Stolen Soulmate
Mary Catherine Gebhard
Copyright © 2020 by Mary Catherine Gebhard
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Line editing by James Gallagher of Evident Ink
Proof Reading by Rumi and My Brother’s Editor
Cover by Hang Le
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Included in this copy with permission from Harvard University Press is THE LETTERS OF EMILY DICKINSON, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Associate Editor, Theodora Ward, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1958 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1924, 1932, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952 by Alfred Leete Hampson. Copyright © 1960 by Mary L. Hampson.
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All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above copyright owner of this book.
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Stolen Soulmate
ISBN-13: 978-1-7338510-5-3
An Unglued Books Publication
www.MaryGebhard.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Heartless Hero Preview
What’s next
Books by Mary Catherine Gebhard
Find Me
Acknowledgments
For the girls who hide and the fate that finds them.
One
STORY
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My love story began when it ended. With a savage kiss and a confession whispered in the dark that wasn’t meant for me.
I was walking the corridors of Crowne Hall when I was grabbed, pulled into a dark room. Moments later I was shoved into the center of the room. Ms. Abigail Crowne’s “must be exactly 180 degrees” white tea fell off my sterling silver tray with a crash and shatter.
The smell of salt air floated in the darkness, white cloth draped over one-of-a-kind furniture, and gold frames glinted along the walls. I knew this room—it was designated for only select, trusted servants. This place, though shoved away and forgotten in the no-man’s land between Ms. Abigail and her sister Gemma’s wing, held millions’ worth of treasures.
The antique room.
The door slammed shut behind me, and I jumped, spinning to find the shadow of a tall man only inches from me.
“Excuse me—” I started, but then the mystery man seized my face, his mouth on mine, and words left me. Thoughts left me. All I knew were his lips—unyielding yet soft. So soft. Searching and commanding and consuming.
I wasn’t ever one to kiss strangers in dark rooms.
I wasn’t ever one to kiss, period. I’d come close…once, but in the end that boy made it clear he’d wanted only one thing.
This was what people talked about in fairy tales. It was the pop. It was fire. Something I didn’t know existed, a tether in my soul, came loose, and latched on to him. The silver tea tray fell from my hands with a clang to the floor, and I grasped my mystery kisser, trying to give him all that he was searching for.
He slammed me against the wall with a rattle, fingers tangling in my spirally, curly hair. He tasted like lollipops and whiskey.
Who was he? A guard? A cook? No one ever gave me a second look, save West, but his attention proved worse than none.
I dressed conservatively, not even showing my collarbone. Even though I could look other servant staff in the eye, I never raised my eyes. I couldn’t have people knowing anything about me, because then they would ask questions, like why I was here, why I didn’t have any family, why I dressed so conservatively.
Questions opened up doors to the past, and taking one look back meant disappearing into a darkness so black it consumed me.
My mystery kisser slanted his mouth, diving deeper, and I sighed into him, getting lost in whoever he was, letting questions vanish.
We broke on a breath, his forehead pressed to mine. A glimmer of the dying sunset sparkled on the iron-blue ocean between us. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and I could almost make him out. Messy blond hair, sharp, angular features.
No.
It can’t be. He wasn’t supposed to be in this part of Crowne Hall.
Each Crowne had their own wing, and they stuck to them like someone had demarcated the lines with lava.
“You came,” he said.
Alarm rang my heart like a bell. I know that voice. I didn’t want to believe it, but I hadn’t come anywhere. Of course it made more sense that I would be mistaken for someone, than that I had a secret admirer.
No one admired Story Hale.
I wasn’t the girl you looked at; I was the girl behind the girl.
“I always wondered what you’d kiss like now.” He dragged a closed fist down my cheek. “It’s so much better than my imagination.” The groan strangling his voice nearly toppled me. I still had some small hope that maybe this man wasn’t the person every sign pointed at.
But then my eyes adjusted, and I knew for certain.
Blue stared back—the notorious steely blue reserved for almost all Crownes. A color as vivid and cutting as the ocean on a stormy day at Crowne Beach.
I should’ve stopped then. Looked away. Run away.
