Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Gaeton

I don’t want to do this.

I slouch into the chair I recently vacated, still trying to come to terms that Isabelle Belmonte is here and bargaining her body and future away because of some bullshit power struggle her sisters are embarking on. Oh, the power struggles didn’t feel like bullshit when I was working under the Man in Black. They felt vital and world-ending. Now, I’m not so sure. What the hell is it all for? I don’t have answers, and I’m not sure anyone in this room does. Isabelle will say it’s for the continued safety of her family and the people under their protection. Beast? I have no fucking idea what goes on in that man’s head.

Beast stalks around Isabelle like one of the great cats toying with its food. Building anticipation for the strike, enjoying the way she jumps a little every time he moves out of her line of sight.

If I were a better man, I’d call this whole thing off and haul Isabelle out of the Underworld and right back to the safe embrace of her sisters. They might have sent her here to draw us back, but there’s no chance in hell that Cordelia and Sienna approved of us defiling their youngest sister. They’d barely tolerated us before and we treated Isabelle like a queen. I can fault Beast many things, but I can’t fault him that.

“Gaeton.” The snap in his voice is a hook in my stomach, slamming me into the here and now.

I resent the fuck out of it. He’s not my Dom. He’s not even my friend. He’s a man I used to hate and now am forced to tolerate from time to time. I glare. “Maybe you get off on playing with someone who’s just going through the motions, but that’s not my kink. I like consent, you bastard.”

“Mmm.” His deep voice rumbles through the room, seeming to wrap around all of us. “Our little Isabelle wants to be punished. It’s why you came here, isn’t it, princess?”

“Yes,” she breathes. She’s watching him like she’s never seen him before. There’s fear there, yes, but there’s no missing the way her lips part and her eyes go hazy with need. Just like there’s no missing her nipples pressed against the silk of her dress when he pulled her hair.

Or maybe I’m just deluding myself in an attempt to justify taking from her exactly what I want. To fuck her and humiliate her and make her cry from the intoxicating mix of pleasure and pain, her senses so overloaded that she can’t do anything but beg for what I will give her.

Maybe.

“Gaeton still needs convincing.” Beast shakes his head slowly. I can’t help watching him as he gathers her hair and lifts it from her neck. We might have scened together in the past, but it was always beneath another’s guidance, playing support in someone else’s fantasy. I’ve never seen Beast orchestrate his own scene. When he plays, he plays behind closed doors, and Hades’s submissives are too professional to gossip about it afterward.

He twines her hair around his fist, gently but inexorably bending her back so that she’s depending on his strength to keep her off the floor. Her breath comes faster now, her tits shaking a little with each inhale and exhale. Realizing she’s not wearing a bra nearly has me groaning aloud. I clench my fists to keep still, to keep myself apart. I might have agreed to Beast’s bargain, but I don’t trust this. I don’t trust him.

“Part your thighs, princess.” Beast’s command might rumble, but he sounds almost like he’s sitting down to dinner. Barely affected. If not for the way he devours her with his gaze, I might actually believe it.

Isabelle moves slowly, obeying him in fits and starts until her thighs are splayed wide. Even as I tell myself not to look, my gaze is dragged down, down, down to where she’s revealed herself. “Fuck.”

“Tell me what you see.”

Again, I obey that snapped command even as I tell myself not to. “She’s not wearing panties.”

“Dirty girl,” he murmurs. “You were planning on fucking us back into submission.”

“No.”

“Yes.” He reaches down, quick as a snake, and pinches her nipple hard enough that I wince. Isabelle cries out, but she’s not arching away from him. She’s pressing her chest into his touch.

Holy shit, he’s right. She does want this.

“Told you.” His attention is all on me now. “Tell me what you see, Gaeton,” he repeats.

Between one breath and the next, I decide to embrace this. Fuck it. I’m going to regret it, but the temptation of having Isabelle on my cock—in my bed—is too strong to turn away from. I lean back, intentionally adopting a relaxed sprawling pose. “It’s dim as fuck in here. I can’t see shit.”

“Unacceptable.” He shakes his head. “Can’t have her hiding from us.”

My mouth practically waters with anticipation. “She came in here wearing that little tease of a dress and flashing her pussy. Seems she doesn’t want to hide.”

“I’m inclined to agree.” Beast leverages Isabelle to her feet. He keeps one hand in her hair, steering her a few steps toward me, close enough to touch. “Best send a message then.”

At that, the hazy lust in her eyes clears. “Don’t you dare. This dress is brand new.”

I hold her gaze and rip the fucking dress in half. Her body jerks with the movement, but she can only shift so far, because Beast holds her mostly immobile. I pull the straps down her arms and let the ruined fabric flutter to the ground. She stands there in heels and nothing else and, fuck, but Isabelle Belmonte does things for me.

She’s built solid, the kind of body that fills out a person’s hands. The kind of body that can take a rough fucking, though in the past I would have fallen on a literal sword before I let myself off the leash enough to indulge in dirty play with this woman. She’s too good for that, too good for me.

I know better than to scene angry. It’s a recipe for disaster. But I am fucking furious. I sit back and give myself a moment to study the way her light-brown skin has gone dusky with desire, her brown nipples pebbled and her body shaking. “When I finger your pussy, am I going to find you wet, Isabelle?”

“I don’t—” She cries out when Beast gives her hair another pull. “Yes.”

As pissed as I am, as light as this is compared to some of the shit I’ve seen—some of the shit I’ve done—in the Underworld … “Isabelle, tell me your safe word.”

“Candlestick,” she gasps.

“You say that word, this stops.” I glance at Beast and find him watching me closely. “It doesn’t mean the bargain stops, so don’t be a fucking hero. On the other hand, if you lie to us, this whole thing is off. Not using your safe word when you need to is a fucking lie. Do you understand?”

Her mouth moves, those prettily painted red lips gasping for whatever words it will take to ensure we don’t back out of this deal. She learned from the best, after all, and she’s heavily invested in seeing this through, no matter what it takes. Finally, she whimpers, “Yes, I understand. I won’t lie.” She shivers, goose bumps rising over her skin in a wave. “I’ll use my safe word if I need it.”

It’s enough. It has to be enough. BDSM only works if there’s a measure of trust involved, and if I don’t trust her to use her safe word, then I have no business being in this room.

I’d rather cut my cock off than walk out that door.

Beast shifts her closer yet. “Now that we have that out of the way, It’s been a year since you had your hands on her, Gaeton. Since either of us did.”

The reminder makes me thin my lips; that we were both arrogant enough to date her at the same time. That I put my heart in her hands, foolish enough to think I’d ever be enough for her, that if we just dated long enough, she’d choose me, love me enough not to need him. I know he’s riling me up. I know he’s playing us both. But I have a naked, quivering Isabelle nearly in my lap. I’m seeing this through to the end.

I give a low laugh. “Better give her a thorough examination, then.” A humiliating play, examining her like she’s an animal instead of a person, but that’s the intention. Isabelle has enough pride to fuel an army. It’s part of what drew me to her in the first place, how fucking untouchable she was, standing there next to her father, perfect and above us all. I just want to carve off a little piece of that pride and get her off in the bargain.

Beast nods and hauls her back, guiding her to resume her place on the floor. “Clasp your arms behind your back. Yes, like that. Now spread your legs. Wider, princess. You can’t expect him to see properly if you’re playing the shy innocent.”

She obeys, each move jerky as if she’s fighting herself to do it. Torn between obedience and wanting to tell us where to shove our games.

Obedience wins.

This time.