Too Beautiful to Break

by Tessa Bailey

  She’d never been more intimate with another human being and he…he was still wearing his clothes. And boots. In the shower. It was so them, to feel their way in the literal dark. Since coming on the road trip, she’d sensed that Belmont could only take her in doses—take himself around her in doses—and she could relate now. If he took his pants off, Sage didn’t know what she would do. Just having his palms below her belly button was enough to make her world spin. The water trickling down between them, along their sides, only highlighted their proximity and made it seem so real. So real her knees shook, her pulse pounding in her temples.

  Show me.

  He’d actually said that.

  Oh boy. It was one thing to experiment with your own body in private, but quite another to articulate, to instruct, a man. Not just a man, though. Belmont. Larger than life and…and he’d just told her he would pick her out of a million women. She was having a hard time coping with the gravity of that, let alone concentrating enough to explain how to give her pleasure.

  “Sage.” Belmont’s voice echoed off the shower walls, sounding as if it had come down from a sky full of thunderclouds. “You could recite the alphabet and I would be grateful for it. Especially the way you pronounce your m’s.” His middle finger dipped below the waistband of her panties. “I love everything you say. So I’m not sure you have any idea what…listening to you talk about that place beneath your underwear…is going to do to me.”

  Whoa. “Can you tell me?” He dragged her higher on his lap and they both moaned. “What it’ll do to your body. It might help me talk about m-mine.”

  For long moments, the only sound in the bathroom was shower spray splattering on the walls. “There was one time in Iowa. You were going out on that girls’ night…and I didn’t like it. I already didn’t want you to go, but then you walked out in these shoes.”

  Sage closed her eyes and tried to picture the ones he meant. “The reddish-brown ones with the buckle?”

  “Yes.” The way he growled the single word made Sage anxious to writhe her bottom. And she did. There was no help for it. Belmont heaved a tortured noise into her ear and lifted her off the ground, bracing her against the wall. “Yes, those shoes. They made your legs stretch. Your calf muscles…I’d never seen them that way before. And the whole night, I wondered. What would it be like to have them locked behind my back?” His erection was so stiff now, she knew he must be in pain. It was there in his voice, too. “We both slept in the cabin that night, after you came home to me, and I shouldn’t have done it, Sage.”

  “Done what?” she breathed.

  His sigh was contrite, but there was a tinge of excitement there, too. “I pulled up your covers when you were sleeping, just to the knee. No higher, I promise.” His finger traveled farther into her panties, separating the lips of her sex, and Sage stopped breathing. “They slid together and apart in the sheets…and your feet were bare, too. I only watched for a few seconds, but it was longer than I should have looked without asking.” His low hum of approval sent heat slithering around and around her tummy. “You can feel how hard you make me. And I’ve enjoyed it. Wanting you is a privilege. I earn it by not touching myself. Just looking, wanting, and…aching.”

  If Sage had been standing, she would have fallen over from the back-to-back shocks. Her legs had turned him on, and he’d been resisting even his own self-pleasure. “You haven’t touched yourself?”

  “No. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been tempted.” His finger slipped over her clit without warning and she screamed through her teeth, bucking against Belmont. He stiffened for a moment, then reversed his touch, finding the bundle of nerves again. “Right there.”

  “Yes,” she managed. “Yes, right there.” The pad of his finger slipped over her throbbing nub again, sending her feet scrambling against his shin bones, curving her arches around them and using them for support. “Ohhh. Belmont, yes.”

  “You said my name while I’m touching you here.” Through the haze of encroaching bliss, she heard the disbelief and awe in his tone, which somehow drove her higher, closer to the sun. “Did the shower make you wet here through your underwear?” His voice was the deepest of blacks. “Or is this—”

  “It’s you. It’s you.” He started using two fingers, massaging her most sensitive spot in luscious circles, fast and slow, fast and slow, as if he were learning through her reactions.

  “Put your head back on my shoulder,” he ground out. “I can’t see your eyes.”

