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“I want pineapple on my pizza, but Seamus says no.” Dec nods at Lucie. “What do you want?”

“She doesn’t want fucking pizza,” I say.

“I might,” Lucie says.

I turn to her. “You don’t.”

The others descend into a ruckus, and she leans in as we turn onto our leafy, West Village street. “Imight.”

This fucking woman.

Inside the brownstone, my brothers head to the common area and I lead her up to the third floor,myarea.

There’s another bedroom and my study. A small sitting room, a wet bar, and the huge bedroom.

“Is this where you bring your conquests?”

I raise a brow. “This is where I sleep. Alone.”

She nods and looks so lost, it twists something in me, and I’m suddenly irritated. I don’t fucking care if she looks like a lost little girl. I just need her to keep the fuck out of my way and, on occasion, appear on my arm as the good wife.

My mood darkens, the goodwill vanishing. “There’s another room?—”

“Is that where you take them?”

I stalk up to her, pulling one of the spaghetti straps off her shoulder, zeroing in on the sudden hardening of her nipples. My mood pivots into one soaked with erotic overtones.

“Why are you so obsessed about my sex life?” I ask.

“I just married you.”

“And?”

“And…” She stops. For a second I don’t think she’s going to go there; I don’t think she’s going to say it. But she does. “And I wanted to know i-if you have a girlfriend.”

“If I had one, why the fuck would I feel up a girl in a park?”

“Perversions?”

“True, but I’m a little obsessive. If I had a woman, I’d be fucking her. Not fingering masked girls in a park.”

“Maybe you can multitask your obsessions.”

“Do you think you’re an obsession?”

“I don’t know, Callahan. I don’t know what you want or what I’m meant to do. Are you giving me my own room, or should I ask when our sex life will start?”

A ghost of a smile hits me. I run a finger over that bare, soft shoulder, over a spatter of the palest gold freckles, like she’donce fallen asleep in dappled light, and that one spot got a lot more sun, and now she wears the evidence.

“Are we going to have a sex life?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers breathlessly, “are we?”

“I thought you might want to remain a virgin for your next marriage.”

Hope lights up her eyes. “So you’re going to let me go in two years?”

For some reason that really pisses me off, and a savageness stirs. “If I’m sick of you or if I choose to. We’ll see.”