It turned out that the frat dinner was okay with dates, and that Belle was bringing one, and that it wasn't him, and he was going to kill someone. The fact that she'd used his own logic against him made it even worse, and then the cherry on top was that it was Killian fucking Jones who got to spend the night on her arm, fending off all of her enamored students for her.

The fight before she'd left had been unpleasant, with Belle spewing things like, "Remember, you said we needed to be careful," and "You hate school events," and him retaliating with not much more than blundering covers of his jealousy.

Still, she'd kissed him before leaving, and allowed him final say in her outfit—a grey skirt and blouse combo that he found almost suitably modest, though he would have preferred a snow suit. Briefly, he'd considered paying the frat's chef to serve rotten food so that she'd have to come home early, but Belle had banished that thought with a reassuring hug and a gentle peck that wouldn't "get lipstick all over him." He wouldn't have minded.

She'd left at six to pick Jones up, and expected to be home between nine and ten. He had thought he would be okay in that time, what with her parting kiss and assurances that every man at the dinner was at least twenty years too young for her, but it only took about fifteen minutes for him to become restless.

He needed to do something with his hands other than pouring scotch. Belle wouldn't take kindly to him being so depressed about half an empty night that he got wasted—also he wasn't sure he would ever recover from Halloween.

It was unlike him to want noise in his house that wasn't music, but he found that putting I Love Lucy on his laptop in the craft room was comforting while he sewed. He didn't think he had the patience for train-building tonight, but watching the needle on the sewing machine was soothing, so he pulled out a table runner he'd started weeks ago and got to work.

The first text came at 6:45, and he was immediately certain that Belle was dying. He fumbled for his phone with numb fingers, sweat-soaked and panting by the time he reached it.

This is the worst.

He sank back into his chair, and laughed with relief. Not only was Belle alive, but she was having a terrible time, which meant that everything was okay. He only felt a twinge of guilt at being glad of her misery.

Can't say I didn't warn you.

I should have listened. The food is awful.

Come home.

I can't. You know I can't leave yet.

Of course you can.

Raphael.

Yes?

I'll be home when I'm home.

Her next bout of texts came around eight.

This food is awful.

Before responding, he took a few seconds to be grateful that he'd thought to stock up on frozen meals and dinner ingredients.

Don't they have a private chef?

Yeah, and he privately made awful food.

Should I get something ready for you?

Can you make grilled cheese?

What?

Grilled cheese. It's my comfort meal.

Of course I can make grilled cheese.

Except, that was the biggest lie he'd ever told Belle, and the rest of her texts went unanswered, because he was too busy scouring the internet for tips on how to make grilled cheese. When Bae was a young child, Milah had made all of the sandwiches and pancakes—it was one of her only domestic skills. Once she was gone and Bae was older, Granny's had done the trick.

But Belle would know if he called in an emergency order. She would know the taste, and find the take-out box, unless he managed to unwrap them, hide them, drive to a dumpster, drive back, and then pretend to cook them all before she got back. Which he couldn't. So he wouldn't.

Instead, he waited for Belle to text that she was leaving, and then pulled everything he needed out of his cabinets. He had managed to stop staring and get at least one sandwich on the griddle by the time he heard the door open, and he tossed the second one on before hobbling out to greet Belle.

"Hey," he said, kissing her on the cheek. "Glad to be back?"

"Ugh." She turned her face to kiss him on the mouth. "You have no idea." She peeled her coat off and hung it up before taking his hand and dragging him to the kitchen.

"Oh, good, they're almost done." She threw herself into a chair, letting him limp over to the griddle.

A quick inspection told him that the first sandwich was getting close to burned, so he hastened to flip it. By the time he got to the second one, it had suffered the same fate. He cursed under his breath. He would not make the same mistake with the other piece of bread.

"What did they have for dinner?" he asked, staring at the bread like it might catch fire—which it might if he wasn't careful.

"Spaghetti and salad. The only thing good was the bread. And it was so awkward—everyone else brought business professors and sports coaches, and they looked at us like we were useless." She slumped into her chair, and he had to stand there with his spatula and watch without touching, for fear that he would destroy her second dinner.

