Beloved Beast

Chapter Fifty-Six

As Don adjusted to the darkness, his breaths were deep and weighted, each exhalation burdened with palpable desire, stirring the frayed edges of the soft, pliable linen that enshrouded him.

Through the tattered blindfold, he began to grasp the weight of Elle's trials—how she had wrestled with an emptiness where rich, vibrant colors and familiar shapes should have been, how she had been denied the simple grace of what others took for granted—the ability to see.

What had been entrusted to most had been withheld from her, forcing her to lean on her other senses, moving through life at tentative paces, guided by intuition and a wooden staff to navigate an unseen realm.

Yet, she had mastered it with remarkable tenacity, refining those remaining senses in ways that sight could never impart—senses he too had taken for granted, and would now rely on to capture his beautiful betrothed.

Dare to chase in nothingness?

Her provocative question was a bold, teasing invitation that surged through him like vaulting flames, igniting his blood with visceral need.

It struck a predatory chord within him, exuding a defiance and longing completely unlike the sweet, innocent nature he had come to know and love.

It belied her wavering confidence, the tremor in her syllables. Yet, if this were her way of reclaiming control, of feeling empowered, then he would deny her nothing.

But in kind, Don would take everything, for worldly heartache had conditioned him to leave nothing behind—and nothing to fate. Such was the product of anguish and hardship: a fractured sense of right and wrong, morality twisted into something unrecognizable and self-serving, until humanity was a foregone memory.

And though his depravity was never meant to harm her, it was no less animalistic, or any less dangerous. It had festered all these years beneath his raised scars—relentless, hunger for indulgence, poised for release—because mercy was not a virtue but an unforgiving wound that cut to the marrow, a hard-earned lesson he had learned far too late in life.

But like all the rest, he had underestimated her from the moment he spotted her beneath an opalescent moon, bathed in pale light, when those dark, impermissible urges first stirred beneath his tight skin. Had he surrendered to temptation on that star-crossed night, he was convinced that single lapse would have ruined them indefinitely, exposing the unlit cavities of his corrupted nature and costing him the one thing that would come to mean everything to him.

How wrong he had been. Elle may have been inexperienced in some ways, but she was far from naïve. Behind those dark, expressive eyes laid a secret yearning to surrender to the forbidden, to abandon her inhibitions and explore her own passions. But he understood her need for self-preservation and could not blame her for clinging to her defenses. They were what shielded her from judgment, from the onslaught of cutting insults. It was that same torrent of condemnation that had cemented his own damnation, deepening his turmoil and self-hatred, burying him further in surliness and a thick, protective cowl.

She had encouraged him to embrace the light—his imperfections—and now he would embolden her to claim what she truly desired, to take back her power.

He just hadn't anticipated this.

Don grinned. The blindfold was a delightful, unexpected twist—a clever and strategic defense on her part. It rendered him vulnerable, something he would have formerly steeled against.