He took that time to look her over.
She was some kind of were-shifter, he could see that now.
He just didn’t know if that was a secret she’d always carried and had just never told him, or if this was new, another tendril of the curse her father had thrown over them both.
When it didn’t look like she was going to move, he took a second to take in his surroundings and give her a moment, as well. It was then that he realized he’d made it passed the barrier he could never get through before.
“You!”
Her eyes narrowed and hardened at him when he exclaimed the word, but they turned to confusion when he continued.
“You must be the key! I’ve tried a million times, a million different ways, to get past that barrier, but holding onto you as you passed through it worked. It’s never let me in before now, not in all the times I’ve tried.”
Belle
She tried to ask him what he meant, but when nothing even vaguely human-sounding came out of her mouth, she just exhaled in frustration and jerked her head instead, telling him to follow her. As she led him back to the manor, so she could shift back and speak to him, her mind whirled.
He’d recognized her immediately, she’d seen it happen when she was watching him through the window of the bar.
Everyone else had been yelling “Beast!” and pointing at her, but he’d known. How?
She’d grown quite pissed off in the minutes that she’d been watching them all inside the bar, before anyone had noticed her. She could hear them all, singing about him, celebrating his sexual prowess. It made her furious.
“No one licks like Gastard, or flicks clits like Gastard. No one’s dick’s as incredibly thick as Gastard’s!”
How dare he! she’d thought.
While she’d been trapped in the manor all this time, pining for him, he’d been there, licking and flicking those women’s clits? How else would they have known how massive his cock was? While she was aching with need for him, he’d completely forgotten all about her?
Had he not cared for her at all?
“No one fucks like Gastard, no one sucks like Gastard! No one yanks, no one spanks, no one wanks like Gastard!”
Hearing their words broke her heart in two. She thought she was the only one he’d ever spanked. And to find out the truth in such a public way?
Oh, hell no!
She’d started to leave, furious that she’d wasted so much time longing for him when she’s obviously meant so little to him, but that was when they saw her.
And then he saw her, too, only he knew who she really was!
She panicked and ran, but obviously not fast enough.
Had he really tried a million different times to come to her? But then why had they been saying those things?
As they stepped inside and her shift human happened immediately, she wondered what he would say when he found out about the staff in their cursed incantations.
“Have you always hidden your animal from me or is that courtesy of your father?”
“I’ve never hidden anything from you, not ever.”
He nodded at her and they stood in the foyer in silence.
“Out there, you said you tried to come to me?” She eventually asked.
“Only every single day since your father chased me out.”
“But, you couldn’t get here?”