Beastly Desires

Chapter Six

Men came up to Colette, offering chickens and foreign goods. Spewing deals laced with sweet words and ridiculous compliments. They showered her in honey covered advances, reaching for her hands, an arm to graze their greedy fingers over. She would normally ignore the handsy ones but found herself unfortunately cornered by one between a stack of hay bales and a cart of produce.

"If only but a kiss upon your hand and this lovely goat will be yours."

Colette smiled tightly at the purred advance, desperately searching for an escape route as the haunched man crept closer to her. He held a rope in his right hand tied off to a spotted kid goat while his other hand reached out towards her.

"I- I don't need a goat, good sir. If I might, I'll be on my way n- now." She stuttered, sucking in her breath as he neared closer to her.

His grimy face was laced with sensuous intent. A blurred hunger- desire pooled behind his brown eyes. Colette wondered what awful thoughts raced through his head, ushering him to stand in front of her, his hand racking down her arm to clutch her own.

"S-sir," she squeaked out. Dread filling her entire body.

No one batted an eye. The woman who passed by only glanced at her, their sneers louder than the words of disgrace that fell from their lips. Men carried on with their work, focusing on the next opportune buyer.

Colette looked up to the heavens, pleading as she struggled to take her hand back.

"Mwah... mwah...mmm, such lovely skin. Like tea with cream. Oh how sweat the taste of cream is."

Colette appalled at the assault her hand took from the man's greedy lips. She thought surely there would be bruises with how roughly he kissed her.

His mouth started up her forearm and she squabbled to be released. "Sir, you must let me go this instant!"

A tall shadow arched above the man and two large hands clamped down onto his shoulders before yanking him back into the ground. The man yelped as a heeled boot pressed down into his abdomen.

"The lady said get, you gluttonous pig. I'll be taking that goat as payment for the expensive soap she'll now need to purchase to clean the filth her hand is covered in. Get, I say."

The man scrabbled to his feet beneath an impatient looking Gregorie who towered over him like a balking tree.

Relief and subtle wariness filtered through Colette's body as she stepped from out her corner of dread. Of course it was Gregorie who came to rescue her at the right moment, as if he hadn't been trailing after her the last ten minutes throughout the market place. She felt his shadow looming behind her for quite some time now

Gregorie held out his hand and Colette gingerly took it. He yanked the kerchief out from around his neck and wiped at the back of her hand with it, his eyes softening as he smoothed the cotton across her fingers. The gesture was intimate, sharing one's kerchief, especially between a man and a woman was a sign of courting.

Colette snatched her hand away before mumbling an illiterate apology.

Gregorie brown eyes simmered with an unreadable emotion. "I saved your life and you balk at the kind gesture?"

Colette flinched, a blush working it's way across her cheeks. She didn't mean to seem rude, she only felt embarrassed by the gesture. She fumbled to say the right words. "M-my apologies, Gregorie. Thank you."
She offered a slight curtesy, her eyes glued to the ground as she felt the assessing weight of his stare at the crown of her head.