Chapter Text
Sometimes she calls Gold at midnight, after her father and she have a row and she discovers she can't sleep. She never worries about Moe asking after the late night phone calls; she pays the bills and that includes the cell phones. And he's always blacked out from drinking by that time anyway.
Gold always comes to get her when she calls, his classic Cadillac purring into her driveway and idling, waiting to swallow her, the demonic black even more intimidating in the dead of night.
Belle loves that car.
--
She walks out her front door into the bitter cold of midwinter, a flimsy jacket her only guard against it, save for her clothes. She wears a dress better suited to spring, but it also better suits her purpose on these nights.
With him, she's not the bookish librarian, or the ungrateful daughter of the towns rival for biggest drunk, or a prudish bitch no one would look at twice. With him, she's warm, and alive, and sexy, and, god, does she need to feel sexy on these nights. To feel her blood pumping, chasing away the cold biting at her skin and the sad and bitter life she leads against her highest wishes.
She opens the heavy passenger door and lowers herself down onto the warm leather seat and is silent as he puts the car in gear and drives away from her sad little house.
They never leave town when they go on these night rides because there's no one around to worry about seeing them. And even if there were, he owns most of the town, and could press that advantage enough to keep someone from opening their big mouth and spreading rumors, even though they wouldn't be rumors at all.
So she lets him drive, lets him pick where they go tonight, and she stares out the window, wanting desperately to cry, to unburden her soul. She wants him to hold her and pet her and take her back to his large, warm house and tell her she can stay with him, that he loves her, adores her and can't bear this unhappiness, this melancholy life she leads.
But she stays silent, doubting he'd want her in any other way than he has her. It's a reverse of that famous line from The Great Gatsby: 'rich girls don't marry poor boys.' Well, rich men don't want poor little broken girls cluttering up their life with their problems and their drunken fathers and their tears.
He pulls the car up to the entrance of the cemetery, and parks. Neither of them speak, though she wishes he'd just pull her into his lap and let her cry those tears that would just clutter his life and stain his impeccable suit.
Instead, she keeps staring out the window, straight ahead, until she hears what seems like a sigh from Gold and then his hand is on her knee, sliding higher up the inside of her leg until he reaches that soft spot where her thigh meets her body and he just leaves his hand there, big and so warm, until she squirms, rising desire pushing away her despondency over her life.
His hand slips closer, touching her through the thing fabric of her serviceable panties, nothing even close to lingerie as much as she wishes they were. She can't afford it and white cotton is probably not what he's used to in the other women he no doubt fucks properly, in big beds with luxurious sheets, set in some foreign city.
But who cares. He's with her, here and now, and it's cold outside but their combined warmth is causing the windows to steam, and his fingers are working patterns across the cotton and her flesh and she's gasping lightly as his clever digits slide underneath the fabric and find her.
He's so warm, warmer than her and he releases a quiet growl when he finds her wet and when the noise reaches her ears, her inner muscles clench and she lets out a whimper of her own. His slippery fingers glide over her flesh and dimly she wonders how he can manage at that angle but then he's sliding a long finger inside her and she forgets what she was thinking about.
Everything coalesces to his hand on her mound and his finger stroking her leisurely inside, her thighs clenching around his hand to keep him inside when he teasingly withdraws. She whimpers when he uses a little more force to remove his hand from between her soft thighs and stares at him dazedly as he sucks her off of his finger, turning his body so that his other hand slides up to press against her and his fingers are back inside her again.
He presses a spot inside her that pulls a long moan from her mouth and his lips latch on to hers, swallowing the sound as he slips a send finger inside her to press harder against that spot. She's incoherent, lost to everything that's not his hand and that place and his mouth on hers.
He slides his thumb over the engorged little bundle of nerves at the top of her and she can't breathe for a minute as his hand works her from the inside out. He takes his mouth from hers and presses his face to the side of hers, breathing harshly and gasping every time she moans.
She reaches blindly for him, grasping at the bulge in his slacks and squeezing and he gives a guttural shout so she keeps squeezing. Usually it's all for her but she's had enough and goddamn it, if she won't fuck him she'll at least give him relief from the blue balls he's probably had for months. And, jesus, does she want to fuck him more than she wants to breathe but she won't. She can't give him that part of herself without his love, without his desire for more than just her wet cunt in his hands.
