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I grinned. “Please what?”

“Please fuck me.”

I pushed inside her in one stroke. She was so tight and wet that I had to hold still and breathe through it before I embarrassed myself. Her nails dug into my shoulders as I started fucking her, slow and deep, making sure she felt every inch.

“Look at me,” I said.

Her eyes opened and locked on mine. No attitude. No slick-ass comeback on the tip of her tongue. Just my Beautiful Belle, open in a way she’d never let herself be outside this bed.

“You know what I want?” I asked, picking up my pace.

“Ahh—what—” She bit her lip as I hit a spot that made her arch.

“I want you to be mine,” I growled, pushing deeper. “Not you keeping one foot out the door. I want all of you, Belle.”

“Cardez—”

I gripped her neck. “I’m serious.” I pulled almost all the way out and drove back in hard.

She cried out and wrapped her legs around me tighter. “I’m tired of us acting like this is something it’s not. You’re mine and I wanna hear you say it.”

Her eyes were getting glassy, body trembling. She was close and so was I.

“Papa—please⁠—”

“Say it.”

“I’m yours,” she breathed. “I’m all yours, Papa.”

I felt her come apart around me, her whole body locking up before she started to shake. Pain seared across my skin as her nails tore down my spine. I kept going, fucking her through it until my own release hit me like a freight train. I came deep inside her with my face buried in her hair, both of us panting like we’d just sprinted ten blocks.

I stayed inside her for a minute, my forehead pressed against hers. Her eyes were closed, chest heaving, a tear running down the side of her face.

I kissed it away without saying anything.

I rolled off her and pulled her into my chest. We lay there in the dark, the city glowing outside the windows, neither of us saying a word.

Her eyes were still closed when I got up and went into my en-suite bathroom to run a rag under the faucet. She opened them when she felt me between her thighs.

“I don’t always need you cleaning me up,” she said softly.

“I know.” I wiped her down gently. She watched me the way she always did when I took care of her, like she was trying to figure out why I bothered. Like no one had ever taken the time to do it before. The thought made me tight every time.

I tossed the rag in the hamper, pulled on my boxers, and got back in bed. She turned on her side, and I wrapped around her from behind.

“I meant what I said,” I told her.

“I know,” she said.

“So, we’re official.”

She was silent for a beat. Not long—maybe two, three seconds—but I felt every one of them.

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re official.”

But her body tensed slightly against mine, and her answer came out a beat too late, like she had to push something down before she could agree.

Belle had been hiding something from me since the day I met her. She thought she was doing a good job of it.