When Sin gets out of the shower and comes into the bedroom, I don’t know how to feel. On one hand, we just had some kind of sexual experience, but on the other, he went in and took a shower instead of letting me relieve him. I was clearly ready and willing. He has to know he could have had my mouth, but he chose not to. I’ve never known a guy to turn that down when the option was on the table.

I don’t know what to make of that.

I don’t know what to make of what just happened, period.

I also know it shouldn’t have happened. Neither of us intended that at the start of this night, but Rafe has a way of igniting my life on fire in various ways.

Sin walks over to my side of the bed with no more than a towel wrapped around his waist. Now I want to look. I’ve been good the past couple of nights; even though he came to bed naked, I haven’t looked. Now I’ve nuzzled it with my face though, so I think we’re beyond that.

He’s holding my phone, doing his nightly perusal. I tell myself that should annoy me too, but it doesn’t. After what Rafe pulled at the restaurant, I sort of want Sin to have the security of knowing I’m not hiding anything from him. I can’t tell if Sin has trust issues with women, or he only does this because of his job, but he does seem to have a mild preoccupation with my phone. Even though it’s my phone, he kept it on him while we were out. If it’s not a trust thing, I don’t know why he bothers. He has to know I’ve had chance after chance to get away if I really wanted to. Hell, I could have told Rafe tonight that I didn’t consent to staying in Vegas, that I didn’t make my flight because Sin kidnapped my ass, but I didn’t. Rafe may not care about me in a romantic sense, but I have a feeling he wouldn’t like that regardless.

“Your sister again,” Sin says.

“You really need to let me call her back,” I tell him.

“Rafe texted you,” he states.

My stomach sinks a little, hearing that and knowing he’s reading the message. “Oh?”

The corner of his mouth tugs up. “I’m deleting it.”

“Okay.”

“If he asks why you didn’t respond, it’s more interesting if you didn’t care, so I’m not going to tell you what it said. Tell him you deleted the message without reading it.”

“It’s more interesting?” I ask, quirking an eyebrow. “That’s a strange thing to say.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He plugs the charger into my phone and opens the bedside drawer, grabbing my second leather cuff.

“Do we have to?” I ask, looking up at him. “Couldn’t you leave me uncuffed tonight? I’m not going to leave.”

“Why?” he asks idly.

“I don’t know. I’m naked, for one thing. Secondly, I have a lot of questions I’ll never get answers to if I leave now. Perhaps most importantly, you said we’d get the best Chinese takeout in Vegas for dinner tonight, but we had to go hang out with Rafe instead, so you kind of owe me.” I punctuate with an apologetic shrug.

I see him considering, but he ultimately grabs my wrist and affixes the other cuff around it anyway. I sigh, giving him a baleful stare. He catches me mean-mugging him and tells me, “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Then give me one night without the cuffs. My wrists need a break. I’ll stay close so you can feel me in the bed,” I offer, though honestly, that’s sort of more for me than him. I have no idea if he even wants to sleep close to me, but I do. I’m post-orgasmic here and I want a cuddle.

“How close?” he asks.

It’s ridiculous, but between his bare chest, those gorgeous brown eyes of his, and his tone as he asks, I feel a little twinge between my legs. I assume he jerked off in the shower so he probably got it out of his system and won’t fuck me, but one never knows what cuddling could lead to.

“As close as you want me,” I offer. Then I add, “You know, for the purposes of setting your mind at ease. No other reason.”

He cracks a little smile. “Naturally.”

I hold up my bound wrists and muster puppy dog eyes. “Please?”

His dark eyes narrow, then he sighs and reaches for the key. “One night.”

I grin, holding up my wrists for him to free me. “Thank you. You’re the best captor ever.”

“In fairness, you’re the best captive ever,” he acknowledges.

