“What happened?” she asked.
I closed my eyes, listening to her raspy whisper.
“When I refused, my grandfather made me. The guards at the end of my wing were no longer there to keep me safe, but keep me in. They don’t let me out of my wing unless it’s to take pictures or smile on command. They watch my every move.”
“Is what West said really true?” she whispered, like the very walls could hear us. “Does your grandfather think I’m in the way?”
“I don’t know what my grandfather knows, little nun, and that’s what makes this all so fucking dangerous.”
I relayed all of what my grandfather told me, of the rivalry between the du Lacs and Crownes, of how it began with a girl who kissed the wrong boy, and how he stole a coin to try to marry her.
Her eyes grew. “That’s like our story.”
I nodded. “My grandfather spent his life collecting the coins. I don’t know what he was planning, but I’m sure it was huge. But something happened. They were stolen.”
Her brows popped. “Stolen? Who would have the balls to steal from Beryl Crowne?”
I went silent for a while. “My father. Or at least, I think so.” I shook my head. “On the day of my father’s funeral, three of the coins were placed in my pocket. Apparently it was Josephine who gave them to me.” I exhaled, shaking my head. “I didn’t know until tonight. She told me…” I trailed off. I couldn’t tell Snitch what she’d said.
“Stop doing that!” Story snapped. “Bloody. Raw. Jagged. Your secrets are mine too.”
Fuck.
Why does that fuck me up so bad?
I slid on top of her, pressing her into the mattress, her cunt only protected by a flimsy thread of cotton.
The perfect weight of you, or your perfect strength and heat. Your groan that echoes in my bones and lungs.
My response, the memories of her that wrapped around me, would have been the soft sighs she makes when I press her into the mattress, like now. Or the way she arches into me, and slides open. Her raspy more, and the way it scratches down my throat, like her nails on my back.
“Yours?” I asked.
She licked her lips, nodding. “They belong to me.” Her voice huskier. Raspier.
“Yeah, little wife.” I pressed my lips to her neck. “All yours. Only yours.”
Her arms wrapped around my neck, dragging me closer.
“Josephine told me my father died doing what we’re trying to do,” I continued. “It was always in the back of my mind that my grandfather could have killed my father. It felt more like a story than the truth, though. My grandfather wouldn’t really kill his own son. Now…”
“Now?” Story’s words wobbled.
“I can’t see anything but that reality. It makes the most sense.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I looked away. From her probing stare, digging into the rocks and crevices of my soul. “It’s just confirming what I already knew.”
“No…it’s like you had a reoccurring nightmare and woke up to find out it’s real.”
Jaw clenched, I looked back. “Josephine looked like she wanted to talk to me for weeks, but she could only do it without punishment on this night.”
“Why didn’t you talk to her?”
“I don’t talk to her.”
“Ever?”
“She wasn’t my mother. She wasn’t anything. I feel nothing.”
“Liar.”
Fuck. I loved that word slipping from Story’s lips in the shadowy light—calling me out. Only she ever called me out.
I pressed my hands on either side of her pillow, pressing down until my lips were a thread away. “I won’t mourn her.”
It was as much a statement as a taunt, begging my Snitch to contradict me.
“No.” Her breath heated mine. “But you’ll grieve her.”
I raked my gaze down her body, her chest rising and falling, legs slipping open for me.
Her honesty was the rawest aphrodisiac.
Heating and twisting me up until I was rock-hard. Curling the satin pillowcase beside her face into knots so I didn’t jackhammer my pregnant wife into the fucking bed.
“My mother died before I could make any happy memories,” she said, voice a raspy siren’s call, and my gaze ripped from her open legs, back to her hazel eyes. “It’s so fucking painful when somebody dies before you have a chance to make it stop hurting. It just…keeps hurting. My uncle died, but I have fond memories of him, and it’s almost a sweet ache. My mother…it’s bad. Our relationship in life was bruised and rotten and she died that way, and so it just always feels bruised and rotten.”
She was right, she’s always right.
I dragged my hand along her rounded belly and she arched into the touch, slamming her hands over mine, forcing my touch deeper into her stomach.
I have wicked thoughts. Wrong thoughts. My wife is pregnant and she deserved gentle, but I want to give her rough.
Hard.
I want her covered in my bruises, her swollen stomach marked with me. For a brief second, I gave in. I dug my nails into her skin and her eyes fluttered closed. A twisted, needy moan slipped from her lips into mine.
“Wait!” Her eyes popped open. “We still have so much more to talk about. I need to tell you. Like what Jo—” She broke off on a breath, my knee pressing into her cunt. “What Josephine told me earlier today. What do you think that means?”
I brushed little baby hairs off her forehead. “I have no idea.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about West?” I pulled away, but she tugged me back by the arms around my neck. “Grayson, please let me in.”
“I couldn’t accept the fucking reality, little nun. Still can’t.” I pushed her into the mattress, breathing her in, her marshmallow scent and her warmth. “You had to lock me to the fucking bed.”
