Bargain With the Beast by April Andrews Page A

does that mean?”
    The Beast tilted his head,
considering, and when he spoke Tobias’ heart skipped a beat. “It
means that we will see each other again.”
    “ You’re planning to abduct
me again? To drag me back down here?” Tobias asked, and the weird
thing, the thing that made absolutely no sense, was that he almost
wanted the Beast to say yes! What the hell was wrong with
him?
    “ Absolutely not,” the
Beast said and his next words had Tobias’ heart racing. “I won’t
need to.”
    “ What are you talking
about?”
    The Beast hesitated for just a moment
and then he pulled Tobias into his arms. Tobias felt his body melt
towards his lover. He had no choice in that. It simply happened.
“Before long, Tobias,” he said, and his voice held such promise.
“You will come to me.”
    “ That won’t happen,”
Tobias said, but if the Beast’s voice held conviction, his held
none.
    “ It will,” he said, a
pause and then, “And believe me, lover, it will be sooner than you
think.”
     
     

Chapter Thirteen
     
    Tobias didn’t need any alarms to wake
him the following Saturday. Just as he had every morning since
arriving back above ground, he awoke just before six, and unlike
all the other mornings before his underground adventure, he woke up
in an instant. There was no struggling to consciousness. No
groaning and wishing for an extra half hour in bed. He was simply
and instantly alert—ready to start his day.
    That worried Tobias. It had all week,
and he couldn’t help but look across at his row of alarm clocks on
the bedside table. They were all silent, all standing sentinel,
until a few moments later when they started to go off.
    His wake-up call.
    Only he hadn’t needed it.
    And he had no idea why.
    With a frown on his face,
Tobias made his way out of bed, ran a hand through his hair, and
pulled on a pair of sweats. They were slightly tighter than they
had been a few weeks back and yet the scales continued to show his
weight exactly where he wanted it to be. It was perplexing, maybe
wouldn’t even have been something anyone else would notice. But so
much of Tobias’ life over the last year had been centered around
this sort of thing, that he did notice it, and was concerned. There shouldn’t be
any reason his sweats were tight. And yet they were. His body was
different somehow.
    A shift.
    A change.
    It made no sense. But then, little had
since him.
    Since the
Beast.
    Tobias shuddered at that thought,
because the Beast had been on his mind far too often over the past
week. But then was that any wonder, Tobias thought almost angrily
as he pulled on a tee-shirt. After everything that had happened,
after everything he had experienced, of course he was going to be
shook up. Of course he was going to replay everything over and
over. Question was, how long until he stopped doing that? How long
until he stopped remembering that night, until he stopped dreaming
about it…
    Tobias groaned as the memories started
all over again. One after the other they raced through his mind,
and for some reason they were the good memories, the time in bed
together, the morning after, the way the Beast smiled at him. The
bad memories were less intense, being half-terrified as he was
shackled to the bed, anxious that he was about to become a
horrifying crime statistic. Those memories were beginning to
dim.
    That too worried Tobias.
    He was rose-tinting everything, and he
watched enough true crime to know that was a bad sign. That perhaps
he was beginning to sympathize with his abductors, to convince
himself that what had happened to him was okay. And it wasn’t. He
should never have ended up below ground…tempted into the clutches
of the Beast…doing things he could never have imagined…
    He shook his head, and, in an effort
to get a-hold of himself, made his way into the kitchen. It had
always been Tobias’ favorite room in the apartment, but today he
barely noticed the bright appliances, or the comfy couch pushed