Seven Kisses: A Beauty and the Beast Dark Romance (3 page)

Chapter 5

These dreams, these dreams: strange and troubling nightmare scenes…
 

What Gabrielle wouldn’t give to trade them for visions of sugar plums!  Heck, she’d be happy to swap them for that one where she only had three minutes to study for an exam in an anthropology course she didn’t remember signing up for.

Anything would be better than last night’s terror: a wicked witch with a beast on a leash, being unable to move while he had his wicked way with her. Not to mention the absolute gut-wrenching shame of enjoying it.

Something poked her in the mouth, and she tried to brush it away.  Tried again.  Wait, why couldn’t she move her hand?

A streak of ice travelled Gabrielle’s veins as she realized last night’s terror hadn’t been a dream at all.  The monster, the witch… it had all really happened.  She’d been captured, confined.  She’d been
ravaged
.

Tears welled behind her closed eyelids as something banged against her lip. Whimpering, she blinked fast, trying to clear her eyes.  The bright white walls increased her photosensitivity. Was this the same room she’d been in before, or had a different drug cocktail made is seem like somewhere else?

“Eat! Eat! Eat!” From a stool beside her bed, a creature took up a spoon and pressed it to her lips. “Eat! Eat! Eat!”

The beast!

Screaming, Gabrielle jerked her head away, knocking the spoon from the creature’s tiny hand.  A purple plastic bowl tumbled across her chest, spilling apple sauce on her skin before crashing to the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see splats of sauce spreading across the tile floor.

The animal jumped down from the stool and raced to the spill.  He shook his tiny fist at her, crying, “Eee! Eee! Eee!”

That was most definitely
not
the beast who’d attacked her.

That was most definitely a monkey.

Why had a monkey been spoon-feeding her apple sauce?  And why was he wearing clothes?  Was that a stupid question?  Did all monkey butlers wear doll-sized trousers and itty-bitty button-down shirts?  Maybe this was the norm in monkey buttling.  It was incredibly impressive.  Did he put on the bow tie himself, or did someone do that for him?

The monkey butler folded down his lower lip, exposing the glossy pinkness inside.  Despite being tied up in the bowels of a Victorian mansion with no escape in sight, Gabrielle felt a burst of laughter effervescing in her belly. She wanted to release it, but it sat there like a ball of gas.  Wouldn’t come out, even though he was so darn cute.  She’d never seen a monkey up close.  He was like a tiny old man.

This whole scene was too strange to be real.

“Eee! Eee! Eee!”

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I wasn’t expecting you. I got scared.”

“Eee! Eee! Eee!”  He pointed from the apple sauce splattered across her bare skin to the overturned bowl on the floor, as if to say, “Look at all the food you’ve wasted!  And now I have to clean it up!”

“I’m sorry,” Gabrielle replied.  “If you undo these straps I can clean it up for you. I can clean myself off, too.”

The monkey butler waved his hand dismissively. He blew a raspberry as he walked out of the room.  The way he moved, teetering side to side in those tiny pants, would have made Gabrielle laugh uncontrollably at any other time. As it stood, her system was too drugged and depressed for mirth.

A monkey butler. Well, that’s a first.

Once the little guy had left her sterile cell, an uneasy feeling crept into Gabrielle’s belly.  She could feel it like a jagged little climber ascending her body, digging his cleats into one organ and then the next, throttling her colon, her stomach, her esophagus.

This is real.

If she didn’t do something soon, the terror she’d experienced would play out again.  The knot in her belly told her so.  She was pretty intuitive when it mattered, and right now she had a sinking feeling something bad was about to happen.

No, she couldn’t think about it, couldn’t deal with it. It was too much, too overwhelming.

The little climber grasped her throat from the inside out and shook her until she trembled. It gained a voice, out of nowhere, and berated her:

Listen, lady: you were taken against your will. Don’t you get that? You can’t deny it by pretending it never happened. You can’t make it go away.

Yes she could. Of course she could. “Shut up. Leave me alone.”

This beast, this man, whoever he is—he forced himself on you.

“No, not me.”

