His Secretly Pregnant Cinderella
Author
Millie Adams
Reads
18.7K
Chapters
17
Chapter 1
MORGAN STANFIELD HAD never taken seriously the idea that a person could die of embarrassment. But from where she was crouched currently, dressed in nothing but a black lace bodysuit, watching her boyfriend of approximately six months laying another woman down onto the bed, she was sure that she was close.
And that, perhaps, should have been the first clue that it was actually a good thing that Alex was cheating on her. Really, she should’ve known.
She should have known that whatever patience he seemed to have for her desire to wait, he would not defer his own pleasure endlessly. She should have known he didn’t actually love her quite so much.
And Morgan had always wondered why he’d been with her. She had always wondered why Alex was interested in her. She had met him when she was waitressing at a bar near her university, and she had been shocked when he’d approached her. He was tall and beautiful with arresting dark eyes and an easy smile. His Greek accent had sent shivers down her spine.
Morgan had worked for everything that she’d ever received in her life, and she was not working at the bar by the university because she went to the university. It was because she wanted to. Because she was saving up all of her precious money to get herself a better future. And when she’d started dating Alex, that future had suddenly been dropped in her lap. He’d given her the funds to go to school immediately, even though she had protested. He had brought her to family functions, bought her clothes and paid for her to be transported to luxurious affairs, and never once had he pressured her for sex.
Well, now she could see why.
He was getting it elsewhere.
And she was... Devastated.
She was also trapped. Trapped in her boyfriend’s bedroom at his parents’ house, their estate, actually, about to see a whole lot more sex than she’d ever had in her life. And she really thought she might die. She really did. And that was when she turned and saw the door that led out onto the balcony. The alcove she was in was quite separate from the bedroom. These rooms were more like suites, with separate compartments. And she had a feeling that if she crawled over to the door, and worked her way out onto the balcony, she would be able to go unnoticed.
Granted, once she was out there she might be stuck, but she would prefer that to being stuck indoors with a full pornographic scene happening within earshot. She took a breath. She turned and began to crawl across the floor. Literally crawl on her belly. Well, her friends had been right. Men like him were too good to be true, and it could only end in humiliation.
Of course, she hadn’t confessed to her friends that she hadn’t given him her virginity yet.
They thought she was silly being a virgin as it was, much less when she had a gorgeous, rich boyfriend. It was just that she’d seen the way that men had taken advantage of her mother over the years, and she had never wanted to... She had never wanted to lose herself like that. Had never wanted to lose her mind quite to that degree.
That worked out well, didn’t it?
She could finally touch the door. She reached up and prayed that the handle would pull. It did. Easily, and she was able to get it open silently. Staying low, she wiggled through the crack she created in the doorway, then once she was outside, keeping the handle pressed down, reached up and close it as silently as she had opened it to begin with.
She sat crouched on the balcony.
This was stupid. It was absolutely stupid. She had finally thought to...to give herself to him and he was giving himself to someone else. She wondered if his parents had any idea he had a woman here...
She knew who probably did. A dark rage expanded in her chest. Oh, yes, she was sure that there was one person who was well aware that Alex was locked away in his suite with some blond beauty.
His older brother.
The man who hated her most of all.
The man whose name she would not even think. Because he didn’t deserve it.
In her moment of humiliation, acknowledging his existence would be too great a burden to bear.
She looked down below. She was four stories up, and she did not relish the idea of trying to climb down.
Then, she really would be dead ostensibly of humiliation, and that seemed a fate too ignominious to contend with.
She looked across and saw that she was very close to the next balcony. She was trying to remember what the room might be, based on her time spent in the manor. A library, maybe. Or was that on the other side? Honestly, it didn’t much matter. She just needed to look in and see if it was occupied.
She stood up slowly, certain that Alex and his lover would be too occupied to notice if there was movement outside, and looked across the space between the stone railings. Honestly, in any other circumstance, she would have called herself crazy, curled up in a ball and lain there on the floor of the balcony until someone came to rescue her. But, no one was going to rescue her. Not from this, not from the site of her own folly. She would have to rescue herself. There was no rescuing her pride. It was already on the ground. So, she would think nothing about crossing the two spaces. She would have not a care in the world about falling.
