Page 158 of Sins of Arrogance

Mick curses. “Feckin’ hell, Kara. You are go­ing to hurt your­self.”

“Bet­ter than let­ting you hurt me!” I try to put dis­tance be­tween us, but it’s nearly im­pos­si­ble when I have to move like an inch-worm.

Mick swoops down and picks me up again, clamp­ing my arms against my body. “You’re go­ing to have bruises to­mor­row. Don’t do that again.”

“Bruises are bet­ter than dead.”

The sound that comes out of his throat is pure an­i­mal­is­tic ag­gres­sion.

And my stupid body doesn’t go into fight or flight mode. It goes into let’s-get-ready-for-sex mode. My vagi­nal walls con­tract and the junc­ture of my thighs gets slick with arousal.

“You are not dy­ing!” His voice doesn’t sound ro­botic now. It’s rough with fury. “And you are not get­ting a di­vorce.”

“That’s not your de­ci­sion to make.” I try to strug­gle.

His hold only clamps tighter. “Calm down. You know I won’t hurt you, but you are feckin’ go­ing to hurt your­self if you keep this up.”

“You al­ready have.”

He sighs. “Not like that. It is in­evitable that a man like me would cause emo­tional pain for a woman with such a ten­der heart.”

“What are you talk­ing about?” A man like him? A mob­ster?

Maybe he’s right. But then again, maybe he’s not. Róise’s mafioso doesn’t hurt her like Mick hurts me.

But he loves her.

Even though their en­gage­ment started out the same way as Mick’s and mine, there is no ques­tion that Miceli loves my cousin. Or that she loves him.

I’m happy for her, but their re­la­tion­ship has put mar­riage into per­spec­tive for me.

Mick doesn’t love me and love on only one side only leads to pain.

“I have kept my mon­ster locked in­side, so you would not be afraid of me.”

It takes me a sec­ond to parse what he’s say­ing. But when I do, it doesn’t make sense. What mon­ster?

He sets me down on the bed again and turns on the light.

He’s wear­ing snug fit­ting cargo pants, a black tac­ti­cal t-shirt and boots.

He’s armed. Overtly. A shoul­der hol­ster with a semi­au­to­matic and an­other hol­ster at the small of his back. I’m sure he’s wear­ing his usual knives too.

I swal­low, press­ing my thighs to­gether.

The fact he’s pre­pared for bat­tle should not send touch-me-now sig­nals to my trai­tor­ous body.

Mick set­tles be­side me and traces the lace edg­ing on the neck­line of my night­gown. “I like this.”

My nip­ples go tight and hard from that sin­gle touch. It’s all I can do not to scream my frus­tra­tion.

How can such a small con­nec­tion have such a big ef­fect on me? But it’s al­ways been this way.

Di­vorce isn’t go­ing to change that.

“I got it to wear on our an­niver­sary,” I say puni­tively.

It’s not sheer, or overtly sen­sual, but the slip style stretchy night­gown that barely reaches midthigh ad­heres to my plus size curves. The spaghetti straps and sweet­heart neck­line re­veal a lot of skin.