Page 79 of Sins of Arrogance

“I don’t want the bath­room,” he says, frown­ing. “Look, Kara. You didn’t need to safe word. All you had to do was tell me you needed the toi­let. You need to keep red for when you need it all to stop.”

“I did want it all to stop.” I try to move past him.

Only, he shifts his body to block my way. “You should know that if you ever tell me you need the toi­let, or you’ve got a cramp, I’ll re­lease you from the re­straints. You don’t need to safe word.”

“I never doubted it.” And I hadn’t.

Mick doesn’t want to hurt me. He wants to con­trol me. Sex­u­ally.

And I’m pa­thetic enough that I want that too.

Only not any­more. Maybe. I’m not sure, but what I liked best was know­ing I was the cen­ter of Mick’s fo­cus.

That phone call proved that I wasn’t. That I never had been, no mat­ter how he played my body.

“Your hair’s wet.” He frowns. “Did you take a shower?”

“Didn’t you hear it?” It’s not re­ally a fair ques­tion.

The door was shut and all the walls and doors in the apart­ment are sound damp­en­ing so that af­ter the son I’m not preg­nant with yet is born, his cries won’t wake Mick in the night.

Mob­sters need to get sleep when they can so they’re al­ways ready to do their job.

At least that’s what my dad says.

Mick says we’ll be able to make all the noise we want at night with­out wak­ing the baby.

“Why did you take a shower?” he asks.

I shrug.

His hand cups my shoul­der, big and heavy. “What’s go­ing on, Kara?”

“I want to go to sleep.”

“We were in the mid­dle of some­thing,” he says, like maybe I don’t know that.

“And you an­swered the phone.”

“You know I’m on call 24-7.”

I duck from un­der his hand and man­age to squeeze by him. “So, go do what­ever it is you have to do.”

I shouldn’t ex­pect any­thing else. Not af­ter our wed­ding night when he made it clear that mob busi­ness took prece­dence, even on such a spe­cial oc­ca­sion.

“I’m not go­ing any­where.” He pauses and sighs. “Not yet.”

Those two words wound me, and I know they shouldn’t. I know I’m sup­posed to be okay with this. It’s the way of life in the mob.

But I’m not okay.

I know Mick doesn’t love me, but I’m afraid I’m fall­ing for him. The feel­ings are so big, they ter­rify me. Es­pe­cially know­ing they’re not re­turned.

“Don’t let me stop you.” I dig an over­sized sleep shirt out of my dresser.

Be­cause that doesn’t feel like enough, in­stead of the sleep shorts I usu­ally wear, I pull out a pair of soft leg­gings I sleep in dur­ing the win­ter.

His big hand wraps around my wrist. “Stop. Tell me what’s wrong.”