TWENTY-THREE
Belle
“We need to say something,” I whisper as I trace the line of Zeus’s jaw with my fingertips.
He jerks his head away from my hold, a frown deep on his brow as he lies beside me on the bed. “Now isn’t the time, Belle.”
I thought we’d turned a corner with what he did to me last night. But now I’m not so sure.
The void between us has slowly inched deeper and deeper this past week with Cerise here. We’ve all been caught up in her toxicity, drawn into caring for her as much as we don’t want to. One week with the alcoholic bitch, and she’s already ruined the best thing to have happened to me ever.
I know it. I feel it.
I can see it in Zeus’s eyes when he looks at her, when he looks at Dad. He doesn’t want to add to the stress by getting caught out with me.
“This is the first night we’ve had the house to ourselves since she moved in,” I remind Zeus. “I miss you. I miss this, and I hate the fact I have to sneak in time with you where I can.”
“That’s the price we pay,” he says flatly.
His cool indifference pisses me off. Where’s the passion, the lust he had mere minutes ago when he brought me to orgasm? I know tension has run high, not only between him and Dad, but between him and Cerise. Still….
“Are you bored with me?” I push up and sit, leaning on one hand. “Because I’m feeling a little used right now.”
He frowns, rolling his head to look at me. “No, dove.” The guy looks irresistable, laid out in nothing but his jeans. His bare torso flexes and bulges as he rolls toward me. I pinch myself daily that this man chose to risk things with me.
For how much longer, though? I’d love to pass off this fear as irrational, but the change in him is real—very real.
“What makes you say that anyway?” Zeus reaches out and takes my chin in his firm hold. “I could never be bored with you.”
“It feels like you are.” I mimic his earlier action and jerk my chin free. “You might be here in body, but your mind is elsewhere. You do things with me and then get distant. I’m not exactly high maintenance, Zeus, but a bit of conversation wouldn’t go amiss.”
We’ve got a short window of time while Dad and Cerise are at a movie, and the fact he’s wasting it like this brings out the sulky child in me. If I could get away with stamping my foot and yelling, “It’s not fair,” I probably would.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind.” He flops back on the bed with a frown.
I crawl over top of him, straddling his thick thighs, and set my hands on his chest. “So talk to me about it.” I want to know everything that goes on that head of his, no matter how tough it seems to be.
Zeus settles his hands on my hips and sighs. He can swear black and blue that he’s not tired of me, but in that moment, in the downward curl of his lips, I read it all: whatever bothers him is entirely to do with me.
Me and my fucking age, no doubt.
“I put an offer in on that place over on Fraser.”
“That’s awesome.”
“It’s too far for you to walk though.”
Oh. “So I bus until I’ve saved enough for a car.”
“Belle….”
“You’re making excuses.” My nostrils flare as I work to supress my tears. I won’t cry. I won’t show him how desperately attached to this I am.
“I’m pointing out facts.” His fingers tense on my hips, biting into my flesh. “I’m facing the truth.”
“That is?”
“This… us… it won’t last.” He hesitates, the battle clear before he adds, “I should have never started it.”
I try to move away, yet he holds me firmly in place. “Nice to know how little I really mean.”
“You mean everything, dove.”
“Stop calling me that.” The bite to my words causes him to let go, allowing me to move away.
I sit on the edge of the bed, but it may as well be the edge of nothing. I could topple, fall off that ledge and gladly slip into the dark where nobody can reach me and nothing can touch me.
Where I wouldn’t get my heart smashed by the one who brought it to life.
“You tell me,” he demands, shifting behind me. “Tell me how you see this working, because I’m all ears for suggestions. I can’t keep away from you, and yet I don’t understand how I can keep you.”
“We tell Dad,” I say, twisting to look at him. “Fuck the consequences.” Doubt clouds his eyes. “Why are you so afraid of what he thinks?”
“I’m not afraid.” His gaze drops to the bed, where he smooths the bedding with his palm. “I respect him.”
“Not enough to keep your hands off his daughter, though?”
“That’s not fair.” Steely eyes flick to mine.
“This whole thing isn’t fair,” I snap. “We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves while my fucking parents are out and instead we’re fighting.”
God, I hate that. I hate the fact I have to mention my parents in the same sentence as what I want to be doing with Zeus. I want out. I want independence. I want to remove everything that makes me seem like a child, and that includes this goddamn room.
My gaze drifts across the walls, across the things I’ve cherished and harboured since I was barely into double digits. How can I expect to move on and change when I subconsciously hold myself in the past?
Zeus jackknifes to a seated position when I launch off the bed and rip a music poster off my wall. “What are you doing?” He gets to his feet as I tear past, pieces in hand, and head for the kitchen in search of a trash bag.
