10. Alex #3
There is no fear in her face now. No hesitation. Only need.
And there is so much of it that, for one insane second, I allow myself to believe some of it has been waiting ten years too.
I kiss her again because looking at her hurts too much.
She moans into my mouth while she moves against my hand, setting the rhythm herself. My fingers press through the fabric, following the motion she chooses, while my cock grinds against her with every roll of her hips.
I want the cotton gone, her nightshirt on the floor, my hands learning every inch of the woman she became while I wasn’t there to see it happen.
I need to know if the same places that made her shiver at twenty still do, what sounds she makes now, whether my mouth between her thighs can pull my name from her for a reason that has nothing to do with fear.
The wanting becomes too large to contain.
My mouth closes over that spot in her neck. I suck until her skin darkens beneath my lips.
Belle arches.
Her nails drag across my back.
I move lower, teeth closing lightly over the exposed curve of her shoulder.
Her entire body jerks up into mine.
Not away.
Closer.
“Alex.”
There it is again.
My name like she still owns it.
I kiss the mark my teeth left behind, then return to her mouth because even a few seconds away from it feels unbearable.
Her movements lose their rhythm.
So do mine.
Belle is frantic now, chasing each stroke before I can give it to her. When I slow, she pulls me harder against her. When I lift my head, she follows my mouth.
For once there is no calculation between us.
No bargain.
No revenge.
No past.
Only hunger.
Her breathing breaks into short, uneven sounds. Her fists knot in the fabric over my shoulders. The tension begins in her thighs before spreading through the rest of her.
I feel the moment she starts to lose control.
Her rhythm stutters.
She misses the pressure and makes a frustrated sound, hips searching for it.
I brace one hand beside her head and keep the other exactly where she put it.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes open.
Hazel darkened by desire, gold catching what little city light reaches the bed.
I move against her again.
Her lips part.
Once more.
Her thighs lock around me.
Then she breaks.
The cry that leaves her is low and raw, nothing like the restrained sounds she usually makes when she is trying not to give me anything. Her spine bows off the mattress, her fingers pulling my shirt tight across my back as the quick contractions beat against my palm through the wet cotton.
I stop moving. Because I need to see her.
Belle shudders beneath me, eyes still fixed on mine while the orgasm moves through her. Another pulse tightens her body. Then another.
I have imagined this for ten years.
My imagination was a beggar.
Nothing I ever gave it looked like this.
Her cheeks flushed. Hair tangled across the pillow. Mouth swollen from mine. Her body open beneath me without a trace of the fear that has followed every other moment between us since I found her.
The last tremor passes through her.
She softens.
I remain painfully hard between her thighs.
One movement would start everything again.
One hand beneath the fabric and we would cross the line neither of us could pretend away in the morning.
Belle reaches for me.
Her palm slides over my ribs, pulling me closer.
And that is what finally brings reality back into this room.
Not the orgasm. Not what we did.
But the way she looks afterward.
Open.
Soft.
Wanting me without defense. Trusting me for the first time in years. There is no Emma Clarke in her face. No woman bargaining for her brother.
There is only Belle.
My Belle.
The thought hits with enough force to make me push off the bed.
Cold air rushes between us. Belle blinks up at me, still dazed.
I stand beside the mattress with my chest heaving and force myself to look at the evidence of what I have done.
Whisker burn reddens the side of her throat. A dark mark sits beneath her ear, another beginning near her collarbone. Her nightshirt has slipped from one shoulder, exposing the faint crescent left by my teeth.
Her hair is wrecked on the pillow. Her mouth is red and swollen.
She looks thoroughly kissed.
Thoroughly wanted.
Thoroughly mine.
The possessive thought scares the hell out of me.
I step back.
Belle’s pupils remain wide. Her hand moves across the sheet toward me.
I almost take it.
My body actually leans toward the bed before memory catches me.
My father.
Danny burned nearly beyond recognition.
My mother standing beside a grave.
Belle disappearing.
The call that came too late.
One knee on the mattress would take me back to her.
I could finish this.
I could strip away the last pieces between us and spend the rest of the night pretending the past never happened.
Belle’s fingers open against the sheet.
Waiting.
I lock my knees.
“Go to sleep.”
The words come out cold.
Too cold.
Her hand stops.
I watch the softness leave her face. The want disappears next. Then comes the hurt. It is small at first, only a tightening around her mouth, but I see it.
I put it there. Again.
I leave before I have to watch it settle. The hallway air does nothing to cool me. My hand closes around her door handle after I pull it shut.
I stand there.
One turn.
That is all it would take.
Go back.
Tell her I did not mean it like that. Tell her I stopped because I wanted too much, not too little. Tell her the sight of her reaching for me scared me more than any enemy I have faced in ten years.
My fingers tighten around the metal. For a second, I nearly open the door. Then my father’s face rises behind my eyes again.
I let go.
I cross back to my room.
I look toward the dresser. Her locket rests beside my cuff links. The sight of it almost undoes me.
A piece of her past she placed willingly in my hand.
I pace instead.
My cock is still painfully hard. Her taste remains on my tongue, and my back burns where her nails dragged across it. Every few steps another piece of the bed returns—the sound she made when she came, the way she looked at me afterward, her hand reaching for me when I left.
I drag out the words that have held me upright for ten years.
She is the reason my father is dead.
I reach the window.
She is the enemy.
Turn.
I came here to destroy her.
Again.
She is the reason my father is dead.
She is the enemy.
I came here to destroy her.
Even if Mark’s debts brought dangerous men to that house, even if she did not kill him, she knew something and chose not to trust me with it.
My family paid for that choice.
She is the reason my father is dead. None of this sticks no matter how many times I try to repeat it.
Only Belle beneath me, crying out my name. Belle waking terrified and reaching for me before she was fully conscious. Belle trusting me enough to give me her locket while refusing to trust me with the truth.
I press my forehead against the cold glass.
I spent a decade believing finding her would be the hard part.
Now she is here, and I no longer know what I am supposed to do with the fact that I still love the woman I came to destroy.