Page 67 of Arrogant Bastard

She rolls her eyes. “Only you will make that correlation.”

I take her hand and drag her back to the seat. She leans her elbow against the back of the sofa and rests her chin on her arm. Her hair falls forward, and I can’t help myself; I slide my fingers through the silky curtain.

“Hey, I have time to make up and a very dirty mind to appease.”

Her green eyes peer at me through her bangs. “Tell me about Costa Rica,” she says.

The request isn’t unexpected. She’s asked me about London, Ireland, and every place I went looking for her. But Costa Rica brings up bad memories I don’t want to recall. “I’d really rather fuck you.”

She stares at me for a long moment. “Something happened there,” she murmurs.

“Something always happened where I went. I fell deeper into hell whenever I left without you.”

She blinks and inhales shakily. “Tell me about Costa Rica, please.”

My gaze falls to her sexy lips. I want to kiss her, wild and hard enough so she forgets her questions. She feels the power of my want because she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth. I like that too.

But…Costa Rica. “Same story. Close but no cigar.” I laugh and shake my head. “If you ever decide you want a movie made about you and need body doubles, I can find you a dozen doppelgängers. Easy.”

“Please, Killian.”

My chest tightens, and a spurt of anger comes with it. “You’re asking me to bare my fucking soul to you while you keep yourself from me. You think I don’t notice you’ve been doing that?”

Her features tighten a little, but she sighs. “No, I know you do.”

“And…? That’s all I’m getting? Your acknowledgment that there’s a problem?”

She attempts to stare me down. “For now. But I still want to know.”

Irrational. Bold. Greedy. I can’t even fault her for it. I feel the same way about her.

I jerk to my feet, my turn to pace to the window. My turn to feel like my skin is too tight to contain me. Memories of Cairo and her leaving me at the hospital have been replaying with alarming frequency for the last couple of days. Each time I see her scar, each time I brush my lips over the inch-and-a-half gash that nearly killed her, I’m thrown back to that night and the long, dark hours that followed.

I was going to change everything for her. I still would in a heartbeat. But she has to want it too. I’m done fighting for us on my own.

So. Costa Rica. I stab my fingers through my hair. “I’m not sure why that time was the worst. I guess there’s only so much failure anyone can take. But when it turned out not to be you, I went a little off my head. I just wanted to…forget for a while.”

Her eyes turn dark, and she flinches back a little. “Okay.”

I stop and raise one eyebrow. “Okay?”

“You don’t need to tell me who you fucked or—”

My bark of laughter earns me a glare. “You think I fucked to forget?”

“Don’t laugh at me, Killian.”

I approach, sit back down, and glance over at her. “Or what?” I taunt because, fuck it, I need more. So much more than she’s giving me.

She rises on her knees and crawls over to me. The buttons left undone and the shift of cotton over her skin remind me she’s naked underneath my shirt. The clothes we threw on were only so we could raid the fridge mid-morning. “Or I won’t let you do whatever you want to me later.”

Her words transmit straight to my cock. Yeah. Okay. So I’m a fucking slave when it comes to her pussy. And every other inch of her body and soul. But I’m a little resentful that this is all it takes. Which is why I stop myself from stripping her right this very second and gorging myself on her. From the pulse beating at her throat and the hardening of her nipples, she wants that too.

Too fucking bad.

I rest my head on the seat and close my eyes. “My Costa Rican guide warned me about the places not to go after a certain time of night. But the taste of failure and half a bottle of tequila racing through your bloodstream has a way of making those sort of warnings less…pertinent.”

She inhales sharply. “Jesus, Killian,” she whispers.

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