  Danger. She shouldn’t. Being face to face with Belmont brought too much gravity. It would suck her back in, turn her back into someone she couldn’t be. But the gathering of release put a hole in her defenses. This was the man she’d clung to for dozens of hours, quietly begging for more. For all. So she didn’t just put her head on his shoulder, she threw it, using a foot on his knee as leverage to cinch higher. “There. There,” she choked out, peering up into his shadowed face. Shadowed, save his eyes, which practically glowed like blue coal as they raced over her face. “I’m right here.”

  “I missed you.” A tremor moved through his huge body. “Don’t keep me banished.”

  “Please. Please just let me have this. Just this.” Her whisper was jagged because the stroking of Belmont’s fingers was bringing on a euphoric quickening in her stomach, those muscles beginning to shudder and contract. She felt her mouth move into an almost dazed smile, totally involuntary, probably because her body had been begging for this kind of release for so long. Consuming and intense and bestowed upon her by the man who’d inspired her quest for pleasure in the first place. “Don’t stop. It feels so perfect.”

  “You feel perfect.” His petting turned up a notch, just the right amount of hard and quick quick quick. Like their bodies sensed what was right for the other and provided, just as a matter of fact. “I can…” He groaned. “God, I can see your pretty breasts, Sage. Let me have them next time. My mouth on them…”

  “Yes,” she whimpered, lust gathering up her insides and squeezing. “Al-almost…”

  “If I’d known,” Belmont started, licking her neck, rolling his hips. “If I’d known I could do this to you with my two fingers, I would have used lotion to make them softer. I—”

  “Don’t change them. Don’t change anything.”

  That bliss she was chasing had plateaued at the highest possible point, making her frantic to go over the edge. Her inner walls were beating with tight, little spasms, which was the point at which she usually stopped, satisfied she’d had an orgasm and the process was over. Wasn’t it? There seemed to be more, higher pleasure begging to be taken. Something shiny and scary, all at once. But half the fear came from missing out, from not climbing to that next level.

  “I need your fingers inside me,” Sage got out. “Please. I need.”

  His strangled groan was like a thunder crack in the air, but he didn’t hesitate. His middle finger felt for her entrance and tested with two shallow pushes, before sliding deep. “I give Sage what she needs,” he rasped into her wet hair. “That’s what I do. Feel what I do.”

  Sage’s flesh clamped around the thick presence of Belmont’s finger and she broke. She broke right down the middle, her legs jerking, the private, untested muscles low in her stomach convulsing until she screamed. It was like waking up in the bottom of a pool and marveling at the feeling of being encapsulated in cool, fresh heaven, but still scrambling for the air that waited at the top. So much relief. Almost too much to stand. “Oh my God. Belmont. Please don’t let go of me yet.”

  He pressed her more securely against the shower wall, and that turned out to be everything she needed. His heated strength at her back and an anchor in front. She slowly drifted back down to earth, her body loosening and going slack. Sleep tried to claim her right then and there, but Belmont’s actions kept her lucid. Still breathing like an overworked stallion, he picked up the soap once again and washed her, starting with her fingertips, her wrists. Huge, calloused hands moved over her flesh with reverence,
even as his rasping inhales told of suppressed impulses. Ones they hadn’t even begun to explore.

  And they couldn’t. Having an ongoing physical relationship with Belmont would never work. He already treated her as if she were his to protect…that responsibility would only intensify within him if they went further. No matter how much she craved that, she couldn’t allow it to happen.

  Sage was distracted from those heavy thoughts when Belmont, still soaked head to toe, his black, unruly hair clinging in clumps to his face, eased her out of the shower and wrapped her in a towel. Then he scooped her up and carried her to the twin bed, laying her on the scratchy sheets and stepping back. Away. She caught a fast glimpse of the large outline of flesh jutting out from behind his fly before he turned on a heel and started tending to the hearth fire.

