Page 14 of Pregnant After One Forbidden Night

CHAPTER FOUR

THEEMERGENCYALARMsystem went off at the end of Jenna’s long, contented sigh, robbing both of them of the liquid ease that seemed to have melted their bodies together on the sofa.

Separating and leaping to their feet in one motion created an awkward space between them that, for Jenna, the heat and contentment she had been filled with rapidly drained, was replaced with a sense of unease, like soapy water spilling over the edge of a mop bucket.

The alarm pattern did not signal the type of emergency she needed to rush away to deal with, but it certainly brought home a few sobering realities.

Royal emergency or not, it was her duty to be beside the queen when an alarm went off, which she was decidedly not.

And the reason for that was because she had just made love for the first time in her life in her best friend’s library.

With a stranger.

No longer caught in the spell of his regard, aware only of the tingling wreckage of her own rapidly chilling passions—the emergency system sounding around them—the truth of that was becoming harder to ignore.

She didn’t know this man at all and yet now she knew him. Biblically.

But that’s not true at all, her suddenly wonky inner compass argued. Your body recognized him as The One.

I literally met him today, she argued with herself, unwilling to allow any excuses as she rapidly dressed. If anything, her body had merely recognized him as sexy.

She had been irresponsible at the very least, because as she continued to dress, she was most importantly not where she was supposed to be when an emergency alarm sounded. She should be at the queen’s side.

She had no idea where the queen even was.

But you found him, a dreamy inner voice sighed.

The sweet, girlish part of her didn’t seem to care that she’d neglected her duty and compromised her morals.

Because you haven’t, it insisted. He’s The One.

Her voice of reason gave a mental snort.

She didn’t believe in that nonsense.

Not believing it was just one of the myriad reasons why she had eschewed Priory tradition—and the advice of both her parents and her older brothers—and gone to the military academy rather than straight into marriage.

She had tried to tell them that while she didn’t see anything wrong with their choices, for herself she wanted a full life and career—opportunities to meet people with common interests and values—rather than chasing after notions of soul mates and rushing headfirst into motherhood.

They had called her foolish and insisted that the right life partner was the key to finding those things. They’d agreed to disagree and shaken their heads even as they sent her off with care packages.

But she hadn’t minded. She’d been sure she would prove them wrong.

Back then, before she’d spent years living as an equally unrealized human being for the opposite reasons, she had been confident in her sense of the path—prideful even.

She had thought of herself as above the limiting conditioning of her childhood.

If the last few years and whatever had just happened between her and the duke were any indication, however, she shouldn’t have been so sure.

Clearly some of that childhood conditioning had taken root, lying in wait to strike, ready to jump at the first opportunity to blossom and bloom in her psyche.

Was it any wonder she had given herself away to a virtual stranger then? Was it any different from all the other Priory girls she’d grown up with?

And did it even matter now that she’d gone wrong from both ends?

She’d eschewed and scoffed at finding The One, and then jumped into bed with the first man to notice her since she left her hometown.

And there hadn’t even been a bed.

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