Beloved Beast

Chapter Fifty-Five

Elle gaped at him, a frisson of heat licking up her spine as his chill-inducing words resonated in the charged stillness.

They were anything but genteel. Or tentative.

No, they were provocative and definitive. An indecent blend of velvet and hellfire uttered to elicit shock—to appall—instead, his titillating words baited something wild and unfamiliar deep inside her. Something unclaimed and equally insatiable that aligned all too well with the predatory glint in his moon-like eyes, enticing her to yield to his seductive command, to surrender to the anticipation of what would unfold when he caught her.

But the dramatic shift in his demeanor gave her pause, her confidence more or less undermined by the animalistic hunger burning in his fixed gaze. It wasn't that his manner was deceptive or harmful; no, Don was none of those things where she was concerned, but she found herself gripped with indecision, dithering over whether she should succumb to his lascivious wishes, or if she should resist him.

There was a secret part of her that wanted to resist him—to defy him, to see how far he would go, how far he would take this depravity.

"Why?" Elle breathed, her eyes flitting over his hauntingly beautiful features, captivated by every complicated detail etched in brutal masculinity. "Why should I run?"

Don stalked closer, and she laid a hand on his bicep—either to halt him or pull him closer—she couldn't decide. She was too fixated on how impossibly warm he was, his massive chest projecting an almost unearthly heat, as if she stood too close to a forge, iron freshly drawn from a well-fed fire.

A heady mixture of musk and brine filled her senses as his raspy baritone washed over her. "This is what it takes to be mine, Nymph," he murmured, his voice deep and intimate, each word laced with unmitigated longing, his breath a gentle hum against her forehead.

The solid muscle beneath her fingers was tense, inviting a teasing touch to expand wider, to explore the hard lines of his chest, to trace the damaged sinew that beckoned a deferential graze of her fingertips.

She imagined kissing him there, curious as to how that misshapen tissue would taste. Would he be flavored with the churning sea? Or something more reminiscent of the flanking woodlands? Something strong and earthy?

For all the warmth Don emitted, it was his eyes—she thought, catching them in the lambent firelight—that held her motionless. Their striking color, like the blade he flourished with finesse, was a source of extraordinary heat, as if forged in steel. His gaze captured her completely, steeped in a desire so fierce it felt precarious—as if, at any moment, his control might slip, leaving her vulnerable to the intensity burning just beneath the surface.

They were something to behold, and Elle found it impossible to look away—to break free from those colorless flames that drifted slowly over her body, devouring every part of her without a single touch of his hardened hands.

Regardless of the walls Don had erected to keep others at bay, his uncanny eyes drew you in. They were a mesmerizing threshold to his unvarnished layers, conveying a volatile rage buried beneath a veneer of ruthless scars. Just as sure and lethal as any unsheathed blade, they embodied a larger, more formidable threat that surpassed his menacing build, divulging a maelstrom of emotions that seethed and festered with time, haunting him like a specter pacing the shadows of an ill-lit chamber, and proving just as threatening as any man-made weapon.

A torrent of energy so deadly, it was more befitting a beast than a soft-hearted man, forcing the former to grasp relentlessly for the natural light.

An energy, Elle realized, that may never find peace.