"You should have brought me. No one would have looked at you wrongly," he said, and that got a tiny chuckle out of her.

"I would have said something, but there were just so many of them. They'd have ganged up on us, even the women." She shuddered. "Is something burning?"

He made a noise in the back of his throat, and almost flung the spatula in his haste to turn of the griddle. He hadn't even gotten plates out, but he could smell the burning bread now, so he had to do something. Flipping one sandwich on top of the other, he got the spatula under them both and then held them over the griddle while he stretched to get plates down.

"Can I help?" Belle asked, watching him with wide eyes.

"No," he growled. "I'm taking care of you."

"Okay, but if you hurt yourself, you owe me."

"Oh? And how did you work that one out, dearie?" He grabbed two plates and slumped back down to his flat feet, jarring his knee in the process.

"You'll have hurt my feelings by not letting me help you and then hurting yourself," she said, still watching him. "At least let me get wine glasses."

"Are we having wine?" He flipped the sandwiches onto their plates. They were a little bit darker than he'd have liked, but less dark than he'd been expecting.

"We are absolutely having wine."

He could hear her bustling around the kitchen, opening cabinets and then the fridge, but all he could do was stare at his sad excuse for a meal. Maybe if he put something on the plate with it, Belle wouldn't notice.

"Are you sure there's nothing I can do?" she asked, pulling her chair out.

"Sit and drink," he said, staring at the sandwiches like something magical would happen to them, if only he looked hard enough. With a barely contained sigh, he opened the fridge, rooting around for anything he could throw on there. He came up with a bunch of washed grapes, which he split between their plates before bringing both meals to the table.

"Thank god, I'm starving," she said, accepting her plate. "I hope you don't mind the white—the red wasn't uncorked."

"It's fine," he said, debating the merits of chugging back his glass. He was about to make a decision when he heard the crunch of metal meeting burnt bread, and looked up to find Belle trying to cut her sandwich.

"Just a little overdone, I think," she said after meeting his baleful gaze. She was smiling like he'd just handed her a puppy. "Still perfectly good in the middle."

He grunted, waiting for her to take the first bite before even touching his. If it was awful, there was no point in them both suffering, right?

"Why are you staring at me?" She picked half of it up, jumping when her fingers pressed hard enough to cause a cloud of breadcrumbs to pop up from the top. That wasn't normal grilled cheese behavior, he was pretty sure.

"Because you're beautiful," he said.

She snorted, and another puff of breadcrumbs breezed out. "Okay, whatever you say." She took a bite, and they both winced at the loud crunch. Granny's grilled cheese never crunched.

"How is it?" He leaned forward, hovering over the table.

"It is—" She chewed carefully, rocking her head back and forth like she was considering. "—Possibly the most amazing grilled cheese that anyone has ever eaten."

"Don't lie to me," he said, slumping in his chair. "It crunched."

"Did you cook it in butter?" she asked, taking another bite. He had fallen in love with such a brave woman.

"Butter?" He blinked up at her. Was this a trick question? "I used vegetable oil."

She stared at him for a few seconds, and even though she smiled around another forced bite, he knew he had made a mistake.

"Just say it," he said, plucking a grape off his plate and popping it in his mouth. "It's the most amazingly awful grilled cheese anyone's ever eaten."

"It's unique."

With a sigh, he swiped the other half from her plate, and then snatched the one she was about to bite out of her hands, dumping them on his plate to throw out.

She frowned. "What am I supposed to eat now?"

"We'll order something in. With a few phone calls, I can have anything you like delivered."

"Oh, shoot." She downed some of her wine. "I have to call my dad."

"Of course. I'll order something."

She nodded and stood, coming around to kiss him on the cheek before disappearing to call her father and leave him wondering where he would stand when she came back.

Belle picked at her pizza, despite the fact that he'd been sure to order her favorite. She picked at the accompanying chocolate chip cookies as well, and only seemed content to eat the grapes soaking in the champagne that he'd poured for them when he saw her face after she hung up the phone.

