My Darkest Passion (16 page)

“Water, please.”

“Sure.” In the kitchen while she was getting Harsh a glass of water, Harsh said, “This is Maddy Winters. She works for Nikodemus. She’s the lawyer I told you about. Maddy, Addison O’Henry.”

She gave Harsh his water and held out her hand to the other woman, braced for contact. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Maddy gripped her hand firmly and let go right away. No nonsense. She liked that almost as she liked that Maddy didn’t prolong the contact. The lawyer put a battered leather briefcase on the table. She seemed like the kind of woman Harsh would go for. Smart, successful. Gorgeous. A lawyer for a fucking demon warlord. “Shall we take care of business?”

Her stomach balled up. “Yeah.”

They sat at her kitchen table, waiting while Maddy took out a folder. Addison did her best to concentrate, but it wasn’t easy. Her mind kept slipping into denial. She’d been to the local clinic for the official confirmation that she was pregnant, which she already knew on account of the previous six weeks of morning sickness and several tearful calls to Harsh because if she talked to anyone else, she would have had to lie about what happened to her.

Maddy put a hand on the folder. She sent a sideways look in Harsh’s direction. “I don’t know how much you know about us. How Nikodemus operates.”

“Enough.” She shrugged.

“Let me know if I need to fill in any blanks.”

“Sure.”

“I have what I hope is good news for you.”

“Okay.”

“But first, a few formalities.”

There was a lot of talk about adoption in general and about child welfare laws in California. Then there was what the kin did to keep themselves under the radar and out of legal trouble with the authorities, and the specific rules Nikodemus had in place. There weren’t many. The kin, as Harsh had already explained, had millennia-old traditions of communal child raising. She knew all that. Harsh had made that clear once she told him what she’d decided.

“Maddy,” Harsh said in a tone that spoke of both fondness and long familiarity. “I think we can move on now.”

“She needs to understand what she’s agreeing to.”

“Seems pretty simple to me,” Addison said. She felt like she ought to say more, but she was done talking about it. She wished she was done thinking about it, too.

Harsh reached across the table and brushed a hand over hers, and to be honest, it didn’t help. She was still pregnant and, right now, feeling like she was being drained of every dab of energy she had.

“Nikodemus knew Bejar.” Maddy grabbed a pen from her case and tapped it on the folder. “Pretty well, it turns out.”

“So did Kynan.”

Maddy’s face went entirely too smooth, but her magic ramped up a noticeable amount. That didn’t help anything. At all. “Is that so?” the woman said. “I suppose the warlords would know each other. The old ones, I mean. At any rate, Nikodemus and Carson have discussed this and would very much like to take the child into their home when it’s born. They have two of their own, and they’re dedicated parents.”

She watched Harsh and Maddy exchange a look. Maddy was opaque to her emotionally—no accident that. Apparently, it was true. Lots of people had issues with Kynan Aijan. Totally understandable. “Sounds perfect.”

“Great.” Maddy tapped her pen on the folder some more. “If that’s agreeable to you, we can get everything settled today.”

“Sure.”

“If she changes her mind?” Harsh said. His smooth voice sent a shiver through her. If you could bottle the effect of his voice, you’d make a goddamned fortune, it was that full of pure heat.

“Always a possibility,” Maddy said. “We’ll go over that before she signs anything.

“No it isn’t,” Addison said. She fucking knew what she needed to do to stay sane. “Guesses about my future state are just that. Guesses.”

“And that,” Maddy said, “is why we have lawyers.”

“I know how I feel right now.”

Maddy ran through a mind-numbing set of scenarios anyway. Addison let most of the words slid away from her. She’d thoroughly dissected the wreckage of her life while she worked out the options and consequences for her, and she really didn’t want to bring any of that up again. A few minutes later, her stomach gnawed at her in that utterly foreign way. Took her by surprise every single time.

She stood up, too quickly, judging from Maddy’s startled glance. “I have to eat something every couple of hours. If I don’t, I feel like crap.”

“Harsh can pick up anything you need.”

