Page 32 of The Boxer’s Belle

“I don’t— Yes?”

“Feels like you’re going to explode?” he asked before engulfing her flushed flesh.

“Yes, yes,” she whimpered, tugging on his hair as her other hand urged his hips forward.

He pulled off her breast with a pop, gaze catching hers. “Trust it, let it happen.” He kissed her before adding, “I have you. You’re safe with me.”

The hand that was tangled in his hair fought, slipped free, trailed up to catch the edge of the palm he had bracing his weight. She tangled their smallest fingers together before nodding.

Permission granted, he used every trick he’d learned to please her. Once, twice, a third time, and Bella arched beneath him again. An erotic groan spilled from her lips as she clenched around him.

West bit his tongue, remaining impossibly still until Bella collapsed, weak beneath him. When he was certain her peak was over, he pulled back from her dripping heat with a groan. His free hand caught his prick and with only a single thrust, he spilled across the hay beside them, his vision fuzzing at the edges until Bella was all there was, flushed freckles, full lower lip, and umber-gold eyes softened at the corners.

Breath returned first in shuddering gasps, then the sensation of elegant hands sweeping through his damp hair, then the rush of her breath against his ear. That was the moment West recognized he was surely crushing her.

With a groan, boneless and sated, he flopped onto his back. Bella curled after him to settle in the crook of his arm.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his skin as she pressed a kiss to his jaw.

He leaned down to give her a proper kiss, soft and sensual, filled with all the sentiment he didn’t know how to articulate.

Bella pulled back and lay her head against his chest while he traced the line of her spine.

As the sweat cooled along his skin, alongside her delicate palm on his flesh, his conscience knocked at whatever corner of his mind he’d shoved and locked it into once his lips met Arabella Sinclair’s.

Her breath was smooth, deep, and even long before he realized she was asleep. West glanced down to find that, yes, sweet, trusting Bella had found respite in his arms.

It wasn’t regret, precisely, that crept in, overflowing his mind until it poured out of his frame and every single one of his muscles tensed, preparing for a strike. Nor was it guilt or shame. Whatever the feeling was, he couldn’t quite name it, even as bile pooled threatened to rise.

Because Bella had come to him with trust in her heart in a moment of pure defenselessness, seeking the protection of his body. And somehow—in a way that had made perfect, beautiful sense in the moment—he’d ended up taking her in a damn barn.

He, Miles Weston, hopeful prizefighter and son of a stable master, had rutted into Lady Arabella Sinclair, earl’s daughter and future wife of some lordling or other, in the hay mere moments after she had almost been⁠—

He’d stolen something precious and irreplaceable from her while she was frightened and vulnerable. At least the man she’d fled from had been honest about his cruelty— West was no better.

And all these years later, that hadn’t changed. The look in Bella’s eyes that next morning, when he’d explained that what had happened was wrong, could never happen again, that he was the worst kind of reprobate—it was precisely the same expression she’d worn moments ago when she ordered him from her bedroom.

Bella neither wanted nor needed his comfort—not after what he’d snatched from her at the first sign of weakness. And the sight of that furrowed brow, the narrowed eyes, the disgusted curl of her lips—it left him just as disgusted with himself as it had the first time.

CHAPTER 8

“I’m with child.” Eliza delivered her lightly performative announcement with a pleased blush.

Bella offered her congratulations, determined her brother would never discover how long she’d known.

West hadn’t seen fit to join them that morning, a fact Bella could not lament, so it was only the three of them at the breakfast table. It also marked the first morning in days when her perfect cup of tea was absent—she very much lamented that fact.

Poor Ben. He wore an expression that somehow appeared both overjoyed and nauseated at the same time. Impulsively, she stood and rounded the table to reach him, then wrapped her arms around him as he rose to meet her.

He stiffened. “Bella, I⁠—”

“Congratulations, brother,” she repeated pointedly as she pulled away. She shot him a look she was certain he didn’t need. Ben was a fool, but he was a besotted fool, and he would never do anything that might cause Eliza to fret in her condition.

“Thank you,” he croaked.

“I’m so pleased for you both.” She offered Eliza a smile as she returned to her seat.

Ben’s hands clasped together, then broke apart thrice in quick succession, as though he’d forgotten their purpose entirely.