Page 138 of Merciless Desires

“There’s another way you look different from Cormac.”

“How’s that?” When he crosses his arms, thick veins pop and bulge everywhere.

“Your twin is full of ink.”

“I noticed a few tats on Cormac’s neck. All of my brothers have them,”

“There were quite a few more.” I didn’t eat for a couple of days because he wanted to finish the skull-and-crossbones scene on his back. “He has ink on his fingers, too.”

Darragh gives me a once over. “Do you have any?”

“You would have seen them. You saw me naked.” Heat swirls in my chest.

“It was overwhelming, and I didn’t get a good enough look at you—”

“The answer is no,” I bite out, the subject hitting a nerve. “I’ll save you the trouble of remembering. I was too scared it would hurt.”

“What about the drugs you did with Cormac?” he asks with an icy tone.

“It wasn’t hard drugs. It was pot and some speed. Cormac freebased coke and made crack. I wouldn’t touch that. But these creepy friends of his would show up…” My throat tightens. “That’s when we got kicked out of the villa.”

Darragh’s eyes darken. “I had you kicked out. When I found out he was doing drugs there, I snapped.” He hovers over me, his skin glowing and smelling so sweet. “I didn’t know you were there.”

“That’s how good he was at keeping me a secret.”

“Pancakes!” Sophie appears in the kitchen in a cute yellow nightgown and holding an iPad.

“Here you go!” I give her my plate.

“Those are yours.” Darragh goes to the refrigerator and pours juice into a purple plastic cup decorated with Easter eggs. “She needs her meds first. Eat,” he demands, and heat tingles spear me all over.

Deftly cutting squares and popping them into my mouth, I watch him give Sophie three different pills, a kid’s vitamin gummy, and then some kind of liquid.

She sits at the kitchen table under a wall of windows and fires up her iPad.

“What are those meds?” I ask Darragh when he puts them away.

“Allergy pills and prescription cough syrup.”

“She gets them every morning? Because I can help with that.”

He opens his mouth to answer but bites his lip. “I got a list of nanny résumés from the service. I have to review them and make calls at one point today. If I don’t have anyone picked out, I’ll change my hours to take Sophie back and forth to school. Someone at the hospital can watch her until—”

“Leaving me alone, all day?” I bite the last sinful triangle of warm heaven. “Hmmm.”

“I’m trusting you to stay here.”

“Don’t forget, I’m a criminal. I know how to fence stuff. There’s lots in here I can sell to buy a ticket to Canada.”

“I heard your lawyer say you don’t have a passport.”

“I need one for Canada?”

“You do now.”

Damn it. Maybe I can call Dante Caruso…

“Can I have my pancakes now?” Sophie asks.

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