Cinderella was sick. That was obvious. Even her stepmother was concerned.

"Are you all right, child?" she asked when Cinderella came in to wake her up ,"you are white as paper."

Cinderella looked at her with surprise. Her eyes were dark and tired, her face chalk white. She looked exhausted.

"Yes," she whispered and promptly ran into her stepmother's bathroom to vomit. Lady Tremaine held her hair back while she retched. When she was done, her stepmother washed her face with a clean washcloth. Cinderella's whole body trembled, but whether it was from being sick or the surprisingly kind touch of her stepmother she wasn't sure.

Lady Tremaine helped her up. "I'm sorry, Step-Madame," Cinderella rasped hoarsely. "It's my…I'm…I have my….well, you know. I'm not contagious. I can still do my chores. Except maybe cooking."

Her stepmother snorted. "So you can throw up on everything every ten minutes? I don't think so. Besides, missing a few days won't hurt anything. Maybe the girls can take a stab at cooking. Heaven knows they could handle learning some skills."

Cinderella looked up in shock. Her stepmother never said anything negative about her daughters. "Stay in here," Lady Tremaine said, gesturing to the bed. "I don't want you fainting on the stairs to your room." Cinderella looked ready to faint. Due to the nausea, she had barely eaten anything for days and her already thin body was looking dangerously gaunt.

"Thank you, stepmother," Cinderella whispered as she crawled on to the bed. She must be really sick to have her stepmother be so uncharacteristically kind to her. She wondered what her stepsisters would think.

She heard the stepsisters grumbling and her stepmother shushing. She bolted to the bathroom again to vomit twice more before finally being able to sleep.

Hours later, Cinderella woke up. She was still pale and nauseous but less so than before. She tried to get up but got too dizzy. The room spun.

She flopped back down, wanting to get up but unable to. She glanced around, wondering if her stepmother had anything interesting to do. Normally, she wouldn't dare going poking through her stepmother's things and she still didn't. Looking around, she saw a leather bound book. Les Miserables was its title.

She won't mind if I read a little, Cinderella thought and opened it to the beginning, careful not to lose her stepmother's place.

An hour later, Cinderella was still deeply into Jean Valjean's story and jumped nearly a foot when she looked up to see her stepmother standing beside the bed with a cup of tea.

"How are you feeling?" her stepmother asked, smirking. "Well enough to steal my book, I see."

"I wasn't stealing it," Cinderella protested. "I was just borrowing it!"

Her stepmother handed her the cup of tea and looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. Cinderella was much smarter than her own daughters, though she would never admit it. It might be nice to have someone to connect with on a level that went beyond the inane interests of Anastasia and Drusilla. And Cinderella was so beautiful. Beauty, brains and angelic. What a combination, her stepmother thought with another smirk.

Cinderella blushed as she sipped her tea. She felt like she had committed some unforgivable crime. "I'm feeling better," she said hoarsely. "I only threw up twice after you left. Would you like me to make dinner?"

She tried to get up again without waiting for a reply, but once again the room began to spin. She collapsed back on the bed. Cinderella looked up at her stepmother with apologizing, pleading dark eyes. She expected Lady Tremaine to smack her or throw some stinging comment at her but she didn't. She did the last thing Cinderella expected.

"Do you like that book?" her stepmother asked, a sneer in her voice. Cinderella didn't miss it. She looked at her stepmother with wide eyes. She was smirking at her, but there was genuine curiosity in her blue eyes. Cinderella sighed. She was such easy prey.

"Yes…" she answered quietly. "But I am beginning to get too dizzy from reading."

Her stepmother looked at her steadily for a minute as if considering something. The she got into bed next to her, took the book out of her trembling white hands and began to read it aloud to her.

Cinderella was flabbergasted. Her stepmother was showing her more kindness in one day than she usually did in a month. She wondered why and worried when it would end.

Cinderella felt her eyes getting heavy again. Unconsciously, she snuggled closer to her stepmother, resting her hand on Lady Tremaine's arm. "I love you," she breathed before falling asleep.

Lady Tremaine looked down at the pale, scrawny child sleeping beside her. She felt a pang of guilt for always being so hard on her stepdaughter, so strict with her. Her own daughters were vapid nitwits and she was well aware of it. But Cinderella was special. Smarter than Anastasia and Drusilla put together and ten times prettier. Not a mean bone on her body. Lady Tremaine wanted to get her own daughters married and out of the house as fast as possible so she could finally get some quality alone time with her beautiful, brilliant angel of a stepdaughter.

"I love you too, angel," Lady Tremaine whispered as she covered Cinderella with a blanket. She tenderly ran her long fingers down Cinderella's shoulder and back before getting up. Dinner had to be made for her beastly daughters.

