I took the paper, confusion seeping through me. “What—” I looked up and she was already leaving. “Wait.” I gripped her arm. “What’s going on? Why are you giving this to me?” Why are you helping me?
She looked over her shoulder. “You have friends here, Cinderella.”
She quickly left, leaving me with a letter with fire-marked edges, written in green ink.
Dear little wife,
Meet me in our room.
Thirteen
STORY
I met Grayson in the antique room, under the cover of darkness like two lovers torn apart by war. He leaned against the windowsill that overlooked the ocean and must not have heard me come in, so I didn’t make a sound, using the time to watch him.
I wondered if he watched me like this that first night between us.
I wondered what thoughts spiraled through his head then, and now.
He stared out the open window into the salty black night, his features muted in deep irons, yet still so striking. His profile was one I had memorized, etched into my heart from so many nights sleeping sideways on his pillow.
Plush, rose petal lips.
A slightly broken nose.
And those eyes. Pensive. Powerful. Aching.
Why did I suddenly feel so nervous? Like this was the first time, the first night? As if we didn’t have hundreds of nights between us?
“I…” I dragged my bottom lip, gut clenched. “I got your letter.”
Grayson spun from the windowsill, eyes landing on me, piercing through the darkness.
“I need to tell you everything. Everything before I can’t.” The words rushed out of me, tumbling, spilling. “Everything before…”
Before West noticed I haven’t come back.
Before I literally lost my voice again.
Before…
I’m not safe—we’re not safe.
The servant’s warning still burned like the candle I used to erase the evidence of our meeting.
Fate was once again a runaway boulder.
“I lied,” I said, then looked away. “Obviously.”
Grayson took a step to me and my heart lurched to him, but I couldn’t move. I was frozen by the look in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw.
“I’m so sorry. It doesn’t change anything but…” I swallowed. “I am. Sorry. I tried to write you—I—” I broke off. Grayson stopped with our chests touching and I had to tilt my neck to look into his eyes. How was it that words failed me when I looked into his eyes, even now, even after everything we’d been through?
“He took my phone. I’m sorry,” I managed a whisper again. “I’m—” I broke off, words disappearing in my throat as Grayson’s thumb met my bottom lip. My heart splintered with his gaze as my stomach bottomed out into a deep ache.
Just that single touch, on one small section of my person, was enough to consume.
A gnawing, dripping need stole my breath, my lip throbbing beneath his thumb.
Hold me, touch me, fuck me, bite me—
Wild thoughts spiraled, but of course, Grayson was in control. He pressed his pink tongue to his upper lip, blue eyes roaming every inch of my body, still holding my bottom lip captive. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but it felt like he needed to do this.
Maybe to see I was okay.
To affirm something in his mind.
“You’re real,” he said, and the anguish in his voice ripped my heart apart. “You’re fucking here. You’re fucking real.”
He trailed knuckles down my cheek before flattening his palm across my face. I closed my eyes, leaning into his palm. I disappeared into that touch.
“Did you think I was a ghost?” I joked softly.
“When I went to bed, I saw you in the dark.” He gripped my cheeks with both hands, eyes crazed. “I heard your voice in the crashing of the waves, a raspy whisper floating through the salt air. I’ve seen you and heard you in a hundred different ways and dreams. You’re never there. Not really.”
“Oh,” I whispered, losing my voice.
He cradled my face with his hands, his eyes aching. I desperately wanted to know what caused those eyes to ache. I placed the back of my hand along his cheek.
“I missed the sugar on your lips, Grayson Crowne.”
He thread his fingers through my hair, pulling me until I could almost taste it. “I missed the lemon on yours.” His touch glanced my skin, feathering odd places. My collarbone, my jaw, skirting down my neck and the top of my shoulder, before skating across my rounded belly.
“I thought you were mad,” I said.
“I am,” he said, blue eyes piercing. “I’m mad you lied. I’m mad you put yourself in this position. But I’m furious I ever let you leave in the first place. I’m…” His eyes broke, and he paused. “This never would have happened if not for me.”
I pressed my hand to his face. “Grayson—”
He cut me off, walked me back, consuming my space until I was flush against the very same wall where I’d first begged him for more.
Where I’d first stolen his kiss.
His love.
He dipped his head to the crook of my shoulder, trailing his nose up and down in a mindless, lust-crazed way that made me go cross-eyed and weak-kneed.
“Why aren’t you wearing your locket?”
My eyes flickered down. “He took it.”
Something flashed in his eyes, but he said nothing. His palm stayed on my belly, pressing the empire waist back to feel and expose my bump. Something buzzed and burned his blue eyes. Something I couldn’t read, something deep and hollow.
What happened in the two weeks that I was away to make my Atlas look so weathered? Prisoner. Prisoner. Prisoner.
“What happened?” I asked. “What did they do?”
He pressed his forehead to mine, palm flat on my stomach, closing his eyes.
“How is she doing?” His voice was rough and jagged, like he was holding himself back to ask the question. He parted my thighs with his knee, and I forgot what he’d asked.