She sighed. “If I sleep in his bed, I’ll have access to his phone and I can try. I can at least try password combinations—”
I cut her off. “If you want me to be the kind of man that sends his wife into another man’s bed, I can’t. I’ll never be him. I don’t care if it saves the world.”
Her lips parted. Wet. “How are we going to do this?”
I exhaled. “I don’t know.”
I’d been working it over in my head. Over and over.
We had no other options.
I know it was the only way, but I don’t know how.
My head fell between her shoulder and her neck, defeated.
Her hands slipped from my neck and she gripped my face, pulling me back up so I could see her eyes. She kissed me softly, slowly, biting my bottom lip.
Melting me.
I groaned, biting her lips. “What are you doing, Snitch?”
“I don’t think you’re going to be okay,” she breathed. “I know I’m not. So let’s stop trying to find that magical reason that somehow makes us okay with this. It doesn’t exist. We just have to survive it.”
I pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “If we do this, you don’t choose him. You don’t sleep in his fucking bed. Promise me?”
“I promise.” She pulled back, rolling her lips. “Promise me you won’t keep anything else from me?”
I didn’t want to lie, but I don’t know how to tell her. I didn’t know where to start. I wasn’t trying to lie or keep secrets, I just…didn’t know how to say it aloud. I don’t know how to tell her the truth—that even with five coins, my safety wasn’t guaranteed.
I’d fight tooth and nail for our happily ever after, but my plan B would always be keeping her safe.
So if it looked like we weren’t going to find that fifth coin, then I’d use four.
To save them.
“I can’t lose you.” The words were ragged and ripped from me. Just the idea of losing her tore my insides to shreds.
She pressed her forehead to mine. “You won’t lose me.”
“You can’t guarantee that, Snitch.”
“I promi
se.” The grit with which she said it almost made me smile.
Story was so strong, so sure of herself.
I thumbed her bottom lip, wanting to kiss her and punish her all at once. Kiss her for her strength, punish her for how much it would get her into trouble.
Her lids drooped at my touch. “I’ll come back,” she said, husky. “I’ll always come back.”
I bruised my forehead into hers. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Grayson…” she sighed my name with so much emotion it bled into my chest.
“The only thing I care about are you and the baby, Snitch. That’s all this has ever been about. Promise me you won’t do anything to put yourself in jeopardy. My family isn’t worth it. My happiness isn’t worth it. Without you, I don’t even have a chance at either.”
“I promise,” she whispered. “I know it feels like we’re so behind. Like everyone knows more than us, like we’re failing. But I’ve decided this isn’t a loss. It’s a win.”
A reluctant smile quirked my lips. “You’ve decided, huh?”
“I’m so furious for Josephine. For the life she was forced to lead, the life they took so easily. I want to get revenge and avenge her. But…she didn’t die in vain. They just showed their cards. They’re nervous. They’re scared…of us. We’re going to win, Grayson. We’re going to get a happily ever after. We will. It’s kind of romantic, if you think about it. We’re closing the circle. This whole thing started with a stolen kiss and a coin, and now we’re ending it with one.”
“Story, what you want to do is impossible. Our happily ever after? It’s only been done in myths and legends.”
“But you’re Grayson Crowne.” She smiled. “You were born to do the legendary.”
I loved her strength, her determination.
But it scared me.
Death surrounded us.
“Fuck me,” she groaned. “Please. More. While you’re here, while we can.”
She arched into my cock and, fuck, I wanted her. There was a piece inside of her that she wouldn’t share with me. A piece of him that was hurting her.
And it just felt…wrong.
Wrong to fuck her when she was still keeping secrets.
Wrong to fuck her when I wanted to rip them from her, bloody and raw.
I pulled her against my body. “Sit with me. I want to get drunk on you.”
Twenty-Four
STORY
Grayson pulled me against his chest, and for a while, we lay like that as he absently stroked me—my hair, my shoulders, my back…everywhere. He slid his arm under my shoulder, wrapping it across my chest and bracketing my entire body from neck to stomach. He slid his other between my thighs, hand digging into my hip.
I sucked in air at the position.
He held me like that for I don’t know how long. Caged and at his mercy, tight against him, like he was afraid I would vanish into smoke.
“He’s going to try to screw us, going to try to double-cross you,” I said.
“I’m counting on it,” Grayson gritted. “But the day before you left for Scotland, you said we have the one thing he won’t see coming. The one thing none of them will see coming.”
I lifted my head to see his sparkling blue eyes, like an early ocean morning. “Trust, little wife.”
Wow.
I melted back into his chest.
“I missed your tired voice,” I whispered. “I missed falling asleep to the gravel in my ears and waking up to the sun and your smile.”
He pulled me closer, pressing his lips to my neck. “Yeah? What else did you miss?” Goose bumps rose along my arms at the low hitch in his voice, as much as the way he hardened beneath me.
“You. This. Us in the dark.”
“Did you know she’s about the size of a Meyer lemon now?” He trailed his nose along my neck, a dark possession wafting off him.
I let out a breath. “No way.”
