A Beast's Belle Read online

  A Beast’s Belle, Book One of the Beast and Belle Series Copyright © 2017 by j. Gambardella

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  For more information contact:

  Riverdale Avenue Books

  5676 Riverdale Avenue

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.riverdaleavebooks.com

  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-62601-355-1

  Print ISBN: 978-1-62601-356-8

  First Edition March 2017

  Author’s Note

  The following is my first published misadventure into the world of erotic romance, the first appearance in print of work under this name. It is an attempt at balancing the tropes and tendencies of the genre with some alternative consideration of characters’ motivations for their peculiar kinks and curiosities, an attempt at exploring a classic fairytale, but with some deviations from the standard formula. I hope that readers appreciate the areas of fidelity and the departures.

  I am especially grateful to Lori Perkins, who encouraged me to start working in this genre and on this project in particular. Without her, I can be absolutely certain that the project would never have started, much less seen the light of day. I look forward to working with her more in the future, to build an audience of readers and express my curious and (at their best) exciting ideas.

  j. Gambardella

  March 17, 2017

  Chapter One

  As she woke, she swung her feet over the edge of her wooden bedframe and let them hang there, dangling. Isabel lay flat on her back for just a moment and then slowly pulled her body up, animated by the fresh breath of a dewy morning slipping through the slight crack in her open window. As she stood, her hair fell asymmetrically, veiling the left half of her face but not the right, where it had been trimmed short. She inhaled and stretched her arms up and out, her breasts raised and flexing as her lungs filled, the brisk air tickling her cheeks and nose. She dressed quickly and simply in brown skirt and a tan blouse, all fit comfortably but hanging loose, leaving her movement unrestricted and her body light. Her feet traced quickly and evenly over the smooth wood of the floor, out into the hallway, and down the stairs into the kitchen.

  In the morning, she liked to cook; she liked warming her body in the dry heat of the wood-burning stove, the smoky flavor of bacon and eggs, with some parsley or peppers or whatever she had picked up in the market the day before. Her father, still spry in spirit even as his bones had grown creaky, kissed her cheek and sang her praises as he hung near the stove and enjoyed the olfactory feast. They had been living together like this for nearly ten years now, and though Isabel knew that to be a young woman in a codependent relationship with her aging father was certainly not appealing to those with whom she’d like to start a future, she simply didn’t care very much. The radiating warmth of her father’s affection and the metal of the stove brought her full and thorough satisfaction. Bacon, crispy and crackling with a thin film of fat, made her salivate, and she ran her tongue over her teeth.

  Isabel carefully tied back her curly almond colored locks, keeping the hair out of her face; her red cheeks were warmed gently by the heat, and a light sweat formed above her brow. The warmth of the stove, in the spring months, was still enough in the morning to produce just a slight discomfort, but when the two were eating and enjoying the smell and feel of the smoky kitchen, chatting about something trivial like what sorts of projects had come into her father’s shop or what either was reading, she hardly noticed. As the air cooled, shifted about by the spring breeze moving through the windows, the two readied themselves for the day. On many such days, Isabel worked in her father’s shop, seeing to the customers and ensuring that her father (his projects scattered about the shop) would finish up whatever toys he needed to finish for clients, and not simply wander off on some peculiar puzzle or idea that fascinated him. He was a tinkerer, at heart, and it was a habit to be expected from someone whose brain was at its best always playing with all sorts of new ideas and fiddling about with old toys.

  The business was sustained largely by his ability to repair all sorts of odd things, many of them quite boring, for the local townsfolk. He would sell and repair children’s toys, plows, and clocks. Really, anything that the town needed fixed, he would find a way. It wasn’t for familiarity with all of those different fields, but just a general inclination of his desire to tinker about on various different projects and ideas; in some cases, the fix was very intellectually boring, but fixing a strange variety of clock or peculiar children’s toy gave him a nice rush and paid fairly well. Isabel recognized that her father was, above all else, pathologically concerned with exploring the ways that things worked, and if she could do her part to ensure that he was able to indulge that pathology and make enough money for the two of them to live comfortably, then all the better.

  In the morning, though, Isabel preferred to get some time away from the shop. Customers only seemed to come in the afternoon hours, when running errands, and so she was well aware that this gave her several hours to get out and enjoy some solace. Spending her days with her father could be quite nice, but she was an adult, and (like her father) quite introverted. She tried to dedicate at least a few hours a day to exploring the woods in her own peace and quiet. She would take a book from the shelves and head out to read in the warm glow of the morning sunlight, before it got too hot in the middle of the day. The roots were familiar and the trails only gently carved, branches bent by her delicate movements and insistence on pushing the branches out of the way rather than simply snapping them to the ground.

