Page 84 of Sins of Arrogance

“Oh.”

“You washed my scent off of your body,” he says, the af­front heavy in his tone.

“I told you. I felt dirty.”

He tips my head up so our gazes meet. “So now when I touch you, you feel dirty?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I def­i­nitely felt icky when he took the call and left me ly­ing there.

As for the nights since, sex (no mat­ter how lim­ited) makes me vul­ner­a­ble and some­how wash­ing away his scent makes me feel less owned by him.

He brushes his hand along my thigh. “You have been wear­ing leg­gings to bed.”

“You’re the one that in­sists we wear pa­ja­mas.” From the sec­ond night of our mar­riage.

“Fab­ric is a bet­ter bar­rier than no bar­rier at all when I wake in the mid­dle of the night and all I want to do is bury my­self deep in­side your pussy.”

He does?

“So why does it mat­ter if I wear leg­gings in­stead of shorts?” I ask.

“You tell me. You wore sleep shorts un­til that night.”

I shrug. “I feel less ex­posed.”

“Be­ing ex­posed to your hus­band should not bother you,” he says with con­vic­tion.

My hus­band may only be 26, but he has the con­fi­dence to ri­val my grand­fa­ther.

“It didn’t bother me,” I ad­mit. I felt sexy and de­sired when I was naked in front of him. “Be­fore.”

“But now it does?”

“Yes.” I can’t ex­plain it any bet­ter than I have.

If he doesn’t un­der­stand why leav­ing me that way to an­swer the phone and go on his com­puter hurt, I don’t have words to make him.

Mick stud­ies me for long sec­onds be­fore nod­ding. “Okay.”

Then he does some­thing I don’t ex­pect. He slides me back onto the mat­tress and gets off the bed. When he picks up his phone, he taps on the screen for a few sec­onds. The swish of a text be­ing sent is loud in the now silent room.

Af­ter that, he taps and swipes on his screen again, be­fore drop­ping his phone on the night­stand. “It’s off.”

“You turned off your phone?” What hap­pened to be­ing avail­able to my grand­fa­ther 24-7?

“Aye. Where’s your phone?”

I jerk my head back­ward to in­di­cate be­hind me. “On the charger.”

He walks around the bed and finds my phone tap­ping on the screen, prov­ing he knows my ac­cess code. Then he places it in my drawer. “It’s off now too.”

“I don’t un­der­stand.” Some­thing warm un­furls in my chest and it’s scarier than that idea of the IVF pro­ce­dures.

“You need my full at­ten­tion to trust me to bind you.” So, he gets it af­ter all.

I nod.

“When I use the cuffs or bind you in any way from now on, I will turn off our phones.”