Enraptured

Chapter 31

Brushing the light snowfall off my shoulders, I ducked under the tiny doorframe of her front door and carefully shrugged my coat off. The temperature had suddenly fallen over the last few days in New York City, but Belle's home never failed to fill my body with warmth whenever I came over.

I glanced down at the fretting little lady as she floundered around me in her adorable kitchen apron and a fluffy towel in her hand. She was extremely worried about all the snow that had melted on my head, but I could care less.

I reached forward, lopping my arm around her waist and effectively halting her motions as I pulled her against my frame. Her cheeks turned a bright red color, as usual, mirroring the red ornament balls hanging from her ceiling.

Her comforting sweet scent engulfed me as I lowered my head, leaning down closer to her until we were just an inch away from each other. I greeted softly, "I missed you, darling."

Her face immediately flushed into a deeper red as she stammered, "I-I m-missed you too, D-Demetri."

I chuckled at her adorable reaction and pulled away slightly before tilting upwards to press my lips against her temple. Even though I wanted to kiss her on the lips, I knew that she wasn't ready yet. Though she would never push me away, I could tell from how her stuttering always went out of control whenever I drifted too close to her.

When I pulled away, she habitually covered the place I kissed her with her delicate little fingers with a dumbfounded expression. She was honestly too cute for me to handle.

Changing the subject, I asked quietly as to not startle her, "Can I talk to Theo a bit before we have dinner?"

She nodded mindlessly and mumbled softly, "I still need about half an hour more to finish dinner anyway..."

I hummed in understanding and gave her waist one last squeeze before letting go of her. Once I dropped Belle back off inside her kitchen, I climbed up the stairs in search of the little one.

I stopped in front of his slightly ajar bedroom door and gave a few light knocks. It didn't take long before the door swung open, and his little figure popped up in the doorway, staring up at me with sparkling violet eyes that matched the look in his mother's eyes whenever she got excited.

Theo wasn't one to initiate much physical affection with me, but he did at least grow much more fond of me since I saved him, enough so that he greeted me with a lighthearted "Mr. Nikoloas" instead of the previous cold "that bastard."

He seemed to like me enough to now eagerly wait for my arrival in the evenings. Even though he tried to hide it by acting indifferent around me, he would always present his day's work to me without fail, kind of like how a son would pine for his father's praise.

He eagerly grabbed my wrist and pulled me into his room, closing the door behind me as he nudged me onto the beanbag in the corner of his room. "You're a bit early today, but that doesn't matter because I just finished the project for my robotics class today."

He bounded up into his closet and started to painstaking pull a large contraption out. He explained, "The professor was talking about neural nets today and I think I finally figured out how to set up the voice recognition program from scratch. I tried it Ms. Belle and it works pretty well in differentiating between the two of us, but I want to see if it works on you too."

He was talking at a mile a minute about his project, but I actually wanted to talk to him about something else today.

Trying to catch his attention, I started hesitantly, "Um..."

But he cut me off, not noticing my attempt at all, and continued, "It might take a couple of sentences before it recognizes you as a new voice, but I think it can do it. I used—"