  “Belmont,” Sage whispered, something twisting in her chest. She’d been so shocked and distracted by her own pleasure, she hadn’t stopped to consider how much pain he must be in. Just as the orange fire began glowing in the iron fireplace, Sage sat up, careful to keep the towel up around her shoulders. “I don’t know how to help you without…”

  Falling back under our spell. She shouldn’t have been so selfish. Now he was hurting because of her. But as Sage sat there, trying to work out a way to make the one-sided situation right, it became more and more obvious she didn’t have to bother. His withdrawal was palpable across the room, so familiar she almost laughed. Almost.

  Belmont didn’t turn around when he spoke to her, his voice gruff and distant. “You’ll be safe here. Please don’t open the door for anyone.”

  Even though she’d known what was coming, it didn’t stop an anvil from dropping on her chest. “You’re leaving.”

  This was his routine. If he wasn’t holding her and using her to calm his anxiety, he was disappearing. He couldn’t stand being in the same room with her for longer than a few minutes, unless she was stuffed up against his chest and being overwhelmed by him. What he didn’t realize? It murdered her every time he turned his back and left. Every time.

  This. This was part of the reason she’d had to leave him in the first place. How could she have forgotten? It was full throttle or nothing, and she couldn’t live that way. It wasn’t healthy and it was one of her worst fears come true. Becoming a half, instead of a whole.

  “I’m sorry,” Belmont muttered, his grip making the doorjamb creak. “I wish…” He cleared his throat. “Please lock this door behind me.”

  She flinched when the door clicked shut behind him.

  * * *

  I wish…

  What? What would he have said?

  I wish I could separate you from my darkness, because I know that’s what you need. I wish I could feel normal and allow you to feel the same. I wish I knew what would happen if we were actually skin to skin.

  Useless wishes, because there was no normal for Belmont. His first memory was of Miriam crying over his crib and over time he’d slowly realized they’d been abandoned. Miriam had moved on at some undefined point, but something about that feeling would never completely leave him. One father had found the very idea of him lacking. And when a new father had arrived…

  Belmont stumbled on the sidewalk when he felt the press of hands on his back, but there was no one behind him. He didn’t even have to turn around to confirm it. He’d felt those hands so many times in his life, the way they almost punctured his skin through sheer force. Maybe he didn’t have to turn around, but out of respect for his sanity, he looked down, confirming there was no hole in the ground before him. Nothing to fall into.

  And then he could only picture Sage coming out of the mine. Sage wrapped in a towel across the room, watching him. A normal man would have removed the damp clothes that still clung to his frame and lay down beside her. Gathered her body close and protected her as she slept. But he’d done her an injustice, without making a conscious decision. When he’d started relying on Sage to keep himself from imploding, he’d allowed her to get swallowed up in the deepest parts of his lake. He’d associated her with the results of his trauma and he didn’t know how to break her free. How to hold her like a capable, well-meaning man and release her when the time came. Step back and be more than a drain on her resources, ample though they were. To just love Sage without…overwhelming them both. What he felt in her presence was so big and demanding, he didn’t know how to stay put in the midst of it and keep himself contained.

  But tonight he’d touched her. Between her legs. He was still raw and keyed up from the indescribable pleasure of feeling Sage twist and moan and shake, all because of something he was doing. Rubbing the tiny bud hidden inside the folds of her…pussy. Christ. Could he call it that? The very act of thinking the word made his erection throb with renewed need. Back at the cottage, he’d secretly hoped for her towel to fall. So he’d have no choice but to move closer. If he’d done so, would they have had sex?

  He should be ashamed that the very possibility had brought him into town. Brought him to the sidewalk outside of a convenience store—the only establishment in town open on Christmas Day—standing in the projected artificial light. He couldn’t help it, though. The compulsion to protect Sage was so firmly ingrained, he couldn’t deny it, so he’d come to buy condoms. For the first time in his life.

