Hunted: An Erotic Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (An Adult Fairy Tale Novel) (29 page)

He couldn't, though.  He couldn't because her body controlled his.  He'd first spent himself inside of her within mere seconds of entering her, and then after that it took all his will and control to hold himself back from repeating this humiliation.  She controlled everything about their sexual encounter; the first and the second time.  It was alarming and eye-opening.

The rest was mostly history.  He grew scared of her, feared her power over him.  He'd wanted to seduce a Queen, or more than a Queen, and he couldn't even control himself in the presence of a witch.  Was this love, though?  Was this more?  Was this what he needed all along?

No, not entirely.  Similar to how he toyed with other women, he sensed Beatrix was toying with him.  Not in the same way, though.  He came to realize the difference over his many years of beast-cursed existence.  She enjoyed the game, reveled in it, and did it for the sake of doing it, which was entirely different than his initial logic.  He did it to be better than someone, to prove a point to himself, to add a notch to his belt and brag about it to other men.

Now was different, though.  He understood better.  He had grown greedy and fallen into a similar groove upon first seeing Danya, but that had passed.  It angered him so much to see her fucking other men, to know about it, but why?  Well, of course he knew why; he wanted to fuck her himself.  He wanted to make her his, to own and control her, to bind her to his will, and...

The only thing he knew how to do after he finished with her was to toss her aside.  He never really wanted to do that, but he'd never done anything else.  Perhaps unintentionally, or because of some innate fear dwelling inside him, he'd done it; left Danya after fucking her.  Later, Alena served a purpose, but...

He grew fond of Danya's younger sister, too.  They'd only mated once while he was the Beast, but he felt badly about it.  She reminded him of Dante in a way.  His younger brother was more carefree, despite being what essentially amounted to his indentured servant.  Everett would never use his brother like that, and tried to set some equality between them, but Dante knew it was a lie.  Their father and mother raised them both to be specific things, and no matter what Everett wanted, he couldn't change that.

He thought maybe he could, though.  Later in life, once he took a wife and became the true Master of the Manse, he'd give Dante freedom to do as he liked.  He never ordered Dante around anyways, but sometimes he needed to tell him to do things.  A facade, he thought to himself, just a show, but maybe it wasn't really.  No matter his intentions, Dante was always inherently less than Everett, through simply being born a few years later.

Alena was like that.  He could tell.  She craved affection in a similar way to Dante.  His younger brother hid it well, as he must, but Everett knew.  Alena liked Dante now, too.  They should be good for one another.

He hoped, at least.  The curse wasn't fully broken yet.  It might all come crashing down at any moment.  If Danya decided to leave, if Beatrix abandoned him once more because of his folly, then within a matter of weeks he would return to his beastly form and everyone that he'd freed from their soul-imprisonment would go back into their respective inanimate objects.

He'd almost broken the curse once, or so he thought.  It involved trickery, yes, but it should've worked.  He knew now that it would never have worked, but what did that matter?  He'd lured a woman to his mansion during a storm and donned a heavy cloak to hide his features.  While she slept away her fatigue, he teased her legs apart and played with her feminine folds beneath her skirt.  She kept sleeping, and he moved slowly so as not to wake her.  Using her dreams as fodder for his needs, he somehow managed to push his erection into her wet pussy while she slept.

Slow motions then, not enough to wake her.  Gentle rocking back and forth.  It worked!  Oh, yes, it worked.  Could this go on forever, he wondered?  Hiding his face from her, refusing to let her know that he was cursed to look like some horrific beast?  Rain pattered outside, tapping hard against the window panes, and he pushed in a little more, deeper, and lost himself within the slumbering maiden.

He came hard inside of her, his seed filling her.  She shifted in her sleep then, yawning, smiling.  Her eyes opened slightly and he tried to move away, to hide his horrible and forbidden depravity, but it didn't work as planned.  As he moved back, the hood on his cloak fell away, revealing his yellow eyes, fur-covered face, and sharpened teeth.  The girl woke slowly, or she had, but when she saw him like that and realized what he'd done, she screamed.

