And Then It Rained (Sequel to Rain Again; Stand Alone Book) (Completed)

Chapter Twenty-eight: First Step of Seperation

He took her in for a kiss. And her senses came to a brightened blankness—a luminous pause. 

A gasp escaped her mouth right away, and he gulped away briskly.

 Her breaths became his.

Her skin sizzled under his lips' firm touches. 

And then, her world swayed at the gentle ministration of his tongue befalling with growing intensity on her lips. She was too taken aback to react at first, but then she got possessed by something weird that made her weirdly kiss him back. A swipe of her lips on his became a couple of swaps of their tongues. For a fact, the heat inside the car had increased beyond imagination. The back of her neck warmed while goosebumps erupted on her arms—it was such a weird combination.

It was about that moment that she noticed it—the snaps, the bright flashes from the sidewalk next to their car.

Victor moved his face back from her in a way that it took a couple of seconds more for their moist and joined lips to detach.

Victoria's eyelids fluttered open to find his dizzy gaze on her first and then move toward her side of the window.

She turned around. 

A paparazzi.

So, that was the reason for his kiss—their first kiss. 

What first kiss! Bullshit! Her insides flared.

"Why?" she asked even though she knew, wiping her mouth and looking away.

Victor was quiet for a second before saying, not meeting her eyes, "I'm playing my part of the game in the hope that it will keep your father calm. One of the bodyguards I appointed for my mother and sister was injured yesterday by a mask-wearing attacker."

Victoria stilled and then closed her eyes. She rubbed her head, feeling a headache coming. Then she lowered her hand, noticing that her fingers were trembling a bit. The kiss had indeed caught her off-guard. But the humiliation, oh! She had kissed him back! 

She blinked to clear the moistness in her eyes and said, "For a fact, I believe that attack had something to do with our last family dinner. He is most probably more weary about you standing up for me than the media questioning our union. Our marriage was supposed to be a punishment for me." 

And getting punished, she was. 

She got out of the car first before Victor. What was he expecting? She was not going to continue discussion sessions with him while the paparazzi kept clicking away their photos in abandon.

They got up to the building in a hurry and in silence. 

Victor asked her a couple of random things, which annoyed her quite a bit. She replied with as few words as possible to get done with talking altogether, as she wanted nothing more than to get into bed quietly and try to forget the bites of humiliation that derived from that all-melting kiss.

That night, after coming out of the shower, she saw that Victor had cooked as usual. But she excused herself to sleep, and perhaps her stoic face made him not indignantly demand that she eat like usual as she straightaway went to bed and got inside the safety of the covers.

He was hurting her.

And, for some weird—weird reason, it hurt to know she had started going down the steps to get away from it.

Minutes later, a resounding thud came from the living area where Victor slept on the sofa. 

Despite jumping at the noise, Victoria didn't move from her bed to see what it was. She was too drained out—mentally and physically to check out if an earthquake had hit over there. She also didn't want to face Victor, no matter what, at the moment.