Page 27 of Betray Me (Devastation Game #2)

The words hit differently than they would have even hours ago. Before watching my parents’ arrest, before seeing the tangible proof that their empire had fallen, I might’ve argued with him. Insisted that I was just protecting myself, choosing the least bad option in an impossible situation.

But sitting here in the wreckage of everything I once thought defined me, I realize he might be right.

At some point during this nightmare, I stopped being Richard Gallagher’s daughter and started being something else.

Someone who could choose right over safety, truth over protection, justice over family loyalty.

It’s terrifying, exhilarating, and completely foreign.

“I’m scared,” I admit.

“Of what?”

“Of everything. Of being free. Of having to figure out who I am without someone else telling me. Of the possibility that I might truly be happy someday.” I pause, gathering courage for the next admission. “Of losing you.”

Max pulls back to look at me, his dark eyes intense. “You’re not going to lose me.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I’m not going anywhere.” His hand cups my cheek, thumb brushing away a tear I didn’t realize had fallen. “Whatever comes next, whatever we have to face, we’re facing it together.”

The promise in his voice, the absolute certainty, makes something crack open in my chest. Not the painful crack of breaking, but the necessary crack of something that’s been locked away too long finally being allowed to breathe.

For the first time in my life, I want to believe in tomorrow. Want to believe that two broken people can build something beautiful from the wreckage of their pasts.

“Max,” I whisper his name like a prayer.

He responds by lowering his mouth to mine, and the kiss is different from the desperate, panic-driven attempts at connection we’ve shared before.

This is soft, tentative, asking permission instead of demanding submission.

It tastes like hope and possibility and the radical idea that I might be worthy of gentleness.

When we break apart, I’m breathless for entirely different reasons.

“Belle,” he says, and the way he speaks my name makes it sound like something precious. “Are you sure?”

I know what he’s asking. Not just about tonight, about taking this step, but about everything. About trusting him with the broken pieces of myself. About believing that intimacy doesn’t have to be another form of transaction or manipulation.

“I’m sure,” I tell him, and for the first time in my life, I mean it completely.

He lifts me into his arms and carries me toward the bedroom, like something out of a fairy tale. Except there’s nothing princely about him, nothing na?vely romantic or unearned. We’ve survived hell, broken each other, and been broken by each other, and somehow still found our way back.

His lips find mine as he lays me gently on the sheets, still rumpled from sleep. The combination of tenderness and raw, simmering heat makes my pulse race. He could devour me whole tonight, and I’d thank him for it. He could use my body to break me open, and I’d let him.

But that’s not what tonight is about. Tonight isn’t about trauma or domination. It’s not about debts or debts paid. It’s not about survival. It’s not even about sex.

It’s about the possibility of something more. About wanting and choosing and trusting instead of manipulating. About giving something freely instead of selling it on the block.

About being seen and heard and touched. Not as an asset. Not as a pretty ornament. Not as a weapon. But just as Belle—human, flawed, so terrified and hopeful and desperate for this man that my entire body trembles with it.

“Are you sure?” he whispers again, pausing with his hands on the buttons of his shirt.

“Just take off the damn clothes.”

Laughter sparks in his eyes, the flash of mischief I recognize from when we first met at Shark Bay.

That humor is unexpected, so different from the solemn, often sad intensity I’ve come to expect.

My breath catches, stolen by the sudden possibility that tonight could be a revelation in more ways than one.

He obliges, his fingers unfastening the buttons one by one until his shirt hangs loose, revealing planes of toned muscle and golden skin.

I know men like Max. Know the work and time that went into earning that strength, into sculpting the body that makes others burn.

It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, nothing that should move me or spark heat in my belly.

But for some reason, it does. Seeing him bare, vulnerable, choosing to share this moment with me, even knowing who I am, is the hottest thing I’ve experienced in years.

“Your turn,” he says, prowling across the bed to meet me.

I sit up slowly, deliberately, letting him watch the slide of fabric over my skin. When we’re kneeling face-to-face, chests bare, he leans forward and rests his forehead against mine.

“Belle,” he breathes.

And the way he says it—like it’s a precious name, like the woman beneath it is a person who deserves kindness—breaks me open like a wave breaking on rocks.

There are no secrets between us tonight.

No defenses or rehearsed lines or need for pretenses.

He’s Max and I’m Belle, and there’s no distance between us except for the clothes we’ve only now started shedding.

