Page 3 of Pregnant After One Forbidden Night

She would cherish the memory forever because he had standards.

Afterward, he would no longer feel like he’d been scraped raw and exposed to the world, all of his shields ripped clean off by the simple fact of her existence.

He would return to being Cyrano’s most notorious playboy—wrecker of marriages and despoiler of hearts.

Every spy needed a cover and with the family history he had, his mother’s infidelities and wildness well known, it was only natural that his cover would be that of the heartless Casanova cad. He had become known more for being free with compliments and enjoying hedonistic delights than for his intelligence or dedication.

Covers worked best when they fulfilled people’s expectations and the Redcliffs had earned a reputation thanks to the previous generation.

To the eyes of society, he was everything Jenna was not—her polar opposite.

She was a royal guard, her full heart in her duty, on proud, uniformed display. As a Priory woman, she was dedicated and faithful to her unusual upbringing and religion, as evidenced by the fact she’d made a stipulation in her employment records that she be allowed the Priory’s weekly day of rest and important holidays off. The Priory were a family-focused and conservative religious minority in Cyrano, famous for still encouraging chastity before marriage in their youth and refraining from many of the modern pleasures that men like Sebastian lived and breathed.

No woman had ever cared to resist him. The sheltered, serious guard would be no exception.

And if she did turn down the pleasure he offered, well, he knew how to walk away. He was just confident she would not.

In fact, the ease with which he anticipated he’d achieve his ends only urged him to get it done sooner.

Her incessant brightness drew him like a moth to a flame, tempting him to come closer, luring him out of the shadows and threatening to both reveal and destroy the darkness he moved within.

It was his job to move in the shadows. He could not be drawn out.

The king reached the two women, and Jenna created space for him with a slightly awkward shuffle of her feet. Her frown, with those unbelievable brows coming together just so, her lips pursing, revealed that she wasn’t pleased to be pushed away from her charge, even by the king himself.

Adorable.

And everything was progressing as Sebastian had designed.

After the incident with the Farden chancellor’s son, it had become a joke that the queen needed no security when her husband was nearby. Like all jokes, it was funny because it was true.

Sebastian was counting on it.

Despite the libertine affectations he presented to the world, Sebastian was severe when it came to his work.

He had taken a vow to safeguard the nation and its monarchs, and no personal distractions could ever be allowed to supersede that, particularly not something as superficial and fleeting as attraction—even an unprecedented attraction.

Sebastian waited until the king leaned close to whisper in the queen’s ear, watching for color to come to her cheeks as she gave a little nod, and then waited still longer for the king to lead the queen away from the party.

Then he crossed the balcony toward where Jenna stood, hoping the triumphant glint in his eyes didn’t look too wolfish.

Sebastian intercepted Jenna’s path into the interior of the manor as she followed the monarchs from a discrete distance. He positioned himself so that she bumped into his shoulder.

The move was obvious but had the desired effect.

“My apologies, Your Grace.” Her words were automatic, delivered with a slight bow, stiff and formal, her eyes cast at the ground. She hadn’t looked him in the eye, and though he’d anticipated that ingrained deference, he found himself irritated.

He wanted to see her eyes.

“Yes, well, if you’d been looking where you’d been going...” He infused his words with the aristocratic drawl that he’d been born to as much as the winning smile he’d been employing to get his way since he was a child.

Her eyes flashed up to his face.

Up to that point, things had been going according to Sebastian’s plan.

Abruptly, they no longer were.

If her brightness had caused him to do a double take, her eyes froze him to the spot and tore him apart.

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