12. Alex #4
“I don’t want to hear it.”
I kiss her hard before she can finish, tongue stroking deep while my hips keep that merciless, shallow rhythm, rolling, grinding, giving her friction without relief. She kisses me back even as the tears keep coming, even as her body tries to pull me deeper and fails.
This was supposed to be punishment.
Somehow my hands keep touching her like worship while my cock keeps denying her.
“Please.” Her voice is completely wrecked now. “Please, I need?—”
“I know what you need.”
I change the angle slightly, letting the head of my cock drag harder over that swollen spot inside her with every shallow thrust. Her whole body tightens around me in a helpless clench. A broken, needy sound tears out of her throat.
“Apologize.”
Belle stares up at me, eyes glassy, lips parted, chest heaving.
“What?”
“Apologize.” I roll my hips again, slow, controlled, cruel. “Say you’re sorry.”
Her chest rises hard against mine.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Pain flashes across her face even as her hips keep lifting, chasing the shallow strokes I refuse to deepen.
“Everything.” Her voice breaks on the word. “God, Alex—everything.”
My stomach twists. I bend and kiss the tears at her temple while my hips keep moving in those tight, rolling circles that keep her right on the edge and nowhere near over it. Salt touches my mouth.
“Again.”
“I’m sorry.” Her fingers dig into the back of my neck. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
The words should satisfy something.
They only make me hungrier.
“Please—” she sobs, hips rolling up to meet every shallow thrust, body shaking with how badly she needs the full length of me. “Alex, please, I can’t?—”
I stop holding back.
The next thrust drives all the way home, hard enough that the bed shifts beneath us.
Belle’s cry breaks against my shoulder as I finally give her the deep, relentless pace she’s been begging for.
Her back arches. Her nails score my skin.
I reach between us and press my fingers exactly where she needs them.
She comes apart with a broken sob, body clamping down around me in hard, pulsing waves that drag me under with her.
Her cry breaks against my shoulder as her body clenches around me in waves. Her thighs lock against my hips, every pulse dragging me closer to the edge. I bury my f ace against her neck and lose what is left of my control. The orgasm tears through me with enough force to leave my arms shaking.
For several seconds there is nothing except Belle. Her body. Her breath. My name still caught somewhere between us.
When the room comes back, I feel moisture against my shoulder.
She is crying. Silent tears that keep coming.
My chest tightens so quickly it hurts. The cruelty from moments ago disappears under pure instinct. I gather her against me, one arm under her shoulders, the other around her back.
“Hey.”
Belle shakes against my chest.
“It’s okay.” The words leave me before I decide to say them. “I’ve got you.”
My hand travels slowly down her spine. Once. Again. Her skin is damp with sweat. I kiss her hair and keep holding her while her breathing starts to settle.
This was supposed to hurt her. That is what I told myself when I slowed down, when I made her apologize, when I dragged the past into bed with us because I cannot touch Belle without also touching every version of what she did to me.
So why am I holding her like this?
Why does this feel more honest than the punishment ever did?
Her heartbeat is fast where her chest rests against mine, then gradually slows. She stays pressed against me, quiet, not pulling away.
Belle’s face is still pressed against my shoulder.
Silent tears keep sliding down my skin. I can feel every one of them.
My arms are locked around her like I’m afraid she’ll vanish the second I loosen my hold.
My heart is still slamming against my ribs.
The aftershocks of the orgasm haven’t fully left my body, and neither has the ugliness of what I just did to her.
I made her apologize while I was inside her.
I edged her until she was sobbing and then demanded the words like they were payment.
And the second she came apart, the second those tears kept falling, every sharp edge in me collapsed into the need to hold her.
I don’t understand myself.
My hand keeps moving up and down her spine, slow and steady.
Her skin is damp. Her breathing is starting to even out, but every few seconds a residual tremor runs through her.
I kiss the top of her head without deciding to.
The scent of her, sweat, sex, the faint trace of whatever soap she still uses, hits me harder than it should.
This was supposed to hurt her the way the last ten years hurt me.
Instead I feel like I’ve been the one cut open.
Belle shifts slightly against my chest. Her voice is small, rough from crying and from the sounds I dragged out of her.
“I’m still sorry.”
