Beastly Desires

Chapter One

"Beautiful Colette."

Colette cringed as she felt familiar hands snake their way up and over her shoulders. She whirled around, paint brushes toppling out of the canister she carried clutched to her chest.

"Tsk! I have no time to play with you today Gregorie." She bit out his name like shooing away a dog. A tall, gangly and much too smitten of a dog she grimaced.

She knelt down to pick up the fallen brushes, now half sunken in the muddy earth. Gregorie grabbed her hands, yanking her up. He pinned them to his chest, pressing himself to her, a lazy male grin upon his face. "I'm not the one playing around in the mud."

A furious blush crept up Colette's cheeks and she bristled against him, trying to escape his grasp but he only tightened his fingers around hers even more.

"Leave me be Gregorie. I have work to do." It wasn't a lie. She needed to head back to her fathers workshop and finish the disaster of a painting she started on late last night. Not her best work, but it had been done out of pure rage. A piece requested by some handsy merchant and horribly underpaid for.

"Is that what you call it? Work? Slapping some colors down on a piece of linen. A child can do that. You shouldn't be working at all. Accept my proposal and you'll never have to touch a dirty brush again. Never will your clothes be covered in paint and your poor beautiful hands callused." He stroked her fingers with his own callused hands and she flinched. Not from the intimate gesture but from the insult he had said so casually.

She glared up at him and yanked her hands away, almost falling backwards from the sheer strength she grasped for. She thought falling in the mud was better than feeling his hot, clammy breath against her face once more.

"I will not accept your proposal. I will not be bothered by you again. Leave me be Gregorie."

Colette gathered up the brushes and turned abruptly, stalking away. She knew Gregorie was only smirking at her from behind. She knew he had his arms crossed over his chest and that haughty, indignant look across his face. Good. She won this time. And Gods be it the last time.

...

The small, slender cottage sat squished between two fatter cottages that towered over it like two smothering parents. Its bricks were worn and aged with brown and green moss dripping from the windowsills and cuddled around its base. Colette smiled with relief. Home. As small and scraggly it was, home never felt safer. Her father had let the windows open and the thin, green curtains she had sewn half-hazerdly twisted and billowed out from the house, embracing the wind that teased them. The smell of paint wafted from the small openings on either side of the door and comfort began to settle into Colette's body.

She grimaced. Gregorie had that affect on her. She always bristled in his presence, was always aware of how close he stood, how much he towered over her like a tall, slender tree, encroaching on her with its long, gangly branches. He alway made her feel small. Sheltered. Vulnerable. Like any day would be the day he'd snatch her away and shove her into the lady in waiting he so eagerly desired her to be. Colette rolled her shoulders at the thought, shaking off the illness that began to creep up. Never. Never would she marry him.

She reached home and pushed open the door. Its hinges sang a familiar sound and she felt at peace once again. "How would one go about disposing of a very tall tree father?"

Her father was hunched over a large work table in the center of the cottage. Work table, dinner table, occasional mending to wounds table. The only table they owned. "Tall tree you say." He grunted.

Colette came to stand beside her father, placing a hand on his back. "Did I mention it had legs for days and too many freckles to count across its smug face?"

She felt his deep chuckle beneath her hand and smiled.

"Gregorie is in love with you dearest. You can't bury love as much as you can bury a tree. It'll just sprout a new one."

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "He made me drop my paint brushes in the mud and didn't even bother helping to pick them up before embracing me."

Her father straightened at the mention and seriousness crept into his scraggily eye brows. Those watery eyes softened a little as he accessed his daughter. "Would an occasional embrace be such a bad thing every once in a while?"

Colette's lips tightened. Her father wanted her to marry. At least marry in love or in a mutual agreement, he only wanted her to be happy and well taken care of. He minded Gregorie and could somehow see past the haughty male swagger he spewed every time he was around her. It's not that Colette didn't think him to be...unpleasing, at least not in outward appearance.

Gregorie was built like a tree. Tall and slender. He towered over her by a near foot. His slender frame was cladded in equally slender muscles that kept him from being generalized as skinny. His skin was pearly and covered in freckles that clustered like rain drops across his cheekbones and nose. His hair was a ruddy color which he kept tied back in a low ponytail. Its ends cascading down his back in wild ringlets. There was once a day Colette may have thought twining her fingers through them tempting, but it was easily dismissed by a smug, male gaze. Those dirt brown eyes stared down a straight nose and beneath them a pair of full lips and a dimpled chin. Any woman would bite their lip to keep from pressing a finger to that perfect chin. Colette thought a fist to it would be better.

