Page 4 of Pregnant After One Forbidden Night

It would be tempting to assign their clarity, the unflinching truth in their sable depths, to her profession, but that would be a fantasy.

Jenna’s goodness was her own.

Astonishingly open and clear, her gaze demanded nothing less than complete truth. So crystalline and deep were the dark brown orbs that they tempted him to imagine that she saw things others didn’t, that she could see through his layered masks, straight through to the true core of him.

But he did not give in to the temptation to believe.

She was no more aware of his multilayered existence than anyone else in their circle.

If she had been, a rose blush wouldn’t have dusted her olive cheekbones, and her moistened lips wouldn’t have parted.

Her stunning eyebrows came together, confusion clouding her gaze, her pupils dilating as she sucked in a quiet breath of air.

Already, his seduction was working, and if there was a level of unexpected thrill in the success, he attributed it not to the woman but to the reward of getting what he wanted.

He always excelled where he chose to put effort.

“Again, you have my apologies. I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she said. Her voice was sweet, as musical and genuine and unguarded as her stare.

It tasted like wildflower honey.

Lifting an eyebrow, he said, “I’ll forgive you for not noticing me once. Not again, though.”

His words startled her again, enough so that this time, he knew he’d caught her attention, truly caught it. Instead of brushing him off to return to her duty, she looked at him and saw him. Her pupils dilated, and her eyes narrowed before she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“We’re in that together then.”

Outright confusion creased her brow. “Excuse me?”

“I wish I could. But that would be like excusing the sun for rising and bringing all of this chaos to life. Impossible.”

“What?” She had no idea what he was talking about, as his words were absurd.

Oddly, he found he couldn’t help it. She made him feel strangely foolish.

Being absurd did not make him any less effective, though. “I find myself drawn to you with an intensity I cannot comprehend, Jenna Moustafa,” he said.

Her expression shuttered. “Very funny,” she said flatly before turning from him.

For an instant, he felt utterly adrift at her abandonment.

With his access to the strange creature he found so alluring suddenly cut off, his mind went momentarily blank, ceasing to process its various inputs as if transported to an all-white room with no windows or doors.

And then he was back on the balcony staring at Jenna, surrounded by the very wealthiest of Cyrano’s very wealthy, with a strange cocktail of sensations swirling in his gut and his hand wrapped around her slender wrist.

She had started to leave, had begun to walk away from him without a backward glance.

It was no less than he would have expected from a royal guard.

She was on duty.

It wasn’t her job to engage in cryptic back-and-forth with cynical aristocrats.

But when she had turned from him, a foreign thing had happened to him.

He had panicked. And in that blank instant, he had reached out for her hand.

She stared at his grip in surprise.

---