She turns narrowed eyes on me, and that’s when she tosses a manila folder I hadn’t noticed before into my lap. “Not as good as the fucking whore you spent all night with at the ball the other night. My father dropped these off for you this morning.”
I swallow thickly, reaching into the folder and pulling out a stack of eight-by-ten black-and-white prints, still images taken from surveillance cameras at the masquerade with timestamps in each bottom left-hand corner. Most of them are of Ferro and his guards surrounding him, closeups of the henchman who was onto me in the crowd, and one of Ferro being escorted out the exit.
But a couple of them are of me and Rosalie on the dancefloor, and the position from the angle of the camera is precarious. It looks like I’m holding her in an intimate embrace, when in all actuality, I was pulling her into a position where I could see around her when Ferro was walking in the door with his men. She was a tall, lithe woman, and she’d been wearing heels with her ballgown, so it made her too tall for me to look over her head like I could’ve if it were my petite piccolina I’d been dancing with.
Instead, I wrapped my arm around her lower back and tugged her toward my left side so I could see past her shoulder. Yet the photo looks damn near like I’m grinding her against my thigh. Rosalie’s expression isn’t helping anything either. Where she’d actually been gasping in surprise at my sudden movement, her face is one of almost ecstasy, as if she’s in the throes of passion, looking like a fucking porn star in this dramatic and completely deceiving screenshot.
My eyes meet Arabella’s, which are burning hotter than my fucking car was not twenty minutes ago. “This isn’t what it looks like,” I tell her, hearing the cliché and wanting to roll my eyes at my damn self.
“Really? Because what that looks like is you dancing with some woman at the ball, when you swore to me you wouldn’t even be around any females the entire night! What did she say when she saw my lipstick all over your cock, Doctor?” she asks, making the title sound like a dirty word.
And said cock twitches behind my zipper at her tone, her haughtiness, her jealousy and possessiveness. She’s fucking sexy in her temper tantrum, the hotheaded Italian inside her DNA coming out to play for the first time, and I’ve never been more turned on. In my goddamn existence.
“Did you have to talk her into still giving it up, or was she some sort of sick bitch who got off on fucking another woman’s man?” she continues, and I sit calmly, still watching her every nuance, every twitch of her brows, every snarl of her perfect lips, every tremble of her chin she attempts to hide. She glances toward the front of the car then, and I follow her look, seeing Maxwell meeting our eyes in the rearview mirror before turning back to the road.
“Are you finished?” I ask, my voice gravelly, as if my throat has been scoured with sandpaper. God, I want to fuck her. Right here in the car. Company be damned.
She won’t meet my eyes and crosses her arms over her chest, but not like a petulant child. It’s more like she’s trying to protect herself. From me. And I can’t stand for that.
“Arabella.” My tone brooks no room for argument. Her eyes meet mine automatically, as if against her will. Her body responds to my commands, even when her mind tells it not to. “Do you truly believe that I would allow any woman to touch me after what we shared just two hours before these photos were taken? Do you really think this… person comes close to making me feel the way you do?” I ask, imploring her with my stare.
Her chin wobbles, but she sucks in a breath through her nose to steady her emotions. “It’s right there. Literally in black and white. You did allow a woman to touch you. You allowed some whore to touch what belongs to me.”
Again, her possessiveness over me is a force to be reckoned with. Never have I felt more desired, wanted—fuck, loved. No one has ever laid claim on me this way before. No one has ever had the audacity to even try. But my Bella… fuck, my Bella is glorious in her fiery jealousy. And it’s then I realize she feels for me exactly what I feel for her.
Not giving a single fuck that we are mere inches from Maxwell and that he can see us in the mirror, I reach across the space between Arabella and me with the speed and power of a rattlesnake, my hand clamping around the back of her neck and snatching her to me. I move her with such ease that she doesn’t even have time to gasp until my lips are already slamming down on hers with a ferocity I know must hurt her, but I also know my girl loves a little pain with her pleasure.