𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 |𝟏𝟖+

44 || Dinner Party

Three.

Four.

I waited four hours before I decided to face the tyrant. He hadn't come for me, but he did call. I'd ignored him the first, second, and third time.

I was playing a dangerous game, with an even more dangerous man. But I relished in the thrill of it all. In the anger I was evoking.

And I could feel his anger.

It was quiet, brewing patiently, simmering beneath the surface. His men probably thought nothing of it with that stone cold facade of his. But I could feel it in the bones of the manor. Feel it with every step I took. As wood became expensive tile, and as that tile led me down into the training centres in the basement, where I'd been told he'd been last seen.

Yet I don't see it in his body or see him for that matter as I walk into the room.

It's deserted, dark, and still.

It feels completely empty.

Just how he likes it.

I don't turn on the lights, its dark, but there's enough light for me to see faint outlines of what's in front and around me. "You wanted to see me?"

No sense of movement, but a low voice does echo from somewhere around me. "Four hours and thirty six minutes ago."

I let myself smile because he won't be able to see it. "How romantic of you to count down the minutes."

He doesn't respond. I gather he's not impressed. "Consider it your punishment." I offer.

A beat of silence, my shoulders straighten while his all too familiar deep voice darkens with intrigue. "Punishment?" Excitement blossoms.

"Mhm." I step further into the room as cold air hits the skin at my nape, "For sitting next to another woman and publicly humiliating me."

He's quiet for a while, and when he speaks again, it's deliberate, while something around him snaps and smoothes. "And what about your punishment?"

I gather he's got something in his hands.

"For?" I turn to face the direction I hear him approach from.

I try to pinpoint what he's fiddling with simply by the sound, but it's long forgotten the minute I'm shoved from behind into what I can only assume is a nearby wall.

"For touching another man and attempting to make all those people doubt the fact that you're mine and only mine." His hot breath sits at my back, before the heat of his body follows.

I don't struggle as his chest pushes me further into the wall, I do, however, tip my head back, so that my lips brush the shadow of his chin. "I think killing him was enough, don't you?"

"It wasn't." He dips his head so that my lips aren't brushing his chin, but his lips, while a hand smoothes down my side and takes ahold of my wrist, pulling it behind my back. "I'm still unsatisfied."

I bite back my smile. "Are you gonna stand here and pout about it or are you gonna tell me why you wanted to see me?"

His other hand smoothes down my other side, and they only stop when his fingers wrap around my free wrist and pull that hand back behind me, "What if there was no reason and I just wanted to see you?" Low and gravely, his steady breath falls against my lips just before he pulls just out of touch.