His lips find mine, and the kiss is wild, electric, urgent, and desperate. Some animal instinct takes over, stripping us bare and pressing us together like maybe, somehow, with enough contact, we can rid ourselves of the pasts that created us.

For the first time in my life, being truly seen doesn’t terrify me.

Because as the remaining clothes fall away, as my body melts into his, as his voice whispers things I never dared to want into my skin, I realize that this feels nothing like the sick, wrong transactions forced on me before.

This feels bright and free and utterly, perfectly right.

Max presses the tip of his cock against me, asking a question with his body.

He doesn’t rush me, doesn’t try to maneuver my body into the position he prefers, doesn’t pressure or demand.

Tonight is about my choice, about my agency.

It’s an act of mutual submission instead of competition, of love instead of compulsion.

“Yes,” I gasp against his lips, and as he enters me, hot and solid and familiar in a way that aches deep inside, I feel myself falling.

Ever so slowly, Max thrusts his hips, gentle movements meant to tease instead of bruise.

He’s everything I never thought I needed and now can’t imagine living without.

Part of me expected rage and aggression, a way of asserting dominance and violence in the absence of healthy outlets.

Instead, he teases and flirts and asks permission, moving in and out in a slow rhythm that ignites fires instead of charring my flesh.

“Belle,” he gasps my name into my shoulder, his teeth grazing my skin with a thrill instead of a wound.

We move together, our bodies complementing each other in a way I never would have expected. And then, as his mouth closes around one of my nipples, the tension deep in my core releases, and white-hot pleasure burns through me, erasing every thought except one.

Mine. This man is mine. This emotion is mine. This impossible, improbable freedom is mine.

“Faster,” I plead as my muscles clench around him.

His hips obey, increasing speed and pressure as he keeps my orgasm blazing like a star.

“Harder,” I order, and he obliges, pulling back just enough to look me in the eyes.

It’s the vulnerability in his expression—the same raw, honest need I feel inside me—that pushes me over the edge again, a second wave of pleasure far more powerful than the first. He follows me into the current, murmuring my name as his orgasm throbs, fast and deep.

“Stay with me,” I whisper as we collapse together, my words barely coherent. “Please stay.”

He finds my hand and holds it, warm and familiar and mine. “Always.”

Afterward, we lie tangled in the government-issued sheets, my head on Max’s chest as his fingers trace lazy patterns on my bare shoulder. The room is quiet except for our gradually slowing breathing and the distant sound of wind against the safe house windows.

“That was…” I start, then trail off, not sure how to finish the sentence.

“Different,” Max supplies, his voice rough with satisfaction and something deeper.

“Yeah.” I press a kiss to his chest, tasting salt and warmth and the lingering scent of his cologne. “Different.”

For the first time in my life, sex wasn’t a performance or a weapon or a transaction. It was a connection—honest, vulnerable, real. The kind of intimacy I never thought I was capable of giving or receiving.

“Belle?” Max’s voice is soft in the darkness.

“Mmm?”

“I think I love you.”

The words hit me like lightning, illuminating parts of myself I didn’t know existed.

Not the calculated love I’ve witnessed between my parents—a strategic alliance dressed up as affection.

Not the twisted dependency that bound the network’s families together.

Real love. The kind that sees every broken piece of you and chooses to stay anyway.

“I think I love you too,” I whisper back, and the admission doesn’t terrify me the way I thought it would. Instead, it feels like coming home.

But even as I say the words, even as I allow myself this moment of perfect happiness, reality begins to creep back in.

My parents are in federal custody, but Dominic is still out there.

The network may be damaged, but it’s not destroyed.

And somewhere in the shadows, forces I don’t understand are probably already planning their next move.

“What happens now?” I ask.

Max’s arms tighten around me. “Now we build something new. Something that’s ours, not theirs.”

“And if they come for us?”

“Then we face them together.” His voice carries the same unwavering certainty that convinced me to trust him in the first place. “Belle, whatever happens next, whatever threats we have to deal with, you’re not alone anymore. You’ll never be alone again.”

The promise wraps around me like armor, but it’s armor made of love instead of fear, protection instead of paranoia. For the first time since this nightmare began, I dare to believe that maybe—just maybe—I can have a future that isn’t defined by my past.

Outside the safe house windows, dawn is beginning to break across the horizon, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold. A new day. A new beginning.

And for the first time in my life, I’m not afraid of what it might bring.