Becoming Bella

by Sarah Hegger

His mouth on her nipples seared Bella. She arched into his mouth, her hands on his head pressing him closer.

  He sucked her deep into the heat of his mouth, first one breast and then the other.

  The ache between her legs grew urgent and soft pleading noises came from her throat.

  His hand slid beneath her ass, palming it, squeezing and pressing her closer to his cock.

  “More.” Bella writhed beneath him.

  His fingers slid beneath her shorts, seeking the wetness between her legs.

  “So wet,” he murmured against her mouth. “Wet and ready for me.”

  “Yes.” To all of it. Everything he had to offer. She dug her nails into the smooth skin of his back, hanging on to him as everything spun around her.

  He raised his hips to slide her shorts off her legs, taking her panties with him.

  She grabbed his belt and tugged it open. Her fingers shook on his zipper as she lowered it. Underneath his boxers, his cock strained against the fabric. Bella fastened her hand around him and stroked.

  Nate dropped his head back and growled. “Shit. So good.”

  Between her thighs, she throbbed in response. Knowing how hard he was for her cranked her up another notch. She shoved his pants off his hips, desperate to feel all that hot and hard inside her.

  Nate stood and shucked his pants. He bent to untie his boots and toe them off.

  He was so much more beautiful than she’d imagined. And she’d spent a lot of time imagining him like this. Sculpted muscle bunched beneath his smooth skin. A happy trail snaked between his perfect abs to his cock. Nate dropped to his knees at the side of the couch. Fastening his hands around her thighs, he tugged her around and to the edge. He bent forward and licked between her folds.

  Bella jacked up on a low moan.

  His head lowered between her thighs and his tongue and lips were right there.

  She dug her fingers into his hair and he worked her over with that clever mouth. Sucking on her clit just right, circling with his tongue, driving her closer to coming with each touch.

  “Nate.” It came out as a garbled whimper. “I’m going to—”

  “Come for me, Bella.” He brought his fingers into play, sliding first one and then another inside her, as he continued to feast on her.

  Her orgasm built hard and fast and she came on a low keen. It roared through her body, tightening her muscles, and she clamped her thighs over his ears to keep him there.

  He pressed her thighs away with a soft chuckle. “I would ask if that was good, but my ears are ringing.”

  “Shut up,” she whispered, her boneless body at one with the soft cushions beneath her.

  He grabbed a condom from his wallet. “Let’s see if we can build another one.”

  The head of his cock pressed against her entrance. Broad and blunt, he eased inside her, filling her. Tugging her up, he pulled her off the couch and onto him.

  Bella slid farther down him, her knees bracketing his thighs.

  “Okay?” His voice had grown hoarse.

  Bella nodded. She had no words to describe how good he felt inside her. Beyond good. Perfect.

  Tendons strained along his neck and he bent to kiss her. Hard hands gripped her hips as he surged up into her, pulling her down on him at the same time. His thrust ricocheted through her.

  Angling his hips, he thrust again, hitting a sweet spot that made her cry out.

  “That’s it, baby.” He thrust harder, his breath coming in muted grunts. “Let it go, Bella. I want to feel you come around me.”

  If his cock and that angle didn’t do it, his filthy mouth would for certain. He whispered to her between hard thrusts, telling her all he could feel, driving her deeper and deeper into his dark world of lust.

  “Yes, baby, I can feel you tightening around me.” He thrust harder and faster. “Let it go. Milk me dry.”

  Bella grabbed onto his shoulders and came in a slow, building wave that went on and on.

  Beneath her, he kept pounding until his hands gripped her hips almost painfully, and with one last thrust he joined her.

  He dropped his forehead onto her shoulder and rode the wave with her.

  His hands slid around her waist. Sweat slicked their bodies together.

  Nate pressed soft kisses on her shoulder. “Babe,” he murmured. He lifted his head and met her gaze.

  His expression was gentle, unguarded, and it cut straight through Bella.

