I went absolutely still when I saw her, dressed as before, all in black, with that wild halo of unicorn’s hair framing the loveliest face I’d ever beheld in my life. My gods, she was breathtakingly lovely.
I was so damned confused by my body’s instant reaction, one of joy, one of such profound relief I actually felt dizzy by it, like my heart knew what my brain did not—that it had never been Belle it had truly loved, but a woman far, far away who I should never have met save for the interference of a dark and terrible prince.
I was horrified by the idea, repelled even. My feet tingled with the need to run away, scared to death by these feelings that were completely out of my control.
How could someone you did not know in the slightest make you feel all these things? How could they be so vital and feel like they’d been carved out of your very soul?
How?
“How?” I asked in a low voice.
She shrugged and spread her hands. “I don’t know. I just quieted my mind, and suddenly, I knew where you’d be,” she said, mistaking my question.
I was further confounded. “This place is my sanctuary, a secret from all but two in this world, Brigitte and Belle.”
At first she said nothing. She just looked at me with a sly sort of smile that tugged at my soul. Rather than run from her, I began to move closer, still not closing the distance between us completely, but feeling as though the world were spinning on its axis with each step I took.
I wasn’t sure what I expected her to say after I’d confessed that I’d only ever brought women here, but she surprised me. Her large brown eyes—now freed of the spectacles I’d found strangely enchanting—raked my form before she grinned and said, “I see you’ve been fighting. Bump into your nemesis again, did you?”
She looked lovely with or without them. Honestly, it seemed like the more time I was around her the more beautiful she became.
I frowned, trying to draw my thoughts back to what she’d just asked me and away from all the nonsense of beauty and now suddenly feeling wonderfully alive again. “My who?”
It was Betty that took the final steps toward me. She grabbed my hand, the one that was swollen and bruised, and lifted it gently to her mouth. My heart trembled, and I shook my head.
But her eyes never left mine as she placed the very tenderest of kisses on the cracked and aching knuckles. I sucked in a sharp breath as need flowed like a waterfall through my body.
I did not know Betty. I did not know her at all. But I knew her touch. I recognized it to the very depths of my being.
“Betty.” I said her name like a croak, full of everything I could not seem to say. “Why?”
I didn’t know what I was asking, but I desperately hoped she had the answer. Still hanging on to me, with our fingers threaded together, she turned back toward the edge of the loft, and I followed.
She sat in the spot I’d just vacated, forcing me to either let go or bend over. I bent over, but she patted the empty space beside her with an imploring look.
“Talk to me, Gerard,” she said softly.
I sat down, moving gingerly, feeling every ache but needing the warmth of her to seep through me. She didn’t flinch or try to scoot away when our thighs rubbed together, and instantly, that pit of despair inside me began to quiet down and recede to the back of my mind.
Betty was magic. She soothed the savage in me. I exhaled wearily.
“About what?” I asked.
She gave me a one-shouldered shrug as her fingers played idly back and forth over my scrapes. My skin tingled, desperate for more and more of her touch.
“About why you’re here. About what you’re feeling. Be honest with me, Gerard. I promise I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
It was so silly to think she ever could. I outweighed her by many stone. There was nothing she could physically do to me, and yet, she was absolutely right. She could utterly and completely destroy me. I was ashamed of my weakness right now, ashamed of how one strong gust of wind could topple me over and shatter the last remnants of who I really was. There was a monster inside me, one that desperately sought to rise up, that wanted to hurt others as badly as it had been hurt. To save me. To protect the last of my sanity from damage.
But as I stared into warm brown eyes, I began to believe her. Began to imagine that this was one of a very rare breed of woman I could truly and genuinely trust.
But dare I do that? Dare I try one more time? Hadn’t Belle already made enough of a fool out of me? I was nothing but a joke in this town, a laughingstock. If I opened myself up to Betty, and she betrayed me, would I not deserve it for being such a gullible fool?
