Page 15 of Pregnant After One Forbidden Night

No matter how different life was in the capital, there was no equation in which she could make her behavior with the duke square with that of the woman she had always been.

He’s not a stranger.

The persistently hopeful voice inside her was getting irritated.

He is an absolute and literal stranger.

The practical voice could get irritated, too.

But instead of offering a fiery retort, her voice of hope gave up, flipping her stomach over in the process. She suddenly felt sick, ashamed and overwhelmed.

Both voices spoke in unison now.

What were you thinking?

But she would sort the answer to that question out later, when she had some time and was alone.

Right now, she needed to get back to the queen.

She should have never come to the library with the duke.

His devilish green eyes, his mesmerizing words, his thrilling touch, his magnetic desire—all of it was none of her business.

Her business was the queen.

“Jenna!” His exasperated tone brought her attention back to the real, flesh-and-blood man, as opposed to the mental image she could neither rectify nor justify.

“What?” Her tone was short, snapping, the one she used on family when they irritated her, not on the Cyranese nobility it was often her job to protect and serve.

“The alarm. It’s not for the queen.”

“What?” she repeated with the same crossness.

“The queen is not in danger.”

“What? Yes, I know.” She frowned, his words finally penetrating her growing fog of self-recrimination. “Why do you know, though?” she asked. He didn’t, as far as she was aware of, have any kind of background in security or defense to interpret the alarm.

“It was not a royal defense code.”

She paused her furious movements, reassembling the layers of royal blue to at least look like a guard even if she couldn’t seem to behave like one.

He was right. But why did he know that?

The oddity of his insider’s knowledge only emphasized the off-ness of everything she’d done with him.

Her awareness of the enormity of it was only growing.

Something was wrong with her mind. It had to be, for one person to have knocked her so far awry from her usual way of being.

Looking around their sensual alcove, she had no justification for how she’d come here.

In the streaming light and hush of the library, hindsight made it clear what the kryptonite had been.

A savior complex, a lifetime of baseless fairy tales, and the practiced seduction of a consummate professional.

She’d been an absolute fool.

He was not the one. He was the Duke of Redcliff.

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