10. Alex #2
I remember the first fancy dinner I could barely afford.
The way I counted bills before walking inside because I would rather have starved than let Belle Mitchell pay for me.
Every shift I took. Every stupid plan I made for the house I would build someday because I wanted to give her something that belonged to us instead of taking anything that belonged to her family.
Did none of it reach her?
Did she still believe, when the moment came, that I would look at her inheritance before I looked at her?
I drag a hand across my face.
Enough.
Because there is another truth, and it is uglier.
Even if she did not kill Mark, even if someone dangerous came for him and Belle ran because she was terrified, she still chose silence. And people died inside that silence.
My father is dead.
She may not have lit the fire that destroyed mine. But she knew enough to run, and she left me blind. Whatever happened that night, she still made a choice that cost us everything.
I hold on to that because the alternative is standing here and admitting I spent ten years hating the wrong woman for the wrong crime. The sentence that has kept me upright for a decade comes automatically.
She is the reason my father is dead.
It should settle me.
Tonight it does not.
Sleep refuses to come.
I change out of the tuxedo, leave the scotch untouched and lie in the dark until the silence becomes louder than the city. Eventually, I give up on the bed and pace instead.
Central Park is a dark cut beneath the windows, edged by the scattered light of streets that never fully sleep. I walk from the window to the door and back again.
Belle is sleeping somewhere across the hall. Or she is awake and furious.
Dante told her about Liam.
I know he did. I saw the change in her before I ever asked him what they discussed.
She knows now that I had security around her brother long before she stood in my kitchen and offered me anything in exchange for his safety.
She knows I let her bargain for something she already had.
I told myself I needed the leverage.
If Belle knew I was still protecting her family without asking for payment, she would see the weakness beneath everything else. She might realize the man she once knew had not disappeared completely.
And if she knew that, I might lose control of the only arrangement keeping her close.
It sounded reasonable when I built the excuse. Tonight it feels like exactly what she probably thinks it is.
Manipulation.
Her locket sits on the dresser behind me, catching a thin stripe of city light.
Then Belle screams.
The sound tears through the suite.
I am moving before I consciously register it.
Her door is under my hand, then open, and city glow spills into the room.
“Belle.”
She is curled near the center of the bed, knees pulled tight, hands clenched near her face. Her whole body shakes beneath the covers. Tears disappear into her hairline, and when I touch her shoulder, she jerks hard enough to make something inside me seize.
“Belle. Hey.”
Her eyes open but do not focus.
“It’s me.”
I sit and pull her up. She comes against me without resistance. That frightens me more than the scream.
“Belle, what happened?”
Her fingers seize my shirt. “Just a nightmare.”
The words break around a sob.
Tonight gave her enough to dream about. Cameras following her through a ballroom. Mark’s past dragged back into the open. Dante knowing things she is terrified I might discover. A woman convulsing on a bathroom floor and nearly dying in front of her.
And beneath all of that, the men she has spent ten years running from.
Mark’s world.
Maybe the nightmare was one thing.
Maybe it was everything.
I start to ask.
Her fist tightens in my shirt.
The question dies.
For once, I do not need an answer badly enough to force one out of her.
I pull her closer instead.
She presses her face into my throat and cries until the sobs begin to space themselves farther apart. I rub one hand down her back, slow enough not to startle her, and feel each tremor travel through her into me.
I say nothing.
Everything I know how to say to Belle has become a weapon. Tonight I do not want to be armed.
Eventually her breathing lengthens.
Mine follows without permission.
The room settles around us until the only sounds are the distant city and the quiet drag of her breath against my neck.
Her fingers loosen in my shirt.
She does not let go.
Instead, she curls closer.
Her forehead settles beneath my jaw. One leg shifts across my thigh, and the thin cotton of her nightshirt does nothing to stop the heat of her body from reaching mine.
My palm rests at the small of her back. She smells faintly of the products the stylist used earlier, but beneath them there is something achingly familiar.
Vanilla.
Warm skin.
Belle.
Once, that scent meant home.
Then it meant betrayal.
For a few unguarded minutes, it means neither.
It is simply the woman in my arms.
My thumb moves along her back.
Once.
Her breath catches.
My hand stops.
So does hers.
Something changes between us so quietly that I almost convince myself I imagined it.
Then her palm slides from my chest, across my ribs, and around my waist.
