Chapter Seven #3
Evidently, since he had married Violet, who unfortunately loathed anyone trying to tell her what to do.
She had said that that rebelliousness was a trait of her twin’s, even though it was painfully obvious to Tore that she was exactly the same.
And he had a bad habit of shooting out orders and expecting them to be immediately obeyed.
He knew that that tendency was something he needed to work on when it concerned a wife.
As she had already told him, she was not an employee of his.
But still, he went rigid as a young man began to dance up against her. Dark primal fury surged up in a tidal wave inside Tore. That someone should actually touch her was beyond his tolerance level and he strode down the stairs to retrieve her. Was he a possessive man?
He had never thought he was before he met Violet.
He couldn’t have cared less about the various women who had amused him during his rare leisure moments.
He had never had to pursue one of them. He had never had one who answered back and defied his wishes, either.
Violet was in a class of her own. It was a marvel to him that such a small body could house such a huge personality.
Only that feisty persona didn’t show on the surface.
He had initially thought that she was rather timid and quiet, but dare to cross Violet and you soon found out that she had inner fire and a passion for defending her rights as an individual.
Violet saw Tore watching her from the edge of the floor, ebony brows pleated, disapproval emanating from every inch of his big, powerful body.
She moved away from the guy who had been trying to get her to dance with him and sped towards Tore, holding out her hand, wanting him to take it so that he could join her on the floor.
Tore reached out and grasped her fingers but used them merely to tug her even closer.
‘Tore!’ she exclaimed as he simply bent down and swept her off her feet to carry her in his arms.
‘Don’t be stupid…put me down!’ she instructed.
‘Not until we reach the car,’ he asserted. ‘If I put you down, you’ll run away again.’
‘Tore…think about this,’ she urged. ‘What does this look like?’
‘Like a guy retrieving his wife. Perfectly normal,’ Tore declared confidently.
‘Someone might take photos of us!’ she warned him.
‘Couldn’t care less,’ Tore countered truthfully, striding towards the exit after giving a nod to the club owner, his security team falling in around them to break through the crush.
‘We’re supposed to be hosting a party!’ she slammed up at him in disbelief.
‘Nobody’s going to miss us.’
‘Angelina will miss you,’ Violet told him snidely.
‘Yes, where were you when I needed you?’ Tore enquired, green eyes gleaming bright with condemnation in his hard-hewn handsome face. ‘You could’ve chased her off and instead you abandoned me.’
‘I know you,’ Violet argued vehemently. ‘You were perfectly capable of chasing her off without anyone’s help!’
‘I expect my wife to stay by my side.’
‘That sounds very Victorian and unreasonable.’
‘I don’t like you dancing with other men.’
‘I was trying to discourage that guy without being rude or making a scene,’ Violet informed him in a superior tone.
‘He’s lucky I didn’t plant a fist in his smirking face!’
‘I was tempted to slap you but I was too conscious that we were in a public place,’ Violet responded, sounding even more superior. ‘I wanted you to dance with me.’
‘Don’t play games with me, lucciola mia. I have a temper, too,’ Tore warned her. ‘One of our guards will retrieve your belongings from our table.’
‘I wasn’t ready to go home,’ Violet complained.
‘Then why are you stifling a yawn?’
‘It’s the one night out on the town that we’ve had.’
‘There will be others.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she declared as the Bugatti filtered up to the pavement outside, eliciting a fair amount of excited comments from onlookers.
‘I don’t want to see you dancing with another man again,’ Tore stated, slowly, carefully setting her down in front of him before reaching for her jacket as it arrived and deftly winding her into it.
‘That’s excessive,’ she protested. ‘Particularly when you don’t dance.’
‘It is what it is. I’m a possessive husband and you’re stuck with me for at least three years,’ he reminded her almost cheerfully as he walked her out to the Bugatti.
‘That is not something to celebrate,’ Violet replied crushingly.
‘No? I think your attitude to me has changed since our wedding day. I know that I’ve changed,’ Tore admitted.
The street lights illuminated the car interior and she looked up at him unwillingly. ‘I really was ready to slap you.’
‘I know but you didn’t because you have to be aware that I wouldn’t like another man putting his hands on you.’
‘Why would you care?’ she dared to riposte.
‘I don’t know but I definitely do…while I dream of having a wife who obeys my every command like I’m a god in the flesh.’
‘Dream on…’
Long brown fingers tipped up her chin so that their eyes collided and those crazy butterflies went insane in her tummy and her heartbeat pounded.
He brought his lips down on hers and ravished them apart with a hungry groan of need.
Any desire to slap him or indeed obey his every command evaporated.
But the need to hold on to him when he felt like the only stable element in her new world simply increased a hundredfold.
Her body pulsed with a life of its own, pushing forward demands and a need to fulfil them that was insanely new to her experience.
‘So, even in this car, it will take almost forty minutes to get home,’ Tore pointed out, settling her back into her seat and reaching across her to fasten the seat belt as he dragged in a ragged breath.
‘Forty minutes,’ Violet repeated slowly.
‘And if waiting forty minutes to sate our urgent desires seems right now like waiting to go over the edge of a cliff, only imagine how we’ll feel at the end of the month when such desires become forbidden,’ Tore urged in a roughened undertone.
Violet breathed in deep and slow. ‘Doesn’t matter how we feel. It’s the right thing to do before what we’re feeling now gets out of control.’
Tore almost groaned. ‘It’s already out of control, mia lucciola.’
Violet rested her head back and struggled to relax, which was a massive challenge when every skin cell in her body seemed to be pitched on high alert.
He ran a fingertip slowly along the line of her thigh, setting up a melting pot of sensation low in her pelvis, and then he pulled out onto the road to join the flow of traffic.
He was arguing with her in silence by showing her how weak she could be made by a single fleeting caress.
‘Agreed,’ Violet conceded softly. ‘Which is exactly why we need boundaries. If we’re lucky this attraction will just burn out by the end of the month.’
Tore said nothing. He was wondering why he would want the best sexual connection he had ever had to burn out anytime soon.
He was wondering why she was weaponizing sex.
He had already made several obvious deductions from the likely consequences of the boundaries she was determined to set.
Perhaps they would occur to her before the end of the month…
He could only hope. If something was good, why on earth would you bring it to a premature end?
It would be senseless self-denial and how would it improve anything between them?