  As she made her way a bit deeper in the woods, towards the splitting streams that broke over smooth stones, the trees grew tighter together, their higher branches interlaced with leaves casting a long green and yellow mosaic of disrupted sunlight. When she felt alienated enough from civilization, so that she could only hear the white noise of the trickling water and the rustling of the breeze in the trees, far from any road, she would kick off her shoes and pull down her socks, swinging her bare feet in the water, reading by the dusty light of the morning.

  When she was young, Isabel had been a voracious reader, both of adventures and romances, her imagination carrying her onto the high seas to commit piracy and into the deep caves to discover treasures of precious stones and gold. Some of those adventures featured the stories of burly, masculine figures who rescued dainty damsels from devious dragons. Those stories had their moments for Isabel, and she often thought about the sensation of being whisked up into massive arms and burying her face in the bristles of a warm, soft beard, but just as often she liked the idea of perhaps rescuing a damsel for herself, or even being a devious kidnapper who might steal away and torment some buxom beauty. The stories let her imagine not just the possible ways her life might go, but picture herself in every possible role that such a life might offer, from sadistic capture to whimpering slave.

  These thoughts felt verboten, taboo, and the little bit of lustful joy she felt in her chest was part of the reason that she had taken to reading these books deep in the woods. Her father, she was sure, would not worry in the least about her adventurous imagination, but it felt like this was a part of her own exploration that was worth protecting, keeping it in her own special and isolated space, guarded and exploratory. She also knew that in some of the moments when she was reading these books, she would not be able to
hide her reactions to the contents of the story and her visceral reactions to the fantastic notions. Her breathing would stutter and her face would flush.

  As she settled down on a rock, with her feet dangling in the water, she delved into the story of a cruel pirate who captured debutantes and tortured them, binding them to the mast of the ship, stripping them naked, teasing and torturing their bare flesh with gentle sensations and cruel beatings. She imagined herself as the pirate, tying down some delicate maid and stripping her bare, pink nipples responding to the cold air; she imagined teasing the labia of the girl with her fingers, while running her sword over the nipples and down the ribcage, digging it just slightly to leave subtle red lines in the pale pink skin.

  Isabel bit her lip as the thought skirted through her mind, the various sensations almost palpable, but still elusive. She loved the prospect, and ran her hands up her own thigh, slipping off the fabric and navigating her bare legs. She ran her hands over her own pussy, the hair around the lips just slightly dewy and soft, and she parted the lips and played with herself as she read of the tortures the pirate would inflict, including the floggings and humiliation, subjecting the wealthy woman to domestic servitude and treating her as a wench, berating her for her inability to clean. In short flashes, Isabel might picture herself interchangeably as the wench or the pirate, but today it was the idea of tormenting and teasing the pleading captive that excited her, and she imagined how she might whip the wide ass of the newly broken slave as she cleaned the floors of the boat, and step on her hair to prevent the servile creature from looking up or moving.

  The fantasy was overwhelming, and her legs started to tremble and her breathing was even more deeply disrupted, bouncing in and out without any voluntary control. She parted her labia and ran the fingers against the clit, bouncing them against it. She closed her eyes and bit her lip even harder, imagining machinations of torture, as the extreme sensations in her body simulated her imagination, the sound of a screaming, subservient wench muffled as her face was forced as Isabel’s wet pussy arched her back and hips, twisting against her fingers and pushing hard and quicker, her fingers and her hips moving together until she reached the point of unbearable climax and ached out, toes curling into the rocks, muscles turning and sprawling.

  Then her body settled down and rested against the stones, everything warmed in the light of the climbing sun except her feet, which settled in the cool water on the slick rocks. The water ran over her feet and she shivered, but the tension in her muscles and her mind sank into the rock. She continued to read, still powerfully aroused but without the monomaniacal drive towards orgasm that had possessed her in those intense moments of sadistic fantasy. Now her interest, while still sexual and visceral and blood-warming, was more clinical and less tied solely to the prospect of orgasm, though she thought that perhaps she would have another stretch of self-indulgent fingering on the rock, before heading back to the workshop. After all, there was still a great deal of morning left to enjoy.

  The crisp smell of water running over smooth stones was refreshing, filling her nose and chest. She let her head lay back against the stone and, with each exhalation, felt the pleasant support of the rock beneath her back. It was a wonderful and satisfying feeling, her feet kicking out a bit, splashing the water up a little, stirring the small pockets of sediment that settled between larger stones. It was a hedonic sensation, muscles and joints unwound as much as they could be, and the forces of nature swirling around her, wind brushing over her skin and water kissing her toes and ankles. The sunlight started to warm her even more, and she sat up, resigning herself to the notion that it was drawing closer to the time when she actually needed to be responsible for the shop.

  She adjusted her dress and pulled herself together, straightening up her muscles to give herself the posture necessary to walk back through the town, and tucked the book under her arm as she made her way back out of the woods, towards home.

