Naughty Fairy Tales Volume II

Handsome and the Beast-2

“Thank you, my lady. I hope to be a helpful addition to your household,” Quinn said, his voice low and curling like a forest stream.

“Please, sir, I am Lady Sophia Chase. But I hope you will call me Sophie,” Sophie said, linking her arm through his and marveling at the hard muscle under his jacket. “Let me give you a tour.” She gave Mirror a hard look. “Alone.”

Mirror shrugged and gave Quinn an encouraging thumbs up that, from his confused look, he didn’t know how to interpret. Sophie patted his arm.

“Don’t worry about her. I have so much to show you.”

Quinn didn’t seem very impressed with the three-story high library, or the size of the kitchens, or the gardens, or any of the other lavish sections of her castle. There had been one guy who loved the library so much he had no time for Sophie and she sent him away with a novel still pasted to his face. Another fawned over her enormous gardens and planted an entire section of colorful roses. She’d hoped at the time it was a sign he wanted to stay. A foolish hope, of course. They never stayed.

The only thing the new guy seemed to be interested in was the servants’ looping arguments. The sounds of another row drifted through the castle and he stopped mid-step, a strained expression on his face.

“Do they always scream at each other like that?” Number Thirteen—Quinn, I need to remember his name is Quinn—said.

“What are you talking about?” Sophie said, looking around. The only other people in the hallway were the housekeeper and the cook standing at the top of the main stairs. The housekeeper, Mrs. Ladium, was ancient and her family had served the house forever; her son worked in the stables. The cook, Macy, was a pretty flirt, the kind of perky cute that Sophie knew she’d never be even with her intense daily beauty regimen. Sophie hated Macy a little bit for her flawless skin, but it was hard to hold onto the emotion when Macy was caught in the crossfire of Sophie’s curse.

“I’m always cleaning up after you!” the old woman screamed, loud enough that the crystal in the chandeliers clinked together.

“If you don’t like how I run my kitchen, then don’t go in there!” the younger woman bellowed back. Normally, Macy had a lovely voice like a bell, but when she was upset—which was nearly all the time since the curse struck—her voice had the scratching caterwaul of a cat in heat. All of the servants except Mirror were trapped in an endless cycle of repeated fights, hashing over the same arguments again and again.

“If you spent a little less time rolling around in there with every man you see, I’d have less of disaster to clean up every day!” Mrs. Ladium shook a filthy rag in the younger woman’s face.

Quinn touched Sophie’s arm gently and she jumped. Her suitors were almost never gentle.

“Shouldn’t you do something about that?” he said, gesturing at the two women. “They look really upset.”

Sophie shrugged. “They’re always yelling about something.” Now wasn’t the time to explain the curse to him. The timing for those explanations had to be perfect. Number Two was nearly running for the door before she finished telling him what happened all those years ago when time stopped moving forward in this blasted castle.

“And the gardener and the stable boy?” Quinn said. “When we were out at the gardens, they were screaming and punching each other. You didn’t even notice.”

A clatter rang out from the other room, and Quinn ran toward it. Sophie sighed and followed after, just as the silver platter Mrs. Ladium hurled at Macy flew down the stairs.

“Why can’t you just admit it?” a woman’s voice screamed from the other room, followed by a second crash. Sophie paused in the doorway to straighten her dress while Quinn wasn’t looking.

Hillary, Sophie’s beautician, stood with her arms raised, holding a candlestick, ready to throw it at the man huddled in a corner of the ballroom with his hands protecting his head.

“I swear I didn’t take your f*****g hair dye! I’m a groundskeeper; why the hell would I want hair dye?” he squeaked.

Great. Hillary and Aaron are looping again, Sophie sighed.

“Do you expect me to believe your hair is that shade of black normally? You think you can just steal from me, Aaron?” Hillary threw the candlestick and it pinged off of the wall, leaving a new dent in the wall already pock-marked with hundreds of indentations from Hillary and Aaron’s senseless, stupid loop.

“Please! Please stop!” Quinn yelled, running between them. “This is madness. What do you think this young man did?” He put up his arms between them, but Hillary was looping so she couldn’t see him.

“Why can’t you just admit it?” Hillary screamed, grabbing an identical candlestick that had reappeared in the place where the first one she’d thrown had first rested. Sophie felt a second to be grateful the curse’s magic replaced all of her possessions broken during the curse loops. She wouldn’t have anything left, the way the servants argued all day.

“I swear I didn’t take your f*****g hair dye! I’m a groundskeeper; why the hell would I want hair dye?” Aaron said again.

“What’s happening to them?” Quinn said, ducking out of the way when Hillary threw the candlestick.

