Seven Kisses: A Beauty and the Beast Dark Romance (12 page)

“Gabrielle, is that you?”

“Fidel?”  Her whole body trembled as her sopping shoes led her to the door.  “I came back to save you. I’m not doing the best job. Is it safe to come out?”

“They’re gone,” he assured her. “Open the door.  We’ll run away together. I’m ready to go.”

When his words reached Gabrielle through the thick wooden door, a wave of relief washed over her. Too good to be true, and yet that was Fidel. Though he’d only spoken to her on the occasion of her release, the confident tenor of his voice hadn’t left her mind. 

“Wait a sec,” she said. “I’ll open the door.”

The lock made a raspy metallic sound when she slid it to the side, then unlatched the bar.

“Hurry up!” he cried.

“I know. I am. I’m sorry.”

Heaving the door open, she met the beast face to face.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, starting to launch herself into his arms before remembering her clothes were soaked through. “I’d hug you but the rain got me first.”

He didn’t move or speak or even laugh. She read fear in his eyes as he looked down at her wet clothes, never quite meeting her gaze. She looked down at his, too, except that he wasn’t wearing any. His bare skin blazed with red streaks and purple welts. He held both hands behind his back.

“Fidel, what happened to you?  Did Madame do this?”

His lips pursed tightly. When he opened his mouth, all that came out was, “I’m sorry.”

“For what? It’s not your fault.”

Rather than stepping out of the way, Fidel entered the library. Mme de Villeneuve followed him inside.

The collar!  How could she not have noticed the collar?

“I’m really sorry,” he said, choking the words out just before Madame struck him in the gut with her elbow.

The last thing Gabrielle saw before she blacked didn’t make any sense. It looked like Madame was holding lightning in the palm of her hand.  When she pressed it to Gabrielle’s chest, the end approached like a star bursting into oblivion.

Chapter 13

Ohhh my arms… why do my shoulders hurt so much?

Gabrielle’s head felt like a bowling ball. Her skin blazed and her insides felt electric.

“It’s okay. You’re okay. I promise I’ll get you out of this.”

Her eyes flew open and she shrieked when she realized her body was pressed up against Fidel’s. When she squirmed, she found out why her arms hurt so badly: they were strung up over her head, her wrists attached to Fidel’s by chains hanging from the ceiling. Her toes barely touched the ground.

Gabrielle shrieked. “Where are we?”

“Torture chamber,” Mme de Villeneuve said from somewhere behind her.

“One of many,” Fidel added.

What? Why does a rehab clinic need a torture chamber?

Stepping into Gabrielle’s field of vision, Madame said, “I keep it here for patients who attempt escape before their program is complete.”

Bile rose in Gabrielle’s throat. “Who wouldn’t try to escape when your therapy is tying up patients and raping them into submission?”

“Tsk!” Waving a dark leather paddle, Madame said, “You sound just like the medical board. They will approve drug treatments that cause bleeding ulcers and birth defects, but propose a style of therapy that’s a little unconventional and suddenly they’re revoking your license to practice medicine. It’s all politics.”

“Ummm… right,” Fidel muttered.

A single bulb burned overhead, and it buzzed every time anyone spoke. The room had obviously been some sort of group showering facility at one time. The tiles glowed grimly underneath a thick layer of dirt: blue, white, mint green.

“Is there a reason we’re both naked?” Gabrielle asked.

Fidel’s cock hardened noticeably. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“I have so many problems with this. Where do I even start?”

“Enough chatter!”  Mme de Villeneuve struck Fidel’s ass forcefully enough to launch him clear off his feet.  “I will not allow your punishment to turn into a soppy fairy tale sex romance.”

Gabrielle leapt off the tiled floor, wrapping her legs around Fidel’s waist.  “
Fairy tale sex romance
? What does that even mean?”

Madame ignored Gabrielle and spanked Fidel with the paddle. This time it really must have hurt. He cried out in a pain so bold it blew the few dry tendrils of hair away from Gabrielle’s face.

“Stop it!” she cried, clinging to him tighter as they swung from the ceiling. “Can’t you tell he’s in pain?”

“I hope he
is
in pain. I hope he feels even half the pain he’s caused me.”

She whacked him again, this time catching Gabrielle’s toe with the edge of the paddle.

“Holy Mother!” Gabrielle cried.  Not only did the pain from her toe radiate throughout her body, but Fidel chose that moment to sink his teeth into her shoulder. She could feel his erection hammering her slit too, but she didn’t make mention of that, only climbed a little higher up his body so Madame wouldn’t catch her toes again. “What pain has he caused you?” she asked their cruel mistress. “Whatever it is, he doesn’t deserve to be treated this way.”