Yes, yes you. That was your pussy taking a pounding…

“No, it was Suzanne’s.”

No, not Suzanne’s. Yours, Gabrielle. Yours. Suzanne ran into the woods and if you’d been smart you would have run after her. But nooo… you had to weasel your way into this joint on your little celebrity search.  Well, how’s that going, Gabrielle?  Not so well, I’d say.

How could she have been so stupid?  She knew in the pit of her stomach that signing committal papers she couldn’t read was a bad idea, and she went through with it anyway.

And now you’re tied to a bed in room with no windows. Nobody on the entire planet knows where you are. Your daddy ain’t coming to save you, chicky-pie.  It’s all up to you now. Good luck with that.

“Shut up!” she said to the voice in her head. “It’s not my fault. I did a stupid thing, but nobody deserves to be… to be… you know…”

Taken?

“No, don’t say that.  Not that word.  That’s an awful word.”

Well, what would you call it?  You’re being held captive against your will.  A stranger penetrated you even though you said NO
.

“But I also said yes.”  Gabrielle had almost forgotten that part, and when it came streaming to mind, her lower half throbbed. “I said yes because it felt good and I wanted more.”

You were drugged.  You didn’t know what you were saying.

“But I liked it!  I’ll never forgive myself…”

Madame de Villeneuve stormed in wearing a very Victorian apron over her stern black clothing.  Soapy water sloshed over the rim of a tin bucket as she kicked the door shut with the heel of her boot.  “What have you done, you messy thing?  Gerard says you spilled apple sauce all over the floor.”

Staring at the leather shoes peeking out beneath Madame’s severe ankle-length skirt, Gabrielle asked, “Who is Gerard?”

Of all the questions…

Madame straightened her shoulders like a cat raising its hackles.  “Gerard is my servant.”

“The monkey, you mean?”

“Yes. The monkey.”

“Gerard the Monkey Butler?”

Nodding ever so slightly, Madame replied, “Quite so.”

The laughter that had been burbling at the base of Gabrielle’s belly erupted.  Her whole body shook with it.  Her naked breasts bounced and her abdomen hopped until her muscles ached.  Even her jaw hurt from smiling so widely.  “You didn’t tell me there’d be monkeys!”

“Well there are, young lady, and I can’t fathom what you find so amusing.”  Marching around Gabrielle’s spread legs, Mme de Villeneuve poured soapy water into a wide-mouthed enamel bowl on the counter. She then let the bucket drop and it clanged violently against the tile.

Gabrielle wondered if Madame had cracked the floor, but she couldn’t lift her head high enough to see.  Lying back, she chuckled to herself.  “Gerard the Monkey Butler…”

“Shush,” Madame said.

Giddiness infused Gabrielle’s drug-induced stupor, and she asked, “Why have you come to clean my room?  Isn’t that what monkey butlers are for?”

“I am not here to clean your room,” Mme de Villeneuve replied.  “I am here to clean
you
.”

Gabrielle heard herself groan unexpectedly, and Madame offered a “Humph!” in response. What she wouldn’t give for a nice hot shower and a cup of coffee… and to be freed from her Velcro shackles…

At least Madame hadn’t brought the beast along.

Closing her eyes, Gabrielle listened while Mme de Villeneuve dipped a cotton cloth in the bowl on the counter.  She could only hope the water was warm.  The last thing she needed right now was a splash of cold water. 

“Messy, messy child,” Madame grumbled as she wrung out the cloth.

The sound of water trickling into a small pool reminded her of something, but the memory seemed far away.  Something about her mother.  Mopping.  Yes, that was it.  Saturday morning chores when she was a child.  Her mother would wring out the mop in a bucket, at it sounded just like that.

A pang of sadness shot through Gabrielle’s nostalgia as Madame’s cloth landed on her chest.  The water was, thankfully, quite warm.

“What are you whimpering about, child?”  The words seemed cruel and uncaring, but Madame’s tone acquired soft, rounded edges.  “You’ve got tears rolling down your temples, Suzanne.”

“I do?”  How could she have lost so much body awareness overnight?  She didn’t even know when she was crying.