I swallowed hard, fighting the terrible lump in my throat, hating my weakness, hating that I’d always been cursed to love more than others, need more than others. Maybe I was broken. Maybe there was no one capable of being what I needed. Maybe the problem wasn’t Belle or Brigitte or Betty. Maybe the problem was me. I needed too much.
I squeezed my eyes shut and felt my insides wither, when a sound like a wounded animal dropped off my tongue. “Go away, Betty. Please,” I pleaded with a broken voice. “Please go away. You shouldn’t see me like—”
Tender, tiny fingers splayed against my bristled jaw. “Look at me, beast.”
My nostrils flared and my insides rioted to hear her call me that because I’d heard it from her before, so many times. Sometimes laughingly, other times with fond exasperation, and even with a shade of annoyance. But always with a thread of love behind it to let me know she never meant to hurt me with that word.
How could I know this? How could I so vividly recall times that had never happened? How? Unless they had. Unless the snatches of memories I was remembering were true. Unless, once upon a time, this woman had been my whole damn world.
“Look at me,” she whispered again from so close that her voice was a heated shiver upon my lips.
This time, I looked at her, telling myself that I could be brave just once more. That I could try one last time. That maybe, just maybe, Betty was worth fighting for.
Her mouth hovered an inch from my own. Our faces were so close I felt the heat of her radiate all the way through me. And again, my mind filled with images, those of the more carnal nature.
She and I on a bed of blankets beneath a million stars as I touched her. Before a blazing hearth, cocooned in a blanket as we made love, snow falling just outside our window in great big, gusty torrents. Whispered words of love spilling off our tongues between the sighs and moans of deep-seated satisfaction.
I placed my hand on her bicep, thinking to push her back a little, to give me some room to think clearly. But instead, my touch had become a caress, and I watched as her eyes turned to pools of liquid desire.
“Oh, my Gerard,” she murmured.
My heart trembled and shook so violently I thought I might be sick from it. I waited for Betty to pull away. But when she didn’t, I moved my hand some more, sliding my palm beneath the sleeve of her shirt and curling it around her smooth shoulder.
She shivered as her long lashes swept down over the paleness of her cheeks. “Yes,” she growled.
At that word, it was like the beast she’d accused me of being woke up. Jumping to my knees, I latched on to both her arms, staring down at her face, both familiar and new to me.
I didn’t say a word, but I felt them.
Do you trust me?
She answered me back with her eyes.
Yes.
Do you want me?
Yes.
Are you sure?
Always...
A sound like that of a dying animal spilled off my tongue as I roughly lowered my mouth to hers. My kiss wasn’t gentle or sweet. It was a hard, rough banging of teeth and tongue.
She accepted it all, curling her hands into the back of my shirt as she drew me in. “More,” she growled. “More, Gerard.”
I swore, a litany of colorful phrases spilling off my tongue. I didn’t even know what I was saying at this point. M
y movements were rough and jerky. I shoved at her, pushing her back into the bedding of hay. She went without question, without complaint.
I knelt over her, watching the blood bloom in her cheeks. Watching her big brown eyes watch me back. Seeing the way her chest rose and fell, the movements lulling and hypnotic.
The beast in me wanted to roar, wanted to pump my fist and declare myself King. I’d finally conquered a woman. I’d made her feel helpless, needful, and frantic. Made her want me in a way I’d always wanted Belle.
I could ask her for anything, now, and she would give it. I could see the acceptance in her eyes, the soft smile playing peekaboo around her lush, tempting mouth.
I wet my lips.
What was I doing? Was I really going to do this to another? Was I really going to cross this line? Was I capable of becoming as cold-hearted and callous as Belle had been with me?
I frowned and gave my head a tiny shake. I wanted to hurt all women, every women in the world. I wanted them to suffer as I had. And yet, I couldn’t do it with her. I pulled my hands back as if scalded.
“Non!” I growled. “Non.”
