Belle felt bad for faking it for about five seconds, until Raphael laid next to her and curled his arm around her like he was afraid to let go. They fell asleep like that, with the TV on and Belle draped naked over his chest, and when they woke up, it was immediately apparent that work was going to be difficult.

"We have to put clothes on," Belle said, kissing at the corner of his mouth.

"Do we?" His hand fluttered down her side, raising goose bumps all over.

"Yes. You never call in sick, remember?"

"I could make an exception." His finger traced the edge of her breast and she sighed, pressing against him.

"It's Friday. We have the whole weekend to be naked." She kissed his bottom lip. "We should go to work today."

"Fine."

When they made it out of bed, they didn't have time to take consecutive showers, so Belle took the guest bathroom, reasoning that, if they shared a shower, they would never make it to the school. Everyone was going to know that something had changed, and even Raphael seemed to realize it as he fumbled with the controls of his car because he was trying to drive and hold her hand.

"Do you have things to do today?" she asked when they pulled into a spot, checking to see if anyone was watching before leaning over to kiss him.

"Not many."

"We should find some. I think it's best to stay occupied."

He groaned. "You may be right."

She slapped his hand away when he tried to thread it through her hair, and he had the grace to look sheepish about it. "Sorry. You're just so pretty today."

She couldn't be mad at that, but she had to try for the sake of his job, so she pursed her lips at him. "Come on, we have to be professional."

"My windows are tinted. We can sit in the car for a bit." He reached for her again, and she leaned away.

"Anyone watching will know what we're doing. Come on. I have a book I need to finish."

They made it out of the car, and Belle considered bringing a ruler with them next week so that they'd remember to stay farther than half a centimeter apart. The desk between them in his office would have worked better if they hadn't been able to see each other, but Belle was too drawn to the way Raphael kept looking at her—like his eyes were un-buttoning her blouse with slow, tender affection.

The group of students that appeared at 9:30, however, was a good dissuasion from their doe eyes.

"What the hell?" Raphael asked, peering out the doorway at the line. "The paper's not due for a week."

"Did you threaten them yesterday?"

His nose wrinkled, and she took that as a yes, which meant she needed to vacate her chair until everyone was gone. Raphael scowled at the idea, but she knew she didn't need to remind him why it was necessary.

"I'll be in my cubicle," she told him, unable to kiss him goodbye.

By the time Hook called, Belle was so deep in a boredom coma, she'd have agreed to almost anything. All he wanted was lunch, though, so she sent a quick text to Raphael that she would bring him food in an hour, then started the walk to Granny's.

"She called me," Hook said before they'd even slid into the booth. Belle frowned, trying to remember if he had told her about a woman recently.

"Who called you?"

"Aurora. She called me. Yesterday. It was fucking weird, Belle, we talked for like an hour and a half." He tapped his finger against the table, as if all of the energy in his body was centered on that appendage.

"About what?"

"I don't know." He flung his hand up. "I don't remember. Everything. Nothing. Who knows? We didn't have phone sex, we didn't make plans to have sex, I think she told me about her ex-boyfriend or fiancé or whatever, I don't know."

"Hook." Belle set her menu down. "Do you like her?"

"I don't want to talk about me anymore. Let's talk about you. How are you?"

She folded her arms. "Hook, you called me here to talk about you. You actually said 'Belle, let's go to lunch, I really need to talk about myself.'"

"Don't use my words against me."

"All right, whatever you say. Should I call Granny over yet?"

"Yeah, yeah."

Once they had ordered, Hook leaned back, jaw set so that Belle would know that he was done talking about Aurora. This could only mean that it was her turn to talk. She was glad Ruby wasn't around.

"So. How's your old man?" he asked, wriggling his thick eyebrows.

"Don't call him that."

"Fine. How's Gold?"

Belle pressed her lips together, glancing around to ensure that Granny wasn't within earshot, and then grinned. "We had sex."

Hook's eyes lit up like a boy on Christmas, and Belle couldn't help her grin growing in return. "That's fantastic. Tell me all about it. How was he? Did he have any performance issues? How'd it start? Who was on top?"

"You are the worst. I'm not telling you anything, now."

"Oh, come on. Don't ruin my fun."

She held out, letting him pout until Granny brought their drinks. He gripped the table in both hands and leaned toward her, face twisted into a dark, furry look of concern.

"Take pity on me."

"Fine." She sipped her iced tea, hiding a smile with the straw. "What do you want to know?"

He looked like he was weighing a lot of options, which she hoped meant that he was considering not asking about Raphael's performance again. "All right. How did it start?"

