provincialbelle | (no subject)

Everything feels as if it's been happening very quickly and very slowly at once. The castle had been frightening and exhilarating at once and she had been so giddy to see all her friends again, but so dismayed to discover them in their original forms. Worse, of course, had been when she sat on the rug of the reading room and confessed that she didn't know that she was ever going to be the one to break the curse.

"I wish I could," she said. "And it isn't that I don't love him in my own way, but..." Belle's attention drew towards the door, where she had asked Jacob to stay for a moment. "But I think that there's someone else and I couldn't imagine a world without him." Disappointment had been so evident, but Belle could manage past that. She was simply grateful that she had managed to see them again after thinking she would never get that chance.

Now, with the gates behind them and the sun beginning to set in the distance, Belle did what she had been longing for -- she simply wrapped her arms snugly around Jacob's waist and held on as tightly as he could permit her.

"I'm glad we came," she admitted, speaking the words into his chest. "But I'm so very tired, all the same."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That was easy enough to understand and the attention felt nice, even if it was much, much different than the attention he got as a human. It was a simpler sort of affection but no less intense and he licked her hand slightly before shifting back.

"That felt...amazing. Damn, I'm glad I can do that again."

She was still laughing when he shifted back from the light tickling of his tongue on her fingers and the sheer joy of seeing Jacob's other form. She practically vaulted forward to wrap her arms around him, both to share her affection and also to keep him warm from the cold and prying eyes of the animals around them, holding snugly tight to his body. "Maybe I should've asked you to do that inside," she admitted, unknotting her cape so she could offer it to him.

"Maybe, but the cold doesn't bother me when I'm the wolf again," Jacob explained, wrapping her cloak around him. "My temperature runs a lot hotter. Can you tell?"

Bella had always been able to, had always basked in his warmth. He wondered if Belle would feel the same way.

"You're very warm, yes," Belle admitted as she tightened the cloak around him and held on firmly so that she wouldn't have to let him go. "I suppose you'd be a wonderful aid on a cold night, but I would take you, no matter the temperature you were."

"I guess I can't really say no to that," Jacob said lowly, brushing a kiss against her mouth.

"We probably need to get back to your father's house, though, unless we want to run into something nastier than me in these woods. You down with that plan?"

She caught his chin with her fingers, softly coaxing him back towards her so that she could press a slower, longer kiss to his lips. "We should go," she agreed, a fretful beat of her heart catching her almost off guard. "I don't want a repeat of what happened last time."

"What...was that, exactly," Jacob asked even though he was a little nervous about the answer. If it wasn't a good thing, it probably was for the best that he didn't know but curiosity had always been something to get him in the end.

"Wolves," she says evenly, which shouldn't still be scary to her after spending more time with Jacob (since he seemed to be as wolfy as they came and she wasn't scared of him, not in the least). "Feral ones, ones that hurt the Beast. I don't want them to hurt you," she admitted firmly.

Jacob nodded. "Yeah, okay, we probably do need to head out. I'm good one on one but there's no way I can take a whole pack by myself. Besides, wild wolves have better instincts than I do. I had to learn. They were born with it."

The advantage he had was solely in intellect but numbers could overwhelm him easily.

"And I wouldn't want you to be hurt," Belle pointed out, because that was more important to her. She didn't want some macho fight to happen because of their lingering due to her wish to stay. "Back home and to Papa, then?" she said, a hopeful look on her face that they could all have a lovely dinner together and she could truly and properly introduce Jacob to her father.

Jacob leaned in and kissed her quickly. "Yeah, let's get back home. I'm sure your horse will appreciate that."

Horses didn't tend to like predators, especially wolves, and the later and darker it got, the more likely they would run into something with more teeth and less manners.