The ball was two days later. Although Cinderella was feeling a bit better, she was still nauseous and weak. More than once she had seen her stepmother looking at her when she thought she wasn't looking, concern etched on her face. All Cinderella had eaten in the past few days was a cup of apple sauce and a few cups of broth, but that was an improvement from the ginger water, which was all she had been able to keep down before. Her stepmother insisted she take it easy, but Cinderella was going stir crazy. She was finally allowed to do some sewing but nothing else. Anastasia and Drusilla were forced to clean for the first time and they were not pleased about it.

"Stupid sick Cinderella!" grumbled Anastasia as she washed the dishes.

"Mother making us clean!" agreed Drusilla as she dried. "Like servants!"

"At least we get to go to the ball tonight," Anastasia said as she rinsed some glasses. "Cinderella doesn't. She doesn't seem to want to even. She must really be sick to not care about meeting the prince."

Drusilla shrugged. She had been scheming on ways to meet and marry into the aristocracy for years and at last had her chance.

"There they go," Lady Tremaine said later that evening as she watched the carriage carrying the girls trot off to the palace. Cinderella stood in front of her, still pale and thin. Her stepmother stood behind her, holding her up.

"Are you disappointed you can't go?" she asked her still sick stepdaughter. There was a trace of a mocking in her voice but not much.

Cinderella shrugged. She was still exhausted and had barely eaten anything in the last few days. Her pale skin and gaunt, exhausted face would not exactly entice the prince. She had never been on a date, barely had even talked to a boy. She would be scared out of her mind meeting the prince. Besides, the person she really wanted to spend time with was behind her.

"I'm not up to going this time," she answered.

"There will be other balls. In fact-"

"Look!" Cinderella interrupted excitedly, "a shooting star!"

"Make a wish," her stepmother told her without a hint of sarcasm. Cinderella blushed slightly, glad it was too dark for Lady Tremaine to see.

"Another one!" Cinderella shrieked. "Look at them all!" She was so genuinely excited and looked better than she had in a week her stepmother didn't have the heart to make some sarcastic comment.

Cinderella leaned back into Lady Tremaine and wrapped her arms around herself. Without thinking, Lady Tremaine bent down and kissed the fair head. Cinderella looked up at her in surprise. Her stepmother smirked down at her.

"It's the Perseid meteor shower," Lady Tremaine told her stunned stepdaughter. "Beautiful isn't it?"

Cinderella nodded.

After a while Cinderella was nodding on her feet. Her stepmother helped her into bed.

"Thank you," Cinderella whispered as her stepmother pulled a blanket around her.

"For what, child?" her stepmother asked, looking down at Cinderella with a trace of a smirk.

"For being so kind to me while I've been sick. I always thought you hated me, but now-" Cinderella stopped, tears welling in her eyes.

"Silly girl," Lady Tremaine said as she pulled the trembling Cinderella into her arms. "How could I hate you? How could anyone?" She stroked Cinderella's hair with one hand and kept the other around the thin body.

"Anastasia and Drusilla do," Cinderella sobbed. All those years of heartache were pouring out

"They don't hate you, Cinderella, they're just jealous. That's why I had to be so hard on you, so they didn't suspect."

"Suspect what?" Cinderella asked, looking up at her stepmother with tear filled blue eyes.

"How much I actually love you."

Cinderella was too stunned to reply for a minute. "You-I..what?" she stammered. "You love me?"

"Don't be so surprised," her stepmother said. "You're beautiful, you're brilliant, you're an angel. How could I not love you?"

She pushed Cinderella on her back and hovered above her. She smirked down at her stunned stepdaughter. "Don't you love me too, Cinderella?" Her smirk deepened, for she already knew the answer.

Cinderella looked into the blue eyes of her stepmother, trying to figure out what to say. Then she sighed and said yes weakly.

Lady Tremaine kissed her stepdaughter's forehead, then her ear. She slowly and softly kissed the pale neck as she slid one hand under Cinderella's head.

"Are you still on the rag?" she asked.

Cinderella shook her head.

Lady Tremaine smiled, the kindest smile she had ever given her stepdaughter. She lay down on top of Cinderella and kissed her full on the mouth. Then she pressed her lips to her neck again, slowly planting soft kisses up Cinderella's neck to her ear. She caressed Cinderella's fair head and smiled again.

"It's okay, honey. You can tell me to stop. Do you want me to stop?"

"No," answered the quivering Cinderella.

"Shall we take this off?" Lady Tremaine asked and began unbuttoning Cinderella's pajama top. She ran her fingers over the small breasts lightly, then took off her own top. "Here, go ahead," she said, placing her stepdaughter's hands on her breasts. "Touch them."

