The work dinner had been wonderful.
That was the problem.
Aurora had spent the entire evening beside Damian in a room full of powerful people and expensive suits and the kind of conversations that sounded important even when they were not, and she had held her own.
She had smiled at the right times and spoken intelligently when spoken to and laughed genuinely at things that were actually funny and not at things that were not.
And Damian had watched her the entire night.
Not obviously.
Not in a way that anyone else would have picked up on.
But she felt it every time.
The slight turn of his head in her direction.
The way his hand found the small of her back again whenever someone new approached them.
The way he steered her gently away from a man who had held her hand a little too long during an introduction, so smoothly that nobody noticed except Aurora.
She noticed everything.
On the drive home he was quiet but it was a good quiet.
A settled quiet.
The kind that follows an evening that went better than expected.
She sat beside him and watched the city lights move past the window and felt warm all the way through.
That warmth was still with her the next morning.
And the morning after that.
By the third day it had turned into something else.
Something restless.
Something that sat under her skin and made her want more than quiet dinners and hands at the small of her back and almost conversations that stopped just before the important part.
She wanted him to stop being careful.
She knew it was unfair.
She had told him one step at a time and she had meant it and he was trying, genuinely trying, in the steady deliberate way he tried everything.
But knowing something was unfair had never stopped a feeling from existing and this feeling was very loud on a Saturday night when Damian told her he had paperwork and disappeared into his study after dinner.
She sat alone in the sitting room for an hour.
Then she made a decision that she would later admit was not her most sensible one.
She called her friend Jade.
Jade was the kind of friend who answered the phone already laughing and had a plan within four minutes and never once asked whether the plan was a good idea because the question genuinely did not occur to her.
Within the hour she had arrived at the mansion gates in a car with two other friends and an address for a new club in the city that she described as absolutely the place to be tonight.
Aurora changed into a short black dress and left a note on the kitchen counter that said gone out with friends and did not knock on the study door.
She should have knocked on the study door.
The club was loud and bright and packed with people and Jade was immediately in her element, pulling Aurora through the crowd toward the bar with the confidence of someone who owned the place.
They got drinks and found a space near the edge of the dance floor and Aurora let the music and the noise fill up all the restless spaces inside her that the quiet mansion had not been able to reach.
For a while it worked.
She danced with Jade and laughed at things she would not remember later and felt young in the easy uncomplicated way that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with not thinking for a few hours.
Then a man appeared beside her.
He was tall and well dressed and he smiled at her with the particular confidence of someone who had never once been told no and was not anticipating it now.
He leaned close to be heard over the music.
“Can I get you a drink,” he said.
Aurora opened her mouth to say no thank you. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
She did not get the chance.
The temperature beside her dropped by several degrees.
She felt it before she saw it.
The shift in the air.
The sudden stillness in the man in front of her as his eyes moved to somewhere just over her left shoulder and his confident smile flickered.
Aurora turned around.
Damian was standing behind her.
He was still in his work shirt from earlier, sleeves rolled up, collar open, and he looked absolutely furious in the quiet controlled way that was somehow worse than shouting.
His eyes moved from the man beside Aurora to Aurora herself and the expression in them made her stomach drop.
Not because she was afraid of him.
Because she recognized what was underneath the fury.
It was fear.
The kind that looks like anger because anger is easier to wear in public.
The man beside her made a brief and intelligent decision to be somewhere else entirely and disappeared into the crowd without another word.
Damian looked at her.
“We are leaving,” he said.
His voice was completely level.
That was the most dangerous sign.
Aurora lifted her chin.
“I am not ready to leave.”
“Aurora.”
“I left a note. I am with friends. I am a grown woman at a perfectly normal club and I have done nothing wrong.”
Everything she said was true and accurate and reasonable.
He stepped closer.
“We are leaving,” he said again.
Quietly.
Finally.
Like a door closing.
She held his gaze for three full seconds.
Then she said goodbye to Jade and followed him out.
The cold air outside hit her immediately after the heat of the club.
Damian walked ahead to where the car was parked and she followed and neither of them spoke until they were both inside with the doors closed and the noise of the street muffled around them.
Then Aurora turned to face him.
“You cannot do that,” she said.
“I just did.”
“Damian. You cannot storm into places and drag me out because you feel like it. I am not yours to command.”
The words landed in the car and sat there.
He was gripping the steering wheel with both hands and staring straight ahead and the muscle in his jaw was working in the way it did when he was fighting himself hard. Read the latest chapters at novelping.com.
“That man,” he started.
“Was a stranger who asked if he could get me a drink,” she said.
“That is all.”
Silence.
“I do not like it,” he said finally.
Low and honest and stripped of the careful management he usually kept in place.
“I know you do not,” she said.
Her voice was gentler now.
“But you cannot have it both ways Damian. You cannot keep me at a distance and then lose your mind when someone else comes close.”
He turned to look at her.
She looked back.
The street outside was quiet.
Somewhere above them a light was flickering.
“You went there because of me,” he said.
It was not a question.
She did not answer.
Which was its own answer.
He exhaled slowly.
Looked at the wheel.
Looked back at her.
“I am trying,” he said quietly.
“I need you to know that. I am trying.”
Something in her chest softened completely.
“I know,” she said.
“So am I.”
He started the car.
Neither of them spoke on the way home but it was not an angry silence anymore.
It was the silence of two people who had just said something true and were sitting with the weight of it.
Aurora watched the city lights again from the passenger window.
His hand left the gearstick at some point and found hers in the dark.
He did not let go until they reached home.
Damian may be trying to stay in control, but jealousy has a way of exposing feelings people are not ready to admit.
Aurora wanted honesty.
Damian wanted patience.
Tonight, they were both forced to face a truth neither of them could ignore.
So tell me, readers…
Did Damian overreact when he showed up at the club, or would you have done the same in his position?
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