“So, you do want to give our relationship a chance?” she asked him and Devon looked at her, deep into her eyes.
“I do, do you?” he asked and Belle smiled and nodded her head.
“I just want to figure things out with Jesse first, and this time I want to take it slow,” she said and he laughed.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to move in with me tomorrow,” he said and Belle laughed too.
“I want us to get to know each other first,” she said, through her laughs and Devon nodded his head.
“You should know, that I’ve never seriously dated a woman before. So, I’m probably more inexperienced than you are at this thing,” he added and Belle laughed again.
“You’ve never been in a serious relationship before?” she asked and Devon shrugged.
“What can I say, I never had the time,” he said and Belle shook her head indulgently.
“And I never found the right woman, I wanted to spend the time with,” he added and she leaned towards him so they could kiss again. Every time Devon kissed her, she felt like she was falling deeper for him. Whatever this feeling was, she had definitely never felt it before.
When they pulled away, Devon started picking their clothes off the floor. He handed hers back to her and Belle held up her torn bra and they laughed again.
He started dressing himself and Belle watched him questioningly. She didn’t want to go back to the apartment yet. She wanted to spend more time with him. She wanted to start getting to know him right away.
“Do you want to call it a night then?” she asked, her words choking in her throat. She didn’t want to have to admit to him that she wanted to spend some time with him. Devon was in the process of buttoning his shirt when he looked up at her with crossed brows.
“What? No! I thought we could go get pizza or go back to my place and watch a movie together or something,” Devon said and Belle jumped off the desk to rush to him and kiss him again.
Belle
Devon dropped Belle to her apartment building the next day in his Mercedes and when Belle stepped out of the car, she looked up to their studio apartment on the third floor. The window was shut and Jesse didn’t seem to be at it, nevertheless, she didn’t care. She stood at the car door till Devon turned to her with a smile.
“I’ll see you tonight?” he asked and she nodded, before leaning in towards him and planting a kiss on his lips. They smiled at each other and she turned to walk into the building. At the door she looked at the car again, and Devon was still there. He hadn’t asked his chauffeur to drive off yet.
Belle was beaming as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. The situation needed to be dealt with calmly, she knew that, but all she really wanted to do was go in and tell Jesse everything and ask him to leave. She wasn’t quite sure what to expect, she had stormed out of the apartment the previous night, leaving him fuming after her.
Belle jiggled the key in the lock and finally pushed the door open. It was eight in the morning, which meant that he was probably still sleeping. Besides, it was a Saturday and Jesse never woke up before eleven on the weekends.
When she stepped inside, she was surprised to find that all their things had been turned over. It was like a tornado had hit their apartment. Jesse was standing on top of the mattress, still in the same clothes as the previous days and his eyes were bloodshot and he looked like he was about to scream.
“Where the Hell have you been?” he thundered.
Belle slammed the door behind her and slipped the keys into her purse.
“What happened here? Did you do this?” she asked, in an equally high pitched voice.
“Tell me where you were last night. I tried calling you like a million times,” he said and stepped off the mattress.
Belle remained standing where she was and glared at him, her own fury rising.
“I spent the night at a friend’s house because I didn’t want to see your face,” she said. The words came tumbling out of her. She had decided to be calm and gentle with Jesse when she broke the news, but she couldn’t control herself.
She had spent the night in Devon’s luxurious penthouse apartment on the forty-fifth floor of a Manhattan sky rise. But she wasn’t going to tell Jesse that.
“Which friend? You don’t have any friends in New York,” he spat out, taking long strides towards her. Belle straightened her back and glared at him. Jesse was studying her, like he was looking for clues about where she had been. Belle’s makeup was off, her hair wasn’t tied in a plait any more and she was starkly aware of not wearing a bra. She had taken a shower in Devon’s place though, so at least she looked somewhat presentable.
“How do you know if I have any friends here or not? You don’t know anything about my life, Jesse,” she said and she folded her arms over her breasts. He had come up very close to her and now he was breathing down on her face, but she only glared back at him. She wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t even guilty any more.
“You were with some guy, weren’t you?” he snarled and Belle arched her eyebrows.
“So what if I was?” she said and Jesse grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently.