Forbidden Fate

by Mary Catherine Gebhard

  “That’s not dumb,” I said softly. “So then, you can use them for anything? Can they be used to reverse fate?” I attempted to ask the last question lightly.

  “Snitch…” That was all he said for at least five minutes. His voice was so soft and tender, I wanted to curl up in it. “If I could have reversed our fate, I would have. I know my grandfather, and I know the du Lacs. They wouldn’t hesitate to challenge.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I don’t…” I stammered, tried to backtrack.

  His eyes met mine, voice stone. “I’d go to war for you Story, but I won’t let you be a casualty.”

  And as though he’d just asked me the fucking weather, Grayson looked away, easily asking, “So, you have it now? Woodsy gave it to you?”

  I think I’m having heart palpitations. “No…” I cleared my throat. “I didn’t think it was real. He said it was buried beneath a poem. I still have no idea what that means.”

  He frowned.

  I jerked my gaze back to his. “Wait, you said you’re missing yours. Did you give yours to my uncle? Why?”

  My heart pounded, waiting for his answer. He could have left this world years ago. Instead he’d given the most valuable thing he owned to my uncle.

  He stared into his whiskey a long time before he answered. “At the time, it was the only one I had. And it was the least I could give.”

  This was such a bad idea.

  “Get up here, Grayson.”

  GRAY

  * * *

  “Get up here, Grayson,” she repeated.

  I stared at my reflection in the glass. I missed her, my girl, my Snitch. Regardless of right and wrong. I set the whiskey down and stood up, taking a second to just stare down at her.

  She stared back with those wide, mossy eyes.

  Not breaking our gaze, I climbed into bed until I was in the center, then I slid down on my bicep, sharing a pillow. That feeling—the tight, ripping one I got every day, every minute I’m away from her—quieted. I could breathe again. The only thing left was an ache in my muscles from the urge to pull her closer.

  It was almost like we were back in my bed, and she was going to fall asleep, and I would wake up to her.

  Dangerous.

  It took every ounce of willpower not to drag her on top of me.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve seen your face like this,” I said.

  Sideways. Softened in shadow. Looking at me in a way only Snitch could. I couldn’t resist running a hand along her naked shoulder.

  Fuck.

  It must be the whiskey.

  “You have four coins,” she whispered. “What if I found my uncle’s, and you had all five?”

  “No one has ever had all five at once,” I said. “It’s basically a fairy tale. Maybe we really could reverse fate…”

  She sucked in a breath.

  The gold locket I gave her glinted in the dark. I lifted it from her breast, trying to ignore the hard swallow at her throat.

  “Have you looked inside it?”

  She shook her head. “I…I can’t.”

  Probably for the best.

  I’d been grief drunk when I put the item inside, a part of me unwilling to let her go forever. Now, as fate had made our destiny clear, it seemed too cruel to open it.

  “I’ve been writing poetry,” she whispered. “In your journal.”

  My grip flexed on the locket, trying to rein it in, but my heart beat faster. Alongside my words Snitch wrote hers.

  “What are you writing?”

  She was silent.

  Fuck.

  Her shorts revealed the swells of her ass, and all I could think about was whether she still carried my bruise.

  “What happened to your little nun nightgowns?” I rasped.

  “I get hot at night,” she said, breathy. “I think it’s the, um…”

  She swallowed.

  Pregnancy.

  God, when she talked about my baby inside her I get way harder than I have any right to be. It fueled some primeval, caveman instinct in me. Story with my child.

  “I’m still missing it,” I realized sadly. “All these things are happening to you.”

  “You took me to the doctor…”

  “I’ve never even held your hair back. I’ve barely satisfied your cravings. I’m not being the man you need me to be, Story. I’ve never felt more like my father than I do now. Trying not to be him.”

  “Every day I feel more like her,” she said quietly.

  I still hadn’t taken my other hand off her, tracing my thumb along her pulse. It pounded and throbbed against my thumb. I worked the sucker in my mouth, trying to focus on that, not how much I wanted to pull her locket, pull her to me.

  “You never told me what you crave now.”

  She looked at my lips and rasped. “Suckers.”

  My groan ricocheted through my chest.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  “What?” Her eyes grew in that innocent, exclusive Snitch way. They got big as walnuts, and I couldn’t help the twitch of my lips. I slid closer until I could taste her sweet breath.

  “Now every time I have another sucker, I’ll think of you.” Wonder if you’re thinking of me.

  Her lips parted.

  “Well…” she said, and I closed my eyes, listening to how her voice got raspy with lust. It had been too fucking long.

  “That seems fair,” she finished.

  “Fair?” I gritted.

  “For months, all I’ve tasted is you on my tongue.”

  My eyes popped open, and Snitch was locked on me. As if in slow motion, she tugged on the sucker stem until I released it from my lips, then popped it into her mouth.

  “Lemon?” She sounded surprised.

  I couldn’t decide if I wanted her to give it back or keep it. My heart pounded like an ocean in my ears. If I wasn’t hard before, I was rock-hard now. My grip steel on her locket.

  My eyes were stuck on her pouty lips. “For months, all I’ve wanted is you on my tongue, Story.”

  Slowly, I lifted my eyes to hers.

  Throbbing. Pulsing. She slowly withdrew it from her mouth and pushed it between my lips. A burst of lemon hit my tongue, followed by a noise that didn’t sound quite human leaving my mouth.

  Fuck.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  I missed the taste of her.

  “I miss the taste of you,” she whispered.

  Then, as if she realized she’d said too much, she blinked and tried to roll away. I kept my grip on the locket firm, biting into her skin.

  “Let me go.”

  “You miss the taste of me?” I pulled harder at the chain. “What else do you miss, little nun?” I searched her eyes. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

  “Grayson…” She said my name in a raspy, husky sigh that I wanted to breathe. Swallow. Consume. “I’ve been thinking a lot. About who I want to be. What kind of mother…Even if by some miracle you did leave Lottie, that doesn’t mean we’ll be together.”

  “What if I could win you back?”

  “This is a bad idea. I don’t want to talk about this—” She tried to roll away again, but I grabbed her bicep, pulling her close.

  Giving in to the insanity growing inside me.

  What if I did it? What if I took down all the obstacles in our way? My grandfather, my mother, the du Lacs, my wife. What if I created a safe place for Story? What if I built us a happily ever after?

  “I don’t like this distance between us, Story,” I said. “I don’t…I’ve never cared about what anyone thought of me, but I want you to look at me like you did before.”

  “Don’t do this to me.” Her eyes watered and, instinctively, I reached to wipe a tear away.

  She gripped my hand, stopping me.

  “I can’t get you off my mind. When you’re here, you’re the only thing that exists. I’m bleeding everywhere. And you were the person I used to bleed with. What the hell am I supposed to do now? Snitch I…I’m b
leeding alone too.”

  Her grip lessened as tears fell down her cheeks. I swiped them away until her skin shone.

  “What would Grayson Crowne have to do to win back Story Hale?” My voice grated like sandpaper.

  “Whatever you do, it won’t be enough. There’s too much.”

  “I can do anything.”

  “Let the servants look you in the eye,” she challenged.

  “Done.”

  She blinked, surprised. “You’d have to eat steak every day for a month.”

  I swiped my thumb across her lower lip, fighting the urge to push it between her teeth. “Easy.”

  “A lifetime supply of spaghetti. Once I’m…not so averse.”

  A smile flickered on my lips. “Done.”

  “You’d have to be honest,” she said with a quiet rasp. “With everyone. Let them know you donate your clothes. Tell them the truth about who you are. You’re a good guy. If you embraced it…maybe this place wouldn’t be so suffocating. So…so haunted.”

  I frowned, lifting my eyes from her lips to lock with hers.

  “Stop lying to me. Unbury your heart. Don’t keep me in the dark any longer. I can see it in your eyes. I can see the weight on your shoulders.”

  I paused.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her everything.

  How I’d tried to divorce Lottie.

  How I was trying to get rid of my grandfather.

  But in the end, what if it all amounted to nothing? What if I pulled her into a promise that fell apart at our feet like last time?

  “I don’t want to break any more promises with you, Snitch. Not with you. I can’t promise you forever…yet”

  Pain and anger crackled in her eyes.

  “Then why are you in my fucking bed?” She shoved me, but I gripped her wrists.

  “Get off. I’m not going to be your fucking mistress.”

  “I’m not sleeping with my wife, Story. I should be, but I’m not.”

  She paused, brow crinkling, then her elbow nearly hit me in the face. I pinned her to the mattress, but she didn’t stop fighting.

  “You’re a fucking liar, Grayson Crowne. I carried the bloody sheets! You taunted me with it. Does it turn you on knowing you’re getting sloppy seconds?” she mocked darkly.

  “I didn’t sleep with Lottie.” I pressed her wrists into the mattress. “Do you want to know what our bedroom looks like, Snitch? It looks like you.”

  “Stop.” She attempted to knee me, and I slid my leg between her thighs.

  “I can’t get hard without Lottie pretending to be you. Our marriage bed is a twisted, dark, fucked-up thing. You slid into it the same way you slid into my veins.”

  Her lips parted, and my eyes dropped to that, to the angry way she swiped her tongue across her bottom lip.

  This was the closest we’d been in too fucking long. I flexed my grip on her wrists, trying to ignore Snitch hot and writhing in anger beneath me.

  “Lottie isn’t even in the same fucking universe as you. You’re all I think about. All I dream about. All I care about. All I’ll ever want. I might be married to her, but I’m lost in you.”

  She shook her head, spirally curls flying beautifully—distractingly—across her face.

  “I owe Lottie so much,” I said. “I owe her a family. I owe her a heart. I owe her so much that I can’t give her, because you already own everything.”

  She froze, walnut eyes wide. Then she shook out of it.

  “Friends aren’t supposed to hear this. Friends aren’t supposed to get excited over hearing this.”

  Excited.

  I lowered my head until our lips were separated only by the moonlight.

  “I’m not your fucking friend, Story.”

  “You said—”

  “You were the only person I wanted to be good for, Story. I wanted to be a good friend. I wanted to be a good husband.”

  “So be a good husband,” she beseeched.