I moved. I tried to stand, but she fisted her tiny hands in my shirt and yanked me back down to her.
“I know what you’re doing. I know the demons you’re battling right now, but this isn’t that, Gerard. This isn’t that.”
My voice cracked as I asked, “What is this then? You don’t understand the darkness creeping through me, the thoughts burning me up. I... I can’t—”
She sat up, but still didn’t release me. “You won’t.”
I placed my hands on her shoulders, wanting to push her away, but instead, I curled my hands into her shirt as a desperate madness gripped me, demanding that I never, ever let her go.
Somehow, without my knowing how, my thumb had slid beneath her shirt and was now tracing small circles around her hot, firm skin. Delicious curls of heat crawled up my spine, and with each touch, I felt something being stitched together inside of me. The darkness was being overwhelmed by something else, something deeper, more meaningful, and fuller.
But I was scared. Scared I was wrong again. Scared I was seeing things that weren’t there. Scared to believe I could ever trust my instincts again.
Betty grabbed my hand, pulling it off her, and my heart sank. I’d been right, then. I couldn’t trust myself. I didn’t know anything about anything. But she wasn’t shoving me away as I’d first imagined. Instead, she moved my hand to just above her left breast, to the spot where her heart beat like thunder against my palm.
My eyes locked with hers, mine full of heat and fire and icy fear, and hers so steady and calming and full of longing.
“I know who you are, Gerard. I just do. I’m accepting you. This”—she spread her arm to encompass the whole of our surroundings—“everything. I don’t know why I know you, Gerard, but I’m done questioning this.”
We were in a hayloft, surrounded by insects, vermin, and dirt. I shook my head. This shouldn’t be happening like this. Maybe this shouldn’t even be happening at all.
“This shouldn’t be, Betty. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be doing this to you. Not here. You deserve—”
“Gerard, stop.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Stop talking. Stop thinking. Just stop. Do you want me?”
My nostrils flared, and the words I kept in check burned straight through me. Yes, with everything inside of me, I wanted her. I wanted to slip deep inside her warmth, her wet heat. I wanted to be held, embraced. I wanted her to never let me go again. I wanted her healing touch. She was a balm to my weary, sick mind. But I couldn’t say those words because I was scared, which made me weak and disgusting. I hated myself right now.
I tried to get up, tried to get off her. She deserved better than this. Deep down, I knew Betty wasn’t like the rest of them. Betty was different, so very different.
She framed my bristled jaw with her tender hand and whispered, “It’s not taking when I’m offering it freely. I need you to touch me, Gerard. I need you more than I’ve ever needed anything else in my life.”
“Why?” I swallowed, fighting that stupid lump in my throat.
“Because I’m scared, too. Because you weren’t what I was expecting. Because my brother and my nephew need me, and I can’t be there for them. Because I’m a stranger in a strange land, except when you hold me. When you look into my eyes, I see the truth you fight so hard to accept.”
I wasn’t going to ask her. I knew what she was talking about because I did accept it. I felt it blaze through every square inch of me. Felt it scream out to me that this stranger was my Betty, my whole bloody world. My love. My desire. My greatest joy, and my deepest sorrow.
She was all things.
But she shouldn’t have been. Not yet. This wasn’t the way it had gone. This wasn’t the way of things. I didn’t remember all of it, but I was remembering enough. Betty shouldn’t have seen me like this. She shouldn’t have found me like this. It wasn’t our time yet.
And I wasn’t even sure what that meant, exactly, only that I felt it to the very pit of my dark and hurting soul.
“I’m so broken, Betty,” I whispered, trusting her with my pain, with my terrible and shameful truth.
She shook her head and did exactly as I’d known she would. She kissed me sweetly, softly. Holding my mouth fast, gently sliding her hot, wet tongue against the seam of my lips, probing for an entrance.
