Page 27 of Sins of Arrogance (Syndicate Sins #1)

KARA

Mick didn't use the cuffs the next time we touched intimately. Or the time after that. He kept his sleep pants on though, even though he stripped me bare.

I showered afterward both times, washing his scent off me even though it wasn't as strong as when he rubbed his cum into my skin.

But the next time he wanted sex, he had the cuffs.

Seven Years Ago

Something wakes me. A sound? Movement near the bed brings me out of my dreams. He doesn't turn on the light, but I know he's there.

"Mick?" I ask sleepily.

"You're awake." His voice is flat, emotionless as his weight makes the mattress dip.

I scoot into a sitting position and turn on the nightlight feature on the wall sconce on my side of the bed. Its dim illumination reveals my naked husband kneeling on the bed, the black cuffs dangling from one hand.

The sight of them triggers sensory memories, both good and bad.

Shaking my head, I scoot away from him.

He reaches for me, grabbing my shoulder. "Stop, Kara. You're going to fall off."

Mick stares at me like I'm acting strange.

I stare at the cuffs. "Red."

"Why are you safe wording?" His fingers grip my shoulders more tightly, like he thinks I'm going to run away.

"I don’t want to do that anymore." It's not true.

I want to be bound by him and touched by him. I want him to come on me with that wild, nearly out-of-control look he gets, but I don't want to be ignored by him.

The best part of wearing the cuffs is being the center of Mick's focus. The way he looks at me like he's not thinking about anything or anyone else.

No one looks at me like that.

I'm not the key player in anyone's drama in my life, not even my own. But always before, for the time he kept me bound, I felt like I wasn’t just the central player, but the only one he could see.

My husband's body vibrates with tension. "The cuffs?"

I nod.

"I don't believe you."

"You're conceited."

"This isn't about conceit. You melt under my touch. Your body craves the pleasure I give you."

"Not that way. Not anymore," I add when he looks unconvinced.

"Because I answered the phone?"

I shrug.

"You're going to have to explain."

Like it's so easy. "I'm sure you can figure it out."

"Nah." His green eyes narrow. "Your brain isn't like mine. Sure as certain, I'd guess the wrong thing."

Are we really that different? "You wouldn't like it if I left you like that to answer the phone."

Something flickers in his gaze. Arousal?

His slacks are already tented, but they have been since I turned on the light.

"I can't let you cuff me. I can't protect you if I'm immobilized."

"No one's going to attack us here," I scoff.

"The men I've killed in their homes would disagree if they could."

The reminder of what he is should scare me. Or at the very least turn me off. It doesn't do either.

Maybe it's being raised as a mob princess, but the men in our world aren't squeaky clean. And he's right about one thing, I wouldn't feel safe with one who was.

"But if I could tie you to the bed…"

That feral light flares again and my voice trails off while images of having him at my mercy flash through my brain. I could taste him then. We haven't done it that way.

I don't know why.

He puts his mouth on me almost every night.

"You wouldn't answer the phone because you aren't on call," he finishes for me.

That reminder does not make me feel better. I wouldn't have answered the phone even if it had been my sister's ringtone. And I never ignore Fi.

She's too fragile.

Knowing I would ignore even my little sister's call for him makes me angry enough to be honest. "I felt dirty. You kept looking at me like I was nothing but inspiration for the spank bank while you talked on the phone to whoever called you."

"Spank bank?" he asks, amused.

And that only frustrates me more. This isn't funny to me. "You know what I mean."

"Nah, I don’t. I was looking at you because I couldn’t stop even though I was on the phone to your uncle."

"You stopped to look at the computer." And that’s when I really started to feel dirty.

"This bugged you?"

Is he for real? "I’m pretty sure it would’ve bothered any woman to be left naked and tied to the bed while her lover went about his business, like it didn't matter."

"I am your husband, not your lover."

Not the point, but if he's going to harp on it... "Agreed. I can hardly call you my lover when we can’t even have sex until after I become pregnant with your son."

"We already went over this."

"Don’t try to tell me that any other woman you’ve called your lover in the past hasn’t known what it feels like to have you inside them."

"My past is not relevant to our present."

But he has a past. I don't. He's my first, last and only. It's not fair, but it's the way it is in our world of double standards.

"You are my wife," he adds, his tone implying that's some great honor.

It didn't feel like an honor when he left me on our wedding night.

"I’m just the guarantor for the contract until I give you a son and then that’s his role." And only as I say those words do I realize how much knowing that my child will be a pawn in my grandfather's power games just like I am bothers me.

