Page 159 of Sins of Arrogance

It’s my kind of sexy.

It’s also com­fort­able.

I wore it tonight as a re­minder of why I’m back in my old bed­room. Mick missed our an­niver­sary be­cause mob busi­ness came first.

Again.

Just like it did this morn­ing with Dier­dre.

My hus­band’s thumb slides over my turgid peak and I give an in­vol­un­tary shud­der of de­light. That only makes me mad.

“What do you think you’re do­ing? We’re not hav­ing sex, Mick.” The pulse of want in my core says, wanna bet? But I ig­nore it. “We’re get­ting a di­vorce.”

“Wrong on both counts.” Mick’s hand slides down my side and along my hip to curve pos­ses­sively over my back­side.

“Stop it,” I say as much to him as my own body bent on be­tray­ing my con­vic­tion to stay aloof. “You’re not go­ing to force me.”

Ours may not be the love of the cen­tury, but one thing I know with ab­so­lute cer­tainty: Mick will never harm me phys­i­cally.

Not in any way, but es­pe­cially not that way.

Re­gard­less of my aber­rant thoughts of a mo­ment ago.

“To have sex? No.” His hand­some fea­tures don’t reg­is­ter any emo­tion, but there’s no mis­tak­ing the re­pug­nance in his voice at the thought.

“You need to take the cuffs—”

“To leave with me?” He asks, in­ter­rupt­ing my de­mand. “Yes.”

Wait. What? Is he say­ing what I think he is? He is go­ing to force me to leave with him? “You’re tak­ing me back to our apart­ment?”

Bind­ing my wrists and an­kles feels pretty elab­o­rate just to get me to an­other wing of the man­sion.

“No.”

Well, that was help­ful. Not. “Then where?”

“Some­where we can talk things out.”

Talk things out? “Since when do you want to talk things out?”

“Since you asked your fa­ther for per­mis­sion to di­vorce me,” he says like it should be ob­vi­ous.

It’s not. Not even a lit­tle. “But you don’t care if we get di­vorced. It won’t stop you in­her­it­ing con­trol of the Shaugh­nessy mob when Bro­gan re­tires.”

“Wrong.” He doesn’t say again but I hear it in the si­lence be­tween us.

“I don’t know where you think you’re tak­ing me, but we’re past hash­ing things out to fix our mar­riage.” It hurts to say the words.

But his re­ac­tion to my al­ter­ca­tion with Dier­dre to­day showed me just how lit­tle I mat­ter to Mick.

“I don’t agree.”

“And be­cause you don’t agree, you’re go­ing to kid­nap me?” I ask sar­cas­ti­cally.

“Aye.” No hu­mor there. Just pure Ne­an­derthal mob un­der­boss in­tent.

With a long­ing look at my breasts, he stands up, leav­ing me sit­ting against the pil­lows on the bed, my ex­trem­i­ties still bound.