Beauty and Her Beastly Love (Passion-Filled Fairy Tales Book 2)
Read Beauty and Her Beastly Love (Passion-Filled Fairy Tales Book 2) Online
Authors: Rosetta Bloom
Copyright 2015 Rosetta Bloom
All Rights Reserved
V160817BB
Many of our favorite fairy tales from childhood, such as The Princess and the Pea, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella, originated centuries ago. Over the years, they’ve been told and retold by different authors in different media, each retelling adding its own spin. Here, we take these classic tales and give them a spin that is full-on sexy. While these tales are not the bedtime stories you would ever read to a child, they are definitely meant to be enjoyed in bed. These retellings preserve the base of the story, but add new twists and include passion, lust, and the fulfillment of carnal desires. I hope you enjoy them.
-May your love always be in bloom.
-Rosetta
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(Book version: V160817BB)
Beauty ran her finger over the imprint of the rose on the leather-bound book, savoring the supple feel of it beneath her fingertips. It was smooth and firm, yet soft enough that it felt almost like skin. She wondered briefly if it felt like the skin of a man’s erection. The type of man she’d read about in this book. In the other books like it.
She smiled to herself, her red lips curving crookedly as she thought about what she’d just read in this book’s pages. The man and woman in their bedroom, the passion with which he’d removed her clothing: speedy, furious, ripping, tearing, beastly. The moans of pleasure that escaped her as he took her. Their bodies naked, groping, clinging to each other.
Beauty wondered if these books were true. Yes, she knew that men and women bedded each other, but the passion with which the people in these books acted and reacted seemed unreal. Were there really people out there that loved each other so fully, that reacted so primally, fiercely and all-consumingly? Did people really do those things? Did they really touch each other like that? The warmth between her legs hinted that it was very real indeed, but she didn’t know for sure. She might never know. Beauty was rarely allowed around others. She lived in the country with her father, Pierre LaVigne. He was a kind man who made his living farming. He grew grapes and made wine, but he lacked spirit.
He was a man broken by loss. The loss of her mother, Celine. Renowned for her beauty and horticultural skills, her mother had taken ill suddenly and died when Beauty was just six years old. Pierre had persevered, and her older twin brothers, Marcel and Maurice, had pitched in to help. The vineyard had run smoothly until Beauty turned 12. Until then, Beauty had been able to walk the two miles to town and attend school or visit the shops or market. Then Marcel and Maurice had become ill working in the fields. They died within a day of each other. It was so sudden, so quick, that Pierre was in shock. He could do almost nothing.
Nothing but pull in the reigns. He farmed less land, grew fewer grapes, made less wine, and demanded that Beauty stay at the homestead only. He allowed her to help press the wine, but never to work in the fields the way her brothers had. She milked the cow, tended the vegetable and flower gardens and sometimes read over the gardening journals her mother had left.
Often she read. Her father indulged her love of books, letting the local shopkeeper, Giselle, bring her books from Giselle’s personal library. Giselle was also supposed to answer feminine questions that Pierre, as a man, would have no clue how to answer. Beauty loved Giselle’s visits and all the books she brought. When Beauty was younger, she offered to read to her father or asked him to read to her, but he wasn’t a man who enjoyed whimsical books like she did. He enjoyed the farmer’s almanac and sometimes books on hunting, but nothing like the fantastical things Beauty enjoyed reading. In the last year, Beauty had been glad of her father’s disinterest in her books. He rarely looked at the books Giselle brought.
About a year ago, right after Beauty had turned 17, Giselle had looked Beauty in the eyes and handed her a leather-bound book with the imprint of a flower on it. It had no real title, in terms of what one thought of as a traditional title. It simply said “Volume I” at the top. In the center of the cover was the imprint of a rose pressed deep within the leather, and at the bottom, in seductive script, was the author’s name: Ferus Lucunditas.
The old woman, her graying brown hair wrapped neatly in a scarf to keep out the oncoming winter chill, whispered to the girl: “These are special books.” Giselle’s dark brown eyes glanced around the room, as if she expected Beauty’s father to come in from the fields and chastise them. “This is the first volume, and it discusses things women should know, things you ordinarily might learn only when you are in your husband’s home. But, your life is so sheltered here, I worry that your father will not ensure your betrothal, or that you will fall into a pattern of contentment here, that you won’t push to leave him. Read this so that you may learn there is more out there.”
Beauty had looked down at the book, the curiosity Giselle seeded already beginning to grow. More. Giselle had called it more. Yes, there was more to the world than this quaint vineyard outside of town. There were bakers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, artisans, bookkeepers. There were families with husbands, wives, and gaggles of children. Beauty knew all these things, but the way that Giselle had said “more,” she’d known it meant something else, something that was so much more.
