It was easy to tell yourself what you’re feeling is nothing, because someone like Grayson is never going to look at you. You don’t have to worry about the nasty, horned whys of how you could like someone like him.
It would never come true.
He would never look back.
“Don’t you want it to be special?” I attempted.
All he did was laugh.
“I can be of way more use to you than just sex. I won’t even be good at it…”
He laughed. “That, I believe.”
He walked around me, each step lighting a jolt of electricity in my heart. Patterns from the iron-paned glass wall guarding stairs to the second floor darkened the already nearly black wood at my knees in crisscross shadows. I focused on them, not Grayson.
But then he stopped behind me, and only seconds later vicious hands fisted my hair, pulling my head back so I was forced to stare into his burning gray-blue eyes.
“Let’s give whoever sent you a nice story,” he growled into my neck. “So you can go back and tell them how you dropped your panties faster than a whore on prom night. How you begged me to fuck you. How much of a fucking slut you are.”
I should hate this, but his cruel, crude words burned on my flesh and vibrated inside my bones.
“No one is going to believe me if I talk, anyway,” I whispered.
My breath caught, and he dropped me without a word.
I stared at the floor, scalp burning. I know he was trying to call my bluff, to get me to say I had been sent, and my heart broke a little bit for him. For someone who couldn’t believe in anything other than sabotage. I was a casualty of fate, as he’d said. I grasped at straws, something else to change his mind.
“I”—I swallowed—“I, um, don’t you like Lottie?” I croaked. “Why would you ruin that with me?”
In that dark room, his feelings for her had been so earnest, so real. What had happened in the few hours between that dark room and now to make him do such a drastic one-eighty?
“The only thing you’re ruining tonight are my sheets.”
I swallowed all the air in the room at the image.
“But—”
“I think I’ve let you talk enough. Stand up.”
I slowly stood. Grayson regarded me with little less than disgust. Everything about him dripped disinterest, like this was just another boring night.
“Are you some kind of burn victim?” He rubbed his eye, exhaling. “Never mind. I don’t fucking care.” Grayson paused, a finger below his eye resting on his cheekbone, his glare sharp.
“I don’t remember saying you could look at me,” he said softly. Too soft.
I sucked in a breath and stared at his chest.
“You want me to sleep with you and I can’t look you in the eyes?” I’d learned to swallow indignity, shame, hurt…but even I had limits.
Grayson walked to me, forcing me to step back, back until I was flush against the glass-paneled wall. I thought he was going to shove himself against me, but he stopped with just an inch of space between us.
His laugh settled in my stomach. “You’re not sleeping with me, Snitch.”
Snitch. That fucking name again. I wasn’t a snitch. I hadn’t told anyone anything. I’d only overheard something I shouldn’t have.
“What if I say no?”
The Crownes were cruel, but abuse was limited to our morale and dignity, unlike many other employers in their caste who saw a disenfranchised girl as an easy target.
“You have this discount-bin nun look going, but I see you, Snitch. You’re just like every other fangirl who sent the Grayson Crowne their dirty panties. And like them, you shiver.” He curled a spiral of my hair between his fingers.
I tried to hold back a shiver and lost.
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t like every other girl—Grayson Crowne was my least favorite thing about him—but we weren’t shrouded by darkness anymore. I was back to being Story, the unknown maid, and he was back to being Grayson Crowne, the infamous prince, and that was all we could ever be.
I’d seen what happens when the prince chooses someone like me over the princess.
“Say no, Snitch.” He tugged on that strand of hair, leaning forward until his mocking whisper burned my neck. “Tell me to stop.”
Still with that inch of space between us, his other hand trailed the curve of my waist and I arched into his touch. He noticed. I couldn’t lift my eyes to see if he smiled, but I saw the way his jaw twitched, imagined his plump pink lips curling.
Say no. Say no. Say no.
In the dark room he’d kissed me with passion, his fingers bruising. Now his touch was a lazy, bored torment, like the annoyed way he spoke to me. He didn’t want me. This night would only end with my heart stomped and bloody.
So why couldn’t I fucking say no?
His lips found my neck and my gut somersaulted.
“Would you really…” I grasped for anything, something.
I couldn’t go through it again. A magical night followed by a nightmare. Giving up a piece of myself to someone who thought they deserved to smash it.
“Would you really take my virginity this way?”
The lie fell from my lips, and he froze.
Four
GRAY
* * *
“So tell me to stop,” I said.
Snitch wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t talk, her light breathing the only sound. From this angle, her eyelashes were too fucking long, eclipsing her full hazelnut cheeks.
“All you have to do is say no, Snitch,” I repeated.
She licked pouty lips, and her kiss slammed back into me. The husky way she’d whispered please stuck on a loop inside my chest.
I can’t. Fucking. Stop. Thinking about kissing her. Couldn’t get the memory of her breath off my lips. How she’d gripped me. Begged me.
But that memory should’ve been Lottie, and for that, I hated her.
“You can’t, can you?” I asked, voice rougher than I’d intended.