  She needed to lighten the mood before she did something crazy like start crying. “Now I really need a shower.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bella woke alone the next morning, and she was good with it.

  Nate had left sometime in the very early hours. Tucking the covers under her chin, he’d given her a sweet kiss as he left.

  She lay in bed and giggled at the memory of his failed tattoo. Somewhere between the bouts of the most incredible sex, ever, they’d found time to chat. She’d asked him about the large tattoo covering his ribs and learned it covered up an older mistake. Under duress, he’d told her about his credo gone wrong.

  Live hard, die young, and leave a good-lurking corpse.

  She’d laughed so hard he’d had to shut her up in the most effective manner he knew.

  Bella stretched, her body twinging in all sorts of places. What a night! She put off getting out of bed for as long as possible. Her sheets still smelled like Nate, but she stripped them anyway. Only indulging in one last breath of him before shoving them into the washing machine.

  Nate had come over and they’d had mind-blowing sex, more than once. And now he’d gone. Life would go back to normal.

  She amazed herself at how okay she felt about that. If she’d known she’d be this okay, she’d have jumped his bones years ago. Shower turned on, she brushed her teeth as she waited for the water to heat. Here she’d been building this up into some great tragedy. Nate would break her heart, blah blah blah.

  She stepped into the shower and, tilting her head, let the warm water run all over her.

  Finally, she’d had the sort of sex Liz went on about. The sort that rocked your world and left you craving more. Except there wouldn’t be more. She and Nate had been friends for years and they would go right back to that.

  And she was . . . fine with that?

  Oh God! She wasn’t fine with that. Not at all. Not even a tiny bit. The wave of sadness grew from her toes and hit every major organ on the way up.

  Nate had moved the earth for her and then taken that away. Every fiber of her rejected the notion. Her tears mingled with the water.

  She’d made a horrible miscalculation. Dreaming and knowing weren’t the same thing. In the past, Nate had been some kind of phantom desire, always floating outside her grasp. Last night that phantom had become flesh and joined with her flesh, grafting itself onto her, sinking into her with sharp, hooked claws. Her gut had warned her all along how it would go. Too late to listen to it now because she’d just eviscerated herself.

  “Stop it.” She hauled out her Nana voice for the occasion. “You slept with him, it was great, now it’s done. Get over it.”

  Pressing her hands into them, she willed her eyes to stop leaking. Worse things happened in the world than getting your heart broken. People got their hearts broken every day and they survived. She would too.

  Nate had made her no promises; quite the opposite, in fact. He’d told her straight up the way it would be and she’d taken her gamble. Win some, lose some. She never wanted him to regret last night.

  Over the years, she’d seen the girls come and go in Nate’s life. Most of the time through the green haze of jealousy. The only thing they had in common was that they eventually all went. Some went with tears and pleading, others got a little clingy before he scraped them off, and a few had even walked away with their heads held high. She didn’t have a time machine to go back to change last night, and even if she did, she wouldn’t do it.

  Foolishly, she’d wished with all her heart for one taste
and she’d gotten it.

  Time to buck up and be one of the girls with dignity. Fake it till you make it and all that.

  Pushing the heaviness in her middle down as far as she could, Bella dressed and drove to the store. Life went on, and she intended to ride along with it. She stopped for her usual coffee.

  “Bella, right?” a tall man with brown hair greeted her.

  There was something very familiar about him, but she couldn’t place him. “Hi . . . er . . . hi.”

  “Daniel.” He grinned and took the lid off his coffee. “We went to school together.”

  “I remember.” Bella forced a smile and placed her order for a caramel latte. Faces cycled through her brain as she tried to place him. “How are you?”

  “Good.” Daniel took a careful sip from his cup. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “Of course I do.” Bella prayed her face wasn’t going red because she did remember him. Sort of.

  In an attractive flash of white teeth, he laughed. “Bella, we went to school together from first grade.”

  “Are you sure?” She would have remembered.

  “Not that I was there much.” Daniel shrugged and gave her another smile. Good-looking in a rugged way, his face softened when he smiled. He really did have a great smile. “And I was a year older.”