“Don’t do that,” she said to herself, “if you fall to the ground you won’t die, it’s grass. You’ll only be maimed. And that’s really only compounding the problem, isn’t it?”
She gritted her teeth, and before she could talk herself out of it, lifted herself up and slung one leg across the railing on her balcony, and over the railing on the next, not quite able to plant her foot on the floor of the next balcony, but feeling somewhat secure that she at least had herself partially there. Then she lifted herself with her arms, and planted the next leg over, rocking forward and pitching herself safely to the ground. Thank God.
She really didn’t want to have to do that again. She looked next door and saw that the room was dim. There was no movement, though, she could not tell quite which room it was. There were bookcases, so perhaps she was right, and it was the library. Her only hope was that the door was also unlocked to this balcony. And it was. She slipped in quickly and quietly, cursing that she had left all of her clothes behind. She moaned. He was going to wonder about the clothes. Later, it was going to be clear someone else had been there. Or maybe he wouldn’t notice. Maybe he would attribute it to some other fling. Or maybe the maid would clean it up before he ever saw them.
It didn’t much matter, because she was never going to see him again. Not him or anyone from this family. For a moment, she felt utterly, desolately sad. Because she had been convinced that... That she’d found a dream.
But dreams did not come true for girls like her. Not dreams like this. There was no Prince Charming. There was no magical happy ending; there was just not going to be any getting out of this with her dignity. But all she needed to do was get down the stairs. And out the front door. And if she had to run... Well, there could only ever be a rumor of a crazed redhead running through the halls. She would never look back, she would never call back, and she would go back to being alone... It was just all over. All of it.
She took a step deeper into the room and heard a sound. A glass clicking against a hard surface.
“Well. When I ordered a nightcap, I can honestly say I did not expect this.”
“Constantine.”
Because of course it was him. Of course, he would be the one to see. Of course, he would be the one in this room.
She was surprised he didn’t bring with him hell’s very fire and all the demons. Or maybe he had, because she was suddenly hot.
He’s always made you hot...
She ignored that. As she’d ignored the heat for six months. Because Constantine wasn’t her knight in shining armor. Her Prince Charming.
Constantine was something shameful, dark and awful she pretended she didn’t harbor inside of herself.
Alex isn’t your Prince Charming either...
“So it is you. I thought that I recognized you.” His dark gaze swept over her, the contempt there so...
Obvious.
Scathing.
Hot.
“I see you’ve abandoned your fresh-faced ingenue look for the evening.” The expression on his face was almost bland. If you didn’t know him.
And, sadly, she did.
She had made an effort to not know him, but it was unavoidable.
Over the past six months she had been taken into the family with enthusiasm. She loved Alex’s parents.
She did not love Constantine. And he did not love her.
But she was fascinated by him. She had learned to read a lot of things in one quirk of his arrogant eyebrow, had become well acquainted with the disapproval inherent in the slightest adjustment of his jacket cuff. He did not look at her so much as through her, so at this moment, as he looked at her with that burning intensity, she felt it. Down to the very center of her soul.
“Your brother is otherwise occupied,” she said.
And if a person could die of humiliation then she was well on her way.
Because to have to admit to Constantine Kamaras of all people, that she was... That she had been replaced... Not even replaced, as she had never even been in Alex’s bed.
Your choice, Morgan.
Yes, it was her choice. Born out of extreme paranoia, to be sure. A fear that if she were to fall pregnant she wouldn’t be taken care of, that she would end up like her mother.
But she had gotten so... So confident in Alex. And what they had. And she had been ready to...
It was more than humiliation that had her reeling now. It was the stunning clarity that in her confidence in another person she had still been wrong. But she had been cautious all this time and so certain of him...
And she had been wrong.
“He is otherwise occupied?”
He shifted in his chair, affecting a more languid pose than she ever typically associated with Constantine. He was rigid. Hard like a mountain. And yet at the moment he looked... Approachable. Which made him all the more terrifying.