She walked into the kitchen, just a few steps away. “Toast is about the only thing I can stand. Oatmeal sometimes.” She grabbed a loaf of bread from the fridge and stuck two slices in the toaster. “Anybody want some? I have plenty. No?”

Head shakes all around. She put away the bread, and when she closed the fridge door, she realized several things. One, Harsh had gone dark to her. Two, he’d been staring at her while she was putting away the bread, and the tail-end of that stare was not some innocent, what do you know, the seat of her jeans are blue, look, and that sent a shock of heat through her that made the back of her knees quiver.

She squeezed the refrigerator door handle and told herself to get a grip.

Men looked at women all the time, and it didn’t mean anything, she got that. Harsh was male, and she wasn’t the fucked up mess she’d been before. Hell, they were best friends over the phone.

Maddy kept talking while she finished making her toast. The legal part boiled down to what she already knew about at least some human adoptions. She could change her mind up to a certain point. But no matter what happened, Bejar’s offspring would be raised by its own kind, loved and cared for, and if it grew up to be a mage killer, well, that was just fine with her.

Maddy stopped talking long enough to slap a ream of papers in front of her. Then she took a breath and started in explaining what the terms meant and where she needed to sign.

“Look.” Addison picked up the pen and started signing wherever there was one of those yellow arrow-shaped sticky notes. “Nikodemus is a warlord. A demon. Not a human. Whatever I sign here isn’t going to do a damn thing except reduce the hassle for you.” She initialed one of the pages and flipped to the next. “Demons have lived around humans all this time without us knowing anything. I think that means Nikodemus can take care of this whether I sign or not.”

Harsh glanced away, hiding a smile, Addison was pretty sure.

Maddy took away the pen. “My job, Ms. O’Henry, is to make sure Nikodemus has as few legal hassles as possible. And that means you need to understand what the hell you’re signing.”

She put her hands on the table. “I understand I’m having a baby there’s no way I can or want to raise on my own. Nikodemus and Carson will be great parents, I am sure.”

“All the more reason for you to understand what you’re doing and why you’re signing.”

She took back the pen and signed and dated the last page. “I decide what I do. Nobody else. And guess what? I decided.”

“I’ll have copies on file.” She pulled out two more documents. “Sign here, too. Here. And here.”

When it was done, Maddy packed everything away. Hands resting on the briefcase still on the table, she addressed Harsh. “I’m going back to the hotel to get everything faxed to the office. I can take a cab back, if you two have anything you need to talk about.”

Addison expected Harsh to stand up and make his goodbyes. But he didn’t. Which unsettled her even though there was no reason.

“Thank you, Maddy.” He stood up, but didn’t move away from the table. “I’ll call you when I’m back.”

And just like that, Addison was alone in her apartment with Harsh Marit.

16

H
arsh waited to speak until Maddy was far enough away from the apartment building that he no longer felt the echo of her considerable power. That solved one of the issues that made him jumpy. He remained intensely aware of Addison on a number of levels; as a warlord, as someone he’d come to respect and admire, as someone to whom he’d made rare personal disclosures. As an attractive woman.

She stood behind Maddy’s chair, and his reaction to her cranked higher. She was nothing like his type, but damned if she wasn’t pushing all his buttons. Fortunately, he had plenty of practice at presenting a neutral state—to warlords on all seven continents. She ran a hand over her head and then let the tension out of her shoulders.

“Hey,” she said in a low voice. “My roommate has beer in the fridge. You want one?”

His instinct was to decline because he was in a mood he didn’t approve of, but that served no purpose. She was being polite and since they’d had talked at some length about Northern California’s many microbreweries, she was also being thoughtful.

“I don’t think it’s heinous stuff.” She gave him a big grin that went a long way toward settling him down. “Right before she left, she ate an entire pint of my ice cream. She owes me, Harsh. I was going to pour one down the sink just to get even. It might as well not go to waste.”

He couldn’t help laughing, and his mood improved even more. At least one of them was behaving normally. Everything was fine. He was fine here with her. “Anything to help you out.”

“That’s what friends are for, right?” She went to the kitchen, and he watched her ass again because he was insane, that’s why. “Glass?”

“No.” He loosened his tie. “We’re friends here.”