He takes my cuffs off, then walks over to the laundry basket in the corner and tugs his towel off, tossing it inside. My tummy muscles tighten at the sight of his perfect ass. I love his body. All lean muscle, so strong and capable. I want to feel him on top of me again. It’s a shame that the night I did he was freaking me out; I didn’t even get to enjoy it.

God, I hope he likes to cuddle. I want to curl up close to him so badly, and I’m not even sure why. He did something to my brain before that shower, bossing me around without words, then denying me—sorta. I feel tangled up, but it somehow doesn’t feel mean.

I think Sin is a complicated man. Maybe I’m making him more complicated than he is in my head. Maybe I just have a weakness for sexually capable men, and I didn’t know they actually existed in the wild before I fell into the Morelli trap, as Carly has referred to it.

Well, Sin isn’t a Morelli, but he does work for them, so I’m still gonna call it that.

I should find out what his first name is. I only know his surname is Sinclair. That’s Scottish, not Italian. I’ve always wanted to visit Scotland.

“Have you ever been to Scotland?” I ask.

Sin stares at me like I’ve just grown another head. “Can’t say that I have.”

“I just wondered because of your surname. You have powerful Scottish roots.”

“Hooray for me,” he says dryly.

“If I ever have internet access again, I’m gonna look it up. I wanna see which tartan belongs to your clan. I’ll buy you one for Christmas. Well, I won’t be here for Christmas, but I’ll send it to you along with your very own ironic coffee mug. I have a book of Scottish tartans at home. I don’t even know why, I think the cover was pretty. Sometimes I make weird choices when I’m at the bookstore. The takeaway here is, you probably shouldn’t take me to the bookstore. Also, expect a Christmas present from me.”

“The takeaway is I should have remembered to buy earplugs,” he states.

“Whatever, you’re going to miss my senseless rambling,” I tell him.

“Where is Price from?” he asks.

“It’s Welsh. Technically it’s derived from something else, I don’t remember exactly. Rhys, maybe? Whatever it is, it means enthusiasm in Welsh. If you ever get the pleasure of seeing me and my sister together, you’ll be like, ‘yep, that’s accurate.’”

“I don’t think I could handle two of you. Does she talk as much as you do?”

“Maybe more.”

I struggle to keep my eyes on his face as he walks around to his side of the bed. I told myself I could steal a peek and see what he’s working with now that I’ve rubbed my face on his dick—even if it was covered, it still has to count for something—but his eyes are on me, and I’m not bold enough to check him out while he watches. Before I can convince myself to look, Sin pulls back the blanket and climbs in next to me. “Is that what you study in school?”

I ignore the fleeting pinch of disappointment and refocus on our conversation. “Etymology? No, not even close. I’m more into science, but I’ve been doing my general education coursework and getting it out of the way so I can focus more on my major. Biological chemistry, that’s my major.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Do you like calculus?”

Sin shakes his head. “I can’t say for sure, but I would guess no.”

I nod. “Then you probably wouldn’t have much fun in my classes. It’s a lot of math.”

“The math required for my job is much simpler. John Doe owes us $10,000 within the next 7 days. If John Doe has $5,000 and a piss-poor excuse at the end of those 7 days, how many of John Doe’s fingers should I take?”

I’m a terrible person for not being horrified by that. “Have you really…? How do you take off fingers?”

“Depends. The tool you use varies by the result you want.”

I prop myself up on the pillow and turn on my side to look over at him. “Isn’t the desired result a severed finger? That seems fairly straightforward.”

“Sure, but you want to deliver different levels of pain and agony. More or less fear. More or less dread. Sometimes it’s just a thing you have to do so you do it clean, other times you want to make ‘em hurt. Anyway, we shouldn’t be talking about this.”

“I think I would pass out if I cut off someone’s finger,” I inform him.

“Eh, you get used to it.”

A startled chuckle sneaks out of me. “No, I don’t think that’s something I would ever get used to. I mean, forget the blood, maybe that you could get used to, but with every new person you would have to experience the fresh emotional horror all over again. I couldn’t do that to someone, let alone multiple someones. How do you deal with it emotionally?”