His shirt collar was open, revealing a wedge of chest, a bit of dark hair. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, and she couldn’t help but take stock of his muscular forearms.
He had the sculpted face of a fallen angel. His eyes black as midnight, and his hair like a raven’s wing.
He was every gothic fantasy a lonely girl growing up with books and little else for comfort could have ever wanted.
Pity he hated her.
Pity he was the older brother of the love of her life.
Pity the love of her life was a faithless scoundrel.
And really, the biggest pity of all was the fact that she was standing there in her underwear.
“What an effect,” he said, his tone dark. “You in that, and with the man you intended to seduce occupied. I feel I must ask. Is it another woman who occupies his attentions?”
“Yes.” She did her best to copy his uncaring pose. “And I think you know that.”
She let one shoulder drop, and with it went the strap on the shockingly scandalous teddy she was wearing. Absurdly one piece and all lace so you could see her body peeking from beneath rose petals in a rather strategic fashion.
It had seemed so daring and sensual earlier.
Now it just seemed dangerous.
“I know nothing of the comings and goings of my brother, mainly because if I had to keep tabs on every creature he took into his bed I would do nothing else. You must understand, Morgan, my objection to you has always been that you were simply another in a long line of questionable choices my brother seems to enjoy making.”
She refused to let the words stab her.
“He loves you, you know,” Morgan said. “He thinks you are the most brilliant, wonderful man in the entire world.”
“What is it they say?” Constantine said, looking down at his hands for a moment, and then back up at her. “Yes. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And my younger brother is hardly even a pantomime of me. And I think you know that.”
There was something about that dark, disdainful note in his voice that sent a shiver directly down her spine. And to her horror, her nipples beaded tight behind the lace bra that did not do an effective job of covering her breasts.
“I think I would like to hear the story of how you came to be standing here without your clothes.”
“I told you. I... Well. I...” And this was where it was going to be tricky to keep her pride.
Your pride is shot to hell, Morgan, you might as well tell him. He thinks the worst of you. Go ahead and give him a story.
“I decided to sneak in his room tonight. To surprise him. Unfortunately I learned the hard way that there are some men you should not surprise. I went into the bathroom to change... And I was in the corner of his room in the dark when he arrived with... Whoever she is.” Her stomach was like acid. “And my clothing was in a different room. I could not bear the thought of him seeing me so I slipped out the balcony. I could not climb straight down, so I decided to seek another room that I might enter... And as you can see it turned out to be occupied. So. Surprises all around.”
“That is quite the tale,” he said. And there was nothing but silence between them as he looked at her. Behind every petal, she felt. “It would be a shame to waste the outfit, don’t you think?”
Her stomach plummeted, that place between her legs began to pulse in a strange and greedy fashion.
She had been ready to sleep with Alex, and she had not felt like this. But one look of intent from Constantine and her entire body was thrown into a tailspin.
You read too many fantastical novels when you were a girl. You are being a fool.
No. Maybe she wasn’t being a fool. After all, she had been certain of Alex, and it was over. It was over. And that realization washed over her like a wave. Insistent and terrible.
He was sleeping with another woman. And she could never...
She could never subject herself to that. And it did not matter that he had paid for her schooling. It did not matter that she loved his family.
She wanted to be loved.
Morgan Stanfield had never been beloved in her entire life. She had been a burden to her mother, nothing to whoever her father was... And she had been certain she had finally found love with Alex. With his family.
But he did not love her. She didn’t know what game he was playing with her, but it was clear that it had to be a game. It had to be.
And she was an idiot who did not have any kind of special insight into other people. Who was not more responsible than other women, than her mother. She had been ready to fling herself on that ghastly altar of love because she had finally thought that she had found... The one.
And she took such great pride in her ability to assess people. Because she did not feel that she was wide-eyed. She did not feel that she was naive. She had always felt that she was exceptionally realistic and pragmatic, and where had that gotten her?
Naked on a balcony.
Well, nearly naked.
And there was a man before her that called to fantasies that she had long tried to suppress.
He despised her. He did not love her as she had imagined Alex did.