"Was it that bad?" he asked, afraid of the answer. What if she'd told him, and her father had forced her to choose between the two of them? What if she hadn't told him at all?

"He wants to set me up with some fish man when I see him over Thanksgiving."

Gold choked on his champagne. "Fish man?"

"Some man who owns some fishing boats and has some money, I don't know, I sort of stopped listening after 'he read a book once.'"

"Did he really say that?"

"No." She dropped her head to her hands. "Something about how he has a bookshelf in his office that I might like."

"So you told him about us, then? After?"

She shook her head. "I tried this time, but he hung up before I could get all the words out."

It was easier to direct his anger at Belle's father than at himself for somehow making Belle not want to tell her father, but he knew he couldn't do so out loud, or Belle would be upset. He hadn't told her about their chat at her reading, and it would be ideal for her to never find out.

"Let's go upstairs," he said, standing. "I figured out how to hook the Netflix up to the TV."

He took both of their glasses in one hand, and she grabbed the pizza box—which he decided not to protest, given her state of mind, even though it could be murder on his poor sheets—before following him up the stairs.

Belle plopped into her side of the bed with the pizza box before he could even suggest they change into something more comfortable, so he bit his tongue and settled for taking off his waistcoat and tie.

"Oh." She looked up at him, and he had a second to feel self conscious before she slid off the bed. "I guess that's a good idea. Toss me your undershirt?"

"What?" He looked up from the buttons of his waistcoat to find Belle unbuttoning her own blouse, leaving it to gape open over a polka dot bra he was sure he recognized from their mall adventure.

"Your undershirt? I don't know where I put my pajamas."

"Of course." He tried to swallow the hoarseness in his throat while his fingers fumbled to get his accessories off. Belle was faster, since she didn't have a tie, vest, and garter to get off before she could touch her shirt, and he had just done away with them when she turned around and slid out of her blouse. He'd seen her in her underwear plenty of times, and it never failed to make color rush to his cheeks—and elsewhere.

Hurrying to get his buttons so that Belle wouldn't have to wait made him fumble more, so he averted his eyes from her back while she shimmied out of her skirt, and then when he looked back up, she wasn't wearing a bra anymore and he almost choked.

He didn't realize that he'd made an actual noise out loud until Belle looked over her shoulder, giving him a side view of her right breast that had him wishing he had his cane.

"There's—ah—something in my throat." He made a big show of clearing it, and Belle smiled before turning back around and starting to roll her pantyhose down her legs. He almost told her to wait so that he could take them off, but she'd have them halfway to her knees before he even got the words out. Maybe some other time.

She looked to be having some trouble, though, wiggling around in them in a way that made it difficult for him to remember what buttons were, much less how to undo them.

"Do you need help?" he asked, brogue thicker than usual.

"No, I'm—!" She cut herself off with a yelp as she fell onto the bed, momentum rolling her sideways and into the pizza box.

"All right, I'll just leave you to it, then," he said, as she struggled to get out of the box while her legs were tangled together and her hands were clutching fistfuls of hosiery.

"Well, okay, a little help might be nice."

He limped around the bed, not wanting to test his agility by rolling over, discarding his shirt along the way. By the time he got there, Belle was stuck in the pizza box, and he loved her for it.

While he tilted her out of it and onto her back like a turtle, he had to keep his eyes on the squashed pizza. He knew without looking that her chest was covered in sauce and cheese, because there were imprints of it in what remained in the box, and if he looked now, he would never be able to function.

"Lie back," he said, and he liked to think he sounded dangerous instead of desperate. Belle complied, though, breasts small enough that they stood almost upright on her chest, smeared with tomato and cheese and oregano, and he lost his mind briefly, until he closed his eyes and forced himself to think of trains and sewing and the mayor.

When he felt capable of using his fingers, he looked at her legs to see if her pantyhose were trickier than others he'd encountered. They weren't—Belle was just clumsy—and it didn't take long for him to have her out of them. Then, all that was left was her underwear and her pizza-covered chest.

