Beloved Beast

Chapter Seventeen

It is never too late to be a better man. Her words carried with Don as he hurtled through the shadows, the candlelight lost on the gray, granular stone.

How could he tell her that there was no better to be found in a heart full of darkness and a mind awash with hell?

He was in awe of her. Scolding him one minute, encouraging him the next. Her soothing voice touched the cold, unanimated parts of him. Elle made him yearn for the life he mourned – for the former man he grieved. He could brandish his figurative claws and hiss through his teeth like any wild beast, and still, she would not be dissuaded.

Having no real illusions that things could turn out differently for him, it was a pleasant thought all the same to think that Elle could adhere to his darker side – the side he abhorred most. That she could accept his vices and physical imperfections.

A ravaged man at best, rife with wrongs, he knew not how to obtain peace. There were no rights to be had for a man like him. No expectations of redemption. No truce with his demons. His every transgression lurked in the dark chambers of his mind, riding his tailcoat of darkness, tied with a heap of grief – and it always led to this unvarying impasse that was his life.

Affliction came in many variations and no amount of ale – or a beautifully receptive woman of heedless tendencies, could keep such horrors at bay. For Don, they were in the form of flat, empty eyes that dominated pale faces riveted with fear. It was the bloodied and mangled bodies strewn amid a devastated village, and the dejected cries of the brokenhearted hardly discerned over a raging fire.

Stumbling mid-stride, a ragged breath escaped him as he braced a clenched fist against the harsh stone; his chest tightening in correlation to the haunting images pressing with unimaginable pain against his skull.

          You have not harmed me.

But he would. It didn't matter that Elle filled him with warmth and commotion. Or that her gentle presence inspired mirth and idealism. Or that she was the very thing he never knew he needed in this forlorn and impaired life. He did not deserve her kindness and wide-eyed innocence.

It was only a matter of time before his control slipped.

And then the beast would get her too.

********************

Sleep eluded Elle, though exhaustion pressed behind her tired eyes, the late hour demanding she retire to the bed.

       His bed, a small voice corrected.

Unable to bring herself to do as fatigue entreated, she elected to pace a maddening groove before the hearth, her skirts swaying about her ankles as her restless mind recounted their earlier exchange.

Anger still burned at the back of her throat, alongside traces of ash wafting from the simmering fire. It was an emotion she rarely had the pleasure to alight upon, but Rossetti had the ability to rouse such said emotion, and likewise, a fundamental desire to reach the shattered parts of him.

This hardened and unfeeling monster, whose beautifully flawed mouth and gentle, coaxing hands rebutted all he alleged to be, was damaged in ways she feared could not be repaired. But there was a willing tenderness in him that disproved his villainous proclamations. The compassion and gentleness he insisted on not possessing, albeit imparting, hinted at hopeful vestiges of the man he used to be.

With a weary sigh, Elle turned away from the hearth and, taking a few tentative steps, collided with an item of furniture. Smoothing her hands over its solid, sturdy frame, she discovered a piece fit to accommodate a very large man. Sinking into its plush seat, she curled her legs and many skirts beneath her, wondering how many times Rossetti had reclined in this very chair, deliberating things before a crackling fire.