She screamed and ran away, fleeing the mansion.  She tried to break through the gates, but they were magic and contained her.  Everett stared after her, watching in the rain, feeding on her fear and arousal.  He could chase her, tie her down, keep her trapped in his mansion forever until he broke through her resistance and she became mindless and willing towards his rapacious intent.

Dante revived then and saw Everett standing there.  He knew.  The look in his brother's eyes as he stared with disdain at Everett was something he never wanted to experience again.  Dante rushed into the heavy rain, wearing nothing more than light clothes which became immediately soaked, and he opened the gates for the girl.  She escaped into the darkness of the woods.

Dante stayed for a few weeks after that, revived and wandering the mansion.  Everett tried to talk with him, but he couldn't do it very well.  He tried to explain, to apologize, to... to what?

Was it Everett's fault?  If he wanted to free everyone, was that really his fault?  What else was he supposed to do?  No woman would come to him, no woman would couple with him normally under her own free will while he remained like this.  Dante vanished again, bound inside of the suit of armor that he'd previously inhabited.  Everett was alone once more.

Danya came, though.  She accepted him.  She stayed.  She was here now, speaking with Beatrix.  Beatrix told him somewhat of her personal desires for staying, but Everett didn't know if any of that would happen.  He didn't care about Beatrix's offer, couldn't even think about it right now.  He just wanted... needed...

"Everett," Danya said, coming up beside him.

In his beast-cursed form he would have smelled her approaching, would have heard the soft falls of her feet along the mansion path.  As he was, he noticed none of this until she was already upon him.

He turned to offer her a sad smile.  "Danya," he said, nodding a greeting.  "I'll open the gates for you."

Using his inherent magic given to him by Beatrix, he focused on the metal gates.  They shuddered and shook, then swung open, offering her a way to escape him.  Why else would she be here, he wondered?  What other reason did she have?

And she left.  Walking through the gates onto the open path winding around the lake and into the forest, Danya left.  Everett watched her go, unsure what more he could do.  Should he say goodbye, or should he remain silent?  Should he close the gates and return to the mansion and beg for Matilda and Beatrix's forgiveness?  Could they stop his curse with their magic and free him from this torment?

Danya didn't go far, though.  She stepped right outside of the gated area, then turned to look at him, offering him a quizzical glance.  He watched her, unsure.

"Will you come swimming with me?" she asked.

"I..."  All sense of words or how to use them vanished from his mind.

"Not in what you're wearing," she added, grinning.  "It's interesting to see you wearing clothes."

She wore clothes, too.  A pale blue dress given to her by his seamstress.  Taya had mostly only crafted clothes of high quality, and then typically only for those who could afford her expensive services, which was essentially no one except his family.  Only his mother had ever worn her exquisite dresses.  Occasionally she gave in and created lesser quality gowns for servants or whatnot, but the seamstress hated it and barely put any effort into doing so.

It somewhat surprised him that she spent so much time and patience on Danya's dress.

"I don't have swimwear," Everett said, stumbling.  Before, once upon a time, he would never have said anything even close to resembling that statement.

Danya winked, then blew him a kiss.  "Neither do I."

"Danya, I..."

"I think I'd like to stay," she said suddenly.  Her expression changed from playful to more austere, as well.  "If I do, we'll need to get to know each other again.  We haven't really done a good job of that, have we?"

Everett nodded.  "No.  I'm sorry.  That's my fault."

"We can still have sex," she said.  "I know the curse will come back if we don't, but to be honest I kind of enjoy it, too."

He gaped at her, jaw dropping.  This was altogether not what he expected.

"I shouldn't tell you this, but I really liked when you buried your nose between my thighs and smelled my arousal," Danya said.  "I guess there's not much of a reason for you to do it now, though.  You can't smell as well, and..."

Oh, he would do it, he thought.  He'd delight in her scent and her wetness and press his nose hard against her clit while plunging his tongue into her depths and savoring her lower lips with his mouth.  He'd... no, no, he couldn't.  He couldn't give in to those urges.  He...

Danya lifted the skirt of her dress up and pulled the entire thing over her head.  Tossing the garment to the ground, she stood before him, naked and smiling somewhat shyly.  Not entirely demure, though, oh no.

