Chapter 17 Belle
BELLE
He thought I was asleep, and you should have seen the look on his face when he realized I heard every word.
Sofia and I can't handle any more loss.
Yeah. Me neither.
He's a terrifying man, but also stupid-cute at how sheepish he looks when I tell him not to push me away.
We're both staring at each other now, suspended in this strange, twilight honesty. He's kneeling at the edge of Sofia's bed like he's praying at something that looks a lot like regret.
He tries to stand, already halfway gone in his head, and I catch his wrist.
"Stay," I whisper.
He freezes like he can't believe what I just said, and for once, Luca Moretti's fresh out of plans.
But he doesn't have to worry. I've got him.
I slide Sofia's arm off my ribs, inch by inch, and kiss her forehead. She sighs, rolls, clutches her pillow in place of me, and I know all's good in dreamland. I set the remote to low volume and ease off the bed.
"Come with me," I whisper. "I want to talk somewhere private."
We tiptoe out like burglars.
"This way." He leads, occasionally staring at me like I'm the mirage here.
We move through the house on soft feet—hallway, library, the corridor—until the night air kisses my face. The balcony wraps the east wing like a sweeping cloud. The city's out there, humming. The estate's a sleeping giant beneath us.
"You want to talk?" he asks, hope etched in every word.
Fuck. I got him out here, didn't I? But where the hell do I even begin? Opening up to Luca Moretti isn't exactly like coloring between the lines. I walk past him, clutch onto the balcony railing and stare out ahead like there's inspiration to be found in the darkness.
Luca just waits, patient as a saint.
That makes it easier to talk. He feels like a safe space right about now.
I lean into the rail.
"I've been thinking about my father," I begin, voice barely above a whisper. "How furious I was when I learned he'd gambled with my life to save his business."
The stone rail bites into my palms. "I hated him for it. But now... I understand desperation. I understand making impossible choices to protect the people you love."
I glance over my shoulder. "Even when those choices destroy everything."
He didn't do it because he's a bad person. He did it because he got in over his head trying to save the company and the jobs of people who've worked for him for twenty years."
"Good men make mistakes," Luca whispers from behind.
"Yeah." I glance over my shoulder, seeing the sharp angles of his face in the moonlight. "I think that's the hardest part. Realizing someone can be good and still mess up so completely."
I don't know if Luca knows I'm not just talking about my father anymore. Well, smack my face and call me stupid, but Luca's a good man the world calls a beast. A contradiction in every way, and one I can't bring myself to keep at arm's length so easy.
I see him. Through and through.
"When you first offered this arrangement, I felt like cattle being traded," I spill, now that I've started.
Luca's breath is a low tide behind me. He doesn't interrupt, and I want to slap a gold star on him.
"It was a deal shoved down my throat. I was pissed. I was stubborn. I fought it. Then you happened, and I got to know Sofia. I started to see that maybe this forced marriage doesn't have to be a prison sentence. That maybe it could be..."
I trail off, trying to make sense of this complicated mess I call feelings.
"Could be what?"
"Something real," I finish. "Something good."
Luca moves behind me then, his chest against my back, arms sliding around my waist. I lean into him, my body recognizing its match before my brain can catch up.
"Something real," I whisper. "Something that matters."
He moves behind me, solid warmth against my back, arms circling my waist like he's afraid I might disappear. I melt into him because my body knows what my mind keeps fighting.
"I'm terrified," I admit.
"Of what?"
"Of falling in love with the man who was supposed to be my prison." The words tumble out before I can stop them. "Of wanting this life when I know how easily it could all disappear."
His hands rest over my belly, and my heart stutters. The touch is easy; the guilt knocks the air out of me. On one hand, I'm coming clean. On the other hand, I'm keeping a big, deep secret from the one man I shouldn't keep it from.
My throat burns. Not now. Not in front of him. Not on a balcony with a hundred cameras blinking. But my stupid eyes go glossy anyway.
He feels it. Of course he does. "Belle," he says, soft as a bruise.
I turn. I step into him like I'm stepping off a cliff. His mouth meets mine halfway, and the relief is so violent it's almost pain. The kiss starts like playing with cotton candy and turns into arson in three seconds flat.
