Tame his Beast - Claire C. Riley Page 0,8

“You sayin’ I don’t deserve your kindness? That’s shitty bedside manner if you ask me.”

Jenna’s gaze shot to Beast. “I’m saying you’re a job. And that’s all some patients are. We fix you up and send you out and we’ll see you again real soon.”

Beast sneered. “Real soon if you’re lucky, bitch.”

Jenna shook her head and looked back at me. “Some men can’t be saved. They don’t want to be.”

“Sure as hell don’t need saving from some uppity bitch like you,” he spat back. “Fucking clean me and get this shit over with.” He looked over at me. “And get the fuck out of here. This ain’t a motherfuckin’ circus, bitch!”

I stumbled backwards, grasping for the handle on the door before throwing it open and getting the hell out of there. I slammed it shut behind me, feeling awful at leaving Jenna in there on her own but glad to be away from that horrible man. He was ugly both inside and out, and I didn’t want to spend any more time with him.

Gauge, the man outside, began to chuckle and I glared over at him, my chest heaving with the need to shout or cry, or both.

“He’s a fucking peach, ain’t he?” he sneered.

“He’s such an—”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s that as well,” Gauge cut in with a laugh. “Don’t take it personal. He hates everyone, not just you.”

My mouth opened and closed. “He hates me?” I stammered. I hadn’t even thought of it that way. Why would he hate me? He didn’t even know me.

“He hates everyone, including himself,” Gauge said before turning his attention back to his cell and effectively dismissing me.

Beast hated me.

And himself.

I should hate him back for the way he treated me and the way he spoke to Jenna. But the stupid part of me didn’t. All I could think about doing was trying to take away some of his pain. I just didn’t know how to do that.

Chapter Four

~ Beast ~

Every part of my body hurt. With every drag of that damn sponge across my sensitive flesh, I wanted to scream. It was like dragging nails across my skin and slicing them into the muscles. At one point I would have loved being bathed by a hot-as-hell nurse. I would have seduced her and had her bent over my bed within five minutes. But now I was reduced to lashing out angrily at her so I didn’t cry out in pain.

She had swiped over one of the worst scars on my stomach and all I could think about doing was rearing back and slamming my fist into that pretty face of hers. I wanted to see her cry. I wanted to see her trembling in fear, snot and tears colliding down her cheeks as she cowered beneath me. Blood running down her face as she begged for me to stop. I hated that the thought turned me on, but it did.

I’d never in my life been violent to a woman—men, yes, but not a woman. Yet the image of her stripped naked with my handprints over her pale flesh was seducing me and making the violence inside of me grow.

“Unless you want it cut off, I suggest you quit that,” the nurse snapped.

I chuckled darkly and pushed all thoughts of violating the pretty Belle out of my mind. She didn’t need to know that I hadn’t felt a single thing from my cock since I woke up in the hospital over three months ago. Nothing, not even a twitch. I was dead from the waist down.

“You had no place bringing her in here,” I said, staring up at the white ceiling as her hands moved down my thigh.

“She needed to see that not all people were good.”

She spoke matter-of-factly, like I was the epitome of the Devil or some shit. Hell, I guess I was.

“Nice,” I said with a shake of my head.

“She needed to take some of the emotion out of the job so she could get on with it. Every patient can’t be a bleeding heart or the job will kill her.” She dropped the sponge back into the bowl and dried her hands off, her gaze moving over the tender burns that were finally healing on the left side of my body.

I’d been in here months. Some of it awake, and some of it in an induced coma. I was glad for the coma, because if the pain of what I’d woken up to was anything to live by then I wouldn’t