Snitch tugged her lower lip between her teeth, and her walnut-size eyes met mine. Fuck, she had a problem with that. For a moment, I let her. They were the most intense shade of hazel I’d ever seen, a stony, mossy green that reminded me of forest floors. In them I saw need blazing back at me that said she’d let me do anything to her.
Still, I stepped off. As far as I was concerned, silence meant no. I ran a hand through my hair, tangling it in the way my mother hated, yet had landed me on the front of many magazines.
“You of all people should know how important this night is,” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have waited. I don’t know why you want to waste it on me, but I’m…I’m not going to lose it with someone who doesn’t love me.” She looked away this time, eyes glittering.
Important? I flexed my fingers in and out of a fist. What fucking fairy tale was this girl living in?
“If it’s so important, then why would I fuck you?” I countered. “You’re shit. You’re nothing. This night? It means nothing.”
A wrinkle formed between her brows and she tugged on the sleeves of her ridiculous dress. Who dresses like that? Floor length, with a collar up to the neck, and long sleeves. She was like a fucking nun.
“In your world, virginity is something you lose on a prom night.” I trailed my finger along the lace at her throat, pulling at the collar at her neck, simultaneously bringing air to her breasts and choking her. “Let’s be clear, the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done, would wreck you.”
My lips were at her cheek, breath ghosting the flesh, when I saw it—the mark, the bruise forming on her neck from my lips.
I want you to bite me harder.
I should’ve known then it wasn’t Lottie I was kissing. Lottie would never ask for that. But I wanted it to be her. Maybe that was why I ignored the signs.
Now Snitch had my mark on her.
I dropped her, taking furious steps away, putting a shit ton of space between us. Until I didn’t s
mell fucking lemons, until I could barely see the mark. The back of my thighs slammed into the edge of a desk, rattling it against the wall.
I lifted myself up on the desk, opening the drawer in front of me, exposing a stash of weed, rolling papers, and loose suckers.
With an arm propped on a leg, I rolled a joint on my knee.
“My game of chicken obviously fucking worked.” I licked the paper, watching Snitch. She stared at the floor. “You have two options. Tell me who sent you, or jail.”
“No one sent me!” She lifted her head, eyes earnest. “I live here, I work here, this is my home.”
“Hasn’t stopped your kind in the past,” I gritted.
“My kind,” she breathed. “Are we really so little to you?”
We’re accused of not treating our servants like people, and I won’t deny it, but it goes both ways. To them we’re pieces of diamond that they want to take a chisel to. I’d lost count of how many maids or cooks or guards we’ve had to let go, or even press charges against, because they’d tried to sell a story or steal an heirloom from that very fucking room.
I rooted around the drawer, looking for a lighter. After a moment I found it, lighting the joint.
I sucked in smoke, then blew it out. “So jail, then.”
“You’re not really giving me an option.”
I trailed my ring finger along my other hand, thinking of the first idea I’d had. “Do you know how easy it would be to make your life hell? I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.”
Her nostrils flared. “Are you threatening me?”
I smiled. “I was giving you an option, Snitch.”
Through the smoke her mossy eyes found me, searching and seeking. Fuck. Those eyes. There was a reason we had our servants look away. Grandfather said it was because training them that way is one more step of corporate security. An intrinsic threat of don’t look at us, don’t look for our secrets.
Mother said it was because they need to learn who we are and who they are.
I think it’s because the eyes are the windows to the soul.
Maybe they’d learn our real secret—we didn’t have any souls.
Coldness filled my veins again. The kiss, the outfit—Snitch was like every other chick I’d met, pure manipulator.
“You really have some kind of death wish,” I said.
She quickly averted her gaze.
“If you weren’t there for me, then you were trying to snatch something priceless.”
I don’t believe in fate. Fate is the bedtime story people without power tell themselves so they can fall asleep.
“I don’t know how else to say it. No one sent me. I’m Ms. Abigail’s girl. I was on the way to bring her tea. You grabbed me.”
“Are you saying I meant to grab you?” The idea would have been laughable if I wasn’t so fucking pissed. “I must have missed the moment when you said, Hey, you’ve got the wrong fucking person.”
“No…no…I just…” She rolled her lips.
Our reflections shadowed the glass wall that separated the living room from the rest of my wing. I realized this was the first time I’d had someone here other than Woodsy or Mom or Grandpa in, shit…ever. At least since Dad had died.
“I didn’t know who you were at first,” she said softly. “When you kissed me, I didn’t know it was you. I should’ve stopped it anyway, because it’s not like someone would be looking for me.” She broke off on a self-deprecating laugh.
And that laugh sucked me in. That single shred of honesty, where in my world, no one would ever admit even the slightest chance they could be unwanted.
I leaned forward, elbows digging into my knees.
“But then…I realized who you were, who you thought I was, and I really should’ve stopped kissing you. I know that was wrong. I knew it was wrong in the moment.”
It was like heroin listening to her, watching her.
A Crowne is never wrong; everyone else is simply mistaken.
My grandfather’s advice echoed in my head, one of the many pieces of wisdom he’d imparted.
“I didn’t stop because…” Snitch took a deep breath, and I leaned even more, trying to swallow every drop. Every slight pout of uncertainty on her lips, the small dip in her brow.
