Page 54 of His Secretly Pregnant Cinderella

A surge of possessiveness went through him and he dropped to his knees, putting his hand on her stomach, desire and pure, masculine pride vying for pride of place.

He pressed his lips to her stomach and felt her shiver. Then he moved lower, gripping her underwear and drawing them down her thighs, leaning in and pressing his face to the cleft there, inhaling the scent of her arousal.

She was wearing heels now, and nothing more. And he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

Morgan. His.

No one else’s.

Not ever.

His children.

And he knew then that he would die for them. For her. He would also kill for them. For her.

Self-sacrifice and violence were armor that he put over himself just then. The truth, a reality as incontrovertible as if the items had been forged in the fire, and not simply in the intensity of his own need to keep the world at bay.

Because he would not lose them. He would lose nothing. Not anymore. Never again.

Never again.

And this was what he had tried to avoid for all of these years. And this was why he had vowed that he would never...

This was why.

Because there was no certainty here. There was nothing but the vast stretch of terror that was the universe, that was fate. For he had not lied when he said that to her.

He had no illusions that he was all-powerful. He never had.

He had no illusions that things would be all right, because they often were not.

And what he’d said about her mother was true as well. He was a man who owned his choices. He had made the wrong choices.

He had failed.

And he accepted that punishment as his.

You even failed at punishing yourself. Here she is. In your arms. Pregnant.

And he pushed all that aside, because now, right now, he was going to seize it. Right now, she would be his. Right now, this reality was his, and he would not let guilt or doubt or recrimination creep in. This was what happened, and he could not rail at it any more than he could rail at the fact that he was the last remaining of his siblings.

It was simply what was.

And he let everything go. Everything except the dark need to possess her. Everything.

He looked at her. Ate into her with a dark need that had taken over everything.

She gasped, and he clung to her, his hands splayed over the globes of her buttocks as he licked deeper and deeper between her thighs, as he made her tremble, shake and moan.

No man had ever done this for her. Only he had tasted this honey delight between her legs.

And only he ever would. No man would ever touch her. There was to be no marriage on paper. This was a marriage between their bodies. They were joined together in this desire. In this truth that she belonged to only him. She was his.

She was his.

The sun shone high above, the open sky watching.

Do you see?He asked the powers that be. Do you see that she is mine. She is mine, and you will not come for her.

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