Beast: Part Two

BEAST
2.

An Erotic Fairy Tale

ELLA JAMES

CHAPTER 1

Annabelle

There’s a window unit humming in the office, and that’s all the sound in the world as I try to straighten out my clothes. My shirt is pushed almost over my head, and my bra is shoved above my breasts, pushing them down and out, as if they’re on display for him. My skirt is jacked up past my belly button. I tug it down to my hips and put my bra and blouse to rights. My panties lie on the cement floor, a slip of red silk he just…annihilated.

My hands shake as I bend to pick it up.

He’s leaning on the desk, just watching me. My jaw tenses and I can feel pressure build behind my eyes when I remember that night, so long ago, at the house party. The way he brought me a cloth.

I move to tuck the thong into my bra, and he steps to me, snatching it away before I even pull the neckline of my blouse down.

“Mine,” he says flatly.

I think I may hate this—the way my eyes widen, the way I swallow whatever I might normally say and just let him have it. It isn’t that I want to submit to him so much as I just can’t seem to form coherent thoughts here in this little room. He fills it way too thoroughly.

Up and down, my gaze flits over him. I’m like a computer program trained to map this man’s body. I note a thick scar on the back of his right hand, a fresh, pink lightning-bolt-shaped scar just underneath his jaw. His face is different. Well, of course. I can see every change, because it’s been years since he’s appeared in a magazine or on TV.

By
any account, he’s gotten even more handsome. Harsher, yes, but also more filled out: his cheekbones higher, lips more rapt, his eyes darker, more cunning. His hair is shorter now, nothing to tug.

In his black
pants and shirt, he looks like the grim reaper. Not the Hollywood kind. Everything about him has turned
realer
. I can feel it.

I press my lips together and try my best to turn off my feelings. If I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll cry.

“I don’t know if I can do this.” Why? Because despite the way he man-handled me, my body is still craving his. Part of me wants to push my skirt up again, lie down on the cold floor, and let him fuck me until I can’t see straight. But the other part of me—the emotional part? That part wants to run.

“You just did,” he says. “You bought
him a reprieve of one day.”

I lose my battle with my tears. They fill my eyes and threaten to
streak down my cheeks.
How did you get like this?
I want to ask, but it’s a stupid question. Prison: that’s how.

He blinks, and I can’t stand how beautiful he is, how wrong he is in this setting. How wrong it is that he just hurt
Holt. Maybe Holt did cheat him. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned Holt isn’t the perfect “Dad” I used to think he was. But that doesn’t erase the wrongness of what Cal—Ricardo—
Beast
did to him just now.

“I really don’
t know you at all, do I?”

“Of course you don’t. Why would you?”

I swallow and avert my eyes. Just because that night was pivotal for me doesn’t mean he should remember me.

I
manage to blink away my tears. I wrap my arms around myself and get the nerve to look at him again. “What are the terms of this?” My voice is soft. My gaze on him is ginger. Because he kind of hurts my eyes.

“Whatever I say they are. Every day, for three hours.”

I shake my head. “I can’t.” I have such an easy, safe way out. “I have to find a job.”

“This is your job.
”

“No, I mean I really have to get a job. I have…bills.”

He turns around and plucks a pen and a sticky note from the desk. He props the pad of yellow Post-Its in one big palm and looks up at me. “What’s your bank account number?”

I laugh—just a little bit, despite myself. “You think I know that?”

He arches one dark brow. “No?”

“Not right off.” I move my arm to dig into my purse, then realize I didn’t bring it with me. I turn a slow circle. There’s my brown leather clutch, on the floor by the door. I scoop it up and pull out the business card that has my bank account number written on the back.

I cup it in my hand and look back up at him. “What are you going to do with it? I mean…exactly?”

“I’m going to put money in it, Angel.”

I bite my lip and try to think of how to get my point across without coming out and saying that I’m broke. “I need to be sure it’s enough. For me to…do this. And not find another job where I’ll be treated better.” I can feel my cheeks heat a little, and it makes me feel ridiculous. Why does he affect me this way? If I feel this way every time I come here, I’m going to get broken.

“I’m not a hoo
ker, you know. I care about my dad, but I’m not having sex any time you ask me to. I’m not that kind of person.”

He closes the distance between us with supernatural-seeming speed. His hands are on my face, bringing my eyes level with his.
And his are blazing.

“What kind of person aren’t you, Angel? The kind of person who fucks without a thought? Who spends half of the day flat on her back, being pounded to oblivion? Or is it me? You’re not the kind of person who fucks
someone like me?”

I blink, and his hands, on the sides of my face, gentle a little. “It’s not you,” I murmur. “I’m just…not a whore.”

“You’re not a whore. You’re
my
whore. If I want to pay you for your time, it’s because I take care of what is mine.”

He release
s my face, and I stare up at him, searching his Cal Hammond face and finding no trace of the man that was.

“I’m not yours,” I whisper.

“You are mine. You’re about to sell yourself to me.”

“Because I have to. Because…”

“Because you want to. You want this. Why can’t you just admit it, Angel?”

My mouth wants to open—to admit he’s right—but my battered pride prevents it. He’s just so…arrogant.

I hand him the card and fold my arms over my chest, watching as he steps back, leans the backs of his thighs against the desk, and starts jotting down my account number. Now’s the time to say more. When he’s not looking at me, crossing the wires inside my brain.

“What you did to Holt was unacceptable. It was horrible. I don’t care if you are in prison. If you’ve turned into someone…violent. That doesn’t make it right. I can’t handle that.”

