The idea of spending the duration of our honeymoon locked up in big, empty hotel suites, lavish as they were, was completely unacceptable. But so far I’d let Stefan call all the shots, mostly capitulating to all his demands. Maybe it was time to take a stand.
Instead of going out and looking for revenge somewhere else (orwithsomeone else). I did exactly the opposite of what he had told me to do in his text. I waited up for hours. Even though the last thing I wanted to do was eat, I picked through our cold dinner, ate some, and left the rest. I refused to let the hotel staff come and clean it up. I stayed right there on the couch in my fancy dress, my hair and makeup still done, refusing to move a muscle until he returned.
He was going to know exactly how I felt about this situation, and he was going to know tonight.
I turned on the TV for background noise and dug deep into Hungarian on my e-reader. Technically, it was the following morning when he finally showed up, but I was still furious as hell when he came into the suite after three am.
He was wearing the same suit he’d been wearing that morning and it looked as annoyingly pristine as it had when he left. In fact, he still looked way too good for someone who had been out all night.
I hadn’t looked in a mirror, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if my hair was limp against my shoulders and my eyeliner had bled by the time he sauntered into the hotel room.
I tossed aside my reading, stood up, and lifted my chin.
“Did you have a good time?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
“What are you doing up?” he asked. “I told you not to wait up.”
He walked right past me, not even sparing me, or my gorgeous dress and sexy heels, a second glance. Somehow, that made me even more furious. I might have been sitting around for the past several hours, my dress might have been wrinkled, my hair might have gone flat, but I still looked pretty fucking good and I’d put in all that effort solely for his benefit.
“We need to talk,” I told him, following him into the bedroom.
“I’m tired,” he said, shrugging off his coat. “It can wait.”
I didn’t want to stare, but I couldn’t help it. Even in just his starched white button up, he was staggeringly attractive. His shoulders broad, his hips narrow, his body perfectly muscled. I forced my eyes away, hating that my attraction to him was waylaying my anger.
“It can’t wait,” I said, trying to focus as he began unbuttoning his shirt. “There are things we need to discuss.”
“Not now,” he said, turning his back to me. “I said I’m tired.”
“Well, I’mnot,” I seethed, raising my voice.
Because I wasn’t tired at all. I was amped up. Exhilarated. Ready for a fight.
“I’ve been waiting over seven hours for you to come home,” I told him, my voice turning icy. “We had dinner plans.”
“Youhad dinner plans,” Stefan corrected me. “And I told you to go ahead without me.”
“You agreed to those plans before you stepped out on me,” I said. “And this is ourhoneymoon.”
He turned to face me, revealing an expanse of his toned, perfect torso. I didn’t want to, but I stared. His chest was just…so unbearably sexy. All that smooth skin, taut over pecs and abs so tight I could have bounced quarters off of them. I wanted to burn a trail of kisses down his chest, follow the trail of dark hair from just below his belly button to where it disappeared into the front his pants.
My attraction to him—throbbing palpably between my legs and burning me from the inside—just fueled my anger even further. I was furious that he could make me this hot even when I was so pissed off. I wanted him so bad that my body nearly vibrated from the intensity of it all.
“You know I have a lot going on right now,” Stefan told me. “I wasworking.”
We’d had this conversation before, but I wasn’t going to let it end the same way.
“I understand that,” I shot back, forcing myself to speak as calmly and rationally as possible, just like my father had taught me to do in an argument. “But you having a job to do isn’t the point. It’s not even that you’re a workaholic—fine, I get that. It’s that time and time again you’ve left me sitting around completely alone, with no consideration whatsoever, and that even if this marriagewasarranged, I was led to believe—youled me to believe—that we’d at least treat each other with basic human decency.”
I took a deep breath, searching his eyes. Had I gotten through to him?
“It sounds like you need to lower your expectations, then,” he finally sneered. “It’s not my fault your feelings got hurt because I have other things in my life that are more important than you.”
I stepped back, his words like a slap. Why did he have to be so mean?
“I know my place,” I told him, not bothering to keep the edge out of my voice any longer. “I know I’m not a priority to you. I also know that I deserve better than this.”
“You deserve better than this?” Stefan waved his hand, gesturing at our beautiful room.
