Page 105 of Sins of Arrogance

“In­ter­est­ing re­sponse,” the other mob­ster says, his Irish brogue giv­ing a lilt to his voice.

Mick agrees. “Very. There are more syn­di­cates than the Five Fam­i­lies,” he points out.

“Like you all?” I ask.

“Ex­actly like us. Why work for that ass­hole Besnik, when you could be part of some­thing big­ger? A syn­di­cate that un­der­stands loy­alty and trains its sol­diers so there are no weak links.”

“You sound like my Army re­cruiter.” And damned if I don’t have that same feel­ing of des­tiny as I did the day I met the Staff Sear­gent.

Chap­ter 27: Sated, Then Shat­tered

KARA

I can’t help it that I keep smil­ing af­ter find­ing out that Mick stood Dier­dre up for lunch.

And I turn that smile on my hus­band when he comes into the bed­room where I’m get­ting ready for din­ner.

There are stress lines around his usu­ally stoic eyes.

Rather than put my ear­rings on, I drop them on the van­ity and cross the room to my hus­band.

Lay­ing my hand against the hard planes of his chest, I look up at him. “Ev­ery­thing al­right?”

Rather than an­swer, he pulls me into a breath steal­ing kiss.

I’m se­ri­ously con­sid­er­ing ask­ing Hope to keep Fitz and skip­ping din­ner when Mick pulls away.

“Bet­ter now.” He gives me one of his gen­uine smiles.

My heart stut­ters in my chest. “I’m sorry you had a hard day.”

“Not too hard. I might have found a new re­cruit.” His grin turns feral.

Why does his mob­ster side turn me on ev­ery bit as much as his pas­sion­ate one?

I don’t bother ask­ing for de­tails I know I won’t get. In­stead, I find my­self ask­ing, “Want to skip din­ner?”

Mick jerks in sur­prise. “You know we can’t do that.”

“No, I don’t know that.” I’m star­tled too, by my will­ing­ness to break the rules, but I want to break them this once.

A lot.

“Don’t tease me, wife,” he growls, still not tak­ing me se­ri­ously.

Re­mem­ber­ing what Róise said about Mick earn­ing the right to stand be­side me, I give him the chance to. “I’m not teas­ing. We’re not chil­dren. We don’t have to go to fam­ily din­ner if we have more im­por­tant things to do.”

Like make love.

Mick’s eyes nar­row. “Speak­ing of chil­dren, what about Fitz?”

“He’s with Enoch and Hope.”

“You trust her to watch him now?” Mick pulls his tac­ti­cal shirt off over his head.

My mouth goes dry like it al­ways does at the sight of his tat­too cov­ered mus­cles. Right now, I just want to lick ev­ery sin­gle black line inked into his skin.

“Yes.” Mostly. “He has his body­guards watch­ing him.”