She’d come.
Chapter 11
Belle
I sat on the edge of the dining table long after the sound of his footsteps faded up the stairs.
My body buzzed—hummed, really—in a way that made my skin crawl. My breathing refused to steady, each inhale catching somewhere between my ribs and my throat. My hands shook when I pressed them flat against the wood, fingers splayed wide like I could anchor myself to something solid.
I could still feel him. Not his hands—he'd barely touched me, and that was worse somehow. I felt his voice, the low rasp of it curling around my spine. His restraint. The way he'd controlled my reaction with chilling precision, like he'd been practicing this moment in his head for a year.
He played my body like he'd been waiting to learn the notes.
I wiped my face roughly, hating the heat under my skin. Hating the way my thighs still trembled. Hating the slickness between them that had nothing to do with what I wanted and everything to do with what he'd made me feel.
I hated him.
I hated myself more.
My jeans lay in a heap on the floor where he'd stripped them off me. I slid off the table, legs unsteady, and bent to retrieve them. My underwear was missing—discarded somewhere between the bedroom and the dining room in the chaos of being carried, of being positioned—but I refused to search for it.
I pulled the jeans on, anyway.
The denim scraped against my skin, rough and grounding and necessary. A reminder that I still had a body that belonged to me, even if he'd just proven otherwise. Even if every nerve ending still sang with the memory of his mouth, his fingers, the deliberate cruelty of his denial.
I'm not broken. Not yet.
The candles had burned low, wax pooling in uneven circles on the table. The food sat untouched, congealing in the dim light. The whole scene looked staged—romantic, even—if you didn't know better. If you hadn't just been spread out on that table like an offering he'd sampled and left half-finished.
I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw stars.
My body still buzzed. My pulse still thrummed in places I refused to name. My breathing still hitched every time I replayed the way he'd looked at me—not angry, not even cruel.
Certain.
Like he already knew how this ended.
Like I was just catching up.
I lowered my hands, staring at the stairs he'd climbed. The bedroom door at the top had closed with a quiet click, no lock, no warning. Just expectation.
He was waiting.
And my body—traitor, liar, coward—wanted to go.
The plate of chicken sat where he'd left it.
I stared at it with equal parts fury and hunger, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached. The meat glistened under the candlelight, still warm, perfectly seasoned. He'd cooked for me. At least, I thought he did. Like this was a date. Like I had any choice but to sit here and exist in the aftermath of what he'd just done.
Part of me wanted to shove the whole plate into the sink. Watch it shatter. Grind the porcelain into the drain until my hands bled, and the sound drowned out the memory of his voice in my ear.
Part of me wanted to starve myself out of spite. Prove that I could still say no to something, even if my body had already betrayed me once tonight. Twice, if I counted the way my stomach twisted now—hollow and insistent and humiliatingly loud.
I hadn't eaten since morning.
A stale bagel at the bookstore counter, hours before the world tilted sideways. Before I signed my name on a contract that had teeth. Before I learned that Gideon Jones didn't need force when he had patience.
My body trembled with leftover adrenaline, legs still unsteady, skin still flushed. I hated that he'd left me like this—wound tight and fraying, hungry in ways I refused to examine.
