Bargain With the Beast

When Tobias Thorn sees a
hooded figure abducting a young girl, he doesn’t think twice before
racing to the girl’s rescue. Only he isn’t quite quick
enough...because the next thing Tobias knows he’s waking up in a
cavernous room, his hands and wrists bound to an equally cavernous
bed, with his chances of escape looking pretty damn
slim.

But Tobias is not a man to
take things lying down. He’s going to find his way back home no
matter what it takes! But then he meets his abductor and realizes
things aren’t quite that simple. Tobias has entered a world unlike
anything he has ever known before. If he wants his freedom, there
is only one way he is going to get it, by making a bargain with the
Beast...

Bargain With the
Beast

A Twisted Erotic Fairy
Tale

by

April Andrews

M/M, ANAL SEX, ANAL
PLAY,

FORCED SEDUCTION, AND
BONDAGE

Twisted E Publishing,
Inc.

www.twistedepublishing.com

A TWISTED E PUBLISHING
BOOK

Bargain With the Beast

A Twisted Erotic Fairy
Tale

Copyright © 2014 by April Andrews

Edited by Marie Medina

First E-book Publication: October 2014,
SMASHWORDS EDITION

Cover design by K Designs

All cover art and logo copyright © 2014,
Twisted Erotica Publishing.

ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED:
This literary work may not be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part,
without express written permission.

All characters and events in this book
are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is
strictly coincidental.

DEDICATION

I have always loved the idea of living
on top of a hill, in a creepy old building, with no access but for
the one hundred crumbling steps below. Imagine sweeping
balustrades, gargoyles a-perch the roof, flagstone floors and
leaded windows. Imagine too how the wind would sound so high up, or
how beautiful the sunshine would be...

When I started
writing
Bargain with the
Beast
, and knowing where Tobias was going
to end up, it made perfect sense for him to live in that imaginary
building of mine. So, thanks go to English Heritage who helped
stoke my muse, and for finding the perfect place for Tobias to
live.

Chapter One

Tobias Thorn was feeling pretty damn
good. No, more than that, he was feeling pretty damn great. As he
made his way up the hundred or so granite steps that led to his
cliff-top apartment, he drew in deep lungfuls of cold, salty air
and felt his ab-muscles contract.

That sensation still surprised
him.

A year ago he hadn’t actually had any
ab-muscles, or at least they were so far buried under layers of fat
that he couldn’t feel them. But now—he grinned to himself as he
raced up the last few steps—now he had all sorts of ab-muscles
going on, not to mention pecs, and lats, and other muscle groups he
hadn’t even known existed.

He paused as he reached
the top of the steps, not to take a deep, no
several,
deep breaths, which was
what he would have had to have done in the past, but just to admire
the view. It had been that which had pretty much sold the apartment
to him on the very first viewing. The entire town was laid out
below him. It sat in a valley, looking almost like it had been
scooped out by a giant’s hand. The land was met by a body of water,
which was fed by the Atlantic, and had some of the highest tidal
surges in the world. The waves were ferocious, loved by surfers and
body boarders alike. Tobias loved them too, though he’d only
started surfing recently. Before that he’d liked to just watch
them. There was something mesmerizing about the way the waves beat
against the cliffs, the way that, bit by bit, they were carving
away at the land.

On the day that he had viewed the
apartment, he had looked down at those fierce waves and known that
this was where he wanted to live—with the wind whipping around his
body, the scent of salt in the air. Had he considered the fact that
buying his apartment meant that there was nowhere to park his ride
except the lot below? Or that he’d be up and down the stairs day
after day after day?

No.

He didn’t regret it
though, because those stairs—and he looked down on them now—had
been the turning point in his life-long effort to get in shape. It
was only being confronted with his lack of fitness
every single day
that
had made him take a good, hard look at his lifestyle, and the
changes that Tobias had managed to make had changed so much more in
his life.

He thought about those changes, and
their consequences, as he turned away from the view and towards his
apartment. It was one of twenty-three in the building that sat,
alone, on the top of this cliff, and Tobias was of a mind that if
the view hadn’t been enough of a reason to convince him to buy, the
building itself was.

