I moaned as he took what he wanted. A week ago I didn't know this man and now I was letting him do whatever he wanted to my body. But as soon as I'd seen him, I knew I'd be his if he wanted me. It was almost as if it was out of our control.
One moment we were lovers and the next moment it was all primal passion, where the tenderness was gone and replaced by an aggressive and painful need to claim my body. And to come inside me.
The night before he'd pulled out, marking my back with his seed. But that morning as he fucked me, I could tell my body felt too good for him to resist me. I raised my hips allowing him to plunge deeper into me, the look on his face telling me everything I needed to know. I was doing all the right things. All I wanted to do was please him.
"Fuck!" he called out, pumping me faster, his large hands wrapped around my waist as he used my body to please his cock. "Belle. Baby. I never want to stop taking this pussy. How do you feel so fucking good? Do you like how it feels to get fucked by me?"
I came hard from his words alone, screaming out his name as the waves of pleasure ripped through me.
"It's yours," I gasped. "Everything I have. You can have it any time you want."
Suddenly, his thrusting was harder and faster and I knew he was going to come. Sweat glistened on his rippled abs, and his biceps flexed as he held me down to finish inside me.
"I'm coming," he said. "I have to, inside you. I need you to feel what you did to me."
I ran my fingers up his chest, the muscles slippery under my hand.
He looked at me as it happened, and there was an electric pulse between us, our bodies as connected as they could possibly be in this world or the next. It was supernatural, this feeling. I cried out from the pain and pleasure of it, never wanting it to end. Being instantly addicted to it.
He'd said he couldn't let me in. But at that moment I was as in as anyone could ever be.
His thrusting had slowed, but his hands still held me. I was panting, completely breathless, consumed by his love.
Because it had to be love. If this wasn't love, what the hell else was it?
"Belle," he said to me. "I love you."
It was as if he could read my thoughts.
"I love you, too," I whispered, not knowing what else I could ever say that would be more true.
"I should make you breakfast," he'd said out of the blue a half hour later as we laid together in bed, our legs intertwined, my head on his chest.
"You don't have to do that," I said. "You've done so much already."
"But we forgot to eat dinner last night," he laughed. "You've gotta be starving. I am."
I had to admit, I was pretty hungry.
"Okay," I said. "Eggs would be nice. And bacon! Always bacon."
"Always bacon," he repeated. "My kinda girl."
As I heard him opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen, I smiled to myself as I pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and threw on a t-shirt.
I needed this. I deserved this. Whatever this was, I wanted it to last.
But I also needed to be honest.
Huck needed to know about Kentucky and what I had left behind.
"Hey," I said, as I walked into the kitchen. He was shirtless at the stove with just a pair of boxer briefs on. He looked like an underwear model as he scrambled eggs and sizzled bacon.
"Hey," he said, leaning over to kiss me as I walked past him. It was crazy how much had changed in the last 24 hours.
How do you love someone when you've only known them a week?
And what if he stopped loving me after I shared the truth with him?
"I want to tell you," I said. "About Kentucky."
He caught my eyes and could tell I was being serious. He moved the frying pans he was cooking with from the stove and walked over to my side of the kitchen table.
"Okay," he said. "I'm all ears." He placed his hand behind my neck and rubbed it. "You can tell me."
"It's a lot," I said, my voice already quavering. "Like, I don't know if it's too much to tell you. I don't know what's going on with us … "
"I don't either," he said. "I know that I meant every word I said to you last night and this morning."
I touched the stubble of his cheek. "Thank you. I'm just scared."
"You and me both," he said, kissing my nose. "So the fear cancels itself out. Right?"
I smiled. "Maybe so."
I sighed. Where did I even begin?
"First off," I said. "I know you mentioned losing your parents. Well, I lost a parent about six years ago. My father."
Huck wrapped his arm around me and pulled me in. "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," I said. "I mean, it's not really okay, but such is life, right? Anyway, he died suddenly when I was eighteen years old. I'd just graduated high school and we were getting ready to drive to Cincinnati to see a Reds game when he suddenly … well. He had a heart attack and died in his bathroom before the ambulance could even get to our house."
I looked up at the ceiling as I remembered everything about that day. It had been in all the papers the next day. DELFORD DOWN. The most insensitive headline.
I continued, "Anyway, I was his only daughter with my mother," I said. "They were married for 25 years and they'd struggle to get pregnant with me, so my father always referred to me as his miracle child. And treated me as such. I wanted for nothing. I had a childhood that most people couldn't even dream of. You see, I'm a Delford. And we own one of the biggest bourbon distilleries in the world. Old family business which means a lot of old money. And I am the heiress to it all. My father left everything to me."
This was the part where I knew it would get weird. That he'd look at me differently, somehow. It's what happened every time. People found out what family I came from and suddenly I wasn't just Belle anymore. I was a Delford.
"Belle," he said. "I have a confession."
"Okay," I said, confused. "Tell me."
"I already knew a lot of this. I Googled you. The night we hired you," Huck said. "Or the night you showed me up. You were this amazing whiz at bourbon history and it about threw me for a loop. I couldn't believe it. Honestly, it was the sexiest display of intelligence I'd ever seen. I mean, I own a bar. A woman who can school me on anything in it is someone I want to know more about. So I did Google your name. Your dad came up in Wikipedia. But I swear, I don't know anything personal about you besides that. I just figured … well, I am ashamed to say what I figured."
I was both relieved and a little nervous, "What did you figure?"
"That you'd be some rich girl. Entitled. Snobby. I didn't think you'd last one hour in our bar, much less one night. But you surprised me that first night," he said. "And you have ever since. So if it's about being an heiress, you don't have to explain anything. Some might say you're lucky to be rich, but the price you had to pay to get it … who would want that?"
God, he was so perfect. It was scary.
"I mean, I hate to complain," I said. "I know I am blessed to have my trust. I get it when I turn 25, which is in a year. Its why I'm so broke now, I don't have access to it yet. But I would do anything to have my father back. I'd be glad to have nothing if it meant he was still here."
"I can understand that," he said. "It's not the same, but when my mother died we got a little bit of insurance paid out to us. It helped us keep our land and buy the bar. But dammit I'd rather have her here. And I can't help but think of that every time I walk in the doors of that damn place."
I nodded, "Yes. Exactly."
"So why would you leave it behind?" he asked. "Too many memories haunting you?"
God. How I wished that was why.
"Well, that's what I need to tell you," I said. "After my father died, for about a year, my mother and I grieved. But soon she was ready to move on, so she remarried. Which, there's nothing wrong with that, though at the time it infuriated me and felt entirely too fast. I think she was angry at my father for leaving his entire part of their estate to me instead of to her. So she married a man that on paper seemed a lot like my father. Old money, old business. And he's okay, they travel a lot so I barely see them."
I sighed. I just wanted to tell him the hard part.
"Anyway," I said. "My mother is a very high society kind of person. She was a debutante, the whole nine yards. She made me do the debutante thing too, something I didn't love, but I did it for her. Well, after my father died, my need to please her just increased. She wanted me to marry well, someone who was from the right family, who had the right sort of connections to the circles she values. It's all so stupid, but I wanted to make her happy. Even more than I wanted to make myself happy.