I wanted to keep fighting, but I couldn’t anymore. This was my Betty. My Betty. And so I made the decision to let her in. Made the decision to allow myself to be vulnerable again, to trust that this once, I would not live to regret it. That in this world, there were those who would not seek to destroy me but to build me up. That I, too, could be loved.
I opened with a shuddering sigh, and she slipped in, her tongue tasting of fire and magic and the breath of life. She didn’t ask me for promises or vows. She didn’t demand I give her all of me while giving nothing of herself in return. It was the other way around.
Betty was tender and patient. She slipped her hands beneath my jacket, and though I wasn’t sure how it happened, she quickly divested me of coat and shirt. My skin was hot to the touch and laced with beads of sweat. I felt outside of myself as I watched her press her chest to mine, heart to heart, holding me close and making heated, kittenish noises in the back of her throat.
I watched as my hand moved down her shirt until it reached the hem and began to tug it up. There was no shyness in Betty. She helped me take her shirt off, revealing a pretty, lacy black-and-purple bra that I wanted to admire further, but that she quickly whipped off.
And then I was stunned, mind going dark as I studied rose-peaked nipples. Her skin was pale here, as if it had never before seen the sun.
I swallowed hard, feeling heat crawl through my bones, boil my blood, and rage through my achingly-hard cock. Her eyes were so soft, so giving. The sweetest smile I’d ever seen laced her lovely lips as she grabbed my hands and placed them tenderly over her breasts.
I gasped at the touch of her rose-soft skin, feeling like velvet beneath my callused palms, my skin so dark compared to her paleness. My touch was gentle, almost hesitant at first, expecting that, at any moment, she would tell me to get off, to go away.
Only once had Belle ever let me get beyond this point, and that once had created a tempest in me, a fire of want and need. It had been our one and only time together on which I’d built a castle made of sand, thinking we would have our happily ever after.
But I could see now what I hadn’t seen then. Belle had been hurting that day, deeply grieving. She’d not told me why, only taken me by the hand and hadn’t tried to stop me. I realized now I could have been anyone, because it hadn’t been about me. It had been about not being alone.
I stared into Betty’s eyes, and it was me I saw in her reflection. It was me she touched, my jaw she curved her tiny hand around.
“I see the way you’re looking at me,
” she said, voice a mere reed of sound.
I swallowed hard, feeling the ache in my chest growing and spiraling even bigger. But it had changed, too. I wasn’t angry. I was feeling something else, something far more... heart-rending. Something that should not have been, had been, and I’d lost everything. Everything.
I began trembling, shaking, feeling as though my brain were fighting to hold back a tide of memories and emotions I’d buried so far down that it felt like my soul was being stripped bare. If I let this wall down, if I let these memories through, what would I see?
I felt the press of them shove up against the darkness within. Massive. Overwhelming. Terrifying.
“Look at me, Gerard,” Betty said softly. “Look at me.”
It was the most natural thing in the world for me to do it, to listen to her. I trusted her innately, and I was starting to suspect why. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to accept this. My chest heaved as I fought to stave off the panic threatening to bring me low.
But she was there again, wrapping her body around mine like a living blanket, holding me close and whispering words that, in my panic, I couldn’t seem to understand.
My ears were ringing, and my throat was suddenly dry.
I wasn’t sure I could do this anymore. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
With an inarticulate cry, she leaned up and, with a kiss, stole the words I’d been ready to utter right off my tongue. I groaned, feeling like I wasn’t going to shatter anymore, wasn’t going to sink.
My grip was rough and demanding, but she didn’t care. She liked my fire, goading me on with heated whispers for more, more, more. I kissed her like I’d never kissed anyone else before.
I kissed her not just with my mouth, but with my whole heart, with the good that was just barely hanging on and the dark that had just been birthed. Betty denied me no part of herself. I was an animal as I yanked down her jeans, my movements violent. But she was no shrinking flower. She clawed at my back, at my head, growling at me to end the madness in her bones, to make it better. Make her better.