Madame’s hand landed on the cloth with such force Gabrielle felt as though she’d been punched in the chest.  She whimpered once again, but Mme de Villeneuve didn’t comment on the sound effects this time.  Instead, she asked, “Why are you crying, child?”

“I guess because of my mom.”

Mme de Villeneuve nodded sagely as she piled applesauce into the centre of the cloth.  When she picked up the wet fabric and lifted it away from Gabrielle’s skin, Gabrielle felt immediate cold, but she felt something else, too—an emotional response.  A sense of abandonment.  A deep longing, like a hole in her heart. One that would never go away.  Never.

As Madame rinsed her cotton cloth in the bowl of warm water, Gabrielle said, “She died, you know.  My mother.  She died in a fire.”

“Your mother?” Madame asked, calmly.  “But I spoke with her only last week.  When did she die?”

For a stretched-out moment, Gabrielle’s forehead blazed with confusion.  She fought the drugs in her system. She had to think clearly now.  And then it occurred to her that Mme de Villeneuve still thought she was Suzanne. 
Damn it
.  If only Gabrielle knew more about the girl she was pretending to be.

“That was my step-mother,” Gabrielle said, praying Madame didn’t know otherwise.  “I’m talking about my real mother now.”

“I see.”  If Madame knew Gabrielle was lying, she didn’t let on.

“She died in a fire when I was thirteen.”  Gabrielle’s throat blazed. She could barely speak, but she forced the words out by some strange compulsion.  “I’ve never told anybody about this. Not anyone.  Not ever.”

“You’ve never told anyone your mother died in a fire?”

“No, not that.”  Gabrielle closed her eyes as Mme de Villeneuve brought the clean cloth back to her sweating skin.  “There’s more to it.  The reason for the fire, I mean.  It was my fault.  It was all my fault, and nobody knows the whole story.  Nobody knows but me.”

She felt the tears this time.  They burst from her eyes as Madame said, “I’m certain that’s not true, my dear.”

Gabrielle tried to tell her tale, but she couldn’t speak.  Her throat wouldn’t let her.

As her secret burned inside her, Madame rubbed the warm cloth across her chest, lower and lower, until the cotton swished and swayed across her breasts.

“What are you doing?” Gabrielle choked out.  “Don’t touch me there.”

“You’re filthy, Suzanne.  I’m only cleaning you.”

“I don’t think I had applesauce on my nipples.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” Madame replied.  “Yes, you see?  Sticky.  Your skin is very sticky.”

“Stop that!” Gabrielle said, wishing she could swat Madame’s hand away as it took hold of her breast.  “You’re touching my boobs.  You’re squeezing them! Why are you doing that?  Stop!”

A strange combination of panic, alarm and confusion zapped from one nerve ending to the next as Mme de Villeneuve circled the cloth tightly around one breast and then the other.

“How does it make you feel when I touch you this way?” Madame asked.

“Not good!”

But that was a lie, or at least a half-truth. While it made her unbearably uncomfortable, the action itself aroused a terrible heat between her legs.  Her nipples hardened.  They shared a thick, throbbing arousal with her clit.

Why was this happening?  Why was she so turned on by Madame’s fingers slowly turning her nipples beneath the cloth, slowly twisting them?

“That hurts,” Gabrielle whimpered.

“Yes I know, child.”  Mme de Villeneuve gazed between Gabrielle’s open legs.  “It hurts, but it also feels good, does it not?”

“Yes,” Gabrielle admitted.

“When I pinch here…”  Madame pinched Gabrielle’s hardened nipples.  “You feel it here…”  Madame cupped Gabrielle’s pussy.

“Yes.”  Heat and hurt travelled the length of Madame’s arms, from her nipples to her clit, from her clit to her nipples. Madame’s hands were conductors, directing throbbing bolts of lightning from one region to the next.

Gabrielle was ready to weep with arousal when Madame’s fingers moved to the pulpy wetness of her cunt. That word again—
cunt
!  Why was her brain suddenly thinking this way, suddenly saying these words?  This wasn’t her.