Page 32 of Made for You
“Leave your brothers to me,” he said with that familiar glint of steel in his eye.
For a moment, I just smiled at him, letting the weight of his words sink in. All the years of clawing my way out from under my brothers’ shadows, of proving that I was as good as them—no, even better, because I was a woman operating in a male-dominated industry with all the bullshit that entailed—were finally paying off.
Professionally, I’d never felt more on top of the world.
Personally, though?
That was a different story.
I’d never wanted the things other women seemed to crave. Marriage. A family. My work had always been enough—my first love, my constant companion, the thing that made me feel most alive. But sitting here now, listening to my father tell me he was proud of me, I should have been ridiculously, gloriously happy.
But was I? The answer should have been an immediateyes. Instead, something felt strangely hollow. Like maybe I’d built my entire life chasing one kind of fulfillment while ignoring another.
Could I have both—the professional success I’d worked so hard for and something softer, more personal?
But the thought of even wantingmoreterrified me.
“Dad?” I asked before I could overthink it. “Can I ask you something personal?”
He tilted his head, curiosity flickering across his features. The corners of his mouth eased, and he leaned back in his chair like a man settling in for a good story. “Of course.”
I hesitated for only a moment, then blurted, “How did you know you were in love with Mom?”
For a heartbeat, his face went still. Then a slow, boyish grin spread across it, softening the lines around his eyes, making him look ten years younger.
“I knew almost instantly,” he said, his voice dropping into something warmer, gentler. “I couldn’t stop thinking about her,even when I tried. She was just… there. In everything. The sound of her laugh, the way she saw the world. When I was around her, I felt lighter. Happier.”
He chuckled under his breath, the corners of his eyes crinkling the way they did when he was lost in an old, happy memory. “With your mother, who I was or what I did for a living didn’t matter. I wasn’t Richard Bellrose, heir to the Bellrose fortune. I was just Ricky, the customer she couldn’t get rid of. Your mom gave me everything I needed to just be … me.”
Something in my chest went very still.
Because suddenly I realized that was exactly how Gage made me feel, too.
From the start, I’d been drawn to him in a way that I couldn’t explain, like something inside of me recognized he was what I’d been seeking without even knowing I’d been looking.
And yes, the sex was fantastic. Hot and electric and everything I’d ever let myself fantasize about. But it wasn’t just the fucking. It was everything the type of sex we had together represented. My need for someone to own me. To ground me. To take my body to places I couldn’t go alone. To push me when I didn’t think I could take another second more … to make me take more.
Someone who didn’t let me shy away from my desires, but rather, confront them head-on. No, not just confront them, butembracethem. A man who let my need for submission live alongside my need for control. My need for that slight edge of pain to live alongside the softer moments afterward, when I came back to myself. To be praised. To be cuddled. To be adored.
But beyond the sex was the banter. The conversation. Even when he was furious with me, he still managed to give me something beyond the physical. Pieces of himself that I didn’t think many others saw.
He listened to my ideas. My fears. The things I’d only ever said out loud to my own reflection. He called me out when I hid behind my ambition, and somehow it didn’t feel like judgment—it felt like being seen.
He teased me about my control-freak tendencies, but never once tried to take my power away from me. Instead, he made space for both sides of me—the woman who could run an entire division of a hospitality juggernaut with an iron fist, and the one who wanted a man’s hand fisted in her hair, pushing her to her knees to choke on his cock.
And when we’d talked last night—about the land, about what it meant to both of us—I realized it wasn’t just chemistry pulling me toward him. It was understanding. It was respect. He didn’t agree with me on everything, but hegotme. The parts of me I’d hidden under years of polish and ambition. The parts that were messy, impulsive, and far too human.
Maybe that was why being with him scared me so much. Because for the first time, I wasn’t hiding behind anything.
With Gage, there were no expectations, no performative smiles, no image to protect. He didn’t care about my last name, my pedigree, or the empire I’d been born into. He saw me—the woman beneath the polish, the ambition, the armor.
And being seen like that, so completely, so effortlessly, was both freeing and terrifying.
Because when he looked at me, it wasn’t with awe or calculation. It was with quiet recognition.
Like I was someone worth knowing.
Worth keeping.