Focused only on the perfect pressure his knee applied to that deep, aching part of me. On the primal possession radiating from that grip on my stomach, like he wanted to sear it into my belly, into us.
“Snitch,” he grated.
“She’s perfect,” I breathed the answer on a shivery breath.
His strong fingers came to my face and his touch turned fevered. Desperate. He dragged my lips closer until we shared one breath. Questions in my head died on my lips at the look in his eyes.
Why did a servant give me that letter? What’s going on? Have you found the coin? Are we safe yet? Is this over yet?
The world melted away, the silence amplified by the crashing of the waves and our breathing like one, magical spell. It was just me and Grayson, in the room that had always been our secret from fate.
“How are you doing, Snitch?” His lips were so close to mine I couldn’t think past the heat of them or the growl hitching his voice. The curling in my stomach and the pounding of my heart. I leaned on my tiptoes—
“Snitch.” He growled, his breath heating my lips.
“Perfect,” I whispered.
Because in this crystalline second, I was.
He dragged me closer, our lips nearly one—then one blinding question stopped me in my tracks.
“How are you doing, Atlas?”
“I’m perfect.” He crushed his lips against mine. “Now.”
Fourteen
STORY
We both let out the same needy, aching groan as our mouths collided. Yet, Grayson pulled back, barely giving me the kiss I needed.
The relief I needed.
Tormenting me.
I clung to his neck, his shoulders, but mostly, I clung to the way he watched me. The utter lust and possession combined with such complete defeat in his blue eyes made my throat dry. It was like he was an old sailor drawn to the rocks, as if I was the enthralling one in the room.
I got high off it.
I remember thinking Grayson Crowne would never look at me, and now it was like he can’t stop looking at me.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I begged.
He breathed his next words against my lips, a hot, arrogant promise. “I’d rather show you, little wife.”
With two hands, he ripped my dress. The tear echoed with crashing waves and I arched into him on a gasp. I couldn’t think beyond his fingers, his sugary sweet lips whispering dirty words, his cock an iron bar on my hip.
I looked down at my torn dress, at my cleavage lifting toward his mouth with my heavy breaths.
A few more inches torn and I’d be entirely bare.
“Your bruises have faded, little wife…” he trailed off, nostrils flared, blue eyes disappearing into black pupils. The grit in his voice slid into my chest, into my lungs. “You should be painted in them.” He crushed his lips against my cleavage, teeth closing on my flesh.
I arched off the wall on a cry as his hand secured me in the arch, captive against his wicked mouth.
Grayson was ruthless, dragging his teeth across my chest. Goose bumps rose with his teeth, and I melted into the possession of his growl on my flesh—the ownership.
I groaned his name like a prayer, twining my fingers into his unruly, silky hair.
Distantly, like the soft crash of waves, a thought tried to push into the forefront. We should be using this time to talk—but now I was nothing save sensation—nothing but deep, throbbing need. Grayson was everywhere at once. Lips hot on my flesh, teeth scraping over the hills and valleys of my breasts.
I could only groan.
He smiled against my flesh. “My little wife, you make the most beautiful sounds for me. Give me more.” His teeth grazed the very edge of my nipple and my vision went blurry, a whimper leaving my mouth. “Fuck. Yeah. Just like that, little nun.”
Grayson throbbed against my belly, hand sliding down my back and searching ruthlessly under the thick velvet of my dress. His large, strong palm found my lacy panties and tugged, pulling them tight between my pussy lips in desperate, harsh yanks. He growled something so low I couldn’t hear it, but I feel it in the way he ripped the lace from my body, and shoved two fingers inside me not a second later.
I felt his groan to my very core. To my heart. To my soul.
Like he’d been deprived.
Breath left me and I bit his shoulder, wetting his shirt with my saliva, fisting the fabric at his back.
Hard, fast, desperate.
“More,” I begged.
His blue eyes darkened, then he was gone. His hands and mouth from my body. I missed him with a whimper. Yet no sooner do I open my mouth to beg him to come back, did he grip my dress again, tearing it from neck to navel. The velvet material butterflied at my waist, and I was entirely bare before Grayson. Shock danced with desire.
How would I go back now?
Grayson pushed his cheek out with his tongue as he studied me. With each second that passed, goose bumps peppered my flesh.
“Grayson… H-how—” I swallowed, trying to think beyond his burning gaze.
Slowly, his eyes found mine. “I’ve missed the way you say my name, little wife.”
He crushed his lips against mine, wrapping his arms around my body and dragging his hands beneath the hollow of my shoulder blades. From his wicked, heady, rich scent, to the silky fabric of his dress shirt pressed against my bare flesh, he gave me his entire body, bleeding his entire soul into mine.
Grayson.
His groan dripped down my throat and I held tighter on to him, my teeth tingling like I’d had too much sugar.
“G-Grayson—” At my stuttering, his smile ghosted my lips. “That dress was my way back.”
West will know I left—the world will know I left. There’s no sneaking back into the party.
“You’re not going back,” Grayson snarled the words, teeth sinking into my bottom lip.
Alarm rang in my mind, foggy through the desire. What did that mean?
