Page 51 of Sins of Arrogance

“N-uh…no.” Con­vinc­ing. Not.

“Af­ter tonight, there won’t be any ques­tion,” he prom­ises darkly.

“But we can’t…you know.”

“I can­not pen­e­trate your beau­ti­ful body with my bod, nah. But I will make you mine tonight, Kara.”

I suck in a breath. Choke on it and then start cough­ing.

Amuse­ment flares briefly in his gaze again, but then dis­ap­pears quickly. “There are many things we can do that will give you plea­sure that do not re­quire in­ter­course.”

“Oh, uh…sure.” My face is so hot, I feel sun­burnt.

Sud­denly the cham­pagne looks more like a life­line than ro­mance. Fi­nally able to move again, now that I have a des­ti­na­tion in sight that is not the bed­room, I head to­ward the glacette.

Mick catches my arm and stops me. “Nah.”

I blink up at him. “No what?”

“No cham­pagne.”

“If I’m old enough to get mar­ried, I’m old enough to drink a glass of cham­pagne to toast that mar­riage.” Or a bot­tle.

Not that any­one else seems to agree with me. My glass at the re­cep­tion had been filled with sparkling white grape juice. Tasty, but not ex­actly a for­ti­fier for the night to come.

Mick tugs me to­ward the stairs. “You are not get­ting leg­less on our wed­ding night.”

“I don’t want to get drunk.” Lie. “But a small glass to toast our…”

Union. Mary, James and Joseph, I can’t say that word. Or any other word right now.

Be­cause Mick’s fin­ger is pressed against my lips, shush­ing me. “I didn’t drink at the re­cep­tion ei­ther.”

Is that sup­posed to make me feel bet­ter? Maybe if he was a lit­tle tipsy, he’d fall asleep with­out do­ing his mar­i­tal duty.

Se­ri­ously, Bro­gan called it that just the day be­fore yes­ter­day. He wanted to make sure I re­mem­bered that though I could be in­ti­mate with my hus­band, we could not fully con­sum­mate our mar­riage un­til af­ter I got preg­nant.

That’s one con­ver­sa­tion I never want to re­peat. We were both as red as toma­toes by the time it was over.

Dig­ging my heels in, I try to stop again. “Maybe we should talk for a while. I bet there’s still a Scrab­ble game around here some­where.”

What the heck am I say­ing? This isn’t a fam­ily va­ca­tion, not that we’ve been on one of those since Aunt Char­ity died. This is my wed­ding night.

A dark chuckle is the only an­swer I get to my sug­ges­tion.

So, no Scrab­ble.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Kara.”

I’m not afraid of him. I should be. He’s Mick Fitzger­ald. An di­a­b­hal. The son of a pow­er­ful mob leader in Dublin with a rep­u­ta­tion as a killer. There are ru­mors he got made when he was still a child.

But I don’t be­lieve that. Not even in the mob, do they ex­pect chil­dren to kill.

His con­trol is leg­end. Ac­cord­ing to mamo, he never loses his tem­per or his com­po­sure.

He will smile while slit­ting your throat. At least that’s the ru­mor. And that one? I be­lieve, along with ev­ery other story about his ruth­less­ness.

I should def­i­nitely be afraid.