“Helps to be heartless,” he offers.

“You are not heartless,” I say, shaking my head.

Sin looks over at me and cocks a skeptical eyebrow. “Based on what evidence?”

I hold up my wrists, unburdened by cuffs. “This is just the most recent addition to my research, but it’s a comprehensive study. I’ll make the argument and present all my findings if you really want me to.”

Sin shakes his head at me. “Rafe’s right; you are a nerd.”

“I am not ashamed,” I state. “I’m also honestly curious about your process. Do you go to a certain place in your head in order to do it? Do you ever lie awake in bed at night thinking about the things you do for work?”

Instead of answering my questions, Sin reaches a big, rough hand over to grab mine. I’m already suitably distracted, but then he locks our fingers together and settles our hands on his muscled abdomen.

“That is quite an effective change of subject,” I tell him, eyeing our locked fingers.

“Not changing the subject, just keeping you close. If I’m not locking you down tonight, I’ve gotta make sure you stay put some other way, don’t I?”

I collapse on the mattress and snuggle close to his body, even if I don’t believe him at all. “Likely story. You just want to shut me up.”

“Maybe, but my methods of shutting you up are much nicer than the ones I use on other people,” he points out.

“What would you do to me if Rafe were to sic you on me, like he said at dinner? What does that entail? I assume there are different levels, a variety of different methods, like you said before, to net different results. What would I get?”

He shakes his head at me, apparently torn between disbelief and amusement. “I can’t talk to you about the work I do for Rafe. You know that.”

“You can’t tell me just what you would do to me? I’m not asking for specifics about anyone else. Even if I wanted to, I can’t tell on you with hypotheticals.”

Cocking an eyebrow, he tells me, “You also need to stop talking about talking.”

“I was saying I couldn’t talk.”

“Every time your mouth opens, something that could get you into trouble pops out of it,” he informs me.

Flashing him a teasing smile, I say, “Just tell me what you’d do to me.”

“If you keep wording it that way, we’re going to have a problem,” he states.

If he keeps making promises like that, I’m going to keep wording it that way. “Maybe I like problems,” I tell him.

Utterly unimpressed, he says, “Yes, clearly you do.”

“If you sate my curiosity, I’ll stop bugging you about it. Would you cut off one of my fingers?” I ask, lifting my eyebrows. “Stuff me in your trunk and take me to an abandoned building? Clearly you enjoy tying me up, so I’m guessing rope would be involved. Probably duct tape over my mouth to shut me up. Would you just give me a good scare, or would you actually murder me? If you would murder me, how would you do it?”

“I draw the line at murdering pregnant women,” he states. “I wouldn’t murder you.”

“Even if Rafe told you to? Wouldn’t it be dangerous to disobey a direct order like that?”

“I’d tell him I killed you, but really I’d keep you stashed here and lock you up when I leave. I have the whole house equipped for a live-in hostage, in case you haven’t noticed. I could keep you here forever and he’d never know. Might still do that, depending on how things go.”

He’s probably joking Sin-style, without making that clear, but just in case he’s not, I tell him, “You can’t actually keep me here forever.”

“No?”

I shake my head. “Definitely not. My sister and brother-in-law will notice if I go missing indefinitely.”

“Vince would be ill-advised to step foot in Vegas,” Sin points out.

“Well, yeah, but he wouldn’t be here to fight with Rafe about crime stuff, he would be here to get me.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

I ignore him and go on pointedly. “Anyway, I’m also only out of school for the summer. I can’t go to class if I’m chained to your bed in Vegas. There’s also the fact that I am currently pregnant, and if you keep me here for about 7 more months, there’s going to be a new addition I’m pretty sure you’re not prepared for. You wouldn’t have to put cuffs on it to keep it from leaving, but you would have to wake up for nightly feedings if I’m still chained to the bed.”

