Sins of the Flesh by Caridad Pineiro

Author:Caridad Pineiro [Pineiro, Caridad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC027120
ISBN: 9780446558303
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

“I won’t?” Mick replied, increasing the pressure on her throat even though doing so made him cringe inside. Still, he achieved the result he’d wanted.

Caterina’s fight-or-flight response kicked in. Her skin erupted with the deep maroon color of his cotton robe and her hands tightened on his wrist, almost painfully so.

He could handle her like this, he thought. He could handle her when she wasn’t all soft enticing female.

“You want me to believe you’re a killer, but you’re not,” Caterina said, her grip as firm as his.

Reason told Mick to increase the pressure at her throat, to disprove her belief. But he couldn’t, because she was right.

Caterina met his gaze as her heart thumped in quick allegro beats. She held fast to his wrist and as she did so, the weird halo sight she had battled earlier returned, outlining his body in a bright blue, while his center appeared as a combination of other colors, communicating to her brain the heat of his body.

Like one of those cheap gum machine love-test strips, she saw the cooler outside edges of his limbs and the increasing warmth toward his core. In the middle of his chest, the brightest of all the colors. The most intense spot of heat.

Caterina shifted one hand from his wrist to that spot. Absorbed the thump-thump of his heart against the sensitized pads of her fingers. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. A steady reliable beat like that of a conductor’s baton.

Splaying her hand against that beat, she closed her eyes and concentrated on it. As she did so, the pressure at her throat eased until Mick finally moved his hand completely away.

But she didn’t remove hers.

Opening her eyes, she met his gaze. The color of his dark brown eyes had deepened to almost black. Beneath her hand, the thump-thump remained steady, but tension had crept into his body.

Finally she pulled her hand away and wrapped her arms around her knees once again.

“You know what I think?” she said, alternately confused and accepting of what was happening between them.

“I don’t care what you think,” Mick replied, still obviously struggling to convince her that he was dangerous.

“I think you’re a White Hat, only you’re afraid to admit it because you won’t be able to control people if they think you might actually have a heart.”

She’d learned about fear and control from her father. She understood it well.

Amazingly he saw past her words to the emotion that drove her. “Not all control is bad, Cat. And you will do what I tell you.”

On some level, she knew he only meant well. That he wanted to protect her and his sister and anyone else who came under his charge. But she had struggled to be free for too long. She had lost that precious freedom at Wardwell and she’d be damned if that happened again.

“We’ll see,” she said.

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