"Well, I fell into a pizza."

Hook's grin felt like the grin of a man undressing a woman with his eyes, but they remained at a gentlemanly level with her face. "So you just went at it on the kitchen table, eh?"

"No, it was in the bedroom."

"You fell on a pizza in the bedroom?"

"Yeah, we brought it up so we could watch TV."

Hook narrowed his eyes as though he'd just smelled an unknown but awful odor. "That is the least sexy thing I have ever heard."

"I know, that's why I fell on the pizza."

"Ah, so you did it on purpose, I knew you had a little minx in you," he said, wagging a finger toward her.

She flushed. "Well, I mean, it wasn't entirely on purpose. I was trying to take off my pantyhose and I fell over—"

"You fell over getting undressed?"

"I just happened to get caught and lose my balance—do you want to hear the story or not?" She folded her arms, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

"Fine, fine. So you fell over because you have no balancing skills?"

"Yes. And then I was close to the pizza, so I just—you know, helped myself along. And then he came over to my side of the bed and made sweet, beautiful love to me."

"Ew." Hook wrinkled his entire face, giving a little shudder. "I don't want to think about it like that. I'd rather just imagine you as a wanton sex goddess."

"Well, I'd rather you didn't imagine me as such."

"What if I just don't tell you about it?"

"That seems fair enough."

Belle's phone rang just as their food arrived, and she stared at the "DAD" flashing across the screen for a few seconds before silencing the ringer.

"Trouble in paradise?" Hook asked, swiping a fry from her plate before picking his fork up to start on his hash.

"It's my dad," she said, shaking her head.

"Like I said, trouble in—"

"Stop, no." She brandished her hamburger at him. "Raphael is not old enough to be my father, and he is not the same age as my father, he just happens to have a few grey hairs."

"A few?"

"Shut up." She tore into her burger, ripping off a bite that she regretted not making smaller as soon as it was in her mouth, and Hook looked as concerned as a person shoveling meat and potatoes into his mouth could.

"So you're screening Dad's phone calls?" Hook asked when he paused for bacon.

"For now." There was no point in treating her hamburger poorly because she was upset, and she found herself nibbling at it.

"What's going on?"

She sighed, almost throwing her burger down, and leaned forward. "Have you ever just really wanted to tell your parents something and been totally unable to because you know they'll take it the wrong way. But you've never kept huge secrets from your dad and it is killing you inside because you just want to come clean?"

He considered this, bacon halfway to his mouth. "No, not really. I don't tell my parents anything. Haven't spoken to them in years."

She pressed her lips together. This sounded like a conversation she should continue, but Hook still looked nonchalant, and she couldn't fix an ongoing issue between himself and his family in one lunch date.

"I want to tell my dad about Raphael."

"Somehow, I figured out that your whole speech was about you. Something about, uh—'you've never kept things from your dad,' and how that didn't apply to me at all." He winked.

"I'm sorry, it's just—"

"Don't apologize just because you have better parents than me." He reached forward and laid a salty hand on hers. "I'm a grown man, I can take care of myself. And you're a grown woman, allowed to make her own choices and also take care of herself."

"I know that." She chewed her lip, squeezing his thumb. "It's just—I just want him to respect my choices, you know? I know I'm doing things differently than he would like me to, but I'm doing them my way and they're working for me, and I just wish there was a way he could see that."

"Have you talked to, eh—" He wrinkled his nose, looking like he'd just bitten into a bug. "—Raphael about this?"

"Yeah." She slumped down. "I think he just thinks I'm ashamed of him, though, and there'll be no convincing him otherwise."

Hook snorted, taking his hand off hers so that he could go back to eating. "Well, that's just ridiculous. If you were ashamed, you wouldn't tell me about him."

"I know, but try telling him that." She shook her head, ripping a fry in half.

"I will, if you want me to. He'll have to listen to me, I'm very persuasive."

"No, please no, never say anything." She glared at him, popping half the fry into her mouth and pointing the other half at him. "I just need to find a way to tell my father that won't freak him out."

"You could just tell him you have a boyfriend." Hook shrugged.

"I could." It was the first good thought she'd had about the whole situation. "And I could make him like him before I ever tell him who he is, and then he'll have to realize that it's not just about sleeping with him for my degree."

"There you go. Would he think that? Really?"

"Probably." She picked up her burger again, ignoring the fact that it was now cold. "He'd at least think that Raphael was up to no good."

"Well." Hook pointed his fork at her. "Seems like he doesn't know you very well at all, then."

