Page 49 of Beau and the Beast

And maybe he had, at the time.

Beau wondered if Wolfram would give up all of the success he'd ever had if it meant getting out from under the curse. Beau knew what his own answer would be—but what would Wolfram's be? Had he truly enjoyed the life he led before the curse, or had it been one of emptiness, lacking thrills, lacking anything genuine?

When he and Noah had unlimited wealth—because that's what it would feel like, he realized, to have $50 million—would they be changed by it? Or was there something so fundamentally different between Beau and Wolfram that Beau would react to money in an entirely different way?

Halfway through the stack of magazines, Beau was exhausted of reading them.

Every interview told the same glossy, faux story.

Isidore Wolfram, Jr., was a man’s man, living the American Dream. No one cared that he wasn’t self-made, that he stood on the backs of others to get where he had been. They wanted to know what sound investments were going to pay off that year, upon what island he planned to sun that winter, and when the expansion to his wine cellar would be complete.

It reeked of bullshit to Beau. It was the same sort of advertorial slag that his editors at The Ledger used to have him writing. He'd barely thought of the place since he'd arrived at the penthouse. It was a job he certainly wouldn't miss.

No. Beau knew there was more to Wolfram than what lay in the pages of those magazines.

And he knew that there was no way he could construct an entire biography based on the ugly caricatures that reporters before him had created of Wolfram.

* * *

After Beau left that morning, dejected, Wolfram didn’t let his thoughts linger on the reporter.

He would force his life to once again take on a modicum of normalcy. Wolfram made tea, went through a new chapter of vocabulary in Mandarin and then Russian, and made his rounds in the study, plucking out wilted flowers and replacing them with the fresh ones Violet had left at his door earlier that morning. Finally, Wolfram settled in at the computer to sort through the correspondences he'd received overnight for the Mueller Global Endowment Fund.

It was a simple life, Wolfram thought. He considered himself almost like a modern monk. His monastery demanded silence, neatness, and a familiar routine that made it easy for the days to pass in an anonymous line, one after another, bleeding together.

In the blink of an eye, he’d fallen into the trap of looking forward to something. He'd allowed himself to believe that he would have a friend in Beau—in someone who treated him like a person, against all odds. He'd allowed himself to believe in something other than logic, to buy into the idea that there was really areasonwhy Beau had arrived at the penthouse with the belief that they could do something together, that Wolfram was someone worth knowing and writing about.

But the moment had been fleeting. And his judgment, he had to admit to himself, was probably clouded by lust. Old habits died hard, and he hadn't met anyone new in almost a decade, after all.

It was too easy to fall for the first pretty face that came along—to buy into fairy-tale thinking about someone handsome showing up to save him.

But Wolfram wasn't a goddamn princess. He was a monster. And he was happy to keep playing the part.

He consulted his watch. Though it was midday outside, the cursed watch showed that it was just a few minutes until midnight. The days were ticking down now, as they had been since the first day of his transformation.

Wolfram went through the remainder of his day as he had always gone through his days: alone. He ate alone, read and practiced and enriched himself alone, and went to bed alone, shedding his breeches and tucking himself in on the giant bed he'd had made for himself.

Beau was all sweetness and naivety and there was no room for anything like that in Wolfram's life.

* * *

Wolfram had setan alarm for the early morning the next day. Despite the fact that he didn't plan on continuing to meet with Beau, he was certainly going to keep the schedule that he'd begun to set. Staying up all night was fine for a nocturnal animal, but it was no way for a man to behave—even if there was no real reason for him to be up during normal hours.

The charities he worked with, after all, were located around the world. There was always something to do to manage the fund, no matter what time he was awake. But he'd set his mind to keeping normal hours again, and he forced himself out of bed at sunrise.

Wolfram stood in the shower stall that he'd had specially made to accommodate him. He'd had renovations done to his entire wing of the penthouse in order to accommodate his unusual size. Contractors had built his ridiculously deep bathtub, his strange shower with multiple heads, and they didn't think twice about it—especially because Wolfram paid in cash.

He stood under the streaming water, rubbing soap into the velvety fur that covered most of his body. The hair over most of him was fine and very short but thick enough to cover his skin. It only grew long in certain places, flourishes on the backs of his forearms and calves, a long stripe down his spine, and of course the mane that had replaced his human hair.

It was hell to take care of it all, but if he didn't bathe judiciously, his fur stank like an animal's.

Violet had once suggested that the smell was a result ofoverwashing—that he didn't need to bathe at all, that wild animals rarely took baths unless they were trying to cool down or had a specific goal to accomplish. He'd been offended at the implication that he had anything in common with a wild animal and had railed against her suggestion that he deviate from what normal people did. That had been before he'd retreated to his wing—back when they still thought they had some sort of input to his life.

Wolfram knew that morning that he shouldn’t allow his mind to wander. It never went anywhere good. Still, his thoughts landed on the reporter.

Beau was as beautiful as he was infuriating. Things would've been so different if they'd met when Wolfram was still a normal man. He'd have charmed Beau with promises and the easy way that he joked. Wolfram was always confident, talented at finding out what people wanted most.

And he could always give them what they wanted.

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