12. Alex #3
The need is so sudden, so instinctive, that my hand is already moving before I think better of it. I cup her jaw, and Belle goes still beneath my palm.
Her skin is warm. Familiar.
For a moment, I am twenty-two again, touching her without wondering what it will cost either of us afterward.
She does not pull away. That should make this easier.
Instead, the fact that she simply stands there and lets me hold her makes something inside me twist. My thumb passes over her cheekbone, and her breath catches against my wrist. Her lashes dip, then lift again, and when she looks at me, there is too much history in her eyes and not nearly enough distance between us.
“I spent ten years telling myself I hated you,” I say, my voice rougher than I intended. “I should be better at it by now.”
A faint, broken smile touches her mouth. “Maybe you are.”
“I’m not.”
My gaze drops to her lips, and I realize my hand is trembling against her face.
After everything she has done to me, everything I still do not understand, I want to pull her against me and keep her there until that hopelessness leaves her voice.
Worse, I want to tell her about Miller, about Edward, about Danny staying in New York, about every shitty day.
I want to give her all the things I used to bring home to her when the rest of the world had taken enough out of me.
As though she is still the place I come back to.
I move closer until my forehead almost touches hers. “If you want me to stop, say it now.”
Her breath catches between us. “You didn’t listen very well the last time.”
“I will now.”
For a long second, she only looks at me. Then her fingers curl into the front of my shirt.
“I don’t want you to stop.”
I kiss her, and whatever control I thought I still had disappears the moment her mouth opens beneath mine.
Belle makes a startled sound against my lips, then her hands fist in the front of my shirt and drag me closer as though I am the one trying to get away.
I am not. My fingers bury in her hair, tightening at the nape as I angle her face and kiss her harder.
She tastes like coffee and something sweeter that is simply her, familiar enough to make ten years collapse into nothing.
When my teeth catch her lower lip, she gasps, and the sound goes straight through me.
Her body presses into mine. My hand drops to her waist, then her hip, pulling her flush against me while she rises onto her toes to meet me.
There is no hesitation now, no standing still and waiting to see who gives in first. We are both past that.
She kisses me with the same frantic hunger clawing through me, fingers slipping beneath my shirt, gripping my shoulders, pulling me back every time our mouths separate long enough to breathe.
That is what gets me.
She wants this too.
Not because I cornered her. Not because she is afraid of what happens if she says no. She is dragging me closer with both hands, kissing me like she has spent every night since New York trying not to remember exactly what this feels like.
I break away long enough to drag air into my lungs. Belle follows me without thinking, mouth brushing mine again before either of us has caught our breath, and a rough sound leaves me as I press my forehead to hers.
Her lips are swollen. Her cheeks are flushed. One of her hands is still twisted in my shirt.
I look toward the hallway, then back at her.
She knows.
Her fingers tighten.
We move at the same time.
I catch her around the waist as she pulls me toward the hall, and we make it three steps before I have her against the wall kissing her again.
She laughs against my mouth, breathless and startled, then grabs my collar and drags me back to her.
By the time we reach my bedroom door, neither of us could pretend this was one kiss that got out of hand.
We have both been fighting our way toward this since New York.
She is standing beside my bed when I close the door.
Waiting.
Watching me the way she used to when we were in Montana and everything still felt possible.
The anger from the kitchen is still burning under my skin, but so is everything else. Ten years of missing her. Ten years of telling myself I was better off without the girl who disappeared. None of it stops me from crossing the room.
Belle meets me halfway.
My hands shake when I catch the hem of her shirt. Hers shake when she reaches for mine. Clothes come away without grace or ceremony: her shirt, my belt, her jeans, my shirt. each piece hitting the floor harder than it needs to, making it impossible to pretend this is anything but what it is.
Then there is only skin.
Belle.
No decade standing between the girl I remember and the woman in front of me now.
I just look.
Her breathing turns uneven under the weight of my stare.
“So, are you going to stare at me all day?”
The old Belle flashes through the question, the girl who used to get embarrassed and turn it into an attack so no one would see how much she wanted to be looked at. Something in my chest twists hard enough to hurt.
I put my hands on her instead.