His hands climb—waist, ribs, jaw—and the world narrows to heat, breath, and the way he tastes like I could live on him for a week. I bite his lower lip, and he groans into it, low and wrecked, the sound taking life in my bones.
The night air is cool; his body is not.
My dress is suddenly a bad idea, and I wish I was completely naked.
The kiss deepens, turns molten. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, and I open for him, greedy for more. My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer until there's no space left between us.
We're gasping when we break apart, but he doesn't let me go far. His forehead presses against mine.
"Belle," he growls, his palms sliding under the hem. His touch is rough-fine, the kind that brands, and when his fingers find the place no one else gets to map, my spine bows to the cause.
My back hits the stone, shoulder blades to balustrade, the estate sprawling behind him in audience.
He keeps me caged with his hips, kisses me, and works me with a rhythm that makes me sound embarrassing. I clutch his shoulders. I choke on my dignity and forget we can be watched.
"Say it," he demands, mouth at my ear.
"I want you." My voice is sandpaper and sin. "I want all of it."
Something wild takes over, flooding my veins with liquid heat. I want him. Right here. Right now. Under the stars with his kingdom spread out below us.
I drop my hands to his belt, fingers fumbling with the buckle. He groans, a deep, feral sound that sounds right on the beast he is.
"Here?" he asks, even as his hands slide up my thighs, bunching my dress around my hips.
"Yes," I hiss. "Here."
His fingers find the edge of my panties, tracing the lace before slipping underneath. I gasp as he brushes over my clit, just a teasing touch, before sliding lower.
"Already wet," he murmurs against my neck. "So fucking wet for me."
He pushes my panties aside, not bothering to remove them, just making room for his fingers to work their magic. I clutch at his shoulders, knees going weak as he goes berserk on my clit.
"Oh fuck, just like that, baby," I pant.
He chuckles and slides a finger in me, then two. The stretch is delicious, his fingers curling to hit that spot that makes my vision blur.
But I want more. I want all of him and refuse to be selfish tonight. Pleasing him is the greatest gift of all. I want to be greedy with him, greedy like I've got a right to it.
Then I remember I have my own arsenal.
I slide out from between him and the rail, drop to my knees on cool stone, and look up at him through lashes that want to commit crimes. He goes feral in the eyes.
So fucking sexy.
"Belle," he warns, already hoarse.
His eyes widen, pupils blown with lust as I work his zipper down. I free him from his pants, and God, he's already rock hard, the head of his cock flushed and leaking.
I smile like a thief. He braces a palm on the rail like he forgot how to stand. I take my time to lick because power tastes sweet on the tongue, because I like watching the Beast of New York go a little glassy for me.
I maintain eye contact as I take him in my hand, stroking once, twice, watching his jaw clench with the effort not to thrust.
"Belle," he starts, but I silence him by leaning forward and taking the head of his cock between my lips.
He tastes salty, musky, entirely male. I swirl my tongue around the tip, drawing a groan from deep in his chest. His hands tangle in my hair.
I take him deeper, hollowing my cheeks as I suck, one hand wrapped around the base of his shaft, the other cupping his balls, rolling them gently between my fingers.
"Fuck," he groans, his hips jerking involuntarily. "Your mouth."
His breath breaks on a hiss, and if anyone down there happens to look up at this balcony right now—well. Let them see devotion.
The heavy weight of him on my tongue, the stretch of my lips around his girth—it's filthy and perfect. I bob my head and take him deep.
I feel turned on myself as I pleasure him, a throbbing, insistent heat between my legs. I press my thighs together, seeking friction.
His breath comes faster, his grip in my hair tightening. "Belle, I'm going to—"
I increase my pace, eager to taste him, to make the mighty Luca Moretti come apart in my mouth.
But he has other plans.
His fingers tighten—warning—and he hauls me back up by the nape, devouring my mouth like he's reclaiming me from a cliff I just shoved him off.
"I'm not letting you go easy," he rasps. "Not until I ruin you."
"You swear?" I dare, because I'm constitutionally incapable of not poking the bear.
He turns me fast. Hands on my hips, on my wrists, planting me to the rail like he wants me glued there. My dress is all hiked up, with the moonlight glorious on my skin.
His mouth's at my neck, teeth scraping the place that makes my knees plead. He slides a hand over my shoulder, bending me over.
