That Forbidden Life by Nikki Kardnov

Author:Nikki Kardnov [Kardnov, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tortoise House Press, LLC
Published: 2020-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

MAD

Mad looked around the cottage at his brothers, his sisters-in-law, and finally Lizzy. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Whatever he said now might reveal too much.

“I’ll be back later to check on you,” he said to Lizzy and then followed Oddie out the door.

Outside of the four walls of the cottage, Mad was free of the confines of Lizzy’s second wish and so when he reached Oddie, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her to a stop.

“Let go of me,” she said, the fury wrinkling between her brows.

“We need to talk.”

“No we don’t.”

The screen door banged shut behind them. His brothers and their caelis were an audience he didn’t want right now. He wrapped his arm around Oddie’s waist and vaded.

She yelped and shoved him away when they reappeared in the attic at Blackwell House.

“Don’t do that!” she yelled.

“Shhh!” he said back. Maybe returning home wasn’t his best decision. For a split second, he’d forgotten that the one place he felt safest was now the least safe.

“I’m tired of your stupid secrets,” Oddie whisper-shouted, her dark ponytail swinging behind her.

“Not all secrets are mine to tell,” he whispered back.

Oddie crossed her arms over her chest and popped out one of her deliciously curved hips. He had a flash of how that hip had looked in the milky light of the pantry all those weeks ago, naked, her skin dimpling beneath the hungry press of his fingers. His cock twitched in his pants. Now was not the fucking time.

When Oddie turned her gaze away, she took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “I guess...this whole thing...I don’t know what to think. How I feel about everything—about you—changes every other minute. At first I was angry that you might have been seeing my aunt, of all people. And then I was jealous. Of a woman I’m related to! And then I was relieved, because if you had been seeing her, it meant I wasn’t guilty of the Conclave’s accusation and my reputation would be intact.”

Now when she looked at him, tears trembled in her eyes. Mad rushed to her. He was a man who had stood before a battlefield and remained unmoved by the carnage.

But seeing Oddie break down...it shattered something inside of him.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in tightly. She didn’t fight him. In fact, she melted into him like it’d taken everything within her just to remain upright the last hour. She sniffed into his chest and clutched at his t-shirt and said, “I’m confused and scared, Mad.”

He was about to tell her all of the things she needed to hear, when the sound of footsteps thudded up the attic steps. Mad heard it long before Oddie and he went rigid as he listened.

Oddie looked up at him. “What is it?” she whispered.

He put a finger to his lips.

It wasn’t Red’s footsteps. They were too clumsy. Too human. But they weren’t the careful, delicate footsteps of Lydia either.

Which meant it could only be Thomas.

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