  The cobblestones clicked quickly beneath her feet; she was in no rush, but tended to savor the feeling of the walk back less than the walk into the woods. Each morning, the woods felt like a new discovery, though perhaps it was also a part of the natural and slow transition that comes with a body still waking and acclimating to the day. In the morning, she found things slow and magical, and in the afternoon they seemed to settle into a more mundane and less curious texture. Maybe it was the wash of the morning light; maybe it was her own disposition to enjoy the taste of the morning.

  She made the stroll quickly back, opened the door to the shop, where a few adolescents were inside looking at her father’s curious toys, clockwork soldiers that swung swords and games that whirred as they ran, little lights and mechanisms to navigate with a marble. The toys were always sort of a way for her father to explore more complicated ideas, but he loved them for their own sake, and for the joy they brought the kids. The idea that a toy was a puzzle and an invention all at once, something to be solved and something to inspire curiosity and awe, captured his favorite things about making the machines. Sure, so many of the larger machines were bigger and functional, they were industrial projects that could help with manufacturing or day-to-day life, but that functionality often lacked the aesthetic adoration he got to see in the younger folks, appreciating his toys.

  “You boys need help with anything?”

  The adolescents turned, their faces familiar and unsurprised to see her coming up behind them, “No. Thank you, Miss Isabel.” One of the older, polite boys spoke for the group, who had fixated around one of the newer games, with working paddles and a small steel ball that had to be navigated through a series of obstacles.

  She smiled and moved to the back of the shop, leaving the boys to their game. She kissed her father on the cheek and he smiled at her while carrying on a conversation with a local butcher about some ideas; it was common for her father to take commissions from the well-off business people in town, those looking to invest in a piece that would make their lives easier or less tedious. Today, it seemed to be about cutting and curing meat, her father and the butcher looking over some anatomical diagrams of sheep and deer, trying to work out where the machine would cut, the various sorts of work that it would do. Isabel dipped her ear into these conversations now and again, always curious about the process of design and eager to pick up trivia about the various trades, her father’s included.

  She did tend to the store, helping customers as they came about on their business. They were, for the most part, familiar faces from around the town; the shop was a novelty for most of the folks, a sort of curious space that produced all sorts of new peculiarities and ideas. For those outside of the town, it was an indulgence, the sort of shop that very few towns of this size had; Isabel also recognized that her father’s resourcefulness and creativity meant many of the designs and contraptions were things they had not seen before. She loved watching new folks explore the shop, their eyes and lips turning with curiosity. When there were no strangers, Isabel tried to get that reaction from familiar faces, show them something new or discuss with them one of her father’s ideas.

  The boys left the plinking, rumbling game as the afternoon wore on, as they had to return to their families or their apprenticeships. The afternoon and evening were when business picked up the most for the curiosity shop, and Isabel and her father rarely sat down to dinner. He would eat with her in the front, talking to customers and looking over his latest designs and conversations from the day, and then go back to the workshop. Isabel would tend to the front and entertain herself by feeding the curiosity of the locals and, periodically, by reading when it was clear that the customers only wanted to browse and explore the inventions on their own.

  The twilight hours were occupied by the orange and purple light of the sunset, long solemn shadows from the trees laid out on the cobblestones. Horses and donkeys clopped along, carrying lumber and bale into town to warm and feed the folks through autumn and winter. Isabelle found the entire experience peaceful, and on that partic
ular evening looked over some of the diagrams and notes her father had left out on the table, designs that were familiar though dusty. Sketches of large pieces of furniture, wooden skeletons marked out in dark graphite with notation as to what would be upholstered with leather, how to do the studding, and notes referring to various technical publications with information on how to treat the leather and studs before applying it to the furniture.

  The wear on the edges of the design reminded her that it was old; she was familiar with the sorts of functional furniture design that her father had done for a few nobles, largely based on referrals from the wealthier class of strangers who wandered through while visiting a nearby relative. At various points along the conjunction of wooden benches and hoists were rings and hooks, with notes about where to use lighter and heavier steels. Isabel has always found these sorts of drawings, in particular, fascinating; her father remarked that they were often used to restrain prisoners or disobedient servants, but had to be presentable as they were also used as a show of wealth amongst nobles. Pieces that looked familiar from illustrations on corporal punishment, stockades and dangling chains, struck a particular chord in Isabel, a deeper curiosity more closely tied to her reading in the woods than the more cerebral fascination with the whirring and thudding machines.

  She flipped through various diagrams, some drawn up with the help of the butcher and others that were older, remnants of pieces her father had built and either located somewhere else in the shop or already sold off. Still, she found herself regularly returning to the sketches of the furniture pieces, dated years ago, that her father had mixed into the pile. It was not unusual for him to return to old projects, particularly projects where he had been somewhat unsatisfied. Still, turning over the pieces of paper, those images stuck with her, and when her father came down to help her close up the shop at the end of the evening, she asked politely what had inspired him to bring the drawings back out of his desk.