Beastly Desires

Chapter One

"Beautiful Colette."

Colette cringed as she felt familiar hands snake their way up and over her shoulders. She whirled around, paint brushes toppling out of the canister she carried clutched to her chest.

"Tsk! I have no time to play with you today Gregorie." She bit out his name like shooing away a dog. A tall, gangly and much too smitten of a dog she grimaced.

She knelt down to pick up the fallen brushes, now half sunken in the muddy earth. Gregorie grabbed her hands, yanking her up. He pinned them to his chest, pressing himself to her, a lazy male grin upon his face. "I'm not the one playing around in the mud."

A furious blush crept up Colette's cheeks and she bristled against him, trying to escape his grasp but he only tightened his fingers around hers even more.

"Leave me be Gregorie. I have work to do." It wasn't a lie. She needed to head back to her fathers workshop and finish the disaster of a painting she started on late last night. Not her best work, but it had been done out of pure rage. A piece requested by some handsy merchant and horribly underpaid for.

"Is that what you call it? Work? Slapping some colors down on a piece of linen. A child can do that. You shouldn't be working at all. Accept my proposal and you'll never have to touch a dirty brush again. Never will your clothes be covered in paint and your poor beautiful hands callused." He stroked her fingers with his own callused hands and she flinched. Not from the intimate gesture but from the insult he had said so casually.

She glared up at him and yanked her hands away, almost falling backwards from the sheer strength she grasped for. She thought falling in the mud was better than feeling his hot, clammy breath against her face once more.

"I will not accept your proposal. I will not be bothered by you again. Leave me be Gregorie."

Colette gathered up the brushes and turned abruptly, stalking away. She knew Gregorie was only smirking at her from behind. She knew he had his arms crossed over his chest and that haughty, indignant look across his face. Good. She won this time. And Gods be it the last time.

...

The small, slender cottage sat squished between two fatter cottages that towered over it like two smothering parents. Its bricks were worn and aged with brown and green moss dripping from the windowsills and cuddled around its base. Colette smiled with relief. Home. As small and scraggly it was, home never felt safer. Her father had let the windows open and the thin, green curtains she had sewn half-hazerdly twisted and billowed out from the house, embracing the wind that teased them. The smell of paint wafted from the small openings on either side of the door and comfort began to settle into Colette's body.

She grimaced. Gregorie had that affect on her. She always bristled in his presence, was always aware of how close he stood, how much he towered over her like a tall, slender tree, encroaching on her with its long, gangly branches. He alway made her feel small. Sheltered. Vulnerable. Like any day would be the day he'd snatch her away and shove her into the lady in waiting he so eagerly desired her to be. Colette rolled her shoulders at the thought, shaking off the illness that began to creep up. Never. Never would she marry him.

She reached home and pushed open the door. Its hinges sang a familiar sound and she felt at peace once again. "How would one go about disposing of a very tall tree father?"

Her father was hunched over a large work table in the center of the cottage. Work table, dinner table, occasional mending to wounds table. The only table they owned. "Tall tree you say." He grunted.