Belle bit her lip. He paused where he was, kneeling on one knee while his bad leg stretched out to the side, hands on her thighs, elbows digging into the mattress for support.

"Kiss me?" Belle suggested, and it only took a little bit of fumbling to comply when she leaned up to meet him.

He forgot to be not-offended when she wouldn't press up against him, and almost said something until he remembered the matter of tomato sauce, and that had to be taken care of soon, especially now that Belle was biting his lip and it was taking all of his self control not to rub all over her like a dog in heat.

"Pizza?" he said against her mouth, hoping she would catch his drift without him having to string together an entire sentence.

"Yes, please. Should I move back? Are you comfortable?"

"No," he said, though he didn't know which he was answering. Both, maybe. He trailed his lips down her neck, pressing harder in a free-form sort of kiss whenever he remembered, until he hit something wet. His head started to swim, until he realized he wasn't breathing, and as soon as he managed to get some oxygen to his brain, he closed his teeth around the top of her breast and licked. Belle sighed, stretching her arms backward and pressing her stomach into his collar, so he dragged his teeth to her nipple and tugged, sucking off the bits of pizza there and getting a soft cry for his efforts.

He wanted nothing more than to climb on top of her and then never be separated again, but that couldn't happen until she was clean, so he licked between her breasts before starting on the other. It felt like he was hearing the soft whimpers and cries that Belle was letting out through a layer of gauze, and perhaps he wasn't breathing as well as he could have, but at least the fog was keeping the more aggressive parts of him in check so that he could reach his goal of having a clean girlfriend to fondle in bed.

"Raphael," she said, lifting his head as he licked up the last bit of red. She sounded weak, like she'd been well-worked over, and he squeezed her thighs.

"Mm?"

"Move the pizza."

"I just did." He pointed to her shining chest, and she tsked.

"No, the actual pizza. Also, if you could get your belt, that would be good, because honestly I'm not feeling particularly coordinated right now."

"Are you ever feeling particularly coordinated?" It was good that he could talk, even though he was having troubles remembering how to move his hands. If words deserted him, Belle would, too.

"Don't make me put a shirt on."

He fumbled for his belt, catching it on the loops twice before he managed to get it all the way off, and then lifted the pizza to place it somewhere neither of them would step on it. When he looked back up, Belle had scooted to the head of the bed, settling among their nest of pillows, and he scrambled toward the bed on the strength of one leg. He wanted to jump on her and crush her to him, but kneeling hadn't been good for him and he was moving slower than the sex god he would have liked to be at that moment.

When he made it up to her, he all but collapsed onto her lips, and then it was a flurry of open mouths and tongues, and he could relax onto her because he had been getting good at this. The pressure of her breasts on his chest had him running his hands up and down her bare sides, and he might have been driving her into the mattress without meaning to, but she was pressing up into him as well, meeting him halfway each time.

He bit her bottom lip, drawing it into his mouth to suck, and almost bit through it when he felt her hands at his zipper.

"What are you doing?"

"Am I reading the situation wrong?"

He blinked at her, uncomprehending of what she could mean by that.

"We're kissing, aren't we?" He nodded. "Well, it's very difficult to kiss you if you have pants on. That's why I'm not wearing any."

He stared at her, and then she fluttered her lashes and he let out a wheezy laugh that sounded like a balloon popping.

"Of course. Very difficult." He struggled to his knee, trying to both balance and undo his button, but Belle's hands appeared to help him and soon his pants had joined the pile of her clothes and he was one undershirt away from being as near-naked as Belle.

She'd seen him with his shirt off a few times, but he didn't like to let her look. He was scrawny and old, and the sparse chest hairs he had were grey, and he just found himself much more impressive with a t-shirt on to give him the illusion of figure. Was there any way they could continue in this manner and leave his shirt on? His boxers were a lost cause—they weren't hiding anything anymore—but he could still salvage his abs. All he had to do was keep her hands occupied.

Then, in one swift motion, she yanked his shirt up and over his head, and he was left in his useless boxers.

"It's only fair," Belle said, cupping his cheek. He swallowed and nodded, grateful for Belle pulling him back on top of her.

