Anna's POV:

Morning comes through the curtains in long pale strips and I'm awake before I mean to be.

Alexander's arm is still around me, but the quality of it has changed — not the yielding weight of sleep, but steady and present, the arm of someone who has been awake for a while and is simply staying. I turn my head. He isn't looking at me. He's looking at my stomach.

His free hand moves in a slow, deliberate circle across my abdomen. Just ...