Cinderella blushed furiously. She ran her hands over her stepmother's breasts and squeezed the nipple. Their eyes met. "Taste them," her stepmother ordered her. "You wanted to be treated like my own daughter. I need to breastfeed you. Kind of, anyway."

She cradled Cinderella so her head was under her chest. Cinderella shyly took one of her stepmother's breasts in her mouth and sucked it softly. Lady Tremaine rolled her head back and sighed. "Good girl," she murmured, holding Cinderella's head. "Just like that, baby."

Their eyes met. Lady Tremaine pushed Cinderella back on the bed and lay on top of her again.

"Off," she said, pulling at Cinderella's pajama bottoms. Cinderella lifted her hips so her stepmother could pull them off her. She lay underneath her stepmother in her underwear and nothing else.

"You're shaking," Lady Tremaine observed. She kissed Cinderella's forehead then her hairline. "You can tell me to stop if you want."

Cinderella smiled, one of her rare angelic smiles. "Don't stop. It's just…it's my first time."

"You'll be fine," her stepmother replied, kissing her on the mouth. She pulled the underwear down Cinderella's thin legs and off. She pushed her legs apart and slid a finger inside her beautiful stepdaughter.

Cinderella dug her fingers into her stepmother's back and moaned.

"You feel me inside you?" her stepmother teased, kissing her neck. "You like it?"

Cinderella groaned in reply.

Lady Tremaine tried to slide in another finger. Cinderella screamed. A scream of agony.

"Yow! That hurts!"

Lady Tremaine removed one finger and felt Cinderella again. She was so tight….Lady Tremaine looked down, confused. Her daughters were always telling her Cinderella wanted to go to the village to meet up with boys…of course... they were lying. Trying to get Cinderella in trouble. She didn't want to tell Cinderella she had believed them.

"Cinderella, sweetheart, when you said it was your first time…did you mean ever?"

Tears streamed down Cinderella's pale face. "Yes. I was embarrassed to tell you."

Lady Tremaine kissed Cinderella's tears, then her forehead. "Don't be embarrassed. Everyone has a first time. Are you sure you want me to be yours? It's such an important step in your life."

Cinderella gave her that angelic smile. "Yes. I want you to…," she blushed and looked away.

Her stepmother looked at her with a combination of smirk and genuine smile. "Can I do this?" she smirked, kissing Cinderella's ear and running her fingers over the small breasts. She kissed Cinderella's neck.

"You can do anything you want to me," Cinderella whispered. She kissed her stepmother's cheek as she kissed her neck, soft slow kisses that made Cinderella moan and arch her back and wrap her thin legs around her stepmother's long ones. She bent her finger inside her stepdaughter and ran her thumb over her clitoris.

Cinderella screamed again, another scream of agony. "Ow-ow-ow! That hurts like-" and she said a word that her stepmother never thought the girl would ever say.

"You are tight as a drum, girl," her stepmother said, not completely unkindly. "Here, let's try another way."

She positioned herself on top of Cinderella so their cores aligned and thrust. Cinderella clung to her stepmother, digging her nails into her back. Lady Tremaine kissed her neck, holding her head with one hand and the sheets for leverage with the other. Even though she had had sex many times before, this was the first time she actually felt like she was making love. Making love to my stepdaughter, she thought, as her clitoris massaged Cinderella's.

Lady Tremaine shook and came, collapsing on top of her stepdaughter. "Feel me on you?" she whispered, "my body in and on you?"

Cinderella nodded, still rather bewildered by what had happened. Her stepmother stroked her thin body. Cinderella smiled up at her. "I love you," she said hoarsely, kissing her stepmother's cheek. Her stepmother kissed the side of her head.

"Love you too, angel," she said. "My angel, my Cinderella. God, how I love you."

She kissed Cinderella's small breasts, down to her stomach. Cinderella felt like her insides were melting as her stepmother planted soft open mouth kisses on her pale stomach. Her stepmother pushed her legs apart and kissed her there, kissed and licked and sucked. Cinderella felt like she was under water. It was surreal. Her clitoris was between her stepmother's lips, being sucked on. It was Cinderella's turn to shake and moan and come.

Lady Tremaine crawled back up to the head of the bed and pulled her exhausted stepdaughter into her arms. "You're trembling," she commented.

Cinderella hid her face against her stepmother's shoulder. She trembled more violently. Her stepmother had taken her virginity, she had given it to her. Lady Tremaine stroked her back and hair until she calmed down.

Cinderella fell asleep, her head on her stepmother's chest. Her stepmother stroked her fair hair long after Cinderella had fallen asleep. Her stepmother kissed her head and whispered, "my angel."