There’s a rule at Crowne Hall: no servants can look the Crownes in the eyes—ever. It was one I’d obeyed religiously. Yet I couldn’t avert my gaze. There was a look in his eyes I’d only ever dreamed of receiving.
Grayson Crowne, playboy prince, heir to Crowne Industries, was staring back at me. It wasn’t to knock books o
ut of my hands and laugh like in high school. It wasn’t to kick over my bucket of soapy water while I cleaned his floors. Gray Crowne was looking at me like he wanted me.
“You’re so goddamn perfect, you know that?”
He pressed me against the wall, abs and chest flat with mine, hips sharp. Every rigid and sculpted piece of him pressed deeper and deeper into me, until even lungfuls of air brought him inside me. He smelled expensive and heady and unobtainable.
“Do you know what I want from you now?” He grew hard on my hip, and suddenly I couldn’t speak. I swallowed and shook my head.
“Honesty. Bloody, raw, jagged truth.”
Alarm bells rang louder than a tornado siren, blaring in my gut. I knew I should pull away, but with him so close, and his breath hot on my lips, I couldn’t.
I wanted that too. Oh my God, I didn’t know how much I wanted that until he said it.
I had no right.
I was an effigy of dishonesty. Lies never left my lips, but I made damn sure no one got close enough so the truth didn’t either.
His lips went to my neck; then he paused. “Did you change?” I thought for certain I was done for, found out, dead. My heart pounded faster than a jackrabbit, louder than a drum. Then Grayson pulled aside the lace of my high-collared blouse. “What is this? Fuck. I like it. I get harder not seeing all of you.”
He sucked on my neck, hard. So hard I saw stars. I knew he would leave a bruise, and a sick part of me wanted that. I dug my fingers into his side.
This moment didn’t belong to me, but I was going to steal it anyway.
“Tell me something. A secret. Anything. Something no one else knows.”
“Sometimes I watch you,” I whispered. “I know you don’t see me, and you don’t think anyone is watching.”
Brief moments when Grayson Crowne was just Grayson.
Moments where I gave in to the insanity growing inside me.
A pause stretched long enough to be counted by the crash of waves outside. Then a distorted, jagged sound fell from his lips and reverberated against my neck. My knees weakened.
“Tell me more.”
I don’t know what came over me. I wanted to tell him everything, give him everything, be everything for him. It was a darkness, a need I’d never known before.
“I want you to bite me harder.”
The tiny shred of sanity left was screaming at me to shut the fuck up. My escape door kept shrinking with each confession. When this inevitably ended, when the lights came back on, there would be no way out.
But he smiled against my flesh before he bit the skin at my neck, and that was all I could think about. All I cared to think about.
“Fuck,” he groaned. “Where has this side of you been? More,” he demanded.
“You’re my first…first…” The word I struggled to say was kiss, but he fisted the material at my thighs, and my words left me. “I—I can’t do it here. Not like this.”
Not again.
He dropped my dress, hands coming beside my head. “More.”
“Tell me something,” I dared to ask. I’d dreamed of kissing Grayson Crowne…but never had I dared to dream I could ask for admittance into his soul.
Another long, weighted pause, then he whispered, “I’m a virgin too, Lottie.”
Lottie? Was he talking about who I thought he was? Wait—too?
Oh no. He thinks I’m a virgin. But of course he does. You’re my first…
“Wait, that’s not—” Then his lips were on mine again, and I couldn’t think.
The Grayson Crowne was whispering secrets and kissing me, and he’d just confessed he was a virgin to me. What was worse, I was kissing him back. I was kissing him back even after knowing those secrets weren’t for me—these lips weren’t mine.
It made me want them more.
I’d grown up in the basement of this palatial home, and I knew soul-deep the difference between me and him: those who were born with the right to have, and those with the right to want.
With his lips on me, I didn’t care. I clawed at his shoulders, willing it to be different.
“More,” I breathed into his kiss.
His grin stretched against my lips. “I like that word from your mouth.” His tongue swept my lips, hot, demanding.
Then all at once, like a douse of scorching fire, the lights turned on. The bright-yellow light burned. I knew the moment it hit Gray, when he realized I wasn’t the person he’d meant to kiss. I couldn’t begin to describe the emotions that swam across his face. Anger, of course. Shock. Disgust.