  A stiff wind caused the automatic doors to roll open and Belmont took that as a sign. He walked inside and scanned the aisles, finding a handful of locals browsing. Some looked to be buying last-minute gifts or boxes of candy, others carrying on casual conversations across the store at the pharmacy counter. They turned to watch him and his skin prickled under the attention. Briefly, he wondered how Aaron went about purchasing protection. The image of his brother’s cocky stroll, the way he would probably toss the package across the counter and wink, got Belmont moving again. Nearly smiling.

  But that smile faltered when the door opened behind him, signaling a new arrival into the store. Everyone went so silent, Belmont got the distinct premonition that he would turn and find Sage’s boss from the mine following on his heels. Automatically, his hands balled into fists, his bones bracing for an oncoming battle, but when he glanced back toward the door, he was surprised to find a woman instead.

  She was older than him, probably by a good fifteen years. And Belmont had spent enough time in dark places to recognize she was a prostitute. It seemed everyone in the store knew it, too, by the way they sneered and turned their backs. The woman laughed in response, her heels clacking on the linoleum floor, but the lines around her mouth were tight.

  When she threw a challenging look at Belmont, he felt the need to nod at her in greeting, instead of avoiding her. A flicker of shock passed across her face, but he was already turning for the personal health aisle, ready to make his purchase. The motel room he’d rented two blocks down was waiting for him. He would probably pace there all night, waiting for morning, when he could go back to Sage. Without work at the mine to distract him until Monday, he would find out her plans and hope she didn’t mind him accompanying her. Something about the town in general made him nervous and leaving her alone longer than it took the sun to rise wasn’t an option.

  Belmont stopped in front of the condom section, his mouth drying up at the abundance of choices. Natural feeling, ultra-sensitive, fire and ice. Classic, extended, pleasure pack. Which one was the correct one for Sage? The fact that she wouldn’t have any idea, either, made the decision even more important. Her first time—if there was going to be a first time—couldn’t be ruined by something like the wrong size or brand. Jesus. He was starting to sweat, the bright lights beating down on him. From across the store, he heard laughter and would have left if it weren’t for the prospect of Sage wanting him inside her…and not being able to give her what she needed. No, he’d withstand the laughter over her disappointment any day.

  “You look like a Magnum man to me,” the woman crooned at his right elbow. “You need some help putting it on later?”

  Her snicker cut off when
Belmont glanced over. “No,” he answered, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth, ears burning hot. Every eye in the place was zeroed in on him, so he kept his voice low. “But I’d be grateful if you could…which one is best for the woman?”

  “Ah.” The woman hugged her thin jacket tighter around her body. “Having a laugh at my expense, are you?”

  “No.” He held her tired gaze. “It’s more likely you’re having a laugh at mine.”

  Keeping her narrowed focus on him, she reached out and snagged a black package from the rack, tucking it into the crook of her arm. “No. And I reckon people don’t laugh at you very often, either.”

  “Why?”

  A laugh puffed out of her. “Why would you care what I think?”

  He couldn’t tell if she really expected an answer to that question, so he went back to staring at the selection of boxes. There was a row of packages still swaying, clueing him into which ones the woman had taken, so he started to reach for those.

  “This is for…your girlfriend?” the woman asked.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Belmont responded, the memory of Sage’s shuddering stomach making his palms heat. “She’s the one I live to protect. This is only a small part of keeping her safe, and I could already be failing.”

  Belmont didn’t know what compelled him to talk so candidly to a stranger. Maybe it was their lack of acquaintance that made it easy, all its own. The side of her body that faced the store’s other patrons was stiff, her shoulder wedged right up beneath her ear, as if to shield herself from their judgment. Perhaps it was that small tell—that proof that she didn’t belong any more than he did—that made it so natural to speak his mind.

  “Thanks for your help,” he said when she didn’t respond.

  “No, wait.” She stepped closer, then backed away, seeming unsure of herself. “Tell me about her. I can…I can help.”

  Relief blustered in his stomach. “My Sage is small. Only comes to three inches below my shoulder. She looks delicate, but she’s strong.” The memory of Sage’s whispered confessions in the dark made him light-headed. “She hasn’t done this before. Maybe she won’t want to. I’m still waiting to see if she…”