“At least it wouldn’t talk for a while,” he says, like he’s considering the idea.

“But it would cry and have a lot of needs. And without anyone else to talk to, I would probably want to talk to you even more. So, you’d come home every day to a lot of crying and talking and eventually you’d get so sick of all the noise, you’d kick us right out. Then Rafe would discover you didn’t kill me in the first place, and you would be in a whole lot of trouble.”

Sin gives me a funny look. “To clarify, you’re trying to talk me into murdering you?”

“Well, no. I was just going through the scenario. This is why you should let me go back home to my own life. You can get on with yours, I can get on with mine, Rafe can get on with his. Everybody wins. We can pretend this whole mess never even happened.”

Shaking his head more adamantly than I expected, he says, “That’s not how life works. There’s no going back from anything. Life doesn’t have an ‘undo’ command. There are actions and results, and once a move has been made, that’s it. Only pussies can’t own the consequences of their choices and shoulder the burden that comes along with them. Consequences are important. They teach you to make better choices going forward.”

The intensity of his statement is curious, the unbending vehemence behind his words. For all that I appreciate this rare peek into his thought process, though, I can’t help taking it a little personally. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Being a pussy? Shirking the consequences of my actions? You don’t think I might have learned anything already?”

“I think you’re here,” he says simply.

I frown at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Before answering, he seems to consider. Weighing his options, Sin must decide it isn’t worth the consequences of finishing that thought, because he says, “Let’s not get into this. It’s late, we’re both tired—”

I shake my head. “Nope. I’d like to know what that means.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not your boyfriend; it’s not my job to satisfy your desires.”

That’s rude, but I can’t argue his logic, so I adjust my attitude and try again. “I don’t want to fight with you or be defensive; I’m just trying to understand your perspective, that’s all. Hearing that little snippet is the closest I’ve felt to even remotely comprehending why you care about my pregnancy when it has not a damn thing to do with you.”

“It does have a damn thing to do with me, because it has a damn thing to do with Rafe. If you’re pregnant with Rafe’s kid and it’s a boy, that’s the next boss of the family I serve. No one was even sure Rafe would ever have kids, so if he is, even by accident… it matters. I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient for you, but it does.”

That causes me to frown. “How would my hypothetical son be the next boss of a criminal syndicate? He can’t even survive outside of my womb yet, so you can’t know if he’d be any good at running crime.”

Sin rolls his eyes like he agrees with me, but it doesn’t matter. “That’s just how things are done in this family. That’s why Vince was set to inherit, even though he didn’t know the first thing about Vegas.”

I pause, considering. “Okay, so the boss position is passed down like a monarchy?”

“Exactly. Think of it like you got knocked up by a king.”

“A king of crime.”

Sin shrugs, apparently unrepentant about his own life choices. “Still a king.”

“That’s a really stupid way of passing on power,” I inform him. “Like, really fucking stupid. What if the eldest son of the current boss grows up and doesn’t want the job?”

“Well, then you have a situation like what we just had and there’s a potential for next in line to take power. Problem was, Vince was Ben’s only surviving son, so he didn’t have a younger brother to pass it on to. Technically, Rafe’s cousin Gio should have been next in line after Vince, if Vince didn’t want the job and had no age-appropriate heirs. But Rafe wanted it more, so… he took over without asking permission and anyone who had a problem with it… we dealt with.”

Our hands are still locked together on his stomach, but now I look closer. Scars cover his knuckles, and even aside from the scars, they’re all dinged up like he’s been in a fight recently. Only, his face and body show no similar signs of damage, so I guess it probably wasn’t a fight.

“I’m obviously not trying to put targets on any backs, so please take this with a grain of salt, but wouldn’t that make Vince and Carly’s son—if they ever had one—the heir? Rafe may wear the proverbial crown, but he’s a usurper. Does everyone just accept his line now?”

