Page 78 of Sins of Arrogance

Sud­denly the sen­sa­tion of his cum sat­u­rat­ing my skin makes me feel dirty.

Worse, I feel naked. Ex­posed.

Which I am, but since our wed­ding night, I’ve never felt ashamed to have Mick look at my nude body.

Now he’s do­ing it while talk­ing to some­one else, prob­a­bly mak­ing plans to leave me like he did our first night to­gether.

He hasn’t done that since, but I re­al­ize now it’s be­cause he hasn’t been needed. No one has called him.

He turns away and crosses the room to flip open his lap­top on the desk against the far wall. Mick doesn’t sleep nearly as much as I do and he’ll work on his com­puter some­times af­ter we do what it is we do.

Is it called mak­ing love when we don’t have in­ter­course? I don’t know. It feels as in­ti­mate as any­thing else could be.

But be­fore Mick, no one had even touched my boobs, so that feels pretty in­ti­mate to me too.

Usu­ally, I like that he works in here rather than go­ing into the liv­ing room, but I don’t like it right now.

Shame prick­les across my skin as Mick boots up the com­puter while talk­ing to the other per­son on the phone.

“Red.” It’s barely a whis­per and he doesn’t hear me. So, I clear my throat and say it again, louder this time. “Red.”

Mick spins to face me, his eyes trav­el­ing over me like he’s try­ing to see what’s wrong. Like maybe I’m hurt. But he doesn’t come back to the bed and undo the cuffs.

This time, I yell it. “Red!”

“Hold on a sec,” he says into the phone be­fore press­ing some­thing on the screen.

Prob­a­bly the mute but­ton.

Mick jogs back to me and un­buck­les the cuffs with quick move­ments, his brows drawn to­gether. “Do you need to pee, Kara?”

With­out re­ply­ing, I roll away from him and scoot off the op­po­site side of the bed. Prob­a­bly mak­ing him think his guess was right, I rush into the bath­room, lock­ing the door be­hind me.

My body still pulses with arousal, but it’s laced with em­bar­rass­ment now. I turn on the shower, flip­ping it to a luke­warm set­ting. That’s sup­posed to make the de­sire go away, right?

I lather my loofah and wash ev­ery inch of my breasts be­fore do­ing the rest of my body. I feel like I can still smell him on me, so I soap up my chest again and rub vig­or­ously.

I think it’s work­ing but noth­ing is help­ing to wash away the hol­low feel­ing in­side me.

I turn the wa­ter colder and that doesn’t help ei­ther. But it’s shock­ing enough to stop the tears try­ing to fall.

So, that’s good.

Fi­nally, I turn off the wa­ter and step out of the shower.

My body shak­ing with shiv­ers, I’m dry­ing off when the han­dle on the door rat­tles. “Kara? Let me in.”

“I’ll be out in a sec­ond.” I fin­ish dry­ing off and put on my robe, hid­ing my nu­dity.

I still feel raw and ex­posed.

But un­less I want to sleep in here tonight, I have to face Mick and pre­tend like I don’t.

I open the door.

He’s loom­ing right on the other side. Still naked. Still aroused.

Swal­low­ing, I turn my head, so I’m not star­ing at his chest. Or any­thing else. “It’s free now if you want it.”