It took ten minutes in Raphael's house for them to be tumbling into bed again, most of their clothes discarded somewhere in the hallway. They kissed as though they'd been apart for weeks, with Belle's hands wedged into his hair while his arms were locked around her waist.

"Missed you," he growled into her mouth, forcing her backwards until her knees hit the bed.

"Me, too." She let go of him long enough to sit down, and then he was climbing on top of her, wrestling them both to the center of the bed. He trailed his lips down her jaw, stopping to suck on her earlobe.

"Why are you wearing so much underwear?" she asked, clutching at his boxer-briefs.

"I beg your pardon?" He lifted his head to look at her, reaching down to pluck at a bra strap. "You're wearing far more than I am."

"Well." She lifted her head to bite at his ear. "Fix it."

He groaned, and they were both soon naked, and then he was sliding inside of her with a tortured-sounding grunt. He was slower than yesterday, more thorough when pulling out and thrusting in, and Belle clung to his back with her legs wrapped around it.

He clutched at her sides like he was afraid they might disappear, and she just wanted him to be confident. "You feel amazing," she whispered as he sank down to kiss at her neck, running her nails down his shoulder blades. He arched up like a cat.

"You're amazing," he hissed, hoarse, thrusts becoming more erratic. It was like she'd flipped a switch, speeding him up and making him clumsier for the lost time. His chest stopped moving with him, only dipping sporadically when he drew half breaths. How was she supposed to keep him calm? And how could she, in good conscience, continue to have sex with him if he continued to stop breathing each time?

It hadn't been long, and Belle wished she could throw herself into the activity as much as she was pretending to, but she could feel nothing coming out of his nose, and his mouth was pressed to her shoulder.

"So close," she murmured, though she was still riding the steady pleasure of his shallow thrusts. It didn't matter, though—the fact that he cared about her satisfaction at all was enough for her, and more than she'd ever had in a partner.

She let it go on for another minute, until she heard his chest rattle with the effort of barely breathing, and then she clenched around him and screamed his name. He sucked in breath like a drowning man, coming immediately, and she bucked her hips against his.

"You're perfect," she said, running her fingers through his damp hair, panting along with him. It felt good to have him surrounding her like this, holding onto her like she was the most precious artifact in the world.

Then, he looked up at her like a kicked dog, and her cheeks flushed scarlet against her will.

"You faked that," he said.

"What?" Her eyes widened, and she hoped it made her look confused and innocent. "No, I didn't."

"You did. Or you faked it yesterday. You sounded completely different today."

"No! I didn't—"

"Oh my god, I'm so stupid." He dropped his head into her chest, shaking it back and forth.

"No, you're not, it's okay—"

He jerked his head up, eyes hard. "You faked it both times."

Belle had always been a terrible liar, and as her mouth tried to form the beginnings of several different questions, she knew she'd been caught. She closed her mouth around her bottom lip, unsure of what to say in this situation. No one had ever noticed before.

He struggled to prop himself on his hands, leaning over her instead of rolling off. His hair hung around his face, slightly sweaty and mussed from her attention to it. "So, what's the problem, then? Am I not good enough? Did I do something wrong?"

"Of course not." She reached up to stroke his hair back, but yanked his head out of the way.

"Then what is it? Are you bored already?"

"No!" She knew it was wrong of her to try and hide how she felt, but she'd thought that in this scenario, it was better that way. It certainly felt like it would have been better now, watching his chest heave and his nostrils flare.

"Tell me."

"Raphael—"

"Don't coddle me, Belle, I'm not a child."

"I just wanted to throw you a bone!"

She regretted this before the words finished leaving her mouth, and Raphael's eyes glassed over like he'd just been slapped. She wanted to reach for him, but was afraid he might shatter at her touch, so she watched him with the most open expression she could, mouth pressed together.

"Throw me a bone?" He closed his eyes and shook his head, and when he looked at her again, there was fire. "How dare you—"

"You stopped breathing!"

He opened his mouth, probably to tell her what she dared to do, and then deflated as if she'd stuck a pin in his chest, sinking lower until his hunched shoulders relaxed above her. She watched him, her own breathing a little heavier.

"I did, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, and—"

"That doesn't mean that you should put your own pleasure on the backburner, Belle," he said, eyes hard again. "I'm not some feeble—"

"Really? Really, Raphael?" She glared at him, and he glared back. "Picture this—you are being ravished by the man of your dreams, lost in the beauty of it all, and then suddenly he asphyxiates. Can you just consider, for a moment, how that would make you feel?"