She came back with a Tsing Tao, which wasn’t even half bad beer. She covered the cap with her shirt and twisted the top. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

“I’d join you, but the smell of just about anything but water or toasted bread makes me nauseous.”

He took a sip of the beer and signaled for her to sit down. She did. “I have a few items to cover with you, at Nikodemus’s request.”

She sat straight and her eyes widened. “Am I in trouble for something?”

“No.”

“That’s a relief.” She put her elbows on the table and bowed her head, fingers rubbing over hair short enough to qualify as a buzz cut. “I’m going to be bald the rest of my damn life.”

“Unlikely. Give it time. Your hair will grow back, I promise you.” He set his hand on her head and rubbed. “For good luck.”

“Get out of here.” But she was laughing, and he joined in. She’d put on weight since her ordeal, and, well. Yes. He tried to regain his mental conception of her as a college student who was too young for him, too different, and failed. He was young as the kin went, barely over a decade since he’d come into his power, but he’d already stopped keeping track of how old he was.

“Are you doing well?” He stroked a finger down her cheek. It was one thing to hear assurances over the phone and quite another to feel the reaction that went with the words.

“Besides hardly having any hair?”

For some reason he flashed back to the day she’d tried to swear fealty to Nikodemus, when Kynan had joked about loving bare pussy, and it felt wrong to even think that about her. Except he had. Did. Was. Jesus. “Still having nightmares?”

“Yeah, but it’s getting better.”

“Good.”

“I’m a wreck is all. But a well-adjusted one. I swear.”

He pushed his beer to one side and set his palms on the table. Addison wasn’t just any woman, she was someone who might know him better than anyone else. Better than Iskander. “I am, at the moment, speaking in an official capacity.”

“All right.”

He lifted a hand. “Nikodemus made it clear you’re not to be pressured in any direction in regard to your decision about your pregnancy. Therefore, nothing we covered with Maddy is up for discussion between us. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Maddy is your contact for that.”

“Okay.”

He was grateful she’d not picked up on his state while he was being crude and staring at her ass or thinking about her with a shaved mound. That would only make this more difficult. “Giuseppe Infante has left Oregon. We’re not sure where he is right now.”

“And that means?”

He kept himself open to her the way he had at the farm house in Olompali; a low-level link. Inappropriate thoughts went behind a mental firewall. She stayed opaque. Fair enough, given he wasn’t sharing much himself. Dealing with warlords of various personalities, competencies, and abilities was the area of expertise he’d carved out since he swore fealty to Nikodemus. Addison would be no different.

His words were careful and deliberate. “With you so far away, Nikodemus’s ability to protect you is limited at best. It may no longer be enough for you merely to be passing.”

“Why? I hardly go anywhere.” She walked back to her chair, but she didn’t sit. She wasn’t showing yet. Or not enough that she couldn’t hid it.

“That’s not the point,” he said. “You know that.” She sighed, and he continued. “Infante is considerably weaker now that he no longer has magic that he killed for. But make no mistake, he blames you for what happened to him, and his current state does not mean he isn’t dangerous.”

“Lucky me.”

The familiar tone, the wry sarcasm he’d heard so often over the phone, made him smile. He relaxed because she was Addison, and she was the kind of person to think things through, and that was exactly what he needed her to do now. “You have company. He blames me as well.”

“Fuck him, Harsh.” She pushed away from the table. “As long as he leaves me alone, I don’t care where he is or what he’s doing.”

He left his chair and paced her tiny kitchen. “That’s just it. We no longer know precisely where he is. We know he’s left Portland and there’s at least a rumor he was seen in Bend. It’s possible he’ll come after you.”

“I get that. And I get why. He knew what he was doing.” Her mouth worked; he could feel her gathering her words. “Bejar had plenty of time for what he did. Obviously.” Her voice tightened, and he reacted to her power, even unfocused. It was hot. Fucking hot. “If Infante wants another shot at a home-grown mageheld—” She put her hands on the table and leaned toward him. Harsh didn’t think she knew how closely her behavior mirrored a warlord’s reaction to a threat. “He can go fuck himself. I will rip off his head if he gets close enough for me to try.”