The words land differently now that we’re not moving. Now that I’m not using them as leverage.
I close my eyes.
“I know.”
It’s all I can give her. I don’t know how to say the rest, that the apology didn’t fix anything, that part of me still wants to keep punishing her, that another, louder part of me wants to pull her even closer and never let the past into this bed again.
She stays quiet for a long time. Her fingers rest lightly against my side, not gripping, just there. Present. The same way she used to fall asleep against me when we were younger and the world still felt simple.
I hate how easily my body accepts it.
I hate how right it feels.
I eventually slide from the bed.
Belle makes a small sound of protest.
I look back at her.
“I’m coming back.”
Something in her face loosens. Not much. Just enough for me to see what she had been waiting for instead.
Anger. Blame. Something sharp enough to cut with.
She had braced for me to hurt her.
I feel like a bastard.
I go to the bathroom, run warm water over a cloth, and come back without saying anything.
Belle watches me as I clean her, quiet for once, her eyes red and exhausted but fixed on my face as though she still does not quite trust what she is seeing.
I keep my hands gentle. More gentle than I deserve to be after everything I have done to her.
When I finish, I toss the cloth into the hamper and lie down beside her.
I do not ask her to come closer. I only open my arm.
She comes anyway.
Belle folds herself against my side with a familiarity that hurts, cheek against my chest, one hand resting near my ribs. My body settles around hers without thought. It remembers her even when I wish it did not.
For a long time, neither of us speaks.
There is nothing I can say that changes what happened tonight. I took her apart and then held her while she shook. I wanted both. That is the part I cannot excuse.
My arm tightens around her.
After a while, Belle shifts and looks up at me. Her eyes are swollen, but she does not look away.
“I don’t hate you.” I tell her.
Her breath catches on a small, wounded sound.
I wish I could take the words back before I even finish them, but I keep going because apparently I have not done enough damage tonight.
“I tried.” My throat feels raw. “I really fucking tried, Belle. I told myself I did for years. I needed to.” I look at her and hate how easy the truth becomes once it starts. “But I don’t. I’m not capable of it.”
Her face crumples for half a second before she turns it into my chest.
I cannot stay there. Not after what spilled out of my mouth.
I get out of bed so fast she startles, cross the room, and shut myself in the bathroom. I turn the shower on cold and stand beneath it until my skin goes numb and my breathing finally slows enough that I can think.
When I come out, the bedroom is empty.
Belle is gone.
So are her clothes.
I stand there with water running down my back and look at the space where she had been.
Tonight was supposed to feel like taking something back.
It doesn’t.
If anything, Belle has taken more of me with her.
And now I know the part I have been refusing to admit.
I cannot touch her like that again and pretend it is punishment. I cannot hold her afterward while she cries and tell myself her pain gives me anything worth having. I cannot feel the way she fits against me and keep calling it nothing.
My fingers stay curled around the wooden bird.
I know all of that.
I also know that if she comes to me again, I am not going to walk away.
I look around the bedroom. The bed is empty. The room feels wrong without her in it, and the hollow ache inside me answers before I can shove it down.
What the fuck are you doing, Alex?
I am an idiot.
I am out of the room before the thought finishes. Belle’s door is only a few strides away, and I do not bother knocking. I push it open and find her sitting in the middle of the bed with her knees pulled tight against her chest, her face buried against them.
She jerks upright when the door hits the wall.
“Alex?”
I cross the room in two steps.
There is surprise on her face, then caution, and I hate that too. I hate that she has to look at me and wonder which version of me just walked through her door.
So I do the only thing I should have done in the first place.
I gather her into my arms.
Belle makes a soft sound as I pull her against my chest, but then her hands catch in my shirt and hold on. I press my mouth into her hair and close my eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
The words come out rough against her hair.
I say them again anyway.
“I’m sorry, Belle.”
I do not explain what I meant, or why I left. I do not ask her to forgive me. I just hold her until the tension leaves her body, and she stops gripping me like she expects me to disappear again.
Then I lift her.
She does not argue when I carry her back to my room.
This time, when I get into bed beside her, I pull her against me and stay there. Her cheek settles over my heart, my arm locked around her waist, and every few minutes I feel her body loosen a little more.
Eventually, her breathing evens out.
I keep holding her long after she falls asleep.