“What do you know about it, you seductive little minx?  Girls like you are the reason women like me can never get ahead. Buxom little tarts who prance around my woods, always on display, always tempting the eye.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gabrielle cried. The chain above their heads began to twist, sending them spinning in nauseating circles.  When they came to rest, she asked, “Women like you? What women?”

Masked in a cough, Fidel said, “Denial.”

“Pardon me?” Mme de Villeneuve shouted.

“Nothing. Is it dry in here?”

Madame spanked him again. “Shut your useless mouth.”

“Useless?” Gabrielle laughed. “He obviously hasn’t put his face between your withered old legs lately.”

“It’s been years,” Fidel whispered, and she could hear a smirk in his tone of voice.

“You brats! You testy little brats, the both of you!”

As they spun on the chain, Madame brought down the paddle once again. Instead of smacking the beast this time, Mme de Villeneuve struck Gabrielle square on the ass.

She screamed as tendrils of pain travelled her nerves. “What’d you do that for?”

“What does she do anything for?” Fidel asked. “She spends her days treating everybody else’s problems, but she couldn’t see her own issues if you put them under a microscope.”

“Children!”  Mme de Villeneuve smacked Gabrielle’s ass again, and the pain it aroused simply blinded her. For a few seconds, her field of vision devolved into a thick haze. She struggled to keep her head up and failed, letting it fall to Fidel’s shoulder. “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic,” Madame chastised. “It’s only a tap on the bum.”

“I think my shoulders are coming out of their sockets,” Gabrielle mumbled.

“How do you think I feel?” Fidel asked. “You’re hanging on me.”

She tried to unwrap her feet from behind his back, but got scared half way and ended up with her feet wrapped around his thighs. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“After everything I’ve given you,” Mme de Villeneuve cried. “After everything I’ve done, this is how you thank me?”

“This isn’t even about me,” Fidel shot back. “It’s about you. Why can’t you see that? If you’d just admit you love pussy, you wouldn’t be so nutso all the time. It’s no big deal. You’ve got this weird fear of yourself and you let it take over your life.”

Gabrielle joined in to say, “Yeah, this isn’t the 1840s, Madame. Nobody cares about that stuff anymore.”

“I am not a Sapphite!” Madame cried, punctuating every word with an unforgiving blow to her bum. “How can you think such a thing, Fidel?  I made love to you, did I not?”

“Yeah, twenty years ago.” He leaned back and looked at Gabrielle. “Thirty? Forty? How many years have I been here? Fifty?”  He cocked his brow. “Ten?”

Gabrielle couldn’t answer. She could barely hear his voice beyond the ringing in her ears. Every nerve ending, from her toes all the way up to her scalp, seemed to react to the cruel spankings Madame sent her way. How could Fidel be so nonchalant? How could he just take the pain?

Maybe he was used to it.

Through the foggy ringing haze in her skull, Gabrielle moaned, “If you’re not attracted to girls then why did you take me? And not just once? Again and again and again…”

The memories stabbed at her brain like an icepick. Why did her guilt around the beast’s attacks feel distant and irrelevant now, but the thought of Madame molesting her still filled her with shame?

“Don’t let on that you like it,” Fidel whispered.

His breath sent a shiver right through her. “Don’t let on that I like what?”

Fidel’s cock twitched between her legs. As the paddle dealt out punishment, Gabrielle took his meaning. Madame’s blows sent her into a frenzy so fierce she struggled and writhed, but she soon realized half her purpose was not to escape, but to provide an escape for Fidel. Her mind blazed with the fires of hell, but she just kept moving her hips, climbing his body until his tip pressed against her slit. So close…
so close
… if he just held that position while she let her body drop down little… by little… by little…

As Madame pummelled Fidel’s ass, his body thrust forward. He filled Gabrielle’s pussy with such unrepentant force she screamed uncontrollably. When he groaned, she was reminded of the beast she’d first encountered in the basement of this horrible home.  Gabrielle didn’t mean to look in Madame’s direction. Perhaps she only did it because she knew there’d be trouble if they were caught fucking while taking their punishment. She met Madame’s gaze completely by accident, but once they’d exchanged that look there was no going back.

“Oh no,” Mme de Villeneuve growled.

Gabrielle whimpered as Fidel’s cock pulsed inside her.

“No,” Madame repeated.

“Yes,” Fidel groaned. “Oh yes, do that. Do that.”

