Page 27 of Sins of Arrogance

“I’m not go­ing any­where,” he mur­murs.

But he doesn’t mean what I want him to. He’ll stay phys­i­cally, but this soft­ened ver­sion of him will dis­ap­pear soon enough.

He rolls onto his side and pulls me with him, keep­ing me wrapped in his arms, one hand curv­ing around my hip pos­ses­sively. His other hand cra­dles the back of my head like he’s afraid I’ll dis­ap­pear if he lets go.

His cock is still in­side me, soft­en­ing but not fully gone. Like he’s an­chor­ing him­self in­side my body.

Maybe he is.

I tuck my face against his throat and breathe him in. Salt and soap and sin.

“I like this,” I say be­fore I can stop my­self. “When you hold me af­ter.”

Mick doesn’t re­spond. His fin­gers just tighten on my waist. That’s an­swer enough.

I shouldn’t push. I never push. Not any­more.

But some­thing about what we just did, how pri­mal it was…it makes me reck­less. Makes me want.

“You’re dif­fer­ent when we’re like this.”

“Dif­fer­ent how?”

I press my lips to his chest, right over his heart. “You touch me like you feel some­thing.”

He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move.

I don’t need him to say he loves me. I gave up hop­ing for that a long time ago. But right now, in this mo­ment, I want some­thing. Any­thing.

He brushes a kiss to my tem­ple. “I feel ev­ery­thing with you.”

And some­how, that hurts more than if he’d said noth­ing at all.

Be­cause it’s a noth­ing an­swer. We both know he doesn’t feel ev­ery­thing with me. And his words im­ply, maybe he doesn’t ac­tu­ally feel any­thing.

Ex­cept sex­ual need.

But is sex a strong enough glue to hold two peo­ple to­gether with­out love?

What hap­pens if he finds some­one else he wants like this? An im­age of Dier­dre flashes in my mind’s eye but I force it away.

He had Dier­dre, ac­cord­ing to her. And he still chose to marry me.

For am­bi­tion’s sake, but he still chose me over her when he agreed to the mar­riage con­tract. And again when he left Ire­land to fol­low through on it.

I let my eyes slide closed and my body re­lax on that thought.

MICK

The ten­sion leaves Kara’s body and sec­onds later, she’s asleep in my arms.

Her breath­ing evens out, and that soft, sated ex­pres­sion re­places the fire that burned so fiercely in her hazel gaze while I was in­side her.

My wife looks peace­ful.

So feckin’ trust­ing.

She shouldn’t.