  “You didn’t let me fucking finish.”

  Our breathing was ragged. Ragged like my willpower. Ragged like the shreds of my dignity and soul.

  “I want to be a good husband, Story, but I want you to be a bad wife more.”

  I slammed my lips against hers.

  Fuck.

  Story Hale is my heroin and I have missed this high.

  STORY

  * * *

  My mouth opened on a gasp as Grayson flooded into me. A vital, missing part of me had come back to life. I can feel again. I can breathe.

  Just as I was about to dive into the inky black waters of my desire, he broke the kiss.

  “Fuck. Fuck. Sorry.”

  There was just a sliver of starlight between our lips, the most fragile connection.

  I knew I should push him off, but all this time I’d been deprived of him. His lips. His taste. His soul.

  He exhaled, about to turn his head, and I gripped his shirt, fisting the fabric, needing that thread of connection to stay. Grayson’s gaze flickered from my hands, back to my eyes.

  My lips parted, but I didn’t know what to say. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I just have this bleeding need inside me.

  So I settled for his name.

  “Grayson,” I whispered.

  “Little nun,” he groaned, tangling his hands into my hair, thrusting me hard against his lips as our bodies collided once more.

  I dragged my nails around his waist, back, biceps—anything—before knotting them in his hair. I wanted his hair messy. I wanted it ruined. I never wanted to see it in that perfect coif again.

  His hands slid from my wrists, tangling into my fingers, pushing our entwined hands into the mattress. His erection throbbed against my thigh, but it was his kiss that Grayson focused on.

  I could feel them—all the words he didn’t say, the secrets he’s still keeping, the apologies he never gave—on his lips.

  On his worshiping lips and punishing tongue, in his desperate bite, I felt the words. Bleeding into my chest. Clinging to our lips.

  Grayson is a poet, but his lips are his pen, and his kiss is his poetry. And I’m frantic for it.

  “More,” I begged.

  It felt like he’s holding himself back. Holding me back.

  “More.”

  This time I bit him, dragging out his bottom lip between my teeth, eyes open so I could watch the look in his blue gaze change feral.

  He pinned me to the bed, and I bit harder. I can feel him throbbing between my thighs and it spurred me on. I dragged his bottom lip out with my teeth. Grayson bruised his forehead to mine as my teeth bruised him.

  I released his pouty pink lip with a pop.

  For a moment, everything was still, the only sound our breathing.

  “Perfect,” he rasped.

  Then he pushed off. The sudden loss of him was ice cold. He left me alone on the bed, adjusting his hard-on as he towered over me.

  His rose gold hair was messy and wild—everything I’d missed.

  Thoughts tumbled like a rockslide into my head: What did I do? He’s leaving again. Abandoned. Forgotten—

  Grayson leaned over and caught my bottom lip like I’d done with his. “I will get us out of this with some shred of our souls intact, little nun.”

  And then he left.

  Forty-Two

  STORY

  * * *

  I don’t remember falling asleep. I must have…because one minute it was dark, and the next it was light. My head ached with lack of sleep, and I felt disoriented by the sun.

  I want you to be a bad wife more.

  I jolted up as last night blasted back into me. I dragged a hand over my forehead. Oh my god.

  Oh my god.

  I wanted it. I pushed him. I would have…would have… Only Grayson saved me from making a terrible mistake.

  What is happening to me?

  A knock on the door sounded.

  “Um…”

  I felt naked and caught, like I was still with Grayson.
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  “Come in,” I croaked.

  The door creaked open, and West stood in the frame. He held something behind his back. What looked like a white dress box.

  “What’s that?”

  “An apology.”

  The confusion must have shown on my face, because he said, “You were attacked.”

  I looked away as more of last night tumbled into my thoughts.

  What if we could be more?

  “I didn’t expect you to be there, West,” I said lightly.

  The waves sounded softer this morning, lighter.

  “I didn’t…” he started, then stopped.

  He exhaled through his nostrils, looking away, working out his square jaw.

  I stared at him. I don’t think I’d ever seen West at a loss for words. He was always someone who had the last word, who knew exactly what to say and was confident with his quips. Now he stared at the dress box, something making his jaw flex.

  His eyes collided with mine. “You were never…I never wanted you to get hurt, Angel.”

  The intensity behind his brown eyes unsettled me.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

  He worked his jaw, as though he was about to say something. Whatever it was…he decided against it. He came to me and placed the box in my lap.

  I fingered the peach satin bow.

  “You didn’t have to do this…”

  “You didn’t think I would leave you without a dress for the Nutcracker Masquerade?”

  Tansy Crowne’s Nutcracker Masquerade happened two weeks before Christmas. A white tie masquerade party, and like every Crowne party, women spent months preparing their costumes. I had nothing…but Grayson had said he would get me a dress.

  West nudged me out of my thoughts with an envelope.

  “More?” I asked, taking the envelope.

  He nodded for me to open it.

  As West sat beside me, I pulled out a starchy plane ticket for one to…Scotland.

  I lifted my head, eyes colliding with his.

  “I promised I would get you out, Angel.”

  “I guess I just thought…”

  “That I was fucking with you?”