Grayson would break from his kiss for seconds—seconds of hot, powerful torture. Diving for my neck, my shoulder, my cheek, my collarbone—anything. He was feral in his determination to devour everything.
While he assaulted my neck in kisses, I managed an eloquent, “H-huh?”
I had a split-second view of Grayson—of blue-eyed lust and unbridled need—and I thought he might answer me, but he just slammed me hard against the wall, slanting his mouth over mine to get more of me. All of me.
My mind fractured, my vision went blurry, my knees weak.
If it weren’t for Grayson holding me up, I would have slid down the wall.
“I’ve missed your mouth.” He dragged his hand from my back to hike my thigh around his waist. “Your taste.” He bit my bottom lip, punctuating his words with a bite. “Your lips. I could spend hours on them.” A deep sucking kiss on my bottom lip, then top. “Days. Fucking weeks. Just on these.”
I couldn’t move in his grip and that made me hotter. I was a prisoner to his desire and desperation, holding me still, to use and abuse with his furious assault of kisses.
His muscles flexed beneath my fingers, roped and powerful. I could only react, gasp, and grab on to him. I tore at his collar—and then I saw it. The bruise. The one he still hadn’t told me about.
Prisoner.
“Wait!”
He froze, hair wild and messy over blue eyes shining through like a monster in a dark cave.
“W-what happened while I was away—” I broke off on a groan as he hiked up my torn dress, a finger circling my ass, while his other hand seared my pregnant stomach.
“This isn’t…” I broke off on a groan. “This isn’t fighting fair.”
He laughed darkly against my lips.
Calculated.
Torture.
I know what he’s doing, but I can’t fight back.
More.
The word burned my lips.
“What—” I broke off as Grayson’s finger pushed deeper inside my ass. I swallowed a choked groan, dizzy with the desire to give in. The ruthless gleam in his eyes said he knew it.
But that ruthless gleam also said he had a secret.
I shoved him off.
His shoulders heaved with the effort of breathing, jaw sharper with his clench.
Restrained—barely.
I rubbed my forehead, hot. “W-what do you mean I’m not going back?”
He worked his jaw. “We’re done. You’re not going back to him. We’re doing this my way.”
I opened and closed my mouth, no words coming out.
After a moment, I finally managed, “What happened? What changed?”
“I told you I wouldn’t put my faith in fairy tales.”
“Your child,” I attempted. “Your family. You’re not thinking clearly.”
He slammed his hands on either side of me. “Of course I’m not thinking clearly; you’re surrounded by monsters!”
I could feel the wrinkle in my brow deepen. “Nothing has changed. You’d still be leaving your child. Your family—”
“Everything has changed!” He yelled so loud it seemed to silence the very waves.
There it was again…the darkness.
The shadow clinging to his soul.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I whispered.
He looked away, and when he looked back, his eyes were stone. “They aren’t worth it. They never were.”
He was lying.
Why was he lying?
“You said you would wait for me, were you lying?”
He gripped my cheeks, thumbs bruising. “I will wait decades.”
“Then let me be Atlas for a while and let him think I’m his mistress.”
His eyes darkened to black. “No. I’ll kill him before I let you sleep in his bed again.”
What?
With his hands still on either side of me, I threaded mine through his silky rose gold locks, pushing it up over his head so I could see his eyes
.
The deep ache.
The burning secrets.
“Why do you look like you have a secret—”
“Oh, doesn’t this look fun.”
We jerked our heads to the side.
West.
Grayson thrust me behind his body, shielding me, one arm holding me protectively against his back. I did the best I could to pull my torn dress together.
“You really have a fucking death wish, don’t you?”
West laughed. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
Two burly men in black suits came into the room and I felt a flicker of hope. Grayson’s guards were here. They wouldn’t let anything happen to him.
Grayson turned to me. “Everything will be all right.” My heart flew out of my throat at his calm, soothing tone and the stone in his eyes.
It happened in slow motion, like I was slipping under water, watching the clouds move above me. The first guard wrapped his meaty hand around Grayson and then the second did the same. Grayson fought their hold a little, not trying to get away, but just so he could turn and look back at me.
And then Grayson was ripped away—no, dragged away. I blinked, coming out from the ocean, and it stung like the salty water too.
Time was torn from us again and I realized how foolish we’d been with it. I hadn’t told Grayson anything.
West knows. West knows about the coin. He knows so much more than we do.
“Grayson, West—” No sooner had I started than West yanked me back with such force it stole my breath.
“Stay quiet, Angel.” West gritted through closed teeth. He fisted the fabric of my dress closed, until it was so tight on my body, I couldn’t breathe.
Grayson was dragged farther from me, but if he was afraid, he didn’t show it. He looked bothered.
Annoyed.
“So this is where you disappeared to.”
Tansy Crowne came into the room, at her back, Arthur du Lac. I never thought I’d feel a flicker of hope at Tansy Crowne’s voice, but I knew above anything else she would not stand for this. Then, the unthinkable happened.
Grayson’s guards thrust him to his knees.
Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point Book 4) Page 7