As if her father could read the thought that crossed her mind she twisted her smirk into an innocent smile. "I wish he would embrace me in other ways. For instance, my paintings. He said a child could do them? How am I not supposed to find that insulting?" She huffed, setting down her sullied paint brushes on the cluttered table.

Her father stroked her hair, pulling the loose tendrils behind her ear. "Sometimes a man doesn't have the right words to say when in love." He gave her a reassuring smile before limping across the tiny threshold into what would be considered the living area. It only hosted a deep purple, velvet, plush sitting chair, worn deeply in the middle, its bottom sagged, almost touching the dirt floor. Beside it a large fireplace and a matching, sagging mantle. Fire licked beneath its deep grin, a pot already broiling atop it. She watched her aged father fuss with the pot, resting his hand on his good leg. The light of the fire danced across his wooden leg, like it would catch fire instantly.

Her father worked as a tinker of sorts, fixing odd things, small or large. The town they lived in came to him to when something didn't turn, clink or throttle. His mind carried the knowledge of his craft from his father and his father, and his father, all the way down the line of Moreau men. His hands were big but steady, gentle and full of focused precision. Though having been crippled at a very young age, it never stopped him from pursuing his career, from marrying, to have children- a child. It wasn't until just last year his crippled-ness started to wear on him. The unseen wounds flared up now and then, causing immense pain and restless, fevered nights. Some nights Colette sat beside her fever ridden father in his chair, clutching his hand and praying to God not to let him slip into a sleep of eternity.

"Let me." Colette hustled over to her father, taking the wooden ladle from his hand and guiding him into the velvet chair. He sank into the worn cushions and let out a deep sigh.

Colette stirred the stew her father whipped up in their little iron pot. Its aroma filled her nostrils and aching stomach. She grabbed a clay bowl and ladled the stew into it, plucking a small wooden spoon from the work table and depositing the meal into her fathers open hands. He sat the bowl in his lap and clutched Colette's hands into his own. His eyes bore down into her, worry, sympathy and love shown beneath their glassy surface. His voice was a soft rumble. "Colette. Your are my only daughter. My- my only child. I want you to be happy. To be taken care of. To be loved."

Colette felt the weight of his words like stones on her chest. She crouched before her father, kneeling at his feet. His hands held hers tightly as if he was afraid they might not again. She braced herself for the words he choose next.

"I will not be around for the rest of your life. Please. Do not use me as an excuse for forgoing your happiness." He sighed and it was heavy and full of guilt.

Tears rimmed Colette's eyes and she dared not to wipe them away. "Father, please. I am happy and content with us. This."

She motioned to the small cottage they called home. It had no separate bedroom. Just a large bed pushed against the farthest wall. A small table beside it and a disintegrating rug beneath it. A large chest rested at the foot of the bed. All of their belongings, personal items, clothing was in that chest. All that they had and held dear to them filled it. Her fathers tools and her own painting supplies lined the conjoining wall, crammed into a slanted book shelf. Her easel- two pieces of wood and a long stick nailed across it, leaned against the wall, the painting she started on last night, big and hideous rested atop it. Behind her was a short counter and a wash basin filled most of the surface space with kitchenware shoved in the corner. Yes, it was crowded. Cramped. But it was home. It was warm, comfortable, filled with both their passions and it was where her mother had died.

She pressed her forehead against his knuckles. "I love you father. Is that not enough to fill me with happiness?" She trembled as he pulled her chin up.

"Beautiful Colette. There are some happiness that I cannot give you. Only a partner. A man whom you'll share your life with can. That happiness is all that I desire for you-"

"And you think Gregorie is the man for that?"

Her father grimaced at her remark, his eyes full of empathy. "Love can make you look past the unpleasant things. Find kindness beneath hard steal. Do not be so cold when love comes baring itself to you. Be open minded my darling." He cupped her cheek and Colette bowed her head into his embrace.

She did not desire the happiness a man could bring her. She never thought of what her life might be as a wife, as a homemaker, as a mother. She only wanted to paint and help her father. She only wanted to fill the gapping hole her mother had left. Though her father did not ask her to fill that role, she felt responsible in some way to do so. To prolong her fathers life and fill it with joy and happiness. But if her fathers happiness was to see her happy, how could she refuse?