So she squeezes his cock through his pants as he fingers her and they're both gasping desperately at each other, silently battling to make the other come first as if they know one will trigger the other but she falters, breaks first, and it's one perfect moment of bright bliss in an otherwise dark sea, her head is thrown back against the headrest and she's giving broken little shouts and her muscles are clamping around his hand. Her climax sets off his and she feels him jerk in her hands through his pants, a hoarse shout of his own ringing in her ear, too loud but she hasn't a fuck to give, all she wants is his pleasure as payment for hers.
They begin to come down, hands still playing with each other but gently and their breathing is ragged, broken, aftershocks shooting from one to the other.
He does the unthinkable, at least to her. He kisses her temple gently, reverently nuzzling into her tousled hair. He's never done it before and she's too stupid from orgasm to react properly so she just lets him and tells herself she'll deal with the kernel of doubt lodged in her gut later in the privacy of her cold room without him and his warm hands and warm leather Cadillac seats soaked with her sweat and juices.
They release each other but he takes his time letting go, slipping his fingers free of her and cleaning them off with his tongue. It's not an obscene gesture but one colored with something that seems like love but it couldn't be, he can't love her, all he knows of her is these trysts in the dead of night by the cemetery or in the church parking lot or the edge of the woods.
He adjusts himself in his pants and she thinks how uncomfortable it must be to sit in your own semen like that and it makes her blush because she knows she has a much better place for him to put it next time. If there even is a next time for them, because something has shifted imperceptibly, but it's there, on the edges of her consciousness and it's making her heart beat and ache, what the hell is going on?
She pulls her dress down self-consciously and looks at her lap, the fogged windows, anywhere but at him for she knows if she makes eye contact, he'll see everything and then it will all be ruined.
Fate is a fickle bitch, though, because his fingers find her chin and pull her face towards his but she still won't look at him, choosing instead to memorize the dark paisley pattern of his tie and telling Fate to go fuck herself right now.
His fingers leave her chin and she feels his hand stroke the side of her face as he sighs, his breath ghosting across her lips. He leans in gently like she's a skittish doe and hovers near her mouth.
She has to choose now: to either pull away and make him take her home, or she can meet his mouth with hers and damn the consequences, damn the pain and the loss when he drops her off and speeds away. She can deny him in fear or take a piece of what she wants with everything she has and face the anguish tomorrow.
She closes the millimeter of distance between their lips and presses against him, full and pouty against thin and firm and he makes a noise of surprise before both his hands cup her face and tilt her so he can access her mouth fully. He's kissed her before, even just a few minutes ago, but this, fucking hell, this is different. He's desperate and sucks her tongue into his mouth like he's starving for her and she tastes herself on him and it's simultaneously erotic and comforting, when did that happen?
It's al suddenly too much and she breaks away from his mouth with a cry of distress and the tears start flowing and they won't stop. He makes a pained sound of his own and pulls her into him, holding her, and she just sobs, doing exactly what she feared she would, letting her tears stain his expensive clothes. He murmurs nonsense to her and pets her and oh, god, it's everything she's wanted for months.
He shifts to start the car, resettling her against his side as he pulls out of the cemetery and back onto the main road, all the while she's snuffling and crying intermittently and she's thinking, no, please, don't take me back, but she can't voice the words for all the sobbing.
She's drowsy from the orgasm and the crying and hardly notices time passing as they drive but soon enough she feels the car park and she can't do anything but whimper her distress, like a dog who knows it's about to be abandoned.
So she slumps in her seat, making no move to exit the car, hoping the blackness of it just swallows her whole. If he wants her out he'll have to fucking pull her out.
The passenger door opens and she sees his hand come into her line of sight. She stares at it, seeing the fingers that were inside of her just a short while ago, making her feel so good and where is that feeling now? His hand hovers for a moment before reaching down to unbuckle her seatbelt and grasping her hand closest to the door to pull her up out of the seat and the car and his life, if she was ever in it to begin with.
She keeps her eyes down even though she wants to rage at him, take out all her life's hurt on him for just doing that to her, breaking their normal unspoken rules and being sweet with her like that and then promptly dropping her on her figurative ass to spend the rest of another cold night without what she wants and needs most in the world.
Her eyes are down, barely focusing and he's tugging her thin coat firmly around her and that movement snaps her out of whatever numb fog she's floating in and she raises her face up, ready to lay the fuck into him out of, what, self-preservation?
She goes to take a shaky breath but it stops in her throat as she surveys the pink (salmon) house behind his shoulder and belatedly she feels the gravel of a different driveway under her feet. She brings her gaze to his face and goddamn him, he looks hopeful and scared and probably all the other emotions she's currently feeling, but what the hell does he have to feel scared by?