He blinks coolly. “I’ll decide what you can handle. Incidentally, I’m not in the habit of hurting those who work with me. Of course,” he says drolly, “I’m not in the habit of being swindled out of just shy of a million dollars, either. Holt is special that way.”

I want to tell him,
He was doing it for us
. For Mom and Adrian and me. Instead, I nod and look away.

A second later, he hands me back my card
. I slip it back into my clutch, and gasp as he wraps his arms around my waist and lifts me off the floor. Heat spears through me, making my entire body tingle as he hoists me over his shoulder and steps toward the door.

“What are you doing?”
I cry.

“Getting you out of here
,” he says as he twists the doorknob. “I’ve got a riot to handle, Angel.”

And, to my astonishment
, that seems to be true. The hallway he whisks me down is absolutely silent—it’s almost weird; the men won’t even look at him; the guards just nod us past—but from somewhere not so far away, I hear the roar of many male voices.

I open my mouth to ask him if everything will be okay. I’m worried about Holt. Worried about him
, even—just a little. But I can tell I shouldn’t speak while we’re in this hall. Everything about the atmosphere is reverent.

I hold onto his shoulders as his long strides eat up the distance between the hallway and the
prison’s main entrance. I’m stunned when the woman at the security check point waves us through, and he carries me past two more guards, through two more sets of doors—all the way out of the building.

He sits me on my feet, and I’m double-stunned to see my car pull up in front of us. A trustee wearing orange steps
out, and the ignition cuts off, as if by magic.

I feel his hand pressed against the small of my back for just a breath of time. “Get out of here. A car will come for you tomorrow.”

I swear, as I get into my seat and he lords over me, I hear him say “Eighteen.”

*

This is the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. Hands down. I never thought I’d be raising a child at my age, so that’s weird, too. But this is weirder.

All night, I dream of Beast. The dreams are strange. He’s shirtless, lying on the desk in Holt’s office with his big, hard
, pretty dick out. I can see his hand stroke up and down it. I can feel my pussy getting wet.

Every muscle on his shoulders, ches
t, and abs stands out: pure male perfection. I’m standing above him, and he’s reaching up, stroking my neck. Stroking my hair. Pulling me on top of him and kissing my breasts. He’s banging his fingers into my cunt. He’s whispering my name. His fingers plunge in. Slide out. His hand, on my shoulder, is caressing me.

And then he pushes me
off of him. My feet hit the floor with a gentle smack, and his eyes harden as he tells me to go.

I
t’s not because he doesn’t want me. It’s because he cares for me.

That’
s how, when I’m tangled in my covers, drifting somewhere in between my dreamland and the pre-dawn light, I know I’m only dreaming. 

*

I check my bank account after I shower, and it’s still dismal. We’re down to eleven hundred dollars, which is pretty much five dollars when you have the medical bills we do. I spend the morning in a state of flux, wondering what I’ll do if this doesn’t come through. Maybe I should give in and file for unemployment. What other options do I have?

One of my friends from UCLA keeps joking about how I should
sell my used panties on some pervy web site. How many pairs of panties would it take to pay the bills?

I set my phone
down on the bathroom counter. Lean toward the mirror and press my palms against my tight curls. So I’m broke. This is a problem I understand well enough. If the car never comes, I’ll figure out something. I always do.

But what if he
does
put some money into my account? What if a car really does arrive, as promised?

I haven’t called Holt, even to check on him, and I guess it’s because, deep down, I don’t want to know
what’s going on. I don’t want to know how probable it is that this is happening. That my spending three hours per day with Cal—with
Beast
—is the only thing keeping Holt from being killed for his embezzling.

Aside from the general insanity of Beast’s proposal, I’m also having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that I encountered him again at all. And in such a way…

I rub balm over my lips and try to shut my brain off for a few minutes, but it’s not happening. I see his face on the cover of the magazines I used to hide under my covers. I hear his voice in Holt’s office.

“I am no one that you know. I will hurt you for my pleasure. I will make you pay. Every day you fuck me, I will make you pay.”

Does he mean that?

Yesterday, it didn’t take him very long to come. I came just a second or so later. Which shocked me.

He pulled out and spilled on the floor, and wiped it up with tissues from Holt’s desk. And I felt shame. And elation. And, more than anything else, confusion.

How does someone change that much?

I keep feeling like yesterday wasn’t real—but it was. If the car shows up, what will I really do?

Would he really hurt Holt if I refuse him?

He said three hours a day, but he didn’t say three hours of sex per day. What would we do if we didn’t have sex? And if we did… I feel warm between my legs and shift my stance a little.

I re-tuck the towel that’s sliding down my
still-damp breasts and dab some moisturizer underneath my eyes and on my throat.

I must be even more messed up than I thought. That I didn’
t refuse him outright when he made his screwed up offer. That I didn’t ask more questions about how he has so much control. How does a prisoner have that much control? It doesn’t make sense. He said he runs the gangs, so there’s that, but that doesn’t explain how he was able to walk outside the prison doors.

How is it possible that a former celebrity—a rich boy, sent to prison for a fatal car wreck—was able to turn into…well, Beast?

I look into my brown eyes in the mirror and try to imagine the guy from the house party. It’s been a long time, but I have flickering memories of that night that changed my worldview in a moment. Sometimes when I dream, I can still smell the tang of his blood. Hear the helicopter blades coming to save him. But those images have been painted over by the vivid, ultra-ripped, dirty-talking monster from prison.