"Hold," he orders, pressing my hands to the cool stone as he pushes me down with his weight against my back. He covers my hands with his, holding me prisoner. "Good girl."
I hate how that lights me up.
Okay, I don't hate it at all.
My heart pounds as I stare down at the drop below, the gardens spread out before me.
"Anyone could see," I gasp. It's just an observation, not fear.
"Good." His hands slide my panties down my thighs. "Let them see that you're mine."
The head of his cock presses against my entrance, teasing.
"Say it," he demands, his hands now gripping my hips. "Say you're mine."
"I'm yours," I breathe, arching back against him. "God, Luca, I'm yours."
He slams into me in one brutal thrust, filling me completely. I cry out, my hands tightening on the rail.
"That's it," he grunts, setting a punishing pace. "Take it all."
The balcony becomes a metronome; my body becomes an answer; we find the kind of rhythm that feels like the world breaking, and I egg it on because I'm trouble like that.
"Look out there," he growls with his mouth at my temple. "Let my whole kingdom see who you belong to."
"Then give them a show," I gasp, pushing back to take every brutal, beautiful inch of his cock. God, the way he fucks me wrecks every defense I brought to this party.
His hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise, using the leverage to drive deeper.
"You feel so fucking good," he pants. "So tight. So wet."
I can't form words, just broken moans and gasps as he pounds into me. The warm hardness of him inside me, the danger of being outside—it's all too much and not enough.
"Harder," I beg, pushing back to meet his thrusts. "Please, Luca, harder."
One hand slides up to tangle in my hair, pulling just enough to arch my back further. The new angle hits crevices I didn't know existed.
"Everyone on this estate can hear you," he growls in my ear. "They all know who's making you scream. Who's fucking you so good you can't keep quiet."
His words send a fresh wave of heat through me. The thought of being watched, of being heard, shouldn't turn me on this much. But it does.
"Let them hear," I gasp. "Let them all know."
"You like that, don't you? The thought of being watched while I take you."
"Yes," I admit, shameless in my pleasure. "God, yes."
His free hand snakes around to find my clit, circling it in time with his thrusts. His cock is like a lever, filling up the well inside me and any fucking second now…
He doesn't let me linger. He pins me there, filling into me with a pace that makes me shameless. Filthy words, filthy promises, the kind that would get us both arrested in a church. I'm nothing but yes and more, and his name bitten into the dark.
It builds quick and mean—coil, spark, detonation. I grab the rail so hard I might carve his name into it. The city blurs; the sky whites at the edges; my body arches and locks and goes.
The orgasm starts deep inside and gushes out until I'm shaking, crying to the stars. My inner walls are out of control around him, milking him, pulling him deeper.
He follows me, voice gone wrecked, his grip on my hips turning savage as heat tears through him. He buries a curse in my shoulder and holds me while his cum gushes down my legs.
For a long moment, we stay like that, panting, connected, his chest pressed against my back.
Then, slowly, he pulls out. I wince at the emptiness, at the sudden chill where his body had been warming mine.
But he doesn't go far. He turns me in his arms, pulling me against his chest, his heart hammering against mine.
"You're trembling," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to my temple.
"Good sex will do that." I laugh shakily.
He chuckles. His hand strokes my back, soothing now rather than inflaming.
This is the moment, I know. I should tell him about the baby. About the life growing inside me that's half him, half me. The words bubble up in my throat.
"Luca, I—"
The crack of gunfire shatters our perfect moment like glass.
We freeze, naked vulnerability replaced by cold terror in a heartbeat. Luca's arms turn from lover's embrace to protective cage.
More shots, rapid fire, automatic weapons, followed by shouts from the perimeter. Men screaming orders. The sound of a war coming to our doorstep.
"Move," Luca snarls, already transforming into the Beast of New York. "Someone's breached the compound."
We adjust our clothes with frantic hands. My panties are still around my thighs—I yank them up as Luca tucks himself away and zips his fly.
Luca, the lover, is gone, replaced by the Beast of New York.
"Stay behind me," he orders, pulling me toward the French doors.
He beelines for one of those gorgeous old-world paintings I've admired. Behind it? A safe. He pulls out two guns so fast my head spins.
Another shot rings out, closer this time.
Someone's here.