  Bella did a scan through her memory banks. Something vague flickered in her memory. “You were Nate’s friend?”

  “There ya go.” He nodded and handed her drink to her. “Of course, in those days you pretty much didn’t see past Nate.”

  Not much change there. Except maybe even more so now. “Well, you know.” Bella had no idea what she would say if he didn’t know. Fortunately, he nodded and fell into step with her.

  Bella paused at the door to the coffee shop. Things with Adam had gotten started like this. “Well, see you around.”

  Daniel jerked his chin. “Later.”

  She increased her pace toward her store. Talk about paranoid, but Adam wasn’t an experience she wanted to repeat.

  Daniel walked behind her.

  Bella tried a secret glance over her shoulder.

  “I swear I’m not following you,” Daniel called from behind her. “We just happen to be walking in the same direction. I’m on . . . what the fuck!”

  Bella swung her gaze to Daniel.

  He stared at something over her shoulder.

  Bella turned. Her cup slid from her dead fingers and hit the ground, splashing hot coffee over her ankles. The pain barely registered.

  Scrawled across her storefront in big red letters: Fucking slut.

  “What . . . who?” Her vision grew hazy around the edges.

  Daniel gripped her elbow. “Are you going to faint?”

  “No,” she said, but she couldn’t be entirely sure. She wanted to puke and her head buzzed.

  “Here, sit down.” Daniel guided her to the sidewalk and plonked her butt down. “Sit there and get your breath back.” He slid a phone out of his back pocket.

  Bella couldn’t take her eyes from her storefront. Taunting her, the words danced around in front of her.

  Adam.

  “Hey, Nate.” Daniel spoke somewhere near her. “Yeah. I’m at Bella’s . . . the store . . . yup. You better get down here.”

  * * *

  Nate hit the siren, pulled a doughnut in the middle of Eighth Avenue, and gunned his cruiser over to Main Street. His sweaty palms slid on the steering wheel. Damn things had been sweating since Daniel had uttered Bella’s name.

  Actually, he’d been doing an internal meltdown all morning. Last night might have been the biggest mistake of his thirty-four years. This thing with Bella kept growing bigger. No woman had pushed him off his axis before, and considering his long list of conquests that was saying something.

  Yeah, the sex had been mind-blowing, but the sweet had been worse. Sugar-sweet, honey, and spice Bella had hacked through the carefully constructed protective barrier he’d built. And he didn’t like it.

  A small crowd milled outside the store. Heads turned as he approached.

  Bella’s pale face jumped out from the others around her.

  It punched a hole through his chest. Something had shaken her up badly. His inner barbarian threw back his head and bellowed. The urge to smash raged through him. He took a moment, calling the scene in to Gabby. So shaken he even managed radio protocol.

  Arm over her shoulder, Daniel stood beside Bella.

  Nate wanted to twist that arm off and shove it up Daniel’s ass.

  “Are you okay?” He brushed through the curious onlookers. Only when he had his hands on her shoulders did he take his first deep breath.

  “I think it might be Adam,” she whispered.

  Fuck procedure! Nate needed to hold her. He tugged her closer, fitting her under his chin and breathing in Bella.

  A couple of voices murmured behind him. This would be all over town by noon, but he didn’t give a shit. When he had his arms around her, he knew she was safe. Nate dropped his head lower, closed his eyes, and let the feel of her, well and safe, seep into him.

  Daniel cleared his throat. “I took some pictures.”

  Nate nodded. He took one more moment and then stepped away from Bella. Adam had dared to put the fear in her beautiful, big blue eyes and he would pay for that.

  He stepped back and assessed the situation. He had a goddamned job to do here.

  “I’ve got something that will clean that right off.” Hank Baker shook his head. “What the hell is this world coming to? Nice girl like Bella with this filth on her store.”

  “Appreciate it, Hank.” Before he strangled something, Nate shoved his hands in his pockets. “I just want to check it out first.” He turned back to Bella. “Do you have the keys?”

