‘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’salreadyout 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.’