And she did not love him.
But regardless, he had captivated her from the first moment she had seen him.
Alex had an ease about him, and Constantine was nothing like that. Constantine was every inch the man you might expect to have a mad wife in the attic. Constantine was...
“Do you think?” she asked, the question coming out much more breathless than she intended.
“I hate to see a woman all dressed up with nowhere to go.”
His voice had become a seductive purr now, nothing like the interactions she’d had with him prior. His tone was usually hard, deep and clipped. And now it washed over her like a wave.
Leaving her feeling restless.
“You’re very beautiful, Morgan.”
He thought she was beautiful? She was pretty. She knew that, but it had always felt a little bit like an inconvenience more than anything else. Her flame red hair and translucent skin drew a lot of attention, as did the vividness of her green eyes, but for a woman who had always wanted to keep her head down and get on with school and work, it had felt an uneasy burden to bear.
She had never much cared whether or not a man thought she was beautiful, but for some reason the revelation that Constantine did was... Well it was heady indeed.
“You think I’m beautiful?”
“Yes. But I would bet you know you’re beautiful.”
“Perhaps. But I imagine you despise everything about me. I did not ever consider that you might apply any sort of virtue to me.”
“Do you think beauty is a virtue?”
She blinked. “No. Not... That isn’t what I meant.”
“Beauty,” he said, his voice hard, “is a vice. Were it not, I would have grabbed hold of you by now and shipped you straight out the bedroom door, flinging you to your ass out in the corridor. However. Your beauty is a particular vice of mine. When I find I am not a man given to questioning a gift when it shows up in my room trussed up and ready to be unwrapped.”
“And if I don’t want you?”
He stood slowly, never breaking eye contact with her, never wavering. Then he made his way to her, and she felt her breath go more and more shallow.
“Darling,” he said. “Do not lie. It insults us both. You have wanted me from the very moment you first set foot in my parents’ house. And the more cruel I am to you, the more you seem to want it.”
Her breathing was truly labored now, and she hated it. Mostly because he was right.
She could recall easily that first encounter they’d had six months ago. When he looked at her as if she was something vile that he had to scrape off the bottom of his shoe. And she had found him beautiful.
She had been thankful, then, for Alex and his easy charm. For the feeling she had for him. Because they had done something to shield her from the scalding heat that came from his older brother’s disdainful gaze.
But there was nothing between them now. No feelings for Alex. Nothing.
“And you must know,” he said. “How I have wanted you.”
He did not grab her and haul her into his arms. Instead, he extended his hand, and with just the barest edge of his thumb he traced the line along the top of her cheekbone. And it was like a match, struck slowly and painfully before igniting the flame.
Her breasts felt painfully heavy, and she was so aware of what she was wearing.
“I knew you were beautiful,” he said. “But I was not prepared for a sight such as this. Even veiled, you’re glorious—something to behold.”
She did not know why it made her heart flutter so, because compliments about one’s appearance were cheap and easy. And they shouldn’t mean a thing. She had decided as a young girl to never let her head be swayed by such things. By romance and beautiful words.
But something twisted in her stomach then, hard and painful, and a voice inside of her spoke the shameful truth.
That she knew this wasn’t romance. Or beautiful words, or anything quite so floral.
It was desire. And from the beginning there had never been anything she could do about it. Never been anything that she could do to minimize what she felt for him.
It simply was.
And, oh, how she wished it were not.
“Show me, Morgan,” he said, his voice going rough. “Show me what I want to see.”
He wanted her to strip. She understood that. She waited for him to sit back down, a king reclining, but he did not. Instead, he stood there, his gaze far too intense, far too intent. And he felt so large. He was broader and taller than his brother, by at least three inches.
And quite near to a foot taller than she was.
She ought to feel frail and shockingly vulnerable, and yet, she did not.
He had not an ounce of fat on his body. Not that she had seen his body, it was just that... Well she had been helpless to not take a visual tour of him anytime she had seen him in the family home. In his custom fitted suit that lovingly held his broad shoulders, muscular chest and slim waist.
