Soft. Deferential. Yet she didn't come across as meek. There was a quiet determination in the way she moved, and a spine of steel for facing off with a monster such as myself to beg for her job.
The more those big tears rolled down her cheeks, the more besotted I became.
The darkness inside of me relished the thought thatIhad caused those tears, while at the same time I worried that I had frightened her off before we could get started.
But she hadn't run.
Even with her cheeks streaked and her breath catching in her throat, she'd held my gaze. Even if it was only after I'd encouraged it.
No human other than Beatrice had done that in years.
And even though Jolie had trembled, she'd faced me and begged me to keep her on.
And the part of me that was still a man, buried under horn and fur and the curse that chained me to this damned house, felt something dangerously close to admiration.
The beast in me, though... he felt something else entirely.
He wanted to claim the pretty flower who dared to beg a monster for mercy. Rut her. Mark her.
I dragged in a breath, fighting down the low, involuntary rumble that rose in my chest whenever I thought of her on her knees.
Pushing away the thoughts of her submission, I stormed back out of my study to the dining room.
No matter what my beast wanted, I couldn't partake.
Girls like Jolie were not meant for me. She was here for one thing, and one thing only.
To do her job.
And her job was nothing more than milking the Minotaur.
Thanks to my curse, I could not leave the blasted house. I could not shift back into my human form. And I had to be milked. Daily.
All because of my own stupidity.
Years ago, before horns split my skull and fur overtook my skin, I had been a sorcerer of some small renown. Arrogant. Brilliant. Hungry for power in all the wrong places. I'd believed I could bind a creature older than time itself, an earth-spirit who dwelled beneath the forest floor and answered to no mortal man.
I had wanted its strength. It's endurance. It's connection to the deep, thrumming magic of the land. Instead, the creature had laughed at me and wrapped its vines around my wrists like shackles.
"If you crave the strength of the bull, you shall have it,"it had whispered to me. "But strength without humility becomes something rotten. You will be bound to the beast until you learnto be humble. Until you learn that there is more to life than your greed."
Before I could do anything, my body twisted, the bones reshaping as my skin split beneath new muscle and hide. And when the transformation had completed and I was a breathless mess on the ground in front of the earth spirit, he had laid the last of the curse on me.
"This form will overflow with power until it breaks you. You must be drained, monster, milked daily, or be drowned in your own greed."
The spirit had left me then, collapsing the woods into a labyrinth and sealing me inside this estate.
My prison.
My reminder.
I had no more magic. No more freedom.
All I had left to me was the knowledge that I would need to bemilkeddaily like livestock to keep myself sane.
Beatrice was the only one who knew the full truth. She'd worked for me even before the curse had befallen me and stood beside me through it all. Through every failed applicant, every woman who had run screaming or sobbing.
Until Jolie.
