14. Tori #2
“Well, I’m not,” I seethed, raising my voice.
Because I wasn’t tired at all. I was amped up. Exhilarated. Ready for a fight.
“I’ve been waiting over seven hours for you to come home,” I told him, my voice turning icy. “We had dinner plans.”
“You had dinner plans,” Stefan corrected me. “And I told you to go ahead without me.”
“You agreed to those plans before you stepped out on me,” I said. “And this is our honeymoon.”
He turned to face me, revealing an expanse of his toned, perfect torso.
I didn’t want to, but I stared. His chest was just…
so unbearably sexy. All that smooth skin, taut over pecs and abs so tight I could have bounced quarters off of them.
I wanted to burn a trail of kisses down his chest, follow the trail of dark hair from just below his belly button to where it disappeared into the front his pants.
My attraction to him—throbbing palpably between my legs and burning me from the inside—just fueled my anger even further. I was furious that he could make me this hot even when I was so pissed off. I wanted him so bad that my body nearly vibrated from the intensity of it all.
“You know I have a lot going on right now,” Stefan told me. “I was working.”
We’d had this conversation before, but I wasn’t going to let it end the same way.
“I understand that,” I shot back, forcing myself to speak as calmly and rationally as possible, just like my father had taught me to do in an argument.
“But you having a job to do isn’t the point.
It’s not even that you’re a workaholic—fine, I get that.
It’s that time and time again you’ve left me sitting around completely alone, with no consideration whatsoever, and that even if this marriage was arranged, I was led to believe—you led me to believe—that we’d at least treat each other with basic human decency. ”
I took a deep breath, searching his eyes. Had I gotten through to him?
“It sounds like you need to lower your expectations, then,” he finally sneered. “It’s not my fault your feelings got hurt because I have other things in my life that are more important than you.”
I stepped back, his words like a slap. Why did he have to be so mean?
“I know my place,” I told him, not bothering to keep the edge out of my voice any longer. “I know I’m not a priority to you. I also know that I deserve better than this.”
“You deserve better than this?” Stefan waved his hand, gesturing at our beautiful room.
I flushed, angry that he kept twisting my words and throwing them back at me.
“Why can’t you ever tell me what you’re doing, or where you’re going?” I cried. “You keep everything from me, running around god-knows-where with people I’ve never even met, and meanwhile I’m stuck in a hotel where you expect me to wait for you all day.”
His eyes were cold, that impenetrable green, but something in them seemed to waver. Just as quickly as I noticed it, though, it was gone.
“I’ll have my assistant forward you my itinerary, then,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Are we done now?”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Victoria Lindsey, you are so much more work than I anticipated. And I am fucking exhausted,” Stefan said, shrugging off his shirt completely and tossing it onto a chair.
“I’m your wife,” I reminded him.
“This is a marriage of convenience,” he told me. “And none of this is convenient for me.”
I couldn’t believe his cruelty. His outright dismissal of me and my feelings.
“None of this is convenient for me either,” I spat back at him.
“Why don’t you just go out and buy something with my money?” he said, glaring at me. “That seems to be the best way to shut you up.”
“Why don’t you decide what you actually want?” I said. “Because I’m pretty sure you have no fucking idea what that is.”
He stalked toward me, his eyes intense on mine. “I always know what I want.”
He was so intimidating up close that my mind nearly went blank. Not only was he staring at me, his gaze unblinking, but his naked chest was inches from me, his entire body radiating heat and strength and power. It was hard to say if I was more angry at him or aroused.
“You never know what you want,” I told him. “Not when it comes to me.” Michelle’s words came echoing back to me then, and I took a deep breath. “Tell me what you need.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I need to live my life, and so do you. Getting in too deep won’t benefit either of us. When this is all said and done and we go our separate ways, we can have a clean break—but only if we have boundaries. And this is one of them.”
I shook my head. “You act like you know what you’re doing, and you think you have it all figured out, but the truth is you’re just as mixed up as I am. Neither of us knows what this marriage is supposed to be.”
“I know exactly what this marriage is supposed to be,” he said, but he didn’t move. “You’re the one who seems confused.”
But I wasn’t confused, or delusional. I saw his eyes rake down my body and back up again, right then and there, proving my point. This was infuriating.
I lifted my chin, ready to fight.
“Bullshit. You’re hot and cold,” I accused him.
“One minute you’re holding my hand on a ferris wheel in Vienna, the next you’re parading some brunette across the lobby of our hotel.
You take me to the opera one night, and lock me up in our room another.
I think you want me, and I think you hate it. In fact, I know you do.”
“And what makes you so sure?” he asked, his voice low and tense.
I closed my eyes, just for a moment.
“I saw you watching me,” I answered. “When I was in the shower. And I could see that you…” For the first time I faltered. “I saw your…”
“My cock?” he asked, his voice cruel. He laughed. “Don’t fool yourself, little kitty cat. I would have gotten hard watching any woman finger fuck herself.”
He turned, as if to dismiss me, but I grabbed his arm, stopping him. His bare skin was hot beneath my palm.
“Don’t,” he warned.
“You want me,” I taunted him. “You want to put your hands on me.” I looked him straight in the eye. “Do it.”
For a moment, I thought he would shake my hand off and walk away. Instead, his eyes flashed hot and before I could blink, his hands were hard and rough against my hips, his fingers gripping the flesh there. Holding me in place. My heart was hammering in my chest.
Immediately, I regretted pushing him. I opened my mouth—intending to apologize—but he kissed me before I could say a word.
He kissed me hard.
It was completely different from the few kisses we’d shared before. Those had been tentative, careful, measured. He had been assertive, yes, and I had been incredibly turned on, but this was nothing like those kisses. This was reckless and hot and intense.
As Stefan thrust his tongue into my mouth, one hand slid up to fist my hair, holding me in place. It hurt just enough to send a tingling shock from my head down to my toes. I opened my mouth wider and he fucked my mouth with his tongue, making me so wet I could feel it.
He was greedy with his kiss, taking everything he wanted.
I loved it. I loved every moment of it.
I kissed him back, meeting him thrust for thrust as our tongues parried, his free hand grabbing the curves of my body with a hungry roughness. I could feel the hard outline of his cock, and the slide of silk against my aching nipples made me dizzy as I arched against his chest.
I wanted more.
Instead, Stefan released me so abruptly that I stumbled back.
“There,” he said, his chest heaving, his eyes angry. “You’ve been kissed. I hope you’re satisfied.”
Before I could respond, he turned and disappeared into the bedroom.
He may as well have slammed the door in my face.