"Yes, I understand that, Belle, but I just think that you should consider—"

"No! No considering. I don't want you to die on top of me."

"Belle—"

"No."

He watched her, not daring to speak while she had her game face on, but he opened his mouth as soon as her eyebrows relaxed. "Look, I just want you to be happy. I don't want to make you do something because you feel like you have to. If you don't like it, then we'll—we'll stop."

"Oh, Raphael." She reached up, and this time he let her cup his cheek, pressing into her palm with his eyes closed. "I love everything about our relationship, even this. I love having you inside me and you being naked and kissing you, and it doesn't matter if I reach completion. That's not the point."

"It's not?"

She shook her head, straining up to kiss him on the bottom lip. "I'm just happy being along for the ride."

"Belle, may—may I ask you something?" He looked away, the same sort of faraway, hunted expression on his face that had been there when he'd discovered her birth control.

"Of course."

"In the past, when you—" He tilted his head, eyes squinted as though searching. "—when you were along for other rides, did you—you know?"

She blinked up at him, and a small, spiteful part of her wanted to play dumb until he was forced to spell out his question, but mostly she felt that she should just throw him another bone. "Not really, no."

His face darkened, and she got the impression that he wanted to eat her alive. "Did you say I was the man of your dreams?"

She nodded, biting her lip, and he ducked his head to kiss along her jaw. She rubbed her feet against his calves, toes curling when he bit her earlobe.

"Belle?" He whispered into her ear, sending a shiver all the way to her belly.

"Yes?"

"Don't fake this one."

She frowned—how could he go for round two so quickly? Was he taking an aide of some sort? But then he was sliding down her body, peeling back the sheets as he went so that he could reach all of her.

"What are you—"

"Sh." He kissed her collarbone, then slid down to her chest to bite and suck. It was good that it was cold enough to wear sweaters, because he avoided her neck when leaving marks, but did not seem to care about leaving them anywhere else. His teeth attended to her breasts more than anyone had before, and she was sure that tomorrow she'd be covered in red bites and bruises, but even that thought made her rub against him.

She tried to reciprocate, reaching up to scratch along his chest, but he batted her hands away.

"I've had mine," he said, drawing a nipple into his mouth. "It's your turn."

She didn't know what he meant to do, but since she had already injured his pride, she didn't argue, leaning back to enjoy the attention. When he slid down further, licking at her navel, she realized what he was doing, and gripped at his shoulders.

"Raphael, stop."

He looked up, frowning. "What's wrong?"

"You don't have to do this—really."

His forehead crease deepened. "What are you talking about?"

She flushed, ashamed that she'd made him feel guilty enough to do something he wouldn't enjoy at all. He must have thought it similar—but she hadn't been lying when she'd said she had fun having sex.

"Belle." His hands rested on either thigh and he watched her, searching her face. "Belle, I want to do this."

She frowned. "You do?"

"So much." He kissed her stomach, looking back up at her. "Does it bother you?"

She shook her head, though she wasn't sure that she should have been honest—what if he thought he wanted to, but discovered that he hated it and just kept going out of some sense of manly duty?

Then, he licked up between her legs, and she stopped caring. His tongue was slow at first, lapping at her like she was a popsicle and he needed to catch the juice on his tongue as she melted. Her hips started to move, and his hands tightened around her thighs, until he removed one to slide a finger inside of her.

She let out a breathy gasp, unable to make more noise than that in the heat of the moment. She rode his finger for several minutes until the pleasure started to plateau—and then he added a second and flicked his tongue against her clit at the same time and she made a noise that reminded her of sharp scissors. He laughed into her, rubbing his nose against her wet flesh, and then he closed his lips around her clit and sucked—gently at first, and steadily harder until she let out a gasp of his name and clenched her entire body. He pulled his mouth away but kept his fingers inside her as she climaxed, and whenever her eyes fluttered open, he was watching her in awe.

When she calmed, he slid up next to her, wrapping himself around her so that she could curl into a ball, still trembling in the after-effects.

"I haven't—" she panted, shuddering when his breath tickled her shoulder. "—in so long."

"It was my pleasure," he whispered into her ear, and she convulsed as though he'd touched her somewhere sensitive.

"I feel like—like—I don't know. Fragile. Is this normal?"

He trailed a finger along her arm and she shuddered again. Was he just playing with her now?

"Yes. It's better than I dared hope."

"Glad—glad that you feel better." She curled up tighter, managing not to shiver this time when he pressed his lips to her shoulder.

"Expect this often."

"Should I be frightened?"

"Oh, yes."