Tooth & Claw Ch. 01

The modern world adorns her.

The delicate, ephemeral things she wears for me, that sheath her skin and shape her flesh,

The scent of her perfume, a heady mix of unspoken implication and calculated temptation.

The colours and highlights that accentuate her eyes and lips and cheeks.

The deep, lustrous shine of carmine on her nails.

The modern world adorns her.

And yet the effect such artifice has is anything but modern for deep inside me stirs the familiar primal urges of the animal. Blood surges in my veins, my breathing deepens and, though I am almost wholly unaware of the fact, my hands clench and relax, clench and relax at my sides. I drink her in, bathing in the assault she makes on my senses.

The fragile shell of restraint and honour and civility that I've surrounded my basest desires with begins to weaken and crack. Their time is passing fast, the ravenous cold and red eyes of the beast burning out from the darkness of my soul. Cruelty briefly surfaces inside me, like a black fin in a calm ocean, hinting at what lays under the placid waters.

My nostrils flare, devouring the air that carries her scents to me. I close my eyes and sift through them; blanketing everything is that perfume, thick and cloying, a flashing neon light calling out where a beckoning finger would be infinitely more pleasing to the senses.

And yet it cannot disguise everything. Underneath it I detect the simple, unfussy soap she used when she bathed for me. It has an effect on me that her choice of perfume can never inspire. She smells clean and fresh and pure, unsullied almost, like nature made flesh. The beast licks its lips, thick hair bristling along dark flanks.

Perfume then soap and then underneath all of that, hiding like prey, is the scent of her arousal. From the midnight depths comes the low, keening howl of need only I can hear and only I can feel.

'Are you ready to serve me?' I whisper, calloused fingers running through silken hair.

She looks up at me, lips slightly parted as if needing to ask something she can't put into words, eyes bright and full of hope and desire. One I will crush this night and the other I will refine to a sharp point.

For there is no hope here, leastways not for her; on this night, in this place, she exists for me. She is prey, meat to the talon, red and raw and fresh and I will feast and she will be consumed.

There can be no hope remaining because she hopes for herself and not for me and that will not do. Desire I will foster and grow, refining it down to a point where her first and last and constant instinct is me, my needs, my pleasures and my hopes. But her own hopes, excepting the precious few that dovetail neatly with or are of use to my own, will by necessity go by the board.

I am in this for me; she will be too. That is the only way it can be. The only way it should be. She has her place and her purpose and I have mine.

But desire must be encouraged because there must be balance in all I do with this girl. She has to offer what I cannot request, has to give what I cannot take.

I can lead her to many doors, to many junctions and stand here there, confront her with choice. I can load the deck in my favour, work a hundred ways to influence her choice to my liking but ultimately the choice will be hers and hers alone.

And what she decides I will abide by, regardless of if it's to my liking or not and that choice is mine and mine alone.

It all comes down to choice.

I could take but I choose not to.

I could force but I choose not to.

I could break her but I choose not to.

This is my joy and my frustration, my pleasure and my pain and my prize and my penance.

I could, but I choose not to.

Instead I endeavour to ensure she chooses for me.

Blood burns in my veins, my breathing becomes ragged and urgent and my hands are clenched to white knuckles at my sides again. The beast paces in his cage, waiting for me to slip the lock from the door.

The girl looks at me and nods.

'I'm ready to serve you,' she says with the confident and knowing tone of one who has no idea what she's letting herself in for.

I smile. 'Are you ready to do as I ask you to, girl, to do the things we've talked of?'

She nods and uncertainty flashes in her eyes. I see it loud and clear, like the beam of a lighthouse cutting through the fog. I see it and I must acknowledge it.

Within me, the beast snarls briefly. We both smell blood.

I cup her face gently, turn my eyes on hers and use the tone and texture of voice she needs to hear. I whisper the words she cannot progress without, giving her the time and responsibility she's looking for. I give her everything she needs to make the choice I need.

Manipulation is a delicate game.

She looks up at me.

She nods.

The lock falls from the cage.

The beast steps out to play.