This kiss was slower, easing some of the flames under his skin until he just felt like a melting candle, warm and liquid and slowly burning. Belle's hands stroked his hair and neck while he kept one arm on the bed to hold himself up and one hand tangled in her curls. Her knees inched up to his waist, rubbing along his legs until they were upright, and then he felt her cross her ankles over the backs of his thighs and he shuddered into her.

"Belle."

"Mm?"

He hoped—prayed—that he was reading this situation right. "I don't have condoms." He should have bought a box ages ago, when he'd first met her, just in case—but that seemed classless, unrepentantly presumptuous.

"It's okay, I'm on the pill."

He stopped, lifting himself off of her just enough to look at her. "What?"

"I'm on the pill."

He knew that he was about to muck everything up but he couldn't help blurting, "Why? Are you having sex?"

She pursed her lips at him, the way she did when he was being difficult about grading. "Yes. Right now. With you."

"Well, did you just start it, then?" Maybe buying condoms wouldn't have been presumptuous.

"No."

He shouldn't have pressed. She looked like she was ready to shove him off of her, and he wouldn't have blamed her, but he had to know. "How long have you been on it?"

The sigh she let out was more of a growl than anything else. "I don't know—two years, maybe?"

"What for?"

"Does it matter?"

Of course it mattered. "No." He closed his eyes, forcing himself to think about what he was saying next. "No, of course not. It's just a pill."

"Okay." She cupped his cheek. "Do you want to kiss me again?"

"What kind of question is that?"

He was grateful that she grinned, and he leaned down to pick up where they'd left off. It didn't matter how much she sucked on his lip, or how tightly she pressed her ankles into his thighs, though—he couldn't shake the nagging need to know. After about a minute, he pulled away again, and she did not look happy.

"When was the last time you did this?" he asked.

"Raphael."

"What? I just want to know. Is that so wrong?" Just because he wouldn't return the favor—too embarrassing—it didn't mean that he shouldn't ask.

"Why does it matter? It could have been last month or last year or last week, but—"

He snapped up to look at her. "It wasn't last week, was it?"

"Of course it wasn't last week, I think you would remember if it was last week."

"Good, because that does matter."

She reached up and pressed her fingers to his hot cheek. "I know it does, that was a poor example. But what I'm saying is that I can't change it, and I can't take it back. If my answer changes your opinion of me, then that's not okay, and we will not be having sex, but if it doesn't—why does it matter?"

"Of course it wouldn't change how I feel." Nothing would change how he felt—probably not even if she decided to kill him. He let his elbow fall so that he could bury his face in her neck, wanting to be enveloped in her.

"Then what's wrong?"

"I don't want to disappoint you."

She snorted and he lifted his head to look at her, lips flattened together. "Sorry. It's just—this is the best sex I've ever had and we haven't even gotten to the sex part yet."

He couldn't resist an invitation like that, and it was only after he'd latched onto her mouth again that the thought that he might not live up to the standard he'd somehow managed to set floated through his mind, and he flinched.

"What? Did I hurt you?" she asked, twisting her head away.

"I don't think there's anything you could do that would hurt me—you're a bit of a weakling."

She made a fizzy noise of protest, and dug her heels into his back—though that was far from painful. "I resent that."

"Shh, let me kiss you." He pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth, then across her jaw and up, shuddering again when he stuck his tongue in her ear and she rolled her hips toward him. He moved down to her neck, licking and kissing until he found a spot at the base of her throat to suck on, remembering just in time not to leave a mark where someone could see.

When he felt her toes latch onto the leg of his boxers, he bit down on her shoulder, and she cried out. Then she was pulling his boxers down his legs and he helped her kick them off and then the only thing separating them was her underwear and he was pretty sure that he was going blind from all of the bursts of fuzzy color in his eyes whenever his cock rubbed against her—which was about every half second, since her feet came back to his back to hold him there.

He couldn't just rut against her though and come all over her stomach. He had to make sure Belle continued to have the best sex of her life—he didn't believe for one second that just kissing him was the best she'd ever had. Belle was beautiful, and he was certain that she'd had beautiful, superior men worshipping her body plenty of times before she'd met him.

