned at the invasion. “I am a monster, yes, but a patient one.”

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The Beast stood, taking the makeup brush with him and tossing it into a receptacle.

“Would you care to dine, my love?” he asked with great courtesy, and Amarantha tried to gather her wits.

“Yes, please. My lord.”

“Very well. You wait there and don't move.”

With that, the Beast left the room, left Amarantha splayed open, staring helplessly at her sex. Her father had told her that any ninny could keep her legs closed for one week, and here she sat, legs impossibly spread, filled with restlessness and feeling oddly desperate to give a monster whatever he asked of her.

On the second night.

The Beast strode back in, carelessly crunching over the bits of broken wood and glass. He carried a plate in one hand and a chair in the other. Reversing the chair, he set it behind hers, straddled it, and sat. He speared a bit of meat with a silver fork, brought it around her cheek, and held it to her lips.

The Beast's voice held amusement at her surprise. “I thought we'd dine here, as the view is so lovely.” Amarantha squirmed uncomfortably, but he only chuckled.

“Eat, Amarantha.”

She obeyed, taking the tidbit from the fork. While she chewed, the Beast got a piece of roasted potato ready and set the plate on the floor. He held the potato to her lips and let her take it.

“I've been thinking about what you said,” the Beast mentioned, as if they were having a casual supper. “It is foolish for me to keep these gloves on when you've already seen, and felt, my hands.” She watched in the mirror as, behind her back, he stripped off the gloves and tossed them to the floor. “It's a vain indulgence that has become unwieldy, since it prevents me from feeling your beauty as well as watching it.”

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He leaned over and forked up several pieces of meat and vegetables. She would receive no leisurely feeding like the night before. The Beast seemed impatient to get her fed and on to other things tonight.

Her punishments, no doubt.

He fed her the food, then set the fork on the floor and draped his hands over her shoulders. A man's hands, yes, but covered in golden fur with retracted curved claws where his nails should be. The Beast's fingers trailed over the upper curves of her bosom, tracing the scratches he'd placed there.

Noticing she'd finished that bite, the Beast fed her another, resumed caressing her cleavage with one hand, and dropped the other to her raised knee, stroking the stocking that rose from her laced-up boot. Amarantha stopped chewing. She wanted to pull away, and the Beast must have felt her muscle twitch under his touch. He chuckled and began trailing his fingers up the inside of her thigh.

“Have you finished eating?” He sounded eager, which did not bode well.

“No! I mean, I'm still hungry. May I have more, please?”

The Beast fed her another bite and resumed stroking her inner thigh. He caressed the gentle curve and dropped into the hollow between her leg and her sex.

She couldn't look away. She quivered, wondering how long he'd tease. The Beast's fingers pushed under the fabric at her breast and began toying with her nipple.

Amarantha gasped.

In the quiet manse, a clock chimed midnight. The Beast withdrew his hands, leaving her trembling and bereft.

“Amarantha, I must ask you a question.”

She tried to gather her thoughts, frowning into the mirror. At her elaborate hairstyle and formal makeup with the obscene display of her sex. She almost couldn't quite wrap her mind around both at once.

“Amarantha, my bride, will you beg me to collar you, chain you to my bed, and fuck you?”

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Ah, the question. Impossibly, she'd forgotten.

“No.” Amarantha tried to make it sound firm and clear, but even she could hear the hesitation.

“Very well,” he said, voice even. “Would you care for more to eat?”

Amarantha shook her head mutely. Even to delay her punishment, she couldn't eat any more.

The Beast sighed in satisfaction and slid his left hand into her bosom again, cupping her breast and tweaking the nipple. She whimpered.

“Sore?”

“A bit,” she confided, and he gentled his touch.

“But I think that's not all that makes you cry out.” The Beast placed his other hand on her knee and recommenced the relentless slide up her inner thigh.

Amarantha's breath caught. He swirled his fingers over the velvet-soft flesh high on her leg, feeling the trembles running through her. “Is it, my love?”

With wide violet eyes, she gazed at the cowled figure in the mirror, helpless to form an answer.

“Watch, Amarantha, and feel.”

As if hypnotized, Amarantha watched the Beast's fingers trail through the black fur framing her sex. He petted her, murmuring of her softness, then slid his fingers into the folds, spreading them wide with his first and third fingers.

Amarantha moaned at the sensation, the tension filling her in unbearable waves.

The Beast's middle finger hovered over her virgin portal, dipping into the moisture pooling there.

Then he pressed and dragged his finger in an arrow of pleasure up to her pearl.

Amarantha convulsed under his hand.

Her head fell back as her stroked her. Her body quaked, building with impossible pressure.

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“Please,” she moaned.

“What do you plead for, my love?”

“I-I don't know… Something…”

The Beast swirled his fingers around the outside of her pearl, listening to Amarantha's mewls of pleasure and need.

Then he released her and stood. Amarantha raised her head, bleary and confused, the need riding her.

“That's enough for now, I believe. The craving you feel will help you through the next hours.”

Amarantha gave a wordless cry of protest.

“Tut-tut, my sweet.” The Beast lifted her thigh from the armrest and lowered it to the chair. Her joints protested, stiff from being in such an unaccustomed position. He lowered her other leg too, and she pressed her thighs together gratefully, feeling the slick slide of her arousal.

With efficient speed, the Beast released her arms and waist. Amarantha brought her shoulders forward, groaning with the stretch of it.

