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Or a murderer.
“I don’t understand what you get out of this,” I snapped, brandishing the card between my fingers like I was going to toss it aside. Instead, I tucked it in my pocket.
If I didn’t accept, who would he try to hand her off to next?
And…I wanted her again. She was so sweet, and I kept finding myself fantasizing about how she kissed and the sounds she’d made. Even in the room’s comfortable low light, I could see my bite marks marring her elegant neck.
I wanted to drag her out of here and mark her more aggressively. Fuck her until she walked like a fawn on ice.
“It doesn’t really matter if you understand it. Not everyone is wired the same way. She had a good time with you, and I enjoyed watching. If you see her again, she’ll tell me about it later, and it’ll be almost as good.”
“So, you’ll avoid me while also getting some of what you want.” I caught him by the wrist as he attempted to retreat, and I could have sworn his skin made my hand buzz. His eyes went wide, his lips parted, and I had the nasty urge to punch his pretty face then piss on him when he fell to the floor.
The man infuriated me, and I didn’t know what it was about him that made me feel this way. He was so cocky andarrogant—a businessman who knew he had the world by the tail. He planned to use my body and his wife’s to get what he wanted out of life yet again.
Taking Tarryn for granted the way he did was quasi evil.
“I’m not avoiding you. What happened between us—I was caught off guard, but sometimes unexpected things happen.” He swallowed. “I didn’t mind it.”
Didn’t mind it?
I was going to respond, but Severin came in, holding Minnow’s arm as though she needed his support to walk. Whenever he wasn’t near enough to cluck over her wellbeing she got around fine. I got the feeling she let him help her so that he’d feel useful.
“Wooow.” Tarryn’s gaze had dropped to Minnow’s belly. There was surprise in Tarryn’s gaze, but something else, too. Envy.
“Right?” Minnow said as she lowered herself into a chair with my brother helping her settle. Prospero had returned with them and crawled under the table again. “I’m only twelve weeks along, but twins are twins, and my body has gotten so used to being pregnant that I ended up showing almost immediately.”
“I can’t even imagine!”
“I’m so glad the two of you could come! Have you met Severin?” She made the introductions again, and I felt both of them looking from Severin to me and back again. I wanted to stand in front of my brother, to warn them away if they tried to shake his hand, but they said hello from where they were. Minnow must have told them ahead of time not to touch him.
In the distance, Concordia bellowed. She’d probably woken from her nap to discover she had been abandoned in her crib. The empress didn’t stand for such rude behavior from her peons.
“Do you want me to get her?” I asked, hoping for an excuse to leave the room for a few minutes to collect myself.
“Would you? That would be fantastic,” Minnow said with a weary smile.
Severin clearly wanted to tell me to be careful with the child, but he held back. I gave him a nod to let him know I understood, and he gave me his version of a tight smile which probably looked like indigestion to anyone who didn’t know him.
As I was leaving the room, Minnow patted her belly and grinned wryly at Tarryn. “This is what happens when you have two husbands and a breeding fetish.” She laughed.
It surprised me she’d say that in front of Prospero, but then I heard the boy playing down the hall. He was fast, and he seemed to be everywhere, but his parents always knew where he was and what he was up to.
Minnow’s words reminded me of what I’d said to Tarryn when I’d fucked her—about how she and Valor might end up raising my child if I got her pregnant. Was Tarryn remembering that now, too? When I glanced her way, her gaze had also slid to me. Were her cheeks flushed?
I reached the second-floor nursery in record time, all too happy to leave the situation. Of all the people Valor and Tarryn could be visiting in town, why did it have to be my family?
Why did they have to know my brother-in-law and sister-in-law so intimately? It had taken long enough for me to understand why flirting with Minnow and Rodrigo had been wrong, and now this felt like another transgression, even though I couldn’t have known.
By the time I reached Concordia’s room, she was working up to a shriek of rage. She cut it off abruptly as soon as she spotted me.
“Lo-Lo.”
“Hi, peanut. Did you have a good sleep?”
She glowered at me, but didn’t start screaming, which I took as a win. Unlike her sweet brother, she was just as likelyto headbutt someone in the face as she was to hug them. She was a prickly little thing, and we were her adoring vassals.
I brought her down the way she was, looking daintily bedraggled, not trusting myself to fix her pigtails without pulling her hair. There was a good reason she liked me, and that was because I didn’t dare do things that pissed her off.
