Sorry for the delayed update - there was a Wedge of Lemon (M-rated companion fic) that fits chronologically between chapters 20 and 21 if anyone's interested. Now then - time for Tea!
They finally rolled out of bed some time after midnight to shower, kiss, and touch before falling gracelessly back into the sheets, both of them dripping wet. They made love slowly the second time, all of their urgency and clawing converted to kisses and caressing. Gold couldn't get enough of her, couldn't believe she was finally with him the way he'd envisioned in his more robust dreams.
Belle's small hands were leaving trails of fire up his arms and over his shoulders, and his lips were coaxing groans from hers that would have crippled him if he wasn't already laying down by her side.
He'd meant to give her the tour tonight; play host, at least a little bit. Gold could show her the townhouse after sun-up. Try to convince her that she should stay. For now, all his energies were focused on celebrating their newly reclaimed intimacy.
When they'd finished and showered again, Anthony held Belle close as she finally drifted off to sleep. He was too enchanted to look away, scared she'd vanish into the night if he so much as blinked. Her damp curls lay splayed across his chest, and one of his plush towels – once wrapped around her like a dress – was slipping open to reveal several more inches of creamy skin. Beautiful.
Gold could remember a time, it felt like several lifetimes, when he'd been intent on bullying the disheveled little painter for no reason other than his own amusement. Gaston, the twit, was philandering with one of his regular girls. He hadn't even been that upset, it was the principle of the thing. For the life of him, Gold couldn't remember the blonde woman's name any more; he wondered, momentarily, if he'd ever actually known it.
And then, before he even realized it, there was Belle. Vibrant and lovely and dancing, his little gypsy whirlwind. She was kind. That's what truly did him in. Gold could read the nastier aspects of humanity like a children's fairy book – they told their stories in their eyes and winces – but Belle had always been content to indulge him with their little tea parties. He was an old man, a deaf and half-blind fool, for not recognizing her as his savior immediately.
Then he'd taken up the mantel of the devilish authority – and he'd nearly ruined everything.
The memory of Belle wrapped in the sheer gold monstrosity that the department store had the gall to call a dress still irked him. It made her look cheap, but it also opened his eyes. He wanted her. Wanted her like a demon hell-bent on possessing something. Gold didn't even remember leaving the party, he was too focused on not doing something to the other men in the room – or, more depraved still, to Belle. Stuffy. That's what he'd said to her. So, even in his revenge and brimstone phase, he would play the fool always.
Next came the mantel of the ardent lover. Well, she'd seen through that too, hadn't she? It was laughable how bad he was at staging a seduction. Women normally responded to fine dresses and empty trinkets favorably, but not Annabelle French. For all his smoldering and wanting, Belle was never taken in by his superficial offerings. What kind of woman left a Tiffany & Co. box unopened? So the presents grew more lavish, and he found that he did sincerely want her to have them.
As far as Gold could tell, Belle didn't even like their business outings all that well. Most women in his circles swooned over things like that, would kill for the chance to rub elbows with powerful and influential people; even for the ones who had no use of his money, the power proved seductive.
It was for the best that Belle hadn't given in to his attempts to buy her favor. Turned him into some facsimile of a sincere and ardent lover, and all was calm and lovely on the surface. Then she'd denied him – some conference or another. He should have gone with her. She'd bloody asked him to take her, and like an idiot he hadn't been willing to enter her world, on her terms, and put his own obligations on hold for a few days.
He'd committed an infidelity. She was the air he breathed, and he'd gone running right back to the tarts and socialites despite all his infernal longing his thoughts full of only her. That Belle never knew about the red head – or was she blonde? – who'd climbed into his lap in the back of his town car was a small blessing. He'd keep that whole debacle to himself. It had worked out well, by some miracle, and that was more than he'd dared to hope for in a long time.
His little gypsy-dearie. It had taken him a long time to divorce the memory of her from the grief he felt over losing his son, but she'd waited. Gold hadn't realized how much of a crutch he'd made her, how much of the burden she bore for him, until weeks after the funeral. Even the small band of acquaintances who turned up to mourn with him were all her doing; he hadn't the heart to invite business relations. Mary Margaret, Graham's secretary, Hopper... even the women who staffed their favorite diner. Belle must have run herself ragged while he'd wallowed in sorrow and sobered up in her bed.