He's still got her hand but at some point the gesture changed from helping to holding and she looks down at them clasped in the night like that.
Fuck her, the sobs start all over again and she's so ashamed and confused yet relieved? How is she relieved? He crushes her to him with his other hand and their clasped ones are pressed between them, against their hearts and again he's murmuring nonsense that quickly turns into words that swear apologies and promises to return her to her father and he's so very sorry to have misunderstood and please don't cry, Belle, I can't bear it.
She pulls her hand from between them and wraps her arms tightly around him, pressing him into her as if trying to merge them together into one, trying to communicate through her tears that no, she wants to stay, she doesn't want to go back, please take her inside and somehow he understands.
His arms are full of her and he's promising things of a different nature now, fervent whispers to his girl, his beautiful, lonely angel and they're stumbling and somehow make it inside without falling on the gravel. She shivers from the warmth of his house, so unlike her father's, and he takes her coat before wrapping himself around her again. There's nothing sexual in the embrace, he just holds her and lets her cry out years of disappointment and melancholy and longing.
She finishes and is utterly drained and sagging against him in exhaustion. He picks her up, tiny thing that she is, and carries her upstairs to his bedroom and lays her down on the bed before removing her shoes and his own. He joins her then, pulling her towards him and she goes willingly, happily even in her sad, drained state. He holds her and she sleeps, deep and dreamless and peaceful.
--
When she wakes, he's still curved about her protectively, his front to her back with one arm around her waist, and there's pale winter sunlight streaming in through slatted blinds over the window she can see. A clock tells her it's midmorning and she snuggles in closer, a spark of delight filling her when he responds in his sleep by grinding against her. Somehow in the night they ended up under the blanket yet still clothed and she wishes they were naked instead.
She feels him waking behind her, the press of his erection through his pants against her back, though whether it's from the morning or nearness to her she can't tell. She snorts a laugh when he murmurs an apology for being indecent like that and turns over in his arms to press a kiss to his sleep-warmed lips. He looks stunned when she pulls back and she has a moment of worry over doing the wrong thing before he presses his lips to hers and rolls her onto her back, his lower half coming to rest gently between her thighs, and he thrusts a little, pressing a bit harder when she moans.
They kiss for a bit, warm and still a little sleepy, before the world starts to intrude with the sound of her phone ringing from downstairs in her coat. Her content mood flees, leaving cold reality and the reminder that this, all this, his warmth and tenderness and safety, is probably temporary and that she should go before he kicks her out.
He sees her face change before she realizes she's broadcasting her emotions and he scowls, and it's scary and sexy at the same time. She thinks of it as his "landlord" face. Sexy as it is, she really wants to get away while he looks like that. She's seen her father be on the receiving end of that look many a time and nothing good ever follows it. She looks away and starts to pull away but he stops her from moving. She looks at him warily and his scowl dissolves into sorrow as he's stroking her hair out of her face.
He kisses her again, and says he's sorry and she wonders what kind of man he is to be so hard with the town but so contrite with her like this, like she's been forced to sleep next to him, stealing his warmth and his touches all night. She remembers the crying she did in his arms and her eyes prickle with more tears as she lifts a hand to his face this time, running her fingers over his cheeks, forehead, nose, lips before pulling him down again into a hard press of their mouths, less a kiss and more a demand to stop apologizing until he's done something to be sorry for. Like kick her out.
She sighs deeply and his eyes are drawn to her breasts, his gaze turning with admiration and no small amount of lust that he can't quite hide. He moves down a little and lays his head against her breasts, and she is surprised by how unsurprised she is to feel him there, like it's always been his spot, pillowed against her heartbeat.
She lays in the moment, absorbing it before she has to break it and deal with the world trying to intrude on them via phone. She pulls his head back up to hers and starts to tell him she can go if he wants, she doesn't want to be a burden to him, he must have many things to do with his day other than deal with her broken self, but he silences her with yet another kiss and she wonders if this is how it will always be with them. One silencing the others stupid worries with a kiss. He pulls back and shakes his head at her, a corner of his mouth quirks in a smile, and he says, stay.
Stay with me, stay here, with me, forever. Be safe always. I want you, I've always wanted you.
And, dear lord, it's too much, too much of everything she's wanted for months, years, right in front of her and she's smarter than this to just say yes blindly. Or is she? Is it smarter to say yes to him, to them, to all of it, to trust him to protect her and her heart, to trust herself to care for his, to take that giant leap? She knows there is so, so much to discuss, to align, to figure out but she gives in anyway, holds him to her and says it.
"Yes."