screams. Wild and unrestrained moans that made the oranges wrinkle up and blush.
She tightened around me, body sending the signal seconds before her convulsing told the rest. I followed seconds after, emptying inside her and dropping on her back sweaty and spent.
“Wow,” I grunted. “Let’s come back tomorrow.”
“Don’t think we’re going to make this a habit, Prince.” Belle wriggled out and eased me onto my back, resting her head on my chest. “We had sex in an orange grove on our list, but don’t forget our beds work just fine.”
I snapped my fingers. “Damn. I forgot to tell you there’s a problem with mine. The frame is busted.”
“Oh really?”
“Smashed to splinters. Plus, bedbugs. They infested the mattress. The sheets. Yours too. Hendrix will have to take our beds out and burn them.”
“When did all of this happen?” she asked, chuckling.
“Very recently.”
She kissed my chest. “I love you. By now you know, you can get me to show it just about anywhere.”
“I love you too.” I held her close, jokes put aside at the rightness of her in my arms. “I should have said yes, Belle. When you asked me to marry you, I should have said yes.”
“No, Nathan.” She laid her palm over the heart that was hers. “You wouldn’t have been saying yes to this. That yes would’ve gotten us separate homes and lives. Connection by bank account and polite conversation every now and then to see how the other is doing while we count the days to annulment. You were right to say no to that marriage. It would’ve destroyed us both.”
“Then let me say yes to the right one.” It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “I don’t give a fuck if Mal hunts us both down for the rest of our lives. The colonel will be putting in twice the effort. If I can put up with him for one woman I love, I can take on some stalker thug for you.”
Belle pressed our foreheads together, peering deep into my eyes. “I love you so much for saying that. I love you even more because you mean it. But... I was selfish once. I put what I wanted first and clung to a life I refused to let Mal take from me. As a result, I hurt someone I loved and he took it anyway. I can’t be that selfish again, Nathan. No one else will be placed in his path to be mauled when that beast comes for me again.”
“So Preston and I marry women we don’t love, and you cut out marriage, love, and family so that the only people on that path are you and Mal? I don’t have to ask if that’s the life you want because I know it’s not.”
Her smile tinged sad around the edges. “At some point, we have to accept we don’t control the outcome.”
“Belle—”
She pressed a finger over my lips. “But we do control right now. Today. This summer. I’m in this beautiful place with my naked, secret boyfriend who loves me so much, he’d risk everything to be with me. The last thing I want to do is talk about that man when I should be giving you the blow job of your life.”
“We’re not done talking about this,” I warned.
“Yes, my love,” she replied between peppering kisses on my nose, forehead, and cheeks.
“We’re making it past this summer, Belle, if I have to track that shit down and kill him myself.”
“Nathan, please. Let’s not make promises we can’t keep.”
Sitting up, I spoke directly to those big, doleful eyes. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep. I know you’ll be my wife as surely as I know I’ll free Mom from her sour-faced sperm donor. Mal is through tormenting and screwing up your life.”
I swooped down and kissed her hard, rough, and insistent. We broke apart panting.
“Now that that’s clear,” I said, “I’ll take that blow job.”
CARTER
Belle sat alone at a small table at the back of the dining room. She likely traded for her permanent spot on Preston’s terrace for the crowded hall due to me. Too bad. I was here to see her.
A million thoughts and twice as many emotions went through my head as I watched her. Taking dainty bites of her cheese and spinach flatbread in between poring over our latest assignment. A list of questions every person needed to ask themselves before they got married.
It was a lifetime ago that we were best friends. Still a part