It still devastated him to think of Bae, long-dead, lying as carrion for the scavengers in some dismal, violent place. But his boy was home now. He'd been buried, and his father was starting to make peace with that.
Maybe, if he was very, very lucky, Belle would stay. He could protect her. Nikolai Zoso was due to arrive in the city in two days time, and then Regina would lose her silly illusion that she'd played Gold into some sort of impotent stalemate. She would lose the illusion that it was ever her game to play.
He'd considered, briefly, letting sleeping dragons lie. But the woman was a nuisance. And she'd targeted Belle. Her shoddy business practices and personal vendettas were running out of control, and – quite frankly – Gold wanted to hurt her.
Anthony pressed a kiss into Belle's temple, her tousled hair nearly dry and her breathing very regular. Of course she slept easily. Her conscience was light and airy, unburdened by his the regrets and plotting of old age. He'd never be what she deserved, but Anthony was past caring. He had her, like he'd dreamed of having her, and he intended to keep her safely by his side.
Two days later, when Old Nick's private jet touched down on the tarmac, Gold and his driver were there to meet him. Nikolai looked ancient – the years drifting from drink to drink had not been good to him – and he was being pushed along in a wheel chair by an enormous man in a suit-jacket. Well that was new. They'd have to hire another aide, a body guard out of the bratva's local branch most likely, because Gold knew without asking that the man would not deign to use one of the new mechanized contraptions when his usual man needed to sleep.
But these things would come to them naturally, after they had a chance to speak privately.
Belle had more than enough of her own work to keep her busy, but she was worried about Anthony. They'd been involved for close to a month now, and – though it pained her to admit – she wondered if, perhaps, he was cheating. He worked constantly, of course. That was never really going to change. But they spent as much time together as they could – except for the hours every week when he utterly disappeared.
It was a silly thing to worry about. Anthony was crazy about her, he showed her that every day. But they'd never actually said the words... and, for all her bravery, Belle was afraid of how he'd react if she said it first. She knew him well enough at this point, she thought, that whatever reservations she felt about letting her feelings show must have been founded in something. A fear of rejection, some subtle hint that he wasn't quite ready.
Her father, her family, had not agreed. Belle was on her own when she left for college and broke her engagement, shattering the dream that she'd become a housewife who had babies and never left their rural county. That was never her dream, though. She wanted other things, and there were certain... certain cruelties, she supposed, that were harder to overcome than others.
Belle, despite her efforts to keep her work pure and rooted in history, saw splashes of Anthony everywhere across her copy of Lovers Embrace. A scowling brow, an Imp's smirk... All of it was coming together for her now. But there were also echoes of another man, one whose face she didn't really want to see. Always, always, her fabricated satyrs bore some semblance of her father's face.
There were more horrible things than what she'd been through. He'd gone temporarily insane, that's what the deacon of their church said anyway. But for Belle, who spent three days forcibly detained in her childhood bedroom unable to escape, their home remained a prison sentence. If it hadn't been for her then ex-fiance coming looking for her... There was no sense dwelling on those things.
She was free. Free and happy. If she saw shades of disappointment and fury in the Satyr's faces, it said more about the source material than it did about her life at present. It was a nightmare, one from which the lovers would surely wake.
Mostly, though, when she looked at the painting she saw Anthony. The hands, especially, bore a certain resemblance that anyone who'd made a study of them – which was only herself, hopefully – would notice in a heartbeat. Enough of the original existed that she didn't have to invent figures in large leaps, but she did have to fill in several muddled or missing blanks.
She didn't want to be ruled by fear, but it was a difficult thing to overcome. All her life, men had told Annabelle French how to live her life. Anthony's ambiguities...
Well, they were enough to give her pause, and make her over-think.
Anthony wasn't obligated to spend every free minute of his day in her company. Wherever he was sneaking off to lately, Belle simply had to let it be. She'd asked him once, and got one of his enigmatic chuckles for her trouble. But he kissed her sweetly and told her it was part of his upcoming business changes. She'd believe him. What choice did she have? She loved the miserable bastard.