Page 29 of His Pretty Little Duet

She'd survive.My blood pumps heatedly through my body, scorching every cell. It's the onset of a possessive sensation. Mis-fucking-placed as it is, but right now, every muscle inside me wants to protect her.

This girl is getting to me.

Fawn

He narrowshis eyes on me as I say, "I'd survive. It'd just be a cut." The glass particles sparkling within a pool of orange juice would probably cut me, but I've seen worse done with glass—a lot worse.

My nonchalance is seemingly annoying him, so I get a strike of urgency to clean the sparkling orange chaos. As I shuffle to jump down, his heat circles me, his proximity to me suddenly enveloping, and I become acutely aware that I am literally caged by his arms. Locked in place. His presence a wall of muscle I am unable to move past.

He'sclose.

And my head is dizzy again.

My need to clean is incinerated in a fire lit by his warmth and scent, and—I swallow. The heat radiating between us, filling the gaps, moves around me as if it owns me. Within a few seconds, I'm able to memorise this moment, bank it away. I map the black ink that decorates the slip of chest between his open collars. Map the veins in his forearms, exposed below the shirt rolled up to his elbows. Map the metallic icy flames in his eyes when I peer up to find them tunnelling into mine.

Is he upset about the glass?

Doesn't seem likely.

Suddenly, my attention is drawn to a sensation in my abdomen. Startled, I curl in slightly.

A fluttering inside me steals my breath. It's not butterflies. Unless they have managed to break from my stomach and into my uterus... I press my hand between my hipbones. My face stills, my eyes losing focus while my mind becomes attune to the whooshing—no, rolling sensation.

Then I realise what it is.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I hone in on the feeling, forgetting about Clay for just a moment so I don't miss this. I thought it was too early, but I'm small so maybe... I think, the baby is moving inside me. I can feel something strange.

"What's happening, Fawn?" he orders, his voice finds me in my daze, pulling me from my focus.

I open my eyes to his full of a kind of stern interest—on anyone else's face, it may be consideredconcern.I smile at him, training my eyes on his devilishly handsome face, ignoring the fact that he's little more than a stranger, intimating, all that, and just eager to see if he feels it too. "I feel something."

Without thinking, I throw the silky lapels of my gown open. Pulling his much bigger hand away from where it has a death grip on the counter, I press it firmly to my lower stomach. His hand almost flinches from me, stiff and defiant, but then he stills with my hand on top of his. Exhaling heavily, his long fingers span out to cradle my abdomen with a protective dominance that causes a rabble of butterflies to take flight inside me.

I stare into his eyes as the strange sensation happens again, but it's too early to be movement... isn't it? His eyes narrow to the sensation. Then meet mine. I smile wider, breathing with excitement and rapture, knowing he feels it aswell.

He smiles too.

That. Is. Everything.

And for the first time, the mystery in his usually impassive gaze dissolves in a deep pool of sentiment, meeting my soul on an equal plane, no longer the enforcer.

I see him a little raw.

Hi, Clay.

I feel like there is a single moment in time while holding eye contact with someone that can change a relationship forever. The moment has risen for us. We both are met with the choice to look away. It’s an itch in my throat, a shudder in my heart—it's time to look away, Fawn.

It's time to stop smiling at him.

To remove his hand from my stomach.

Yet... I don't.

And neither does he.

But then his fingertips glide around the outline of the swelling between my hipbones, as something inside him switches. Visibly.He leans closer, his breath a warning as he says, "Who put this inside you, little deer?"

My heart sinks.

---