Free Beauty and Her Beastly Love (Passion-Filled Fairy Tales Book 2) by Rosetta Bloom

one. She had to be here with him. That was their bargain, their agreement. Saying she would be his wife would not change things in the least.
    They had just had sex, and Beast lay entwined with her, his furry legs tangled with her own. She looked at his monstrously large legs and sighed.
    “What’s wrong, Beauty?” Beast asked, stroking her arm. “You’ve been a bit distant lately.”
    She wasn’t sure what to say. That she missed her father. What did it matter? She couldn’t leave. That was her promise. But…but what if he changed his mind? Surely he had to understand how difficult it was to leave family behind. He had to have had a family once.
    “I’ve just been thinking,” she said. “About you. Wondering what you did with yourself before I came.”
    Beast looked away, then spoke softly. “I was very lonely before you came.”
    “Did your family ever come to visit you here?”
    “No,” he said quickly.
    Beauty could tell he didn’t want to talk about his family, so maybe this was a bad strategy. If he didn’t miss his own family, how could he ever understand her longing to see hers? She smiled at him, leaned toward him and kissed his lips. He seemed to relax a little with that, so she decided to try a different approach. “It’s just that you said it was my choice if I wanted to be your wife. Since it is my choice, and my father isn’t here to look after my interests, I thought I should find out more about the family I would be marrying into. It might be nice to know whether you all hate each other and never speak, or if you love each other but live too far to be with each other.”
    He was silent a minute, and Beauty wasn’t sure what to think. Then, he said, “You’re considering becoming my wife?”
    Beauty nodded, though she wasn’t sure that was true. She wasn’t sure what his distinction meant, since they were bound together — just as if they were husband and wife — so long as he held her to her promise to stay with him forever.
    “I don’t like to talk about the time before I lived here because I was different. Everything was different, and part of me wishes it to be like that again, but I know it can’t be,” he said. Beauty had no idea what he meant, but she nodded reassuringly so he would continue. “I used to have a mother, a father, an older brother and a baby sister. When I was 10, my mother died while giving birth to my sister, Odette. My father was a merchant who was away a lot, so my older brother Jacques taught me all he knew about life and women. Only all the stuff Jacques taught me was wrong. I love them all very much, especially little Odette. But I don’t see them anymore, because I am here. They do not come visit me because they do not know what has become of me. If we were married, if you loved me truly, it is possible we could go visit them. I think they would like you.”
    Beauty threaded her tiny fingers through Beasts massive ones, to hold his hand. “Do you miss them?”
    His hand squeezed hers tighter. “I don’t let myself miss them because that would make me sad. You shouldn’t let yourself miss your father either. It’s better to just enjoy what the two of us have, right here, right now.”
    It was not what she wanted to hear. It was, in fact, the exact opposite of what she had been hoping to hear. Beauty lay her head on Beast’s chest and tried not to sulk. If she told him she missed her father, he would not care. He would simply tell her to stop it. He truly was a beast, just like his name suggested. And then it hit her, that Beast couldn’t be his name. His siblings were named Jacques and Odette.
    “What is your name?” she asked.
    Beast tensed, and Beauty sat up. “Beast is my name,” he said.
    She shook her head. “It can’t be. A mother who names her children Jacques and Odette would never name a child Beast.”
    Beast pursed his lips and dragged his fingers through the mane of black fur on his head. “I guess if you are going to make a