Blackmailing Belle (The Lost Girls, #4)

by Holly Roberds

"Good luck with that," I say with more sharpness than I intend. "In my experience, love is best kept between the pages of a book. Lucky for us, we’ve got plenty of them." I wave a hand to my many shelves.

I once read that sometimes our bodies adapt, creating shields where our minds can’t. Maybe mine did just that, forging armor to protect me from the world I grew up in. If that’s true, then I’ve made myself a soft place to land.

Sometimes, I wonder if one day I’ll feel strong enough or safe enough to let the weight go.

Unless he’s got a super specific kink for heavyset introverts who love to read smut, I’m safe.

read books until I died an old, bookish cat lady with an insanely long unfinished TBR.

I know what it’s like to be forced to be someone you’re not. Dissociation was such a regular habit, I made it into a business.

Whatever flicker of warmth I felt earlier extinguishes. Forget calling him a beast. My husband is a dick.

"Love is real," Rap says quietly. "And you’ve wanted it desperately for as long as I’ve known you." My nose tickles and the sharp heat behind my eyes kicks up again even as I continue to watch the group. "It may not be exactly like it is in your books, but it’s real. The passion, the devotion, the loyalty, exists in our actual world Belle, not just in your fantasy ones. And you deserve to have all of it." "Do I?" The words slipped by without consciously letting them out. I feel rather than see Rap smile a little. "You deserve it because you want it. And what I need all my lost girls to realize is if there is a desire in their heart, it was put there because it was meant for them."

He wants you as much as he needs you. The issue isn’t him loving you. The issue is, you have to let him love you. Everything you want is just on the other side of allowing it to come to you."