She falls back onto the bed and pulls me down with her. My weight settles over her fully for the first time in years, and the press of her skin beneath mine almost stops me cold. It feels too right. As if the last decade happened to everyone except the two of us.
I run my palms down her sides. Belle trembles. Her back lifts into my touch as if her body still knows the trail of my hands better than her mind does.
I close my eyes for a second.
Ten years of telling myself I had forgotten this. The texture of her skin. The hollow beneath her ribs. The exact way her waist narrows before the curve of her hips.
My mouth moves down her throat. Across her collarbone. Lower. Her fingers push into my hair. Her nails drag lightly over my scalp when I kiss the skin between her breasts.
“Alex.”
My name in her mouth is still the fastest way to lose every sensible thought I have left.
I look up. She is watching me, wanting, desperate, already open. And for one ugly second another thought cuts through the want.
Has anyone else seen her like this? Has another man had his hands here, learned these sounds, touched the places that make her hips lift from the mattress?
Possession rises hot and irrational. I want to ask. I would rather cut out my own tongue than hear an answer I cannot live with.
I slide my hand between her thighs.
Belle gasps. Her hips lift toward me as if she’s been waiting for this longer than I have. I watch her face while I touch her, every response, the catch in her breathing, the way her lips part, the moment her eyes close when my fingers find exactly where she needs them.
She is slick under my hand. When I slide one finger inside her, her body clenches around me hard enough to make my pulse stutter.
“God—” Her head presses back into the pillow. “Alex, please.”
I add another. Her hands fist in the sheets. I remember what she likes. Of course I do. My body never forgot.
I work her until her breathing changes, until her hips start chasing my hand, until she is right on the edge of falling.
Then I slow.
Belle’s eyes fly open.
“No—”
I keep the pressure steady, just not enough.
“Don’t stop.”
I bring her close enough that her thighs tighten around my wrist, close enough that a broken sound tears out of her throat. Then I ease away again.
Her frustration breaks in a rough, needy noise.
“Alex.”
“I know.”
I kiss her hard. She answers with the same desperation, hands dragging me closer like she can force the pace if she just holds on tight enough. When I lift my mouth, her eyes are shining.
I should stop. I should walk out of this room and keep the anger clean.
Instead I position myself between her thighs.
The first press of my cock against her makes both of us go still. I look at her.
“Belle.”
She knows what I am asking.
Her hands slide up my arms and close around my shoulders.
“Yes.”
I enter her slowly.
The sensation empties my lungs. Heat. Pressure. Her body gripping me inch by inch until there is nowhere left to go and I am fully inside her for the first time in ten years.
Belle’s mouth falls open. Her eyes lose focus.
My body remembers her. That is the most dangerous truth of all.
I move. Slow at first, because if I give in to everything I want I will hurt her, she feels impossibly tight.
Belle meets every thrust. Her hips rise, taking me deeper.
Her nails dig into my shoulders. Sweat gathers between us.
Her breath burns against my neck. Each broken sound she makes strips another layer off whatever control I thought I still owned.
I came into this room angry. At Miller. At Edward. At Danny. At myself. At her.
Now Belle is wrapped around me and I cannot remember which part of the anger belonged where.
I feel her getting close, thighs tensing, breath turning sharp and broken. I shift the angle and drive deeper once, hard enough that her back arches clean off the mattress. She cries out. Her body clamps down around me so tight it nearly drags me over with her.
I slow.
Pull almost all the way out.
Hold there.
“No—” The word fractures. “Alex, please.”
I give her only the shallowest thrusts—hips rolling in tight, controlled circles that keep the head of my cock dragging over the spot that makes her shake, never giving her the full length she keeps trying to take.
Her heels dig into the backs of my thighs.
Her hands claw at my back, trying to force me deeper.
I refuse. Every shallow stroke is a deliberate denial.
“You don’t get to come yet.”
Her eyes fly open, glassy and desperate. The words come out harsher than I meant them, but the wounded, angry part of me hears them and keeps going.
“Not after ten years.”
“Alex—”
“You ran.” Another shallow roll of my hips. Belle gasps, hips lifting helplessly to chase me.
“You disappeared.” I push in just enough to make her moan, then withdraw again.
“You left me with nothing.”
Tears spill into her hair.
“I couldn’t?—”