“I looked it up and that was the comparison they gave me. Even though it feels like the universe is conspiring against us, sometimes I think the universe is talking to us. Sending us a message. I don’t know…” I swallowed as his grip on my stomach spanned wide, strong. “She’s probably bigger now, actually. I checked a while ago, and you’re…”
“Bigger,” I said.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “Even though she’s bigger than a lemon, I want to think of her that way. We don’t have a name for her, anyway…our little Meyer lemon.”
He was iron against my ass and I wanted him like fucking air. I ground against him mindlessly but he held on to my hip, holding me still.
“Please,” I whimpered. “I used to look in the mirror and see you everywhere. But now… My bruises have faded.”
“You want bruises? Here?” His thumb traced my hip and I whimpered. “Or here?” I groaned as he trailed his touch down to my inner thigh.
Yes. I wanted that. Everywhere.
“What happened the last time I bit you?” he growled.
West. The bite was still fresh.
He slid his hand from my stomach and yanked my head back, so my eyes met his. “Don’t be so fucking reckless, little wife.”
“What about here?” I lifted my ring finger, where his bite had long since left me. “Who will know what it means? I can say I slammed it in the door or something. It could be another secret we have.”
From the world.
From everyone.
He groaned. “Fucking trouble.” But then he slid my finger into his mouth.
Slow.
His tongue swirling around the digit, eyes burning on me and palm digging harder into my stomach. Heating up my lungs until l had to part my lips to let go of the steam.
Then he bit.
I arched and he bruised his fingers into my inner thigh, holding me in place, his cock throbbing against my ass. His fingers inched higher, into the soft skin creasing my groin.
On the edge—like me.
“More,” I begged.
He released my finger, wet, red, and throbbing. He licked the newly formed indentations, blue eyes never straying from mine.
“Please. You can bruise me in other ways…” I whispered. “You can bruise me inside. Where only I can feel it.”
“Little wife…” He groaned deep—a surrender. “Tell me to stop.”
Of course I couldn’t tell him no.
I could never tell him.
But fear and worry rolled through me in waves.
Who needs to die for you to realize this isn’t a game? That your kisses have consequences.
Someone had died, and still, all I wanted to do was melt into him. We were going up against Goliath and we’d always had one very obvious Achilles heel: each other.
I arched into him in answer.
His breath hot in my ear, heartbeat pounding against my back, he slowly slid his fingers inside me. I think I went cross-eyed, or at least, the ceiling blurred. I hadn’t been drunk in months, but now my blood was wine. I writhed into it, against his perfect, thick fingers.
My head fell to his shoulder, catching the dark shadow of his square jaw, the sheen on his pink, pouty lips. For one second, our eyes locked. His softened blue eyes—a look reserved only for me.
“There’s my girl,” he said, soft.
And then something flipped inside him, some kind of switch. He turned wild. Animal. Fingers still inside me, he ripped my nightgown down, past one breast, teeth descending.
“Grayson. You’ll…you’ll—”
You’ll leave marks.
Drawn back to the very first time.
Only this time, the stakes were higher. They were death. They were destruction of our happily ever after, what we’d been fighting for tooth, nail, and blood since the moment in the closet when everything snapped and broke between us.
“If he sees this, I’ll kill him anyway,” he snarled.
He arched over me, teeth searing my flesh, fingers fucking me, still holding me flush to his body and entirely caged. I felt like a d
ame in an old vampire novel.
I was helpless. Boneless. His.
“Anytime you’re with him.” He was crazed now—I was crazed. “You look at this mark and you remember me. If the world can’t know.” Thrust. “Then I want you to know, little wife.” Thrust. “Whenever you walk, I’m there walking with you. I always will be.”
Grayson pressed me against the sheets, and I breathed him in as we slept in the shadows of my prison as the sun smudged the night sky gray.
“So what are you guys gonna call yourselves?” I joked. “Team Anger Issues?”
“Jokes.” He exhaled like he could breathe again. “Nah, probably Team Eskimo Bros.”
Gray barely lifted his head enough to see my shocked face, rose gold hair falling roguishly across one eye. He mirrored my shocked, open mouth, then grinned, a body-melting, devious boy grin, that showed his teeth and pink lips and actually met his eyes.
Oh, I missed that.
He crushed his lips against mine, still holding me in place by my chin.
“You started it,” he murmured against my lips, then pulled back, suddenly serious. “I gave you your phone. So you’ll write me morning and night, and if you feel the need…anytime in between.” He gave me another boyish smile.
I bit my lip. “Yeah.”
His eyes dropped to my bitten lip briefly. “And if you have something else to say to me, you’ll tell me your words? All of them?”
His brow furrowed, jaw clenched, as if reading something from me.
Digging.
My throat was scratchy. “Always, Atlas.”
He exhaled through his nostrils like there was something he wanted to say, but didn’t.
As the sun grew higher in the sky, my heart pounded with the ticking clock it represented.
“Grayson, you said you want to be a hero. A good man. A good father. You said if you went down this road, you couldn’t promise you’d be the man I loved on the other side.”
His eyes cracked. “Story—”
“So take me with you,” I breathed against his lips. “Let me walk down the dark road with you. If you don’t let me disappear, I won’t let you disappear either.”
Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point Book 4) Page 14