And now, every ounce of his power, every ounce of his beauty was all directed at her. His gaze keen, his muscles bunched as if he were a predator ready to attack.
And she found that she did not fear it. Before she could decide what to do, before she could think it through, she reached around and unhooked the lace top. It went loose, and she pressed her hand over her breasts as it went slack. Her forearm neatly covering her from his view. She had certainly never done a striptease in her life. And it wasn’t so much that she was being a tease now as she was feeling... Dazed. Wondering what the hell she was thinking.
A fantasy. He is a fantasy.
And should he not be the thing that you get on the way out the door?
Because it was always him, hadn’t it been?
He was the one that had appealed to her in this darkly sexual way that had always felt shameful to her.
She had always been so ashamed of this part of herself. The part of herself that didn’t simply want sweet and wonderful words but wanted a man who wanted her. A man who would grab hold of her with big, strong hands. A man who would kiss her, taste her...
She had pushed all that down and told herself that she didn’t need that sort of thing.
Because it kept her safe.
Because it felt like something that was too close to her mother and all of her vices.
There was that word again.
Vices.
Perhaps beauty was his. And he was hers.
And she would make herself a slave to it. For tonight. Just tonight.
It emboldened her, and she dropped her arm, letting the top fall free and expose her breasts to him.
His jaw went tight, a muscle jumping there, and arousal speared her between the thighs.
She had forgotten about Alex and whatever he was doing in the next room. Because one look from Constantine and her entire body was alight. And it had never been thus with Alex. Oh, she had thought him handsome. She had felt comfortable with the idea of sleeping with him. It would be no hardship.
But it had not been like this. This sickness. And perhaps that was one reason she had wanted Alex.
Because this was the very thing she had always feared. But the beautiful thing was she didn’t like Constantine. So she would never be like her mother pining after a man far after he had moved on. She would never pine after Constantine.
She would heal from the disappointment of losing Alex.
Just like she would heal from missing the sheer sexual connection she felt right now with Constantine.
But at least she would never miss the man himself.
So her recovery would be quite a lot easier than it might’ve been otherwise.
“Stop,” he said.
“What?” she asked, feeling confused now.
“Thinking. I do not need you to think. You simply need to feel.”
She focused on the glide of the lace fabric against her skin as she began to tug the bodysuit down over her hips, exposing the rest of her body to his hungry gaze. She swished her hair and focused on the feeling of it skimming over her shoulders.
She felt the breath fill her lungs, felt her heart beating a hard and steady rhythm. Felt that place between her legs go liquid with longing, aching for his touch. For his possession.
And she didn’t think. Not at all.
He appraised her openly, his gaze taking in the most intimate places on her body. He took a step toward her, and then moved to the side, around behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders, let them skim down her arms, and then he placed them on her hips and pulled her against him, and she felt the hard ridge of his desire pushing insistently against the curve of her buttocks. “I want you,” he growled.
“Oh,” she said.
“You are truly beautiful,” he said.
“Now who’s thinking too much,” she said. She turned her head slightly, and then he kissed her, light, teasing. Not enough. She wiggled in his hold and turned toward him, and he deepened the kiss. And it was like fire.
His mouth was firm and hot, his tongue insistent and clever as he licked deeper and deeper into her mouth with each pass of his lips over hers.
She arched against him, completely naked, aware of the silken fabric of his shirt, of a button skimming over her nipple and making her gasp. She could feel the belt buckle on his pants pressing against her stomach, and beneath that the insistent evidence of his desire. He kissed her, and backed her against the wall, the plaster cool beneath her skin, with him hot and hard at her front. She clung to his shoulders as he kissed down her neck, to her collarbone, to her breast, where he took one distended bud into his mouth and sucked hard, making her cry out in a ragged gasp of joy.
She wanted him. And she was going to have him. Because tonight, she would not lose everything. She would not walk away a broken, demeaned woman who had been made a fool of.
She would embrace this darkest part of herself that she had always denied, and she would claim her power once and for all. She was tired of being afraid. She would not allow this to be a lesson in how she could not trust herself. It was other people she couldn’t trust. She was not to blame. She wasn’t.
