Page 72 of His Secretly Pregnant Cinderella

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MORGANWASSOREand sated the next day, her whole body replete from making love with Constantine all night.

She had stayed in his bed. It was the first time they had gone to sleep together. But when she woke up, he wasn’t there. And she felt bereft. Wondering if the connection that she felt with him last night had just been something she’d imagined. She kept coming back to that thought she’d had earlier. That what she wanted was for him to have feelings for her. She was sitting with that, while considering all that it meant for her. Especially when taking into account the revelations that she’d gotten from her mother. It should have—almost—made her more afraid of her feelings. But that wasn’t the effect. She was afraid of being hurt.

She didn’t know if she could reach him. She just wasn’t certain.

But she wanted... She wanted.

And last night had been... Well, she had loved their conversation. He had seemed younger. More human. And then a switch had flipped inside of him and he had gone all intense. But of course, he hadn’t talked about that.

She got out of bed and realized she didn’t have any clothes in here. And because there was no one else here... There was no reason to be concerned. She walked out of the bedroom, stark naked, and began to head toward her room. But there, of course, was Constantine, standing at the end of the hall, looking at her with dark, fathomless eyes.

“You’re awake.”

“Yes,” she said, heat rising up in her body.

“I like you this way. If you aren’t cold, perhaps this is how you should be for me all day.”

“Possessive,” she said.

Mine.

He had said that, repeatedly. Over and over again.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re carrying my children, agape.”

She knew enough to know that meant love in Greek.

But she was not his love.

No, what had passed between them last night had been something dark and intense, and nothing half so sweet. There had been a moment. When they had spoken of ice cream, and she had...

He was fathomless, this man who was her husband.

He had told her about his sister, about his deep pain. But she didn’t feel closer to knowing him because of that. It was when he had stopped and spoken of things he’d enjoyed that she had found something she recognized. It was only then.

“I’m not certain you would get anything done,” she said.

“What do I need to get done?”

She laughed at that. “I don’t know. You were awfully busy yesterday.”

“And now I’m not busy today.”

And he wasn’t. They spent the day at the beach, and after she got over her initial shyness, and her concern over being sunburned—which he dealt with by rubbing lotion all over her body—she enjoyed being bare underneath the sun. He joined her, only he looked like he was part of the landscape. Like he belonged. He looked as if he had been born there. Poseidon, maybe. A god of the sea...cut and bronzed and glorious.

And it was perfect like this. They spoke little, feeding each other fruit and making love in the sand. Swimming in the waves.

But the problem with that was it gave her a chance to interrogate her heart.

She loved him. And love, she realized then was the seed of joy.

That joy that had taken root in her spirit and begun to drive out the bitterness she’d been so afraid of.

---