“I knew I would never get this moment ever again. So I stole it.” Then she lifted her head, brown-green eyes furious in their earnestness. “But I stole it for me. No one else.”
Every moment, experience, interaction in my life had taught me honesty wasn’t something people actually had; it was a word used to manipulate. So why the fuck did my gut believe her?
“Listen, uh…” I hopped off the table. “My harem is full, so good luck.”
I stole it for me.
I don’t know why the fuck that was twisting me up so much.
I hated her.
Wanted to crush the part inside me that kept reacting.
Wanted to fucking crush her and bury my cock in her at the same fucking time. Shit.
Fuck.
I stole it for me.
That shouldn’t affect me. It shouldn’t make me twist on the desk in discomfort. She’d pretty much admitted to everything I expected and loathed in a person. However, no one ever wanted to keep the pieces they took from me for themselves.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean get the fuck out.” My voice edged, apathy and humor waning the longer I was with her.
I’d learned never to let anyone see what I felt; even anger was a win.
But she was like poison ivy. Crawling inside, hot, flashing back to hours before when her lips were on mine, her hands clawing at me. A twisted part wanted to scratch the itch.
And her honesty. What was with that? No one ever talked to me like that.
If I never see her again, it would be too early.
“Like back to Ms. Abigail?” she asked.
“I’d suggest leaving Crowne Point entirely, if you ever want to work again,” I said. “Maybe try someplace in…fuck, I don’t know, maybe Portugal?” I suggested, trying to think of somewhere Crowne Industries didn’t have a foothold.
There aren’t many.
“Portugal?” she gasped. “But…” Panic strangled her voice, and she looked left and right. “I can’t leave. My unc—” She quickly backtracked. “I mean, this is my job. It’s where I live. I have nowhere to go.”
“You’ll manage.” I picked up a black-and-gold rotary phone that connected me to my security. “Yeah, we’re done. Come and get—”
Snitch had it out of my hands before I’d seen her move, slamming the phone back against the receiver.
The balls on her.
I liked it.
“You wanna die, Snitch?” I growled.
“I can…” She drew her lip between her teeth, and instantly I thought about lemon, what she’d tasted like. Why the hell did she taste like lemons? Not sour, but sweet, Meyer lemons. The ones my mom put in everything when they came in season.
Venom sliced through my veins, hating her, hating myself, for having the knowledge.
“I can help you get Charlotte back!” Her eyes grew so wide with the idea, like the eyes of plushie dolls you got for kids.
Earlier, when I’d finally caught Lottie, she’d played it cool like anyone of her status would, but I knew I’d ruined whatever chance I had.
Lottie was like me. Trust wasn’t something we gave easily, if ever.
One of the many reasons I liked her.
I paused as temptation stretched its inky tendrils.
The morbid reality was I didn’t need to win Lottie back. She was already engaged to me; she just didn’t know it yet. It was a merger my grandfather and hers had been working longer than I wanted to fucking think about.
The moment I learned about it, I forced my mother and grandfather to let me tell her. They gave me a year, until the end of this summer, to do my “pedestrian proposal.”
This wedding would happen whether Lottie wanted it or not.
If Lottie doesn’t choose me willingly, then her father would threaten her down the aisle.
Despite who everyone thinks I am, I won’t fucking marry someone whose veil hides their tears.
“That’s cute,” I said, voice rough. “Thinking I give enough of a shit to chase her.”
I went to pick up the phone, and she pressed her hands harder on mine, pinning it down, digging into my skin with little nails I couldn’t help picturing digging into my back.
“I know you like her,” she said. “You can’t take back what you said in that room.”
I quirked my neck to the side, a rush of anger I couldn’t fucking tamp down washing over me.
“You’re right about one thing…” I lifted my hands in the air, pretending to surrender. Like I expected, Snitch lifted hers off the phone, and I snatched her wrist, ripping her to me.
“But it isn’t that I can’t take back what I said. You can’t take back what you heard, Snitch.”
Her eyes widened and she yanked at her wrist. “Let me help.”
I laughed. “The only way you can help is by getting the fuck out of my life. Or cleaning my shirts,” I added absently. “Maybe both.”
“That’s not true I…” She tugged her lower lip between her teeth. Once again that fucking kiss slammed into me.
More.
She was so greedy, so fucking eager.
“Maids talk!” she exclaimed. “I’m a secret weapon. I can figure out what she likes and doesn’t like. What she wants.”
Her eyes met mine again, brows drooping at my face, misunderstanding my tight jaw and glare. Good. She doesn’t need to fucking know I can’t stop thinking about that kiss.
She keeps looking at me. And I keep liking it.
Fucking bad sign.
“Seems like a lot of work when I could just get you out of my life for good right now.” My voice was too rough.
Lottie and I had been childhood sweethearts, and though people like us don’t get to choose who we end up with, I always wondered what it would be like to end up with her.
But it was never like this. With her hating me. With a deadline. With a fucking servant as my last hope—a servant whose kiss I can’t stop replaying in my goddamn head.
Stolen Soulmate Page 3