I don’t need any of the shit that I coveted as a child. I don’t need to fan girl over rock gods and keep trinkets from the regional fair. I need to grow up. I need to be taken seriously by everyone, most of all Dad if he’s ever going to accept that I want to be with Zeus.
“Belle,” Zeus snaps as I tear a plastic bag off the roll.
He’s every part as desirable as always, standing in the doorway with his arms braced on the frame. But that angry scowl? Jesus—even when I’m mad with him the guy makes me wet.
“Leave me to it,” I bite out as I push past him. “You want a woman, somebody you’re not embarrassed to show off, then let me be one.”
I make it as far as my bedroom doorway before he spins me with a hand to my shoulder and pushes me up against the wall. The bag is torn from my hand, my heart torn in two directions as he looks down on me with a mix of frustration and hunger.
“You think I don’t want to show you off?” he asks, nuzzling my neck.
I sigh, my goddamn body sparking alight as he nips my ear.
“I want to show you off. I want to put your sexy little arse in those black cut-offs of yours, wrap you up in one of your fucking tank tops that you love so much, and put your shit-kickers on your feet so every other man out there can see what I do.” He pauses to drag his bottom lip over the ridge of my jaw. “You’re different, and that”—he nips at my lips, melting me to the spot—“is what makes you irresistible.”
“So do it,” I breathe. “Take me out.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” I murmur against his mouth.
He presses his forehead to mine, his breaths heavy. “What do you think they’d do to a thirty-five-year-old guy who parades an eighteen-year-old girl around? What do you think they’d do to that guy when he puts his hands on her, touches her the way I touch you, kisses her?”
“Gossip.”
“Worse.” He huffs out his nose, a smile on his lips. “They’d take you from me, Dove.”
My heart picks up the pace as he pulls his head back, his hips still holding me against the wall, and watches for my reaction.
Would they? Would people be that bitter against something they don’t understand?
“What if I explain that I want to be with you? How can they take me then?”
“Baby,” he says on a sigh. “There are always ways for people with malicious intent to fuck over those who just want to live in peace. The world is a jaded and angry place. Most people can’t resist the opportunity to make themselves feel better, vindicated, by bringing down others.”
“So you’ll hide me?”
“To keep you,” he presses. “I hide you to keep you, because that’s the only way I know how to do it.”
I slide my hands onto his waist, tracing the swell of his obliques as I slip my palms to his arse. His eyes narrow, a playful smile on his lips as I reach into his back pocket and pull his phone out. Holding the device between us I hit the home button and light up the screen to show the time.
“We have forty minutes, maybe fifty if we’re lucky.”
“That we do.”
“How are you going to make them worthwhile, Zeus?”
His phone hits the floor as he grabs hold of my hips and shunts me up the wall. I’m so small in his presence, so vulnerable, but it’s a surrender I’ll willingly make day after day. Anything to lose myself in this man.
“How about,” he murmurs in my ear, cheek to cheek, “we take a drive?”
Excitement pulses through me in a wave as I drag my bottom lip over the shell of his ear. “Where to?”
“It’s a surprise.”
I lose any protest I might have had as he takes my mouth with his, devouring me with a hunger that I understand after a week around each other with only a single stolen moment for ourselves. I wish I could show others how happy he makes me, stick my middle finger up to the world while shouting his virtues from the rooftops.
But I can’t. Instead I have to relish these moments, these dirty lies as they leave me high on a deceptive wave of euphoria.
I run my hands up the sides of Zeus’s head as he pulls away, the short locks tickling my palm. “Remind me again why you had to cut your hair?”
“Health hazard.”
Fuck his work, and fuck machinery with moving parts. He’s had gorgeous shoulder-length black hair for as long as I remember, one of those men who can pull the length off. I loved it, and I’m not ashamed to admit how shallow I am in feeling a teeny bit of disappointment at losing it.
“Get your jacket,” he grumbles, eyes closed as I run my fingers around to the back of his head. “I’ll meet you in the car.”
“Okay.” I drop my hands to his shoulders, yet he doesn’t move.
His eyes stay trained on mine, the slight furrow to his brow adding to the intensity as he whispers almost as if in disbelief, “Life isn’t the same when you’re not in it.”
I cock my head to the side, frowning as I give him an unsure smile. “What makes you say that?”
“No reason.” Shutters flick down behind his eyes, his staunch indifference returning as he steps back and gently sets me on my feet. “Get your stuff and don’t muck around.”
I smirk as he rearranges the obvious erection pressing against his jeans. “Impatient?”
“Like you wouldn’t know, dove.”