Page 69 of His Secretly Pregnant Cinderella

“You were angry with Alex.”

“I wanted you. I told you that already. Yes, I was angry with Alex, but I was a virgin, do you honestly think I would only sleep with you to get back at your brother? I did it because I wanted something that was mine. For me. I did it because I wanted to indulge myself after a lifetime of total control. And you were the gift that I wanted. You were... The ice cream. Just there to be an indulgence. So I suppose we’re the same on that score. That you were my indulgence too.”

“Morgan...”

“And now we are having these children. And nothing about the way we’ve begun is normal, or makes sense, or is a way that people should carry on. But I don’t know how to go back and be like everyone else. And maybe we won’t. Maybe we can’t be. Maybe a billionaire who ends up with a waitress can never be...” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. Maybe those are the wrong words.”

“What words?”

“Ends up with. I feel like that implies romance and happy endings. And that isn’t necessarily us.”

“What you are is mine,” he said. “There will be no question of there being other people in this union, you understand that, don’t you?”

“I don’t want anyone else. I never have. You were the only man that I have ever wanted.”

“You were ready to sleep with Alex.”

“I liked him and I thought it was time. But I didn’t think at all when it came to you. It was about desire, and I was completely overwhelmed by it.”

But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the answer. It wasn’t what he felt when he looked at her. That unsatisfied sensation that made him feel rocked to his core.

It wasn’t just desire, because... Even if he had never experienced desire like this before, he knew what it was to want a woman.

Do you? Can you even remember what it’s like to want anyone other than Morgan?

No. He couldn’t. From the moment he had seen her he’d been consumed with her. He had not touched another woman since the first time he had seen Morgan almost a year ago.

The realization stunned him.

“I have not been with anyone else since the moment we met,” he said, and he had not intended to say that to her, had not meant to say it out loud, but for some reason honesty had felt... It had felt necessary then. Perhaps because he was sitting there grappling with the truth of it in himself.

“You... You haven’t been?”

“No. I haven’t wanted anyone. Not since the moment my brother first brought you home. I thought it was quite a cruelty. That a woman on his arm should capture my attention so. But you must understand, I never expected to see you again after that first time. And still, you haunted me. You haunted my dreams. In a rather effortless fashion.”

“And you wanted to have a marriage in name only?”

“I did not see what the alternative could possibly be.”

“You didn’t want me to be carrying his children.”

“It doesn’t matter. It would’ve been better. It would be right.”

“You didn’t want me to be carrying his children because you want them.”

“I should not.”

“Who cares about should and shouldn’t, Constantine? We have never followed that guideline. It has never mattered to us. No matter that we might have wanted it to, it never has.”

He could not deny the truth of what she was saying, even if it gouged at him. Of course he wanted the children to be his, the same as he wanted her to be his, but it didn’t matter. Except it did. All of it mattered. No matter how he told himself it should not and could not. It did.

She was pregnant with his babies.

And he wanted to believe that redemption was what was on the other side of that glass. But did it matter if it was? He had her. She was here. They were his children, they were not Alex’s. And just perhaps he did not owe his brother a legacy. Perhaps Alex should’ve guarded his own legacy. Perhaps his brother should have managed things, taken care of himself. Well, perhaps that. The children were his, and she was his. And she had wanted him above Alex. And suddenly, the beast inside of him roared.

He wanted her. In his bed. Tonight. Now.

“I hope there is no dessert,” he said.

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