KILLIAN: A Mafia Romance (The Callahans Book 2) by Glenna Sinclair Page B

him.”
    “Do you think people can really do that?” she asked softly. “Love someone enough to forget all the awful things they’ve done?”
    “I do.”
    She was quiet for a long moment, her fingers playing over my chest, over the myriad of tattoos on my chest. I wasn’t proud of my past, but I wasn’t ashamed of it either. It was a part of who I was. It seemed like a waste of time to regret any of it.
    “But you think she made a mistake.”
    “I think you have to accept the person you’re with. Everything about them. If you don’t, then you can’t be completely intimate with that person.”
    “But Mom made it work for twenty-five years.”
    “But can you imagine what their private time alone together was like? They couldn’t talk about the one thing that occupied almost all of Pops day, his thoughts, his worries. What kind of marriage doesn’t allow both people to share the things that are most important to one or the other?”
    “Spies manage to make marriages work.”
    “Not always.” I slid my arm around her and tugged her closer to me. “I don’t like secrets. I wouldn’t want secrets between me and the woman I’m sharing my life with.”
    “What if those secrets could hurt you?”
    “I don’t care. You can’t make a relationship work with secrets.”
    She was quiet again, hardly moving except where her fingers continued to dance over my tattoos. I took her hand and pressed it against my lips before moving it to my shoulder. I ran my fingers down the length of her arm, watching the goose bumps appear over her smooth flesh.
    “Can I ask you something?”
    “You can ask anything. I just won’t promise to answer.”
    “Fair enough.” I kissed her forehead lightly. “You and Davis…” She stiffened before the words even came fully out of my mouth. I rolled into her, pressed my lips to her throat. She began to relax again, moaning softly as I slid my hand over her hip and moved lower over her chest, teasing a nipple with the tip of my tongue.
    She sighed, sliding her fingers through my hair.
    “Let’s get out of here,” I said, sliding back up to study her face. “I have a place in Connecticut.”
    “You do?”
    I shrugged. “It’s always good to have a place where you can escape when you need to. It’s just a little farmhouse on a bit of property.”
    “Okay.”
    “Yeah?”
    I jumped off the bed and started to dress before she could change her mind. She laughed as she watched me, the laughter changing the look of her face. It smoothed the hard lines of her jaw and brought a light to her eyes. And then she climbed off the bed, hobbling over to the closet to get some clothes.
    “You should let me look at your foot.”
    She glanced back at me. “Later. Let’s just get out of here.”
    She grabbed a duffle bag and threw some things into it before sliding on a pair of jeans. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched, finding it difficult to keep my eyes off of her. The way she moved, the way she made this funny little sound when she tugged her shirt over her head…she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known. If this was all I got, it would be enough.
    She came over to me and climbed into my lap.
    “What are you staring at?”
    “You.”
    “Why?”
    I ran my hands over her jaw and pressed my fingers into her hair, turning her head just right.
    “Because I can’t get enough of you. Because I’ve wanted this for so long that it feels almost surreal to have it become a reality. Because I love you.”
    “How can you say that? We’ve been together for all of an hour.”
    I shook my head. “No. I’ve been in love with you since you were fifteen. Since that summer after my college graduation.”
    Her eyes widened. “You mean—?”
    “I stopped coming home because I didn’t want you to know. If we were alone together too much, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hide the way I felt.”
    “Killian,” she whispered.
    “I told myself it was just a stupid little crush,