“Assuming he’s able to hold onto it, yes. The idea is, if someone is strong enough to take over, that person is probably the better leader anyway. If that happens though, the person they’re stealing power from should be imprisoned or dead, not pushed aside like Vince. It’s not smart to leave loose ends like this. It could potentially open up a situation in the far-off future where Vince does have a son who learns about his claim to power and wants it. Depending on his level of capability and Rafe’s son’s, he would have a pretty legit case for restoring power to his line, especially if people weren’t happy with the current leadership. Since my star is hitched to this wagon, I’m pretty invested in keeping things running smoothly for Rafe’s line.”

“You worked for Ben though, so you work for Rafe’s whole family, right? Not Rafe himself. If Vince had taken over, you would enforce for him. You only work for Rafe because he’s the current ringleader. If someone else took over, wouldn’t you just work for them?”

“It could go that way, but it depends on a lot of things. Since I’ve helped Rafe take power from Ben’s line, I highly doubt Vince or his offspring would keep me on if something changed now.”

“But Vince didn’t try to take over, right? I wasn’t around for all this so I don’t have the details, but my understanding is Vince doesn’t want this life. There’s no threat of him coming back. He just wants to open up a bar, adopt a dog, and live happily ever after with my sister.”

“Well, yeah, that’s why he’s alive. Vince only toyed with coming back and taking over his father’s rule someday, and it was for a stupid fucking reason. He was eclipsed by Mateo’s power back in Chicago and he wanted to impress that damn girl. He didn’t care about the business side of things; he just wanted the power for once in his life so he could keep her. Your brother-in-law is a fucking idiot.”

“He’s fine,” I say dismissively. “Mia was his kryptonite, according to my sister. She brought out his crazy side. Or Mateo did. Or… the pair of them? I’m not sure, but the point is, he never even wanted the power for himself and now he has a life with Carly. My sister is not into the mob life, so there’s no chance he ever comes back for it.”

“His son still could, though. Obviously down the road, but this isn’t the kind of job you retire from. Assuming I don’t get myself killed before then, I’ll still be around, and I would be one of the first to go in that scenario. Ordinarily in a situation like Rafe’s where someone takes over power, they clean house and bring their own crew in with them. Most of us are still around this time because we all worked together and had established relationships. If Vince’s son ever decided to stake a claim for power, he would have to clean house. Keep the ones who supported his bid, obliterate everyone else. He would have to be a stronger, more ruthless leader than even your son, because he would have something to prove.”

“I’m Vince’s sister-in-law though. He will be the uncle of any kid I have. If I did have Rafe’s baby, my sister’s baby and mine aren’t going to be rivals. They’re going to be family and best friends, just like me and Carly. They would never want to hurt one another.”

Sin is already nodding like he’s well aware of that fact. “Yes, which is a point in your favor. It’s not a guarantee, by any means; men are seduced by power all the time. Vince’s son could turn on yours, which is why I was strongly in favor of more permanent measures being taken, but Rafe doesn’t believe Vince is a threat in present day, and as I mentioned, he never planned on having kids, so he didn’t have anyone to look out for down the road.”

Unease moves down my spine and I pry my fingers out of his grasp. “When you say permanent measures…”

He watches me, his gaze flickering briefly. He ends up averting his gaze before he says, “Like I said, permanent.”

“But Vince hasn’t done anything wrong,” I insist. “Well, there may have been that kidnapping thing, I never got the full story there, but you know what I mean. He’s no threat to Rafe.”

“I just explained how he potentially could be. This isn’t the kind of business where you practice mercy and hope for the best, Laurel. In a kill or be killed world, you do what needs doing to protect your interests and your people. Only the ruthless make it here. You want sweet tempers and brotherly love? Join a church, not the Morelli family.”

“Trust me, I have no intention of joining the Morelli family.”

His humorless smile is tinged with something like sympathy. “Too late.”