Free These Damn Suspicions by Amy Valenti Page B

territorial part of me wanted to throw myself at Elena and scratch her eyes out. The other one was worse, though. He really was giving her the same focus and affection he’d usually save for me, holding her head with both hands as he encouraged her to look into his eyes.
    I forced myself to look away, reading the simply worded paragraphs that accompanied the pictures instead. Apparently the photographs had been taken outside a restaurant the cast had gone to for dinner a couple of days ago. He’d come home pretty late that night.
    Remembering how Callum had pressed me up against a wall on the way back to his car after I’d taken him to my brother-in-law’s restaurant in New York, I suppressed an outraged cry and flipped the magazine shut. Callum’s picture on the cover just tore my heart a little more, so I turned the gossip rag facedown. Perfume ad—at least Elena Sanders wasn’t the one endorsing it.
    I grabbed a bar of chocolate from the cupboard, finished fixing my coffee, and went upstairs, not wanting to be too close to Callum when he came home. I dropped the magazine on the hall table on the way past, face up. He’d see it when he came in.
     
    * * * *
     
    I’d managed to catch a couple of hours of miserable sleep in the guest bedroom, but I was awake when Callum came home. It was passive aggressive of me to wait for him to come to me, I knew that—but I didn’t know what to say. I’d never had anyone cheat on me before, and I’d been too busy trying to block out my imagination to really come up with a way to start the conversation.
    The sound of him placing his keys on the table like usual made me flinch. Suddenly, the last thing I wanted was to talk to him. I should have gone to Alex’s place or something. Too late now.
    “Little miss?” he called up the stairs, after a few torturous seconds of silence.
    I ground my teeth, wishing I could cry or scream or something. But my emotions were a fiery ball burning in my stomach, and I couldn’t move or speak.
    His footsteps on the stairs made my heart stutter. I had no choice but to face him now.
    Once he was upstairs, it took him less than a minute to find me. The closed door was probably a pretty good indication of my mindset, but he didn’t knock before opening it. Typical Dom.
    “There you are.” He didn’t ask if I was awake. No one sleeping could have been as tense as I was.
    He sat down on the edge of the mattress.
    “Go away, Callum. I don’t want to talk to you yet.”
    “Too bad. We need to talk about this.” His words were quiet, almost gentle. What did that mean?
    I sat up and defensively hugged my knees. Even though we’d been together a year now, I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. “Explain yourself, then.”
    “Elena has some…anxiety issues. She was on the verge of a panic attack when we came out of the restaurant. I had to calm her down.”
    “With your lips? With your hands?” With your cock? I left it unspoken.
    “It was nothing like that, Little Miss Badass,” he said sharply.
    Now I could look at him. Molten rage thawed my frozen body. He’d come up with that pet name the first day we’d met, but though he used it when I opposed him, it was always borderline affectionate and teasing. That was not appropriate today. “Call me that again, and I’ll make you eat that damn magazine.”
    He nodded. “Sorry. Habit.”
    I didn’t accept the apology, but I didn’t reject it either. He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I thought you trusted me more than this, Kat.”
    “You’re giving her your Dom look! The one you give me! This isn’t some friendly hug that they’re interpreting wrong. It’s… intimate .”
    “It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t mean it that way. She was panicking and I did the first thing I could think of to help her.”
    Because he’s so used to talking me down from stupid panic attacks. If I believed his explanation, that just left me with a new problem. I was a high maintenance