“Can you stand?” The Beast held out a courteous hand for her. Amarantha took it and allowed him to help her to her unsteady feet. “Here.” He led her behind the vanity chair. “Hold on to this.”

She clung to the chair. The dazed girl with violet eyes gazed back at her, flushed and disheveled, her skirts tied up with fanciful bows at her waist, framing her slim thighs and the dark V of her sex with cascading silk. The Beast knelt behind her, and Amarantha realized he sought out other ribbons under her hem. As he'd done with the front, he drew up the back of her skirt with the ribbons, neatly tying it so the dress fell only along the sides of her legs, leaving her bottom as bare as the front.

“See?” he asked, obviously pleased. He gestured to the full-length mirror behind her. Her rounded bare bottom peeked out from the frothy folds of the lifted

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skirt. “It will look better,” he assured her, “once I've reddened your bottom.” The Beast gave her a playful spank, and she moaned. He chuckled. “I confess, my sweet Amarantha, that I'm disappointed to have an opportunity so soon for this punishment. Bend over the back of the chair, please, and lay your forearms on the armrests.”

She did as he told her, wincing as the high back dug into her belly. The Beast grasped her hips and eased her up on her toes a bit, so she bent from the hips more.

“Is that better? I suppose the boot heels should have been higher. We'll see to that next time.”

“Or the chair lower.”

The Beast laughed and caressed the uplifted globes of her bottom. “Now where's the fun in that?”

He attached her wrists and elbows to the vanity chair armrests with little hooks. Then he slid her legs apart so that her ankles were outside the chair legs.

The beast used laces from her boots to secure her ankles to the chair.

“Look up, please.”

Amarantha looked at him in the mirror. The chair obscured her straining body somewhat. Not from him, of course, but at least she didn't have to see everything.

“I had thought to leave your breasts covered tonight so they could heal, but I think it wouldn't hurt to expose them a little. What do you think?”

Amarantha wasn't sure what to say.

“I think they'll look beautiful with you in that position, your breasts hanging down like ripe fruit,” the Beast continued in a thoughtful tone. “Let's see, shall we?”

He wrapped his left forearm around her shoulders to stabilize her. In the mirror, Amarantha could see him unsheathe his claws. She closed her eyes against the wicked curves, so she only heard the hiss of material parting, then felt the tight bodice give way. The Beast reached into the corset and lifted her breasts out one by one and hummed his approval. He released her shoulder.

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“Arch your back and raise your chin, please. See? Just as I thought—most enticing.”

Amarantha nodded vaguely. The globes of her breasts did hang like fruit, the nipples cherry red. She suspected that he played with her, drawing out her anticipation of the punishment. No one had spanked her as a child, of course. But she'd watched the servant children wail under willow switches. One little boy accused of filching food from the family's dinner hadn't sat for days.

“Will this be terrible?” she asked the Beast. Her voice trembled. At least helpless longing didn't sap her limbs any longer.

He considered her question. “A punishment does not serve its purpose unless it's terrible enough that you don't care to repeat your transgression. Wouldn't you agree?”

Amarantha held back a sob.

“Now, my bride, you may lower your head. I know that position is a bit of a strain. I will ask you to raise your head from time to time so I may ascertain your expression. Otherwise, you must understand that while you should feel free to weep or cry out, I will not heed any pleas to stop before I'm ready. Agreed?”

“I have no choice,” she returned bitterly.

“No,” he said, sober in his agreement. “Few of us have many choices. You have but one choice.”

“And you punish me for denying you what you want!”

“Ah, Amarantha.” The Beast slid his fingers into the folds of her sex, rubbing her pearl so that she squirmed and strained. “I do this to make you mine in every way.”

With that, he withdrew his hand and spanked her on the bottom. Far harder than his previous, playful smack. Harder than he'd slapped her breasts the previous night. Amarantha cried out in shock and pain. The next blow followed immediately upon it. One upon the other, the Beast's spanks landed on her, viciously and rapidly

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until she couldn't catch her breath. She cried and screamed, as he'd predicted, choking on her tears and pleas for mercy, for forgiveness, but nothing disrupted his relentless rhythm.

She didn't hear him ask her to raise her head, only felt his hand beneath her chin, raising it. She panted wildly, her face soaked with tears, tendrils of hair clinging here and there. She tried to reason with him, hopeful that this would be enough. The Beast held her chin up in his left hand and smacked her tender bottom again, watching her flinch.

He stepped back, and Amarantha thought perhaps it was over and he would untie her. But he parted his cloak and unbuckled the broad black leather belt he wore. Sobs overtook her at the prospect, but the Beast ignored her. Amarantha dropped her head and stared at the seat cushion through the sea of her tears.

She shrieked at the first crack of the belt. The next snapped against her tender bottom before the first cry ended. Again, the Beast never paused in his assault. The rhythm pounded through her, each snap of the belt leather cracking through her flesh and into her soul. The lashes fell on the globes of her bottom, the tender undersides, and the backs of her straining thighs.

Finally, something in her gave way. Amarantha no longer wondered where the next stinging lash would fall. Her bottom felt enormous, propped high in the air, her breasts swollen and swaying with each crack of the belt. Time no longer moved.

Eventually, Amarantha realized the belt had stopped and that the Beast held up her chin again. He pressed up against her throbbing bottom and thighs, bent over her back, her chin clasped in one hand and her breasts gathered together in the other in a light, circling caress.