Gabrielle’s pussy trilled, milking his cock like a tight little fist. It felt so good to have him inside her that her muscles went into spasm. A strange fleeting orgasm ripped through her body.  She couldn’t hide it.

Madame’s grey eyes turned black and beady. “How
dare
you? He’s mine!” She punished Gabrielle’s ass with the paddle before turning the instrument on Fidel. “And you!
She’s
mine too!”

Spinning in the heady heavens of desperate pain, Fidel and Gabrielle looked into each other’s eyes… and laughed.

“Stop it! Stop laughing at me!”

They couldn’t contain their mirth. It was a living thing, shared and exchanged in sparkling eyes and hysterical laughter.

“Stop it!”  Madame attacked them with the paddle, relentlessly, joylessly, like she was swinging a cricket bat at their bodies. “Stop laughing!”

The heaven and hell of pleasure and pain soared through the one body they now inhabited: the beast had two backs, and so did the beauty, and both were each. And when they kissed, Mme de Villeneuve’s curses floated away on a cloud of searing pain. Their bodies were only flesh. As they remained connected yin to yang and mouth to mouth, their spirits became one. They kissed shamelessly, and they paid for it. They were so battered they could no longer feel their skin. It grew numb behind layers of love and pain.

All that remained of life was the cascade of him into her. Her cries filled his mouth when she sensed his arousal expanding into bliss.

“No!” Madame growled, brandishing her paddle over her shoulder like baseball bat. “How dare you betray me this way? I banish you, Fidel!”

“You banish me?”  An unexpected pain rang out in his voice.

Turning her nose up, Madame said, “You are not welcome here anymore.”

His voice cracked as his cock slipped from between Gabrielle’s legs. “I’ve lived here for ten… twenty… seriously, what year is it?”

“Fidel!” Gabrielle cried, clinging to his wretched body. “Why would you even want to come back? She banished you. That means you’re free! We can leave together unencumbered, just me and you! Forever!”

Fidel’s eyes widened like saucers. “Whoa… we haven’t really talked about this, Gabrielle.”

When she heard her own voice in her head, she realized how cloying that must have sounded. “Sorry, that just slipped out. Forget I said anything.”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to forget when a woman basically proposes to you.”

“That’s not how I meant it.”

“That’s sure what it sounded like.”

“I know, but I take it back. I never said it. Okay?”

“Not okay.” Leaning back, he looked worshipfully into Gabrielle’s eyes. “I’ve just been banished, Gabrielle. I’ve got nowhere to go. I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than at home with you.”

“Oh, Fidel!”  Gabrielle tightened her calves around his thighs because she couldn’t hug him with her hands bound over her head. Just as she inched forward to lay a kiss on his lips, a bright flash of rage flickered from across the dirty tiled room. Everything happened in slow motion after that.

In her black cat suit and impossible heels, Madame stepped forward, paddle in hand.  Her words echoes off the tiles: “How
daaare
you?”

Gabrielle had never seen anger like this, and she wasn’t sure whether it was meant for Fidel or herself or the pair of them. But when Madame swung the paddle, she reacted. Fidel didn’t. His eyes widened as the paddle came at him on a sideways trajectory.

“No!” Gabrielle screamed as she turned away from the attack.

In her mind’s eye, all she could see was Fidel’s silent mouth hanging open as the deafening crack echoed through the room.

All sound disappeared into a fuzz of white noise. Pain drained through her toes, and she wondered if she was dying. She wondered if she was dead. No. Because she could feel Fidel’s blood trickling down her chest. She could feel its warmth against her skin, and then its sheer ice coldness when it trickled all the way down to her belly.

When her auditory sense returned, it was to the sound of Madame grumbling. “Look what you did! You broke my paddle, you ass! Now I’ll have to find something else to kill you with.”

“Whaaa…huh?”  Fidel’s chin fell against Gabrielle’s shoulder. He picked his head up, then dropped it back down, letting out a terrible moan.

Gabrielle didn’t want to look. She could smell the metallic warmth of his blood and she knew if she saw the state of him, everything would change.

And yet they were bound together. How could she not see him?

“Whaaa… what happened to me?”

Fidel’s cheek was sliced open from his temple to his jaw. His eye was red and swollen, but it was his nose that made her stomach turn like a tumble dryer. It wasn’t at all where it was supposed to be.

“You’re okay,” she said, her voice quivering. “You were hit with a paddle, but you’ll be fine. Your nose is just a little… sideways.”

He lifted his head, but obviously couldn’t keep it up. It circled around and fell on her shoulder. “I’m too ugly for you,” he mumbled. “I’m a monster. I’m a blood monster. I’m a beast.”