Despite the fact that he’d researched
it when the sale was going through, Tobias still didn’t know which
period the building dated from or who had thought to build it up
here, separate for the rest of town. It was almost part castle,
part colonial, part Greek revival, with a smattering of marine
homage thrown in. On one end of his apartment, in the room he had
made his bedroom, he had a glorious arched window, which reminded
him strongly of a church, and yet on the other, in his home gym,
was a round, tinted porthole which made him feel like he was out to
sea. Tobias loved it. At thirty-four years of age, he couldn’t ever
imagine living anywhere else.

He smiled at that thought as he jogged
across the cobbled ground and to the huge, oak front door. The
frame around the door was decorated with a series of drawings, and
so far as Tobias could tell they were part of the original
structure. He’d once spent a half hour looking at them all, at the
howling wolves and the fierce bears, but it was too cold for that
today. Already, now he was on the cliff to proper, he could feel
the bite of the wind on the back of his neck.

Quickly, he pulled his keys from his
pocket and let himself in. The change from howling wind to complete
silence was as startling as always. The building seemed to be built
from the same sandstone and granite that the cliffs were made of,
and it was a wonderful noise reductor. Once inside, and especially
in his apartment, Tobias felt like he was sealed in, able to watch
and enjoy the elements from the warmth of his bed.

He placed his keys back in
his pocket, rubbed his hands together to warm them up then checked
the mail slot for his apartment. There was a small pile of letters,
and Tobias scooped them up into his hand. Briefly, he looked
through them, but there was nothing pressing. He had
nothing
pressing to
worry about at all in his life right now beyond what he might eat
for dinner, and whether to watch the television show that he’d
recorded.

He nodded at that thought and turned
towards the sweeping staircase that would take him to his apartment
on the second floor...then paused.

Another guy was making his way down
the stairs, and when Tobias realized who it was he felt his heart
sink. He looked left, then right then left again, but there was
nowhere he could make a hasty retreat to. Instead, he pasted a
smile on his face and clenched his fist around the pile of
mail.

“
Tobias!”

His neighbor Paul, who lived four
doors down, came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs. He brought
with him a strong stench of whatever aftershave he was wearing, not
to mention whatever the stuff was he had covered his hair in.
Tobias suspected it was some sort of molding gel, though it could
just as easily have been baby oil.

“
Oh, hey,
Paul.”

Paul responded to Tobias’ greeting by,
as he so often did these days, invading his personal space. As he
did so, Tobias couldn’t help but think about how quickly Paul’s
reactions to him had changed. On the day Tobias had moved in, Paul
had given him nothing much beyond a cursory nod and a polite
greeting. But over the last months, as his body became more
defined, as his entire shape changed, Paul had changed too, and it
wasn’t just him. Guys that wouldn’t have given Tobias a second look
a year ago were all over him now. After spending pretty much his
entire adult life struggling to get even a date, Tobias now had his
pick of as many as he liked.

And it was weird...but
he
didn’t
like
it.

Though part of him understood why the
guys at work, and the guys at the gym, were now interested, the
other part of Tobias couldn’t get past the fact that he was still
the exact same person now as he had been a year ago. If they’d
asked him out before he hit the gym, they’d have got the same
conversation, the same interests, the same everything...all except
the body.

Which made Tobias wonder if the body
was all they wanted.

And if so, what was the
point?

Those thoughts raced around his mind
as he took a step back from Paul and tried to work out how soon he
could get away from the other man. Paul negated Tobias’ effort to
put some distance between them by placing his hand on Tobias’
arm.

“
Haven’t seen you around
in a while?” he said.

Tobias shifted. “Well, I’ve been busy,
you know work, and the gym, and stuff.”

Paul grinned and squeezed Tobias’ arm.
“You never told me which gym worked such miracles on
you.”

“
No,” Tobias said. “I
didn’t.”

He meant that to be a way of ending
the conversation, of making his feelings clear to Paul, but the
other man clearly did not pick up on it.

“
Or,” Paul said, and then
his voice lowered, “when we’d be setting up our date.” He grinned.
“I’m still trying to pin you down.”