Free The Beauty and the Beast by Leigh Wilder

 
    The Beauty and the Beast
    Leigh Wilder
     
     
    Copyright Leigh Wilder 2012
     
    Cove r art copyright Meckfisto at Dreamstime Stock Photos and Free Stock Images
     
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    In the scene Kate had been called ' Beauty' for so long she didn’t thin k anyone k new her real name. She rarely remembered it herself—since she had become a professional Dominatrix after getting laid off the real world seemed so very far away. Sometimes she thought she lived in a fantasy land of leather and chains, and there was nothing else out there.
    The castle sh e pulled her car up in front of didn’t seem real either . It wasn't really a castle, but a massive Victorian house with a wrap-around por ch festooned in deep red climbing roses, like Sleeping Beauty’s castle. A lovely turret room jutted out from the second fl oor. When young she dreamed of being a princess in a round room just like that. As she grew up it became obvious she wasn't going to be a princess. She was a queen .
    Kate got out of the car and walked up to the house with the strong, confident st eps of someone who not only got what they want ed , but expect to get it every time. She had no idea what to expect here. The house belonged to a man almost a s notorious in the scene as she. W omen called him 'The Beast,' but they tended to flutter and sigh as they did so, and the moniker was not a negative one. They said he would take submissive flesh and devour it, and titter like schoolgirls.
    Kate did not submit for anyone or anything . B ecause the Beast did not play in public very often, she could only guess at his abili ty to devour. She stepped up to the huge porch , pausing to finger one of the rose’s silky petals and breathe in the fragrance. Not really thinking, just wanting the rose, she snapped the bloom off the stem and tucked it behind her ear, careful to let the tiny thorns catch in her hair instead of her skin. She approached the door and rang the bell. He had invited her to dinner in his home. She just wished she knew why she had accepted.
    The Beast himself answered the door. A bit beast-like in looks as well as in manner, h e wa s a tall, broad man and wore a beard. F or one fright ening moment Kate felt like Red R iding Hood confronting the wolf. She didn't let it show. “Hello Nathan ,” she said, having dug up his real name in the depths of a memory filled with names like 'Shadow' and 'Baby Kitten ' (one of her male clients) or ‘Phoenix.’
    “Kat e,” he greeted her, and she blinked, taken aback that he knew her real name as well. “I’m so happy you made it this ev ening.” He s poke with an easy smile, and stepped aside so she could enter the house , glancing at the stolen rose but not commenting . The hallwa y was painted in cool greys paired with pale wood and little color. If this were my place I’d warm it up a bit , she thought. She had always wanted a big old house (impossible with the money she made) , and her favorite color, of course, was red.
    “Thank you for the invitation ,” she said . Forget the niceties , she thought. Tell me what you want . He had to have an underlying motive for inviting her to dinner. They moved down the cool hallw ay to the dining room, decorated slightly closer to the period correctness the house craved, with striped wallpaper and a heavy oak table, set wi th rose patterned dinnerware . She stared at it and imagined sweeping all of the fine china to the floor and tying him down to it, taming the big beast of a man at her side.
    She had these thoughts about most men she encountered, but Nathan wa s nowhere near her type. Too big, too masculine. Like Kate, h e had the look of someone who liked to be in control. She wanted to yank that control away . He pulled her chair out for her