They cut old scars anew. One time, I’d let myself believe I could fall in love with a prince. I still haven’t recovered from the cuts those glass slippers made when they shattered.
“Gray?” At the voice, he tore his eyes from mine. I blinked out of my foggy pain, following his line of sight.
A silhouette was illumined in the doorway, and it took only a second to recognize her. Charlotte “Lottie” du Lac. She looked kind of like me, if there was a better, billionaire heiress version of me.
My eyes were stony hazel, and hers were a warm dark chocolate. She was slightly taller, but the extra inch slimmed her waist and made her legs go on for miles. Her chestnut skin glowed from within, and I was lucky if I got a day without a blemish. Today our hair was similar…but where my curls were without direction, pulled back to get out of my face, hers were piled high, beautiful and natural.
Gray did a double take, turning from her then back to me, who was trying to huddle and disappear into the shadows.
Charlotte sighed. “I don’t know why I believed you.” She rubbed a hand across her forehead. “This is cruel, even for you.”
With that Charlotte turned and left, red-soled heels clacking down the hallway.
“Charlotte, wait—” Gray started, then paused, eyes finding mine once more. The heat, the gentle desire, was extinguished. In its place was nothing save coldness. He looked down the hall, as if torn between chasing her and smashing me beneath his shoe.
He chose me.
In one swift motion, he speared my curls, yanking me toward him by my hair. “I don’t know who the fuck sent you, but you’ll regret this. Speak a word of what you heard and die, Snitch.”
He dropped me so hard and fast I had to throw my hand out to keep from banging into the wall. I sucked in air.
“Don’t go anywhere.” He shot me a searing look, before turning his sights where Lottie had been.
“I have to!” I blurted. Grayson’s eyes narrowed like I’d just spat in his face. “I mean, Ms. Abigail needs me.”
I’d been kidnapped into a dream and forgot about reality. I was his sister’s girl. I’d spent years trying to get that position and only barely achieved it. It was coveted. I’d started out as a servant in the kitchen and worked my way up. There were only two positions higher than working directly with a Crowne, one of which my uncle held.
I’d finally gotten my own room. I’d have vacation time, a higher salary. Tonight was Abigail’s sister’s birthday party, and she needed me to get dressed. If I didn’t show up…
Displeasure iced his beautiful features. I wondered if what had happened really was a dream.
“I’m your sister’s girl,” I said weakly.
A cruel smile speared his pretty pink lips. “You’re my girl now.”
Leaving me with that, Gray left, chasing after Lottie.
Two
STORY
* * *
I stumbled back against the wall, barely keeping myself from falling. I touched my lips, trying to rid the taste of him, the feel of him. That moment wasn’t meant for me. The pounding in my chest wasn’t meant for me. What I’d just learned spun around and skipped in my head like a scratchy record.
What I’d just told him.
What he’d just told me.
The whoosh and crash of waves filled the air like loud breaths. I never would have guessed Gray Crowne was a virgin—no one would. Every day a new tabloid printe
d him on the cover with a different girl. I still wasn’t sure I’d heard right.
“I’m such an idiot.” I exhaled, rubbing my hands over my face.
Sometimes I watched Grayson Crowne when he wasn’t looking, so I know he is cruel, unforgiving, and I have no reason to like him.
Oh, except for that one big, unavoidable reason.
I can’t stop.
I’m not certain when my crush started, and I don’t know what witch I pissed off in a past life to be afflicted, but it’s there. In my heart. Scraping at the walls like a caged animal. My uncle always said I was the smartest person he knew, but when it came to boys, I was a damn fool. I can’t say he’s wrong.
I dragged my hands across my face. This room smelled sweet and ancient, like some magic perfume, and it was getting in my head. I relived his bruising touch and gentle words. You’re so goddamn perfect.
Heat seared my gut.
I tore my hands away from my face, staring out the window at a nearly black sky.
That memory is a dangerous drug.
Salty night summer air drifted in through the open window. The sound of crashing waves drew me to it as well as the promise of getting away from the memory of Grayson’s hands and lips on me.
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