He wiggled down until he was again at her breasts, rubbing his thumb over her left nipple while he took the right one in his mouth, and she let out a strangled, breathless noise that made him glad to only have the bed against him now. Trying to multitask, he used his free hand to wriggle her panties down her legs, and then she was helping him and they were off and Belle was naked underneath him and he was probably going to end up in an ambulance going into cardiac arrest, provided he didn't just keel over dead first.

His hand trailed along her stomach, but stopped at her hips. He wanted to please her in every way possible, but what if he did something wrong? Fingers could be painful, and his were strong—he didn't want to hurt Belle.

He'd use his tongue, then. His hands moved back to her breasts, and he pulled his mouth from her with a popping noise that had her sighing out his name. It was possible that his hands stopped moving on her as he worked his way down her stomach, kissing and biting and making swirls with his tongue, but he only had one brain and he considered himself lucky that he hadn't passed out yet, especially since Belle was stroking his hair and rubbing her toes along the backs of his legs.

He dipped his tongue into her navel, taking it as a sort of practice round for dipping his tongue elsewhere, but then he paused, pressing kisses around her belly and clutching her breasts in a way that probably wasn't comfortable, though he didn't think he could unclench his fingers. What if he did it wrong? Was she like him—pretty much any contact would be okay? Or was it more artful than that? He was a literature scholar—he'd read plenty of things about the art of pleasing women, written by women, against his better judgment. What if they were right? What if he ruined everything by treating her like she was some sort of giant lollipop instead of a more delicate treat for a more sophisticated tongue than his own?

"Raphael," Belle sighed, sounding a thousand miles away. "Raphael." She tugged on his hair and he looked up. "Come kiss me."

That he could do, and he clambered up her body to try and make up for the fact that he was clumsy and confused with kisses. He was so focused on being perfect that he didn't notice Belle wiggling her hips around until she had bumped into his cock several times, and it took him longer to realize that she was trying to line them up, and he really should have been helping her but he was afraid of thrusting in too soon because Belle was counting on him—and then she wrapped her hand around him and slid him inside of her.

He made a noise that sounded like a small dog being stepped on, and he hoped irrationally that she somehow hadn't heard it over her own quiet groan of pleasure. For long seconds, he was still, pressing his cheek against hers and panting, and then she scraped her nails down his back and his hips starting bouncing in quick, shallow thrusts. He wanted to pound into her, make her writhe and scream, but all he could manage was his frantic rhythm. Still, Belle clung to his shoulders, digging her nails in like he was taking her for a crazy ride, and he took that as a good sign.

Belle's tiny noises of pleasure were like tiny compliments, and he lost himself in them, unable to do more than bury his face in her neck and kiss it every once in awhile. He was so close, but he was sure that this wasn't doing much for Belle, and he had to keep himself together until she came, because otherwise, he was just selfish.

He closed his teeth around her pulse and sucked, holding his breath for as long as he could before releasing her. If he didn't breathe, he wouldn't come—probably—and this was his best method. He held his breath again, closing his eyes and trying to achieve some place where he wasn't on the brink of explosion while also holding onto Belle's left breast like a lifesaver.

When she let out a cry, her whole body clenching around him, he felt like the heavens had smiled upon him because he had done something right, for once, and he rocked against her, trying to prolong it as best he could, drinking in the way she screamed his name until he felt dizzy and couldn't hold on anymore. He followed her over the edge, biting her shoulder to muffle whatever embarrassing noise he was preparing to make, and his body still rocked with aftershock a minute later when he managed to lift his head.

Belle blinked up at him, panting much less than he was, and reached up to smooth his hair.

"Well," she said while he tried to focus on more than the fact that he was still inside the love of his life and he never wanted to move, ever. "I feel better now."

He stared at her, and then a laugh fought its way out of his throat, and he couldn't stop the rest that followed so he buried his face in her neck, feeling giddy in a way that he'd only ever felt around Belle, and he hoped that the feeling never went away.