Titus: Book Two of the Cantrell Brothers Series

Chapter Forty-One

Anna shifted around in the bed, reaching out with tired hands until she found exactly what she was looking for. A hot, hard wall of muscle was underneath palms that couldn't get enough of touching this man before her. She opened one eye, peering around until she focused in on the robust chest that she would never get sick of waking up to.

Right above the sinewy muscles and a thickly corded neck was the face of the man she would never – could never – get tired of being with. Her chest felt like it was being ripped to shreds as her eyes took in the features of Titus's sleeping face. Like they had been for this time with him, emotions swamped through her, making her voice clog and her heart ache all because of him.

Him. The man who kissed their unborn daughter every morning and every night with the softest of touches. The man who had just recently begun reading little children's books to Ella right before they went to bed together. The man whom she had fallen so hard for that she sometimes stopped breathing whenever he was around. He was the giving, loving man who made her heart pound every time she saw him, almost to the point where she felt sick with the wave of emotions that crashed through her at just the sound of his voice.

Taking a deep breath so as to keep the tears that threatened to break through at bay, Anna reached down to their baby, coming into contact with another warm hand against hers. She couldn't stop the semi-lunatic looking smile that graced her face at just the thought of everything this giving man was and how much she loved seeing him just being himself.

It had been exactly eleven days of sleeping in his bed, no complaint coming from him – just a smile, some bed time stories, and an occasional hardness pressed against her whenever he fell asleep before she did. Anna didn't that part at all; instead, actually enjoying the huge hit of lust that surged through her veins with the mere contact.

Except, lust wasn't what this – this caring, hurting, and tearing feel inside her – was. It was so much deeper than that. At one point in her life, when she had been much too naïve for her own good, she had felt something almost akin to this. She had called it love at the time and had told the man to whom that certain feeling had been directed to exactly what her feelings had been.

But this was so much heavier, deeper, more real than that love she had felt for Hunter in their years of a relationship that she now looked back on with disgust. This feeling clogged her throat, watered her eyes, and shook her with its intensity whenever Titus was just speaking with her. And when the more intimate actions were done, like them holding each other as they slept, it was a complete massacre of everything inside her.

She hadn't known where to go at first, not knowing if this state was just from the hormones of pregnancy or something else. But then Anna had trusted in what she had been feeling, had become more fearless, and had figured a few things out – like how she didn't ever want to leave and how the way in which Titus looked at her wasn't just some deep form of friendship – and here they were, his hands on her pregnant belly and her face so close to his that she was completely surrounded by Titus.

All she could see was Titus. All she ever wanted and would ever want to see was Titus. It was an awareness that had shocked her as it crashed through her.

It had happened just barely a week ago when she had been lying in bed, all alone and feeling an inner cold that had nothing to do with the weather. She could still remember staring up at the hawk and trowel pattern of the wall, just thinking about what all of this was.

Anna had known that it was most definitely a physical attraction, but that could come with anybody out there. And Titus wasn't just anybody. That thought alone had made everything inside of her feel sick at the thought of not being with him. At the thought of knowing there was so much more that she was going to be with him, but she just hadn't known what that was.