Page 58 of The Devil's Torment

Victoria has shown me I can feel. Maybe not deeply, but it’s more than I ever thought possible.

Once I took a breath, I called her assigned bodyguard, and he told me where they were. I’d looked up the building and the company who owned it but was still none the wiser why Victoria would have gone there.

The question running around my mind, though, is why she didn’t tell me she had an appointment, who it was with, and what it was for. Ironic, I know, because I didn’t tell her where I was going, but logic isn’t in charge. Possession is.

She’s my fucking wife. I demand to know who she’s spending her time with.

At a quarter to seven, a car pulls up at the front of the house, and Victoria gets out. She doesn’t look up at the top floor, where my burning gaze tracks her inside until she disappears from view. It’s a further five minutes before the door to our apartment opens and she enters. I promised myself I’d stay calm when I saw her. The second my eyes land on hers, I break that promise.

“Where the fucking hell have you been?”

There’s a slight stiffening to her shoulders, but that’s the only reaction she gives—until she shuts the door. Then she lets me have it.

“Don’t turn this around on me. You’re the one who bailed, Nicholas.” She tosses a distressed leather folder on the table to her right. “I heard you disappeared off somewhere with Christian. It’s fine. You chose who you’d rather spend time with, and it wasn’t me. But if you thought I’d sit around here, painting my fucking nails while you were galivanting off to God knows where, you are in for a bitter dose of reality.” Laying her handbag on top of the folder, she shrugs out of a smart suit jacket and casts it at a nearby chair.

“You’re my wife. You owe me an explanation.”

She snorts, folding her arms across her chest. Her tits lift with the action, and I can’t help dropping my eyes and drinking in the sight of her erect nipples through the white blouse.

“Eyes up here.” She waits for me to slowly drag my gaze north. “You’re my husband.Youowemean explanation.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath. We’re getting nowhere fast. This is the Victoria I’ve always known; the combative one, the argumentative one, the fucking stubborn one.

The perfect one.

My brain is not in charge when I close the space between us, grab her face, and smash my lips to hers. This is how we communicate best. Talking can come later. I’m starved for her. It doesn’t matter how many times I taste her lips, breathe in the floral scent of her skin, or feel her perfect body beneath my hands. It’s not enough.

It’s never fucking enough.

Victoria’s teeth sinking into my lip snaps my head back. She bit me. She fucking bit me. I dab a finger to my bottom lip, and it comes away red.

“Jesus Christ, Victoria. What the fuck?”

“You won’t find the answer to our problems by sticking your tongue down my throat. Tell me where you went and why you were late. Then I’ll tell you where I went and what I was doing, and we can move on from there.”

I snag a tissue from a box on the coffee table and dab it to my lip. “You’re lucky you’re not over my knee for this.”

She bows her head, and her shoulders begin to vibrate. At first, I think she’s crying, but she’s not. She’s fucking laughing.

“What’s amused you?”

“You have.” She flops onto the couch and kicks off her shoes. “You’re ten years older than me. You’re supposed to be the mature one, yet here I am, negotiating peace.”

“It’s really mature to fucking bite me.”

“Want me to lick it better?” She grins, and my anger vanishes faster than darkness at the flick of a light switch.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Come here, then.” She pats the space beside her, and I can’t sit down fast enough.

Gently cupping my chin, she turns me to face her. Leaning in, her tongue sweeps over my lip, mopping up the blood she caused. The groan that rumbles through my chest echoes in my ears. It’s almost impossible not to press her into the couch, tear the clothes from her body, and drive myself home.

Because that’s what she’s becoming to me: home.

I don’t, though. I let her explore my face with her fingertips and brush her thumb along my bottom lip.

“I’m waiting.”

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