And in Constantine’s arms that felt true and possible and real.
Because he made her feel like she was everything. He made her feel like she was perfect. He growled, his hands hard on her hips as he thrust forward, making sure that she felt how much he desired her.
“I want you to know,” he growled against her lips, grinding his hips against hers. “I do not behave in such a fashion. I like sophisticated women. Close to my age. With cultured experience. I do not like twenty-two-year-old waitresses with dangerous sexuality they do not know how to control.”
And something in her sparked. She felt the corner of her mouth turn upward into a smile. “Stop then. If you don’t like me. If you don’t want me. Stop.”
He cursed, something vile in Greek, and grabbed hold of her chin, his eyes meeting hers. “Little cat,” he said. “I cannot walk away. Or I would have done so already.”
“Then I suppose this is something you do now. You have painted me with quite the brush, Constantine, it is hardly fair that you get to excuse yourself, exclude yourself, from your own judgment by pretending that this is somehow an aberration, and therefore excusable. If I am an aberration, then perhaps it is because I am singular. A sea change in the world of the most immovable Kamaras.”
“Then I will drown.”
He kissed her again, and hauled her against his body, as he moved them across the vast chamber, toward his bed. He flung her down on the center of the mattress, and stood back, his eyes wild on hers as he undid the buttons on his shirt, as he stripped it off and let it fall to the floor, his pants and underwear following. And Morgan was faced with the sight of a naked man for the first time in her life. He was... Glorious. An Adonis carved from golden marble. Except he was not cold. He was hot. And that most masculine part of him was... Cruelly, dangerously beautiful. He made her ache with desire, even while she battled her virgin’s nerves.
But there was something about the wildness in him that only increased her confidence. She was made to take him. She knew. Because he was made to need her. If it was deniable, then they would have denied it, that was the thing. That was the truth. If there was a way for the two of them to not want each other, then they simply wouldn’t want each other.
Of that she was deeply certain.
He held her in no esteem whatsoever, and while she respected a great many things about him, she never wanted to sit down with him at a dinner party with only him as a conversation piece.
And so, this moment must be, as she had thought, singular. And inevitable. And that meant that she would take him. Yes. She would.
He joined her on the bed, but he was down at her feet. He kissed her ankle, her calf, the inside of her knee. And she began to tremble as she realized his intent. She had fantasized about this. Not him specifically, but only because she had gotten a handle on her fantasies in the last couple of years. Knowing that she needed to get through this last year of school, knowing that she couldn’t go sleeping around for her own protection, she had done her best to banish her sexual desires. But there had been times... Late at night, when she had been unable to sleep that she had thought of a man, dark haired and intense, putting his head between her thighs and tasting her like she was the sweetest of desserts.
His breath was hot at the apex of her thighs, and she whimpered as he hovered there, glorious anticipation tightening her stomach into an impossible knot.
And then he took her, his lips and tongue slick and clever as he composed the symphony of desire that built to a crescendo, and then eased again, before finding its way to a crest, and waning into something slow and soft and steady.
Again and again he took her to that edge, again and again he took her there, but denied her the cymbal crash.
Again and again he made her mindless with desire as she twisted and writhed beneath him.
Constantine.
There was no doubt that it was him. For his mouth, the lyrics traced against her skin by his tongue, were wicked in a way that no other man’s ever could be.
At least, wicked for her.
The most perfect expression of the rebellion that she had always tried to deny.
She was sobbing, begging as he took her to another swell in the masterpiece. “Please,” she begged. “Please.”
And finally, he gave her what she desired. He pushed two fingers inside of her, and the shock of the penetration sent her hips up off the bed. There was a slight stinging sensation, but her orgasm was hard on the heels of it, pulsing and demanding, drawing a scream up from her throat as her release went on and on, more than a cymbal crash, an entire finale with fireworks.
And she lay there gasping for air, barely able to move, completely unable to breathe. And she found herself staring up into his dark eyes, and she felt exposed just then.
Terrified.
Because in that moment he did not feel like a man she couldn’t make conversation with at a dinner party. He felt like a man she could bare her entire soul to.