"Arranged marriages are the norm in the mob, that doesn't make you any less my wife." He sounds offended. "Even if I don’t stick my cock in your tight, hot cunt until after you become pregnant with our son, that does not change who you are to me."

No it doesn't. Penetrative sex isn't going to make me any more important to Mick than I am right now.

"I don’t want to do that anymore." I try to pull away from him.

Only he won't let me go.

Instead, he uses his hand on my shoulder to pull me toward him until I'm sitting across his legs. "We both signed the contract promising we would not have physical intercourse until after you became pregnant."

"So?" I squirm, trying to get off his lap.

He locks his arm around me with more effect than a safety harness on a rollercoaster. "When you touch me it compromises my self-control."

"I don't believe you." It never feels like he’s out of control to me.

"I don't lie to you, Kara."

"You would though. If my grandfather wanted you to." And how did we go from talking about sex to this?

"Nah. I wouldn't. I won't always tell you everything and I won't answer if you ask a question I can't give an honest reply to, but I'll never lie to you."

His words hit my heart in a way I absolutely cannot afford them to. "But you’re the one who drives me past the point of sanity."

"Touching you does that to me too."

I shake my head, denying his words, but he just said he wouldn't lie to me. "Touching me turns you on?"

"My hard dick doesn't tell you that?" he ripostes.

I shrug helplessly. "You're always hard."

"Around you."

"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."

Shock courses through me. "Because I want you too?"

"Because you need it," he corrects.

And he's right. It's not about a preference but a necessity.

Still, I can't help pointing out. "That won’t stop my grandfather or uncle from sending someone to pound on our door."

"That’s what Conor is for."

"Conor is outside our door?"

"Yes. His instructions are not to interrupt unless there is an emergency."

"Seanathair won't like that." Neither will my uncle or dad, I don't think.

Mick shrugs.

"That doesn't worry you?" I ask.

"No."

"Oh." My thighs clench, but it's the squeeze in my heart that worries me the most. "Does, uh...does Conor know we’re going to…" My voice trails off.

"Have sex?" Again, my husband shrugs. "Probably. Does that bother you?"

Not as much as knowing what he's doing that I find so devastating isn't as important to him. Only, maybe it is. If not for the same reasons.

Mick is a highly sexed guy. Getting off might be as necessary for him as being treated like I matter is for me.

He strips out of his clothes, his member jutting from his body like a flagpole.

Everything inside me clenches.

Then he picks up the cuffs and dangles them from his forefinger. "Aye or nay?"

"Y…" I clear my throat. "Yes."

Green eyes flare with desire. "You're sure?"

Unable to say even one more word, I nod.

He turned off his phone for me. He put a man outside our door to prevent interruption. I might be a guarantor to the contract, but I'm not unimportant to the man I'm married to.

Present Day

Since that night, Mick always turns his ringer off, if not his phone when we make love. And the times when he's got me bound? He puts his phone in the drawer until we're done and I've climaxed so many times my womb aches from it.

If that means being sore the next day? It's totally worth it.

But it usually doesn't because Mick's aftercare has grown by leaps and bounds in the seven years of our marriage. It used to embarrass me when he massaged my inner thighs and buttocks along with the rest of my body, but then I began to equate his "aftercare" with actual care.

And I looked forward to it.

I'm not sure anymore that it means anything other than keeping my body prepared for nightly sex, but I still enjoy it.

And tonight is no exception.

He returns to the bedroom and lifts me from the bed, carrying me into the bathroom where he makes sure I pee.

He's militant about that after I got my first UTI. When I'm done, he guides me into the fragrant, swirling water of the bath.

The heat envelops my body and I groan with pleasure as overused muscles find comfort in the hot water. There are two bottles of water.

One for him. One for me.

He brings mine to my lips so I can drink. Alternating between frozen grapes and sips of water, Mick pampers me like I'm really something precious.

When his fingers slide between my labia in the oil softened water, I respond with soul deep passion. And he tenderly makes love to me again in the bath, the water sloshing around us as he takes me on a gentle climb to an orgasm that leaves me insensate.

I don't remember him drying me off or carrying me to bed, but when I wake up in the morning, he's gone like always.

Only this morning, there's a red rose on my pillow. He's done this a few times, leaving the sweet fragrance of the long stemmed rose to tease me from sleep.

I wish that rose meant abiding passion and love, but lust based passion is the only emotion I've ever gotten from my husband, or ever will get.