Her fingers find the hem of my shirt.
When they slip beneath it and touch bare skin, every muscle in my body locks.
Her nails trace lightly along my back.
“Belle.”
She lifts her face.
The fear has gone from her eyes. They are still wet, her lashes clumped at the corners, but something else has replaced the panic.
Want.
The sight of it is enough to make my chest ache. I lower my head before good sense can stop me and press my mouth against her temple.
One kiss.
That is all.
Her lips touch the base of my throat. Heat tears down my spine.
She does not pull away.
Her mouth stays against my skin through my next breath, warm and open, and my hand tightens at her waist.
I turn toward her.
She tips her chin back.
The space between our mouths disappears until I can taste salt at the corner of hers.
Her nails press deeper into my back.
My hand slides slowly along her spine.
Her next breath shivers against my cheek.
I pull away before I lose the ability.
“We can’t.”
Belle’s fingers tighten around my waist.
“Why not?”
A hundred reasons crowd behind my teeth.
She woke crying, and I came here to comfort her, not touch her.
I dragged her back into my life under threat, and I still have no idea what happened ten years ago.
Worse, there is a part of me that still blames her whenever I look at the scars on Danny’s body or hear my mother say my father’s name.
None of that stops me from wanting her. Wanting Belle has never made me rational.
I choose the only answer I trust myself to give. “This isn’t why I came in here.”
“I know.”
“You were terrified.”
“I’m not now.” Her voice is quiet, but nothing in it wavers.
I stare at her.
“Tomorrow you’ll hate me for letting this happen.”
Her mouth trembles into something that is not quite a smile. “I already hate you.”
The lie fails between us.
We both hear it.
Her gaze drops to my mouth.
Then her hand slides behind my neck.
I have one last chance to move.
I do not take it.
“Fuck it.”
I kiss her.
The first taste of her destroys whatever restraint survived the last ten years.
Salt still clings to her lips from the tears. Her mouth opens beneath mine, and when her teeth catch my lower lip, every memory I have carried of Belle becomes useless beside the reality of her.
I kiss her harder.
She follows every time I try to lift my head, fingers tightening in my hair as though she is afraid I might come to my senses.
I have spent ten years learning to live without her. Apparently none of that education included what to do when she kisses me back.
My mouth leaves hers long enough to find her cheek, the hinge of her jaw, the soft place below her ear.
Belle tilts her head.
The movement is so familiar it nearly stops me. She used to do exactly that. Give me more room without being asked. My lips find the pulse in her neck. It races against my tongue.
“Alex.”
My name leaves her breathless. Something inside me gives way.
I want to hear it again.
I want every version of it I was denied for ten years.
I want her angry when she says it. Trembling. Begging. Desperate. Coming apart beneath me.
I want to hear my name from her until I believe she never forgot how to say it. Her hands catch my face and drag me back to her mouth. The desperation in the kiss strips the thought from me.
I come over her as she falls back against the pillows, and she pulls me with her, arms locked around my shoulders. I keep most of my weight braced away from her on instinct.
Belle hooks a leg around mine and drags me closer.
There is no room left between us.
Her thighs part.
I settle between them.
The first press of my cock against the thin cotton between her legs is enough to make my arms shake.
Belle gasps into my mouth.
Her hips lift.
The friction is brutal.
I freeze.
She does it again.
“Belle.”
Her fingers tighten in my hair.
“Don’t stop.”
The words are quiet.
Desperate.
They tear through the last of my control.
I roll my hips against her.
Her head falls back.
The sound that leaves her goes straight to my cock.
I grind against her again, slower this time, feeling her body rise to meet every stroke. Her heel hooks behind my knee, holding me close, and when I try to ease the pressure, she pulls me back.
She has spent weeks fighting every inch I take. Now she is the one refusing to let me go. The knowledge is intoxicating.
My hand closes around her hip and guides her into the next movement.
Her nightshirt has ridden high enough that my palm finds bare skin.
Warm.
Soft.
Familiar enough to hurt.
I remember holding this waist when I was twenty-two and believing I would be allowed to touch her for the rest of my life.
Belle catches my wrist.
For an instant, sanity returns, and I stop.
She moves my hand lower. My breath leaves me.
Her palm presses mine between her thighs over the damp cotton of her underwear.
“Jesus Christ.”
She looks straight at me.