  Nodding, she fumbled them out of her purse. Her hands shook as she held them out to him.

  “Did you change the locks?” His voice came out a whole lot rougher than he intended.

  Her eyes widened. “Not yet. I was going to speak to Hank today.”

  “Do it.” He turned the lock, almost throwing the door open. He looked at the small crowd around them. “You can all move along now. This is a crime scene.”

  Anger sat like a devil on his shoulder as he went through the store. This kind of thing could get a cop hurt. Anger clouded judgment and he forced himself to breathe slow and deep.

  The front of the store was clear; so was the stockroom behind.

  When he got back to the street, Gabby had arrived and was taking statements. Thank God someone was thinking straight. He gave her a nod.

  Gabby moved closer to him. “Doesn’t look like anyone saw anything.” She shrugged. “And, of course, no security cameras or anything like that.”

  “I think we have a fair idea who did this.” Anger simmered beneath his skin.

  Gabby gave him a hard stare. “That may be, but we still have to prove it. That’s generally how this works.”

  Nate bunched his hands into fists before he punched something. “I know my job.”

  “Huh.” Gabby adjusted her utility belt. “Does that include handing out hugs to crime victims now?”

  “Don’t.” He couldn’t deal with her bitchiness right now.

  “Nate?” Daniel interrupted their stare-down. “I’m going to take Bella to get a cup of coffee.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but there was Gabby with her sharp gaze on him. “Fine.”

  “I’ve got her statement already,” Gabby said.

  Not sure he could watch Daniel walk away with his Bella, Nate turned back to the storefront. Whoa! He stopped in midstep and Gabby swore behind him as she sidestepped quickly. His Bella. She wasn’t his, and someone like him had no business having that notion.

  “Got what you need here?” He got his voice under control again.

  Gabby nodded and headed for her cruiser.

  “Deputy,” he called after her. Gabby turned around. “Find him.”

  * * *
>
  Bella had heard Nate had a bigger, fancier county headquarters. One with detectives and jails and lots more deputies. The Ghost Falls sheriff ’s office hadn’t changed much since Sheriff Wheeler had died. The battered old filing cabinet with its Broncos stickers down the side. Two desks behind the counter. One clearly Jeff ’s because of the liberal scattering of baby pictures. The other as neat as if nobody ever used it and the one Bella presently sat at.

  Through the open door to Nate’s office, the deep rumble of his voice on the phone distracted her. He’d been terse and professional since she’d arrived at the station to lay a charge. Pacing, his tall body crossed the open doorway. He nodded and rubbed at the back of his neck as he spoke. Everything girl inside her ached.

  She edged her shoulder around slightly, putting him out of her sight line.

  Gabby pecked away at her keyboard. What a crying shame to drag that gloriously thick, curly hair into a ponytail. She’d bet Gabby looked like some kind of pagan goddess with her hair down. Good God, you couldn’t buy skin like that at any price. Beneath her butt-ugly uniform, there was no denying that Deputy Gabby rocked a hot bod. She must introduce her to Pippa. She’d lay good money on Pippa getting the same itch to make her over. “How long have you lived here now?”

  Gabby looked up at her, her mouth dropping open slightly. “About two years.”

  Two years in a town the size of Ghost Falls and Bella had never seen her out and about anywhere. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s okay.” Gabby shrugged.

  Uh-oh. A very definite negative, or did they say negatory in police stations? She might be losing her mind here. Still, her inane mental meanderings beat the hell out of obsessing about some psycho out there with her name on his hit list. “Where did you live before here?”

  Gabby narrowed her eyes. “A few places.”

  “Ah.” Even to her, it sounded like someone had strangled the sound out of Gabby. “A woman of mystery.”

  “Not really.” Gabby glared at her computer screen. “Just a private one.”

  Hand slap. A very definite hand slap there. “Sorry.”

  “Appreciate that.” Nate’s voice floated into the uncomfortable silence. “I’ll make sure you get something today. Yup . . . BOLO . . . aha.”