Beloved Beast

Chapter Twenty-Seven

His place was not among a budding sunrise – nay, his place was here, amid the inhospitable stone of his wasted ruins. Yet, Don sought the prospective dawn he so abhorred, prepared to chance the harsh, concentrated light for one final glimpse of her.

Throughout the remainder of the night, he had prowled his quarters like a caged and restless animal, tipping a tankard and imbibing far too much mead that would otherwise inebriate a weaker man, seeking a deep end that could not be met. A score of refills and hearty swigs failed to relieve the pressure in his chest or slow his tortuous brooding. Those said thoughts cluttered his awareness now, filling the shadows of his mind with all the terrible untruths he had spewed into her.

Before his rash and very uncharacteristic bargain with a heedless farmer, he had simply endured his mundane existence; drifting astray in the thick of desolation with grim acceptance. Now, he could hardly bear the oppressive air, for she had lent a hopeful touch. His generally unfeeling heart could not compete with the harsh sea of varying emotions. All of the things he would ordinarily abstain from: the self-loathing and immeasurable regret; a feeling of hopelessness and loss, the unrelenting thoughts of "what if", were an unflagging constellation of grief that refused to be quelled.

He wasn't this feeling man. Where was the welcoming reprieve of icy numbness? His innate ability to withdraw from the onslaught of heartache and anger?

Braced before a window, filled with hopeless sentiment, Don waited with bated breath, his expression carved in graveness. As the dawn's early light banded across the horizon, he gripped the rough stone until his knuckles turned white with pain. Watching. Waiting anxiously for her to appear. Greedy for the sight of her and just selfish enough to steal one lasting image.

A dash of roseate pursued the retreating night, the frosted moon slipping away on a soft adieu at the yawning sun's behest, rousing birds to take flight amid the misty air of the pink and lavender hues. For all its breathtaking splendor, the sun-kissed morning engendered no warmth or the admiration it justly deserved. It did not percolate the dark fog of Don's pensive mind, for an arresting, irrefutable thought struck him.

He loved Elle. Loved her. More than he'd ever loved anyone or anything.

In light of this staggering revelation, he felt an inward shock to his core as it sapped all the breath from his lungs, divesting him of his readiness to desensitize from the living. Instead, he ignored his intense affinity for numbness, his preferred avenue of emptiness, and invited the raw, agonizing pain hurtling through him. He would not shut it out as he was prone to do, for he deserved every bit of it.

As short-lived as their time together had been, the chaste and fleeting moments they had shared would never be enough to sustain him. What he wouldn't give to have had all of her – body and soul – to have fully known and possessed the sensual and passionate woman beneath that self-effacing nature.

Internally, Don ruminated over all the things he resolved to eternalize of her, to keep alive in his mind, things he would adhere to until his end of days. The lissome and unsure sweep of her slender fingers, feathering across his scars, skating bands of muscle that flexed in earnest to touch her. The sweet and heady taste of her lips, although steeped with shyness and shallow breaths, filled him with insatiable longing. The velvet brown of her telling eyes that, when marked with fire, could easily be depicted as a man's favored spirits. Her unapologetic candor and naiveté. Her soft, alabaster skin. That wealth of jet-black hair. It left something to be savored in the quiet moments ahead of him, and the thought of another man coming to know these intricacies of her, these infinitesimal parts he relished best, struck a visceral chord of jealousy and outrage in him. He wanted to be the man to nurture her desires, to stoke her passions, to school her in all things carnal.