She felt as if he could see her. And for one fleeting moment she thought she might’ve seen him.
But then a veil was drawn back up and he was himself again. Hard and remote, but no less beautiful for it. She reached up and touched his face. Just as he positioned himself between her legs and thrust inside of her.
She gasped, and he groaned as he sank deep.
She felt like she couldn’t breathe. Almost certain that she would be torn in two by the size of him. She was gasping, clinging to his shoulders for all that she was worth.
And then he began to move, the slick friction that she had found beneath his mouth and fingers returning, the pain beginning to ease.
She looked up at his beautiful face and saw that his eyes were clouded with pleasure. He had not noticed her moment of discomfort, and for that she was grateful. Because she did not want him to stop and ease her fears. Did not want him to stop and treat her like an inexperienced virgin.
She felt like a seductress in his arms and she did not want to lose that sense of power.
He gripped her hips and thrust into her with ferocity, the act of making love so much more physical, so much more feral than she had realized it would be.
Man and woman. Hardness and softness. The slick slide of their skin, the sensual overflow of his hardness inside of her. And with each thrust he carried her higher. Higher and higher. And when her pleasure broke, like a damn, spilling pleasure over her in a wave, his movements increased, until he shouted out his pleasure, the mountain fracturing above her, the shock of it sending her hurtling toward another release.
And afterwards she lay gasping and unbearably conscious of her nudity. Because it was done now. She had given herself to Constantine, and she had done it not simply out of duress or any kind of desire for revenge, but because she had wanted to. And there was no denying that.
“I will see you out,” he said, moving away from her and getting out of the bed.
His broad, muscular back filled her vision, that sleek waist and muscular backside.
“Of course,” he said. “I will get your clothes.”
“Surely not my clothes.” Alex’s room could still be...occupied.
“Clothes that will be fitting.” He dressed, methodically, and she felt slightly ashamed of watching him.
Then when he was finished, he left the room.
She crawled beneath the covers in his bed, feeling like it was the wrong thing to do. He’d taken her on the top of his bedspread, he had not allowed her to be underneath it, and it felt like perhaps an intimacy she should not have taken.
And because he was not there, she gave in to her momentary desire to weep. Just a little bit. Just to let tears fall from her eyes enough to try and ease the pressure, around her tender heart.
He returned a moment later with clothes that were definitely not hers.
“Did you drive yourself?”
She shook her head. “I did a... A rideshare.”
“That will not do. My driver will take you home.”
“It’s late...”
“It does not matter,” he said. “My driver will take you home.”
She got out of bed, and he turned around as she dressed in the clothes that he had brought her. “The car is ready,” he said.
And then he walked her out of the bedroom, as if he were some sort of gentleman walking her to the door after a date.
She smiled weakly as he opened the entry, and she saw his sleek town car sitting there.
“Whatever business you decide to conclude with my brother or not, that is up to you. I will speak to no one about tonight.”
“Thank you.”
Preserving his pride as much as hers.
“Be safe.”
“Right. Well. You too.” She cringed as she said that as she got into the car and pressed her head against the cool glass window.
Tonight had been a spectacular failure.
She had lost Alex... And she had lost her mind.
She had given in and given herself to Constantine.
Except even as tears slipped down her cheeks, a slight smile curved her lips.
Because for just a moment, Morgan Stanfield had had a pure and perfect fantasy.
It was just a pity that it was over.
A knock woke Constantine around five a.m.
His first inclination was that it was her.
Her.
His stomach tightened viciously.
Morgan.
He should not have done that. He was a man who wasted little time regretting his actions. After all, what was the point. But Morgan...
“What?” He threw his covers off and went to the door, not bothering to cover himself before he opened it.
But it was not Morgan.
It was the family business manager.
And of course if there was urgent business it would be his door that the man knocked on. And not Constantine’s father. His father was useless when it came to anything half so demanding as his business.
“Yes?”
“We had a call from the police,” he said.
“What?”
“It is...” The older man’s words became choked. “Alex. He was in an accident. He’s dead.”
