The shop is on the seedier side of town, nestled between raucous gaming halls and ill-lit pubs. Not the sort of neighborhood a genteel lady would normally patronize, and yet they will, to visit him. Down a cozy sunken stair, through a thick oaken door, and into a tasteful room of tasseled lampshades and gorgeous tapestries of lush jungles and sun-drenched savannahs. His home, perhaps. Mr. Velvet. So they call him.

"He is only a beast, after all," laugh the rich gentlemen when they hear their wives have paid him a visit, "and so there is nothing to fear."

But those who have met Mr. Velvet find this far from the truth. Yes, he is covered with a lustrous pelt the shade of midnight. Yes, his face is a whiskered muzzle, with such disconcerting smiles that show his fangs. Yes, a tail sways leisurely at his hindquarters, disturbing the otherwise fine cut of his dressing gown. Yet those golden eyes shine with intelligence and humor, and his purring voice speaks more than one human language not just comprehensibly but with a rhetorician's grace.

"Still he is only a beast, after all," laugh the fine gentlemen, and shake their heads when their wives saunter off to their appointments with him, "and so there is nothing to fear."

And what happens on those appointments? Magic tricks, some say, performed before a truly exclusive audience -- sometimes a single, enraptured observer. Gentle tales of his jungle home, the beginnings of legend -- what he is, perhaps; stories of how he came to be this way, for some say he was once as human as you or I. Only if you listen to the tawdriest of rumors do you hear whispers of the carnal delights he visits upon his clients; of the intoxicating teas he serves, a sinuous caress of his paws on the shivering bellies of the women who partake; of the darker rooms where restraints and cages might be found, occupied only for a long, aching evening before those dazed women wander back to their unsuspecting husbands.

"But he is only a beast, after all," mutter the frowning gentlemen, puzzled by the distant looks in their wives' faces, "and so there is nothing to fear."

They hesitate to speak of Lady Dunthorpe, and how she was shipped off to the furthest corner of the countryside, how her appetites had grown beyond her husband's ability to sate, how she cried out for Mr. Velvet as she writhed slick and naked in the dark of night, how Lord Dunthorpe found oddly possessive claw marks scrawled on her flesh, down her shoulders, down the lush swell of her backside. How the other wives speak of her with envy in their voices.

And if you ask Mr. Velvet himself, he will only shrug and offer a sly purr.

"I am only a beast, after all," he growls softly as he takes your hand in his paw and leads you into those darkly shadowed rooms, his feline eyes gleaming hypnotically, "and so there is nothing to fear."