Page 51 of Betray Me
But for some reason, it does. Seeing him bare, vulnerable, choosing to share this moment with me, even knowing who I am, is the hottest thing I’ve experienced in years.
“Your turn,” he says, prowling across the bed to meet me.
I sit up slowly, deliberately, letting him watch the slide of fabric over my skin. When we’re kneeling face-to-face, chests bare, he leans forward and rests his forehead against mine.
“Belle,” he breathes.
And the way he says it—like it’s a precious name, like the woman beneath it is a person who deserves kindness—breaks me open like a wave breaking on rocks. There are no secrets between us tonight. No defenses or rehearsed lines or need for pretenses. He’s Max and I’m Belle, and there’s no distance between us except for the clothes we’ve only now started shedding.
His lips find mine, and the kiss is wild, electric, urgent, and desperate. Some animal instinct takes over, stripping us bare and pressing us together like maybe, somehow, with enough contact, we can rid ourselves of the pasts that created us.
For the first time in my life, being truly seen doesn’t terrify me. Because as the remaining clothes fall away, as my body melts into his, as his voice whispers things I never dared to want into my skin, I realize that this feels nothing like the sick, wrong transactions forced on me before. This feels bright and free and utterly, perfectly right.
Max presses the tip of his cock against me, asking a question with his body. He doesn’t rush me, doesn’t try to maneuver my body into the position he prefers, doesn’t pressure or demand. Tonight is about my choice, about my agency. It’s an act of mutual submission instead of competition, of love instead of compulsion.
“Yes,” I gasp against his lips, and as he enters me, hot and solid and familiar in a way that aches deep inside, I feel myself falling.
Ever so slowly, Max thrusts his hips, gentle movements meant to tease instead of bruise. He’s everything I never thought I needed and now can’t imagine living without. Part of meexpected rage and aggression, a way of asserting dominance and violence in the absence of healthy outlets. Instead, he teases and flirts and asks permission, moving in and out in a slow rhythm that ignites fires instead of charring my flesh.
“Belle,” he gasps my name into my shoulder, his teeth grazing my skin with a thrill instead of a wound.
We move together, our bodies complementing each other in a way I never would have expected. And then, as his mouth closes around one of my nipples, the tension deep in my core releases, and white-hot pleasure burns through me, erasing every thought except one.
Mine. This man is mine. This emotion is mine. This impossible, improbable freedom is mine.
“Faster,” I plead as my muscles clench around him.
His hips obey, increasing speed and pressure as he keeps my orgasm blazing like a star.
“Harder,” I order, and he obliges, pulling back just enough to look me in the eyes.
It’s the vulnerability in his expression—the same raw, honest need I feel inside me—that pushes me over the edge again, a second wave of pleasure far more powerful than the first. He follows me into the current, murmuring my name as his orgasm throbs, fast and deep.
“Stay with me,” I whisper as we collapse together, my words barely coherent. “Please stay.”
He finds my hand and holds it, warm and familiar and mine. “Always.”
Afterward, we lie tangled in the government-issued sheets, my head on Max’s chest as his fingers trace lazy patterns on my bare shoulder. The room is quiet except for our gradually slowing breathing and the distant sound of wind against the safe house windows.
“That was…” I start, then trail off, not sure how to finish the sentence.
“Different,” Max supplies, his voice rough with satisfaction and something deeper.
“Yeah.” I press a kiss to his chest, tasting salt and warmth and the lingering scent of his cologne. “Different.”
For the first time in my life, sex wasn’t a performance or a weapon or a transaction. It was a connection—honest, vulnerable, real. The kind of intimacy I never thought I was capable of giving or receiving.
“Belle?” Max’s voice is soft in the darkness.
“Mmm?”
“I think I love you.”
The words hit me like lightning, illuminating parts of myself I didn’t know existed. Not the calculated love I’ve witnessed between my parents—a strategic alliance dressed up as affection. Not the twisted dependency that bound the network’s families together. Real love. The kind that sees every broken piece of you and chooses to stay anyway.
“I think I love you too,” I whisper back, and the admission doesn’t terrify me the way I thought it would. Instead, it feels like coming home.
But even as I say the words, even as I allow myself this moment of perfect happiness, reality begins to creep back in. My parents are in federal custody, but Dominic is still out there. The network may be damaged, but it’s not destroyed. And somewhere in the shadows, forces I don’t understand are probably already planning their next move.
