Page 97 of The Scandal You Started
It made her belly feel…floaty. Satisfied, but it was deeper than satisfaction.
She was happy that he was happy. And that made it impossible to find his insistence on feeding her bothersome.
Sighing in petulant defeat, she snatched the toast from him and tore it in half. It didn’t tear perfectly down the middle; one piece was much bigger than the other. Of course, Dominic swiped the smaller triangle from her fingers before she could offer him the bigger one.
“Dominic,” she grumbled. “That’s not half.”
“It’s very nearly half,” he said playfully and shoved the toast into his mouth.
It very well wasn’t, and she glared harder. But her traitorous mouth edged up. “You’re not doing this again.”
“Doing what?”
“This. Trying to feed me.”
He set his elbows on the table, leaning towards her. “I will feed you. I shall always feed you. With my own hands and from my own plate. That is my privilege as your husband, and you will not deny me, little witch.”
Her jaw stuttered mid-chew as her heart convulsed. But then she recalled a similar joke he’d made in the supermarket, and she rolled her eyes. “You’re not my husband.”
“But I will be.”
The unreadable depth of his stare made her movements slow to stillness.
What the actual fuck is he on about?
“That reminds me.” Dominic sat up straighter. “Where is it possible to purchase a special license? Is it still the city hall?”
Rayna swallowed the chewed lump of toast in her mouth with a cautious pinch between her brows. “A special licence for what?”
His brows dipped as if he didn’t understand her confusion. “Our marriage, Rayna.”
Silence.
A numbing ring echoed within the chamber where her thoughts usually were, but her brain was struggling to compute his words into a code she could process.
Until an imaginary hand slapped the “Enter” button, and abruptly all the mystifying zeros and ones became blaring, thrashing emotions.
Her eyes blew wide as realisation screamed in her ears nearly bursting her drums. Horror clamped around one lung, while rejection squeezed the other, and she choked on stutters and breathy sounds that might have been words if her tongue had cooperated.
Suddenly, Dominic seemed too big and too close, the space between them too small. The remaining toast splatted jam-side down on her plate as Rayna shoved herself back from the table. The wooden legs of her chair squeaked loudly against the floor.
“Excuse me?” she exclaimed. “Our what?”
Dominic’s hand hovered over the table as he narrowed his eyes, searching her face. Then he lowered them to the table, his stare clouding with seriousness.
“We are to marry,” he said firmly, like it was an indisputable fact. “As soon as possible.”
Is he joking?He was joking, wasn’t he? But none of the lines forming his determined expression twitched out of place to suggest he was pulling her leg. And that kicked her panic up a notch.
Therun, run, runhammering of her pulse sent her shooting up from her seat. “No, the fuck we are not.”
“Yes, we—Rayna!”
Shaking her head, she stormed away from the table. His fingers just brushed her wrist, but she moved too quickly for him to catch her. She rounded the breakfast bar and swerved to face him from the middle of the kitchen.
He was standing at the table, his shoulders puffed out and hands in fists.
“Are you okay in the head?” she said. “We arenotgetting married, Dominic.”