Sophie sighed. “They’re looping. It happens.”

“Can’t you stop them?” Quinn said, looking between Hillary and Aaron. The crash of the platter falling down the stairs again in the other room made him jump. “Are the two on the stairs looping too?”

“Why can’t you just admit it?” Hillary screamed again, grabbing the regenerated candlestick.

“I swear I didn’t take your f*****g hair dye! I’m a groundskeeper; why the hell would I want hair dye?”

Quinn kept looking between the beautician and groundskeeper in horror.

“Fine, if this is upsetting you…” Sophie sighed and walked further into the room until she could catch Hillary’s eye. Hillary looked confused for a second, and then lowered the candlestick. Sophie maintained her eye contact and said in a firm voice, “Hillary, go upstairs and start preparing a new batch of eye cream. We’re running low.”

Hillary nodded and curtsied, smiling like everything was fine with the world. “Absolutely, my lady, I will get started on it right away.”

Sophie nodded to Aaron. “And you too, get back to work.” She fluttered her hand and Aaron scrambled to his feet, bowing low before sprinting out the door. She just hoped Aaron didn’t catch sight of the stable boy, Chad, before he got back to work. Their loop was loud.

Sophie wiped her hands together and turned back to Quinn. “Well, now that we have that nasty business out of the way, I want to show you the final stop on our tour.” She walked out the room, peeking a glance over her shoulder to make sure Quinn was still following. He wasn’t paying attention to her. He ran his fingers over the ruined section of the wall where the wallpaper was cut and the wood paneling bruised from repeated impacts of a candlestick being thrown with all Hillary’s might.

“Come along, Quinn,” Sophie said, trying to keep the impatience from her voice.

She had meant to take him up the main stairway. It was by far the most impressive route to their destination, but she could still hear Mrs. Ladium and Macy starting up again.

Life is so unfair. She sighed, and held out a hand for Quinn to take. He hesitated for a second, and then put his hand in hers. She waited for the little zing of warmth she’d felt when he kissed her hand, but it wasn’t there. He was still looking back at the dented wall.

Sophie could hear her mother’s voice in her head scolding her. A man is like a spoon: he only has so much capacity, so make sure you fill him with thoughts of you. While his head was turned, she quickly yanked on the bottom of her dress so it pulled down lower across her breasts.

“I told you, I saved the best for last,” she said.

“Um, right. You know your castle is a little weird, right?” he said, his voice distant.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re so strong. Do you work out?” She rubbed the side of his arm.

“I never thought about it,” he said, his voice tight with some emotion Sophie couldn’t diagnose. Anger? Annoyance?

This one has to be different. I can make this time different, she told herself as she opened up her bedroom door and stepped aside for him to follow her through.

Her bedroom was decorated in the style of a painting she once saw depicting the inside of a genie’s bottle: a worthy set for an opulent romantic fantasy. The room was draped in blue, green, and purple silks with a wide sofa that ran the length of one wall and a large canopied bed that took up most of the rest of the room. Large enough to fit four adults, a dozen velvet pillows covered its silken surface, arranged to match the drapes.

“What do you think?” Sophie said, already unlacing the sides of her dress and pulling down the draping sleeves so she could walk out of it without missing a step. She stripped quickly down to a lacy shift that barely covered the skin around her breasts and didn’t go further down than the top of her thighs. She kept on her high-heeled shoes and put an extra sway into her walk.

This has to work. She grit her teeth.

Quinn walked further into the room without looking behind at her. He barely glanced at the opulence around him and moved straight to the large window overlooking the forest.

“This place is very different from where I grew up. But the forest always looks the same.” His voice trailed away as he turned around and took in her nearly-n***d body. His eyes traveled up her smooth legs—Sophie kept her face neutral as she remembered all the waxing it took to get her legs so smooth an hour ago—her firm stomach—after exercising nearly three hours a day, it should be firm—and up to her perfectly-painted face.

Sophie walked toward him slowly, a cat stalking a mouse, as she peeled off the shift and lifted it above her head, giving him a nice, long look at her body as she raised her arms above her head and then let the flimsy fabric fall to the floor.

“I hope you know, although I am the mistress here, I want you to feel free to make this place your home. And make use of my”—she reached up to run a fingernail down the side of his cheek—”attentions.”

“Uhhh,” Quinn said, his eyes wide. “I’m not really sure what you want from me, my lady.”

“Oh, I think it’s very obvious what I want from you,” Sophie said, running her hands down his chest to his belt. She started to undo the buckle when he stepped back, his hands raised defensively.

“I’m really sorry, but I just met you about fifteen minutes ago and, I have to admit, so far I don’t think you’re my type,” he stammered, backing up another step.