Forbidden Desire

CHAPTER 16

At his words, Marga had grown still in his embrace, so quiet she didn’t even breathe. Once again, Atticus cursed his dull daytime senses, which left him guessing at her feelings in a vacuum. He had no idea how his revelation had affected her when she was withdrawn like this, whether he’d inadvertently broken the fragility he held in his arms.

  She’d seemed so deeply vulnerable after she’d cried, so brittle as to crumble at the slightest misplaced touch, that he’d known, instinctively, he could crush her with one careless word. And that, he’d realized with surprise, would crush him as well.

  So, in a visceral response to this vulnerability in her that cut right through him, he’d decided to share with her the most painful part of his past, of himself, something he’d never spoken of to anyone else. Not even Benjamin, whom he considered the closest friend he had, knew how Atticus sister had died, let alone that he