Everett stared at her beauty.  Danya wasn't perfect, but he loved her body.  She was real and perfect in that way.  Not fake, not throwing on a million types of cosmetics like many other women he used to know, nor using magic to enhance her appeal.  He didn't mind those things, and in fact enjoyed them sometimes, but... Danya was different.

He stripped himself of his clothes as quickly as possible and threw them into a heap near hers.  She watched him struggling to remove his socks while bouncing back and forth, first on one foot and then on the other.  Once he tossed the last sock away, now standing before her naked, she ran from him.

Laughing, fleeing, sprinting towards the lake, Danya ran.  Everett chased her, grinning.  Before she could escape into the water, he grabbed her by the waist and picked her up into the air, spinning her around.  She giggled and flailed before catching hold of him.  Her arms held onto the back of his neck and he pulled her close to him, embracing her.

"I don't know if this will work," she said.

"I don't know, either," he said.

"We might be terrible for each other."

He nodded.

"None of this started well."

He agreed.

"If you'll try, then I'd like to try, too," she said.  "And maybe... I don't know for sure, but maybe we can take Beatrix up on her offer," she added.  "Not right away.  Not yet."

"I'll try," he said.

"Is this like the legends?" she asked, worry creasing her brow.  "Like the stories?"

"Hm?" he asked.

"Do... do you think we'll live happily ever after?"

"We can try," he said.

She smiled and nodded.  "I'd like that, if we could.  If that's how it works.  I'd really like that, Everett."

They kissed, soft and sweet, holding onto each other while standing at the edge of the gentle waters of the lake.  They would try.  They would live happily ever after.

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~*~

A
nd they all lived happily ever after!  Perhaps.  It's not definitive, but I think everyone has a good chance at it, don't you?

I first started writing this on a suggestion from someone.  They wanted to read a story about obsession and stalking and lust.  I took those ideas and went with them, eventually letting the idea of an erotic fairy tale re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast form in my mind.

I've always been fascinated with fairy tales.  I think they're some of the most interesting stories for a lot of reasons.  Everyone's more familiar with the more recent sorts, where everything ends up wonderfully and everyone lives happily ever after, but fairy tales weren't always like that, you know?  The original Grimm's versions, and others, were darker and contained more grit than otherwise.  To be honest, some of them were downright scary, too.  I don't know if anyone actually told these stories to their children, but if they did then I imagine it was more to keep them from doing things than anything else.  Don't go into the woods at night or the wolf will eat you!  Right?

I kind of wanted to mix the two with this.  I don't like sad or dark endings very much, but I like the idea of darker fairy tales.  I like the idea of some romance and fantasy mixed in, too.  The setting is otherwise relatively ordinary, except... then there's a witch.  And a man cursed to look like a beast.  A magical rose appears, and we learn that Everett's servants are trapped within various items in his mansion.  More and more, onwards, Pinem'e the fallen angel, plus Alena becoming a succubus, another witch, and finally Horatio is revealed as the Timekeeper.

You might have noticed, but this story has a lot of sex, too.  I'm going to be honest and say this is probably the most sex-filled story I've ever written.  A lot of that stems from there being multiple characters, mostly in the form of Danya and Alena.  I can't really just abandon one of them, you know?  While the story is mostly about Danya and her situation, Alena plays an important role in that.  It's kind of about both of them in a lot of ways, and their similarities and differences.  They both feel trapped and stuck in life, but neither of them really realizes it, you know?  Danya thinks that Alena's life is a lot more carefree and easy, while Alena wishes for the exact same things that her sister does.

I liked the parallel of Dante and Everett, too.  They have a similar situation going on among them that Danya and Alena have, but in a different sort of way.  It worked out well, I think.  Dante just kind of shows up on the scene all of a sudden, seemingly, but I really enjoy the allusion of more, too.  Dante
does
appear more through the story, and he's got to be the one who Horatio mentioned earlier (when he said that someone put a pitcher of water on the table, remember?), but he's scared of what's going to happen, and so he hides himself away in his room.