She’d known instinctively by Giselle’s demeanor and words that she should not read the book around her father. Even though he never expressed much interest in her books, she knew this one should be kept from him, that it would not be right to even read the book in the same room with him.
She was so glad that she had trusted her instincts. The night she’d read that first volume, she had been so shocked she gasped. Then she read it again, because she liked it. She read it a third time and touched herself, her fingers getting slick as she tried to create the sensations that had been described so vividly on the pages. She could almost feel the young man from the volume caressing her breasts, the way he’d caressed the heroine’s, sliding his fingers slowly, softly down her abdomen until he reached the tuft of wild hair that shrouded her womanhood. The thought made her shiver with desire.
The door to the house banged open, and Beauty sat up straighter, lifted the book from her lap and tucked it into her sewing basket, just as her father entered the room.
“Beauty,” he said, pronouncing her nickname with warmth. Though her given name was Angelina, everyone had called the girl Beauty since she was old enough to walk. “Are you alright, dear? You look flush.” He turned and looked at the roaring fireplace, then at the windows, which were shuttered for the winter. “Are you too hot?”
Beauty shook her head at her father. Pierre was a stout man, with white hair atop his head and a matching beard. Some of the school children thought he looked like St. Nicholas, but Beauty simply laughed at the notion. Her father was a kind man, who happened to look older than his years because he was so marred by experience.
“I’m well, Papa,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”
He sighed. “Sometimes, I think that’s all I do, Beauty.” He took off his coat and hung it on a hook near the fireplace in their cottage. The front door opened into the main room. The house also included a kitchen and two tiny bedrooms. One for Beauty and one for her father. Had Beauty’s mother, Celine, lived, there might have been more children. But they all had died: Celine, Maurice and Marcel. Now, it was just Beauty and Pierre.
Beauty stood and walked to the corner, where a jug of ale sat. “Father, would you like me to warm you a mug?” she asked as she picked up the jug and a tin cup that she could warm over the fire.
Pierre shook his head. “No, my dear,” he said, sighing. “Sit, sit. I have news for you.”
Beauty set the jug down and walked back to the armchair she’d been sitting in when her father had entered. He sat across from her in the other armchair. Their home was modest, but these chairs, pieces her mother had brought with her from her own home, were ornate and plush, even after all these years.
“What is the news, Papa?”
He looked down at his hands, then at Beauty. “My dear, you know your kind tutor who brings you books each week, Giselle?” Beauty nodded. “Well, for some time she has been prodding me to arrange for your marriage. She says I’m getting older and if these things aren’t done, and something were to happen to me, you would be destitute, and no telling what would happen.”
Beauty nodded. Giselle had told Beauty much the same. And she had given her the books. So, Beauty had yearned for her own reasons to be wed. She tried not to smile at the thoughts of what that would mean, at the pleasure of what she would experience upon being wed, assuming she were wed to a kind man, like the ones in the books. “You’ve found a match?”
“I think,” he said. “I need to set off tomorrow to finalize the deal. The young man’s family is a day’s ride from here. His father sent word he’d like to make the arrangements tomorrow, before winter takes hold too strongly. And then in spring, when the thaw comes, you will be married.”
Beauty smiled, an appropriate smile. “Papa, I thank you for your hard work on this,” she said. “Might I inquire more about my husband, briefly?”
He smiled kindly, for he always seemed to appreciate Beauty’s inquisitiveness. “Of course, Beauty.”
“Is he kind?” she asked, for that was the only thing that mattered. She didn’t care if he were handsome, as that faded over time. Her father was the perfect example. He was supposedly quite a catch in his day. His looks were gone, as were a few of his teeth, but his kindness remained. She imagined a cruel man would be forever cruel.
Pierre chuckled. “You always get to the heart of things, my dear.” He pursed his lips and thought for a moment. “From the accounts of many in town, he is a prosperous young lad who hopes to inherit his father’s business as a lumber man. No one has told me they have seen him being cruel, so I can only assume he is a kind man. I actually met the man at Giselle’s shop. She is a good judge of character, so I’m sure him being with her is a good sign.” He smiled and gave Beauty a reassuring pat on the hand.
Beauty nodded. Giselle was a good judge of character. Beauty’s smile grew wider, as she thought briefly of the passage she had read the other day. “He was gentle and kind to all he met, but at night in the bed chamber, his kindness caused screams of pleasure to me, his mistress, as he unleashed his unbridled passion on me.”
Her father chuckled again. “Beauty, you are positively delighted by this news,” he said. “I am surprised. I thought maybe I was rushing you, that maybe I was mistaken, doing this too soon.”
“Oh, Papa,” she breathed out. “Part of me is sad at the thought of leaving you, but the other part of me does yearn, a little, to know a life in my own home, as an adult.”
He reached out and patted her hand again. “You shall, my dear. Soon enough, you shall.”