He leaned down, forehead pressed against mine, and shoved the fabric of my dress into my hand. He forced me to hold it up for him, keeping me open and bare for him. He caressed the inside of my thighs with one hand, ghosting bruises on my flesh, the ones he’d given me just days before. I couldn’t stop my shiver.
“Do you want me to kiss you, Snitch?” he asked lightly, his breath teasing my lips.
“You said no kissing…”
His laugh feathered my lips.
“Want me to say your name?” His touch rose higher, over my panties.
Yes.
I shouldn’t.
But, God, yes.
His eyes locked with mine, ripping, piercing.
Maybe I should look away, but I couldn’t.
“Know I know it’s you I’m kissing?”
His lips were so close now, I could taste the warmth, taste the lollipops on his breath.
He pushed aside my panties, sliding inside me, and I sucked in a breath. In and out, slow, easy, torturous. His thumb slid around my clit but never touched it. My heart was a traitor, beating too fast. My skin prickled and my gut tightened. My only reprieve knowing he can’t read my thoughts.
“Know I want to kiss you.” The only way I knew I’d slightly affected him was the grit in his voice.
He pressed against my clit just as he pressed his lips to mine.
“I don’t want you,” he whispered, as I shattered against his fingers. His lips were warm, wet, but barely touching me. Just enough so I could feel the vibration of his cruel, cruel words.
I was too far gone to stop it. Too far gone to push him away, to stop the wave of pleasure. I grasped his shoulders, coming undone.
He didn’t stop massaging my clit or pumping inside me. Didn’t stop forcing me to come as his words echoed within me.
I don’t want you.
His words dripped inside me, mixing with the taste of him, the want I couldn’t suppress, until I could barely stand.
When I finished, he licked my upper lip, slow, easy, until flames threatened to burn me to the ground.
Then he stood back.
He eyed me from down his crookedly beautiful nose. “I could never want you.”
I fell to the floor, tears burning the corners of my eyes, but thank fuck they didn’t fall. I stared at my knees, knobby, bruised.
I could never want you.
I knew he’d opened the door by the sudden rush of sound. Of laughter and music.
“Who was that for?” his cold voice drifted back.
“What?” I blinked through my tears.
Suddenly my hair was in his fist and he yanked my stare to his. “Who was that for?”
It dawned on me what he meant, and then I couldn’t stop the tears from falling.
“Lottie,” I rasped.
He dropped me.
I put my head in my hands as the door slammed shut.
I had only one fucking rule, and here I was breaking it, falling for the cruel prince once more.
Thirty-Three
STORY
* * *
I could never want you.
I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, but back on the island, through the open window the Riviera skyline was a blurry, twinkling treasure through my tears.
I stayed in that room until Grayson came and got me. Silently ordered me to follow him back to the boat. Grayson had spent the rest of the time at the club with Lottie, and now back home, I don’t know where he was, but I didn’t care.
I pretended to be asleep.
But I cried.
Messy tears I refused to let him see.
I heard the subtle, muted creak of a door opening. A moment later, Gray’s cold voice followed. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
I didn’t respond, hoping he’d think I was asleep. My chest couldn’t take it.
“Get up here, Snitch.” Grayson bent down, blocking the open sea window, and placed one careful finger below my chin, lifting it so I met his eyes. “Or have I broken you already?”
Grayson Crowne was the cruelest person in the world.
Cutting, ice-blue eyes. A nose slightly broken. Plush pink lips. Blond hair that was constantly falling out of his coif, messy like his personality, messy like his soul, messy like the way he’d kissed me when he’d woven my love irrevocably with his hate.
He lifted me up into his arms without another word and settled us into bed together, cradling my head on his bare chest. I noticed he’d taken off his shirt and had changed into sweats.
“What’s your safe word?” he asked.
“Mr. Crowne,” I croaked. When he made me choose one, I thought it was because we were going to be doing some kinky whipping and paddling Fifty Shades of Grayson shit. Not ripping apart my soul.
“Remember to use it,” he said, chest rumbling.
He stroked my hair. My back. Tears fell in a constant, hot stream down my cheek. I decided his sweet side was worse than his cruel side. Like the way the twinkling Riviera blurred with my tears, it blurred my picture of him.
“Why don’t you want to be a poet anymore?” he asked softly.
I wasn’t prepared for the question.
“Someone needs to take care of my uncle,” I said even more quietly.
“You can write while taking care of him.”
“Yeah,” was all I gave him.
I don’t know how many minutes passed as I lay on his hard chest. I kept telling myself to get up, to yell at him, to not let him get away with it. But he was warm, and his fingers were soft and loving, and I was weak.
“I received a really thoughtful gift from my fiancée today,” Gray said. “A green pen.”
“Oh,” was all I managed.
“I keep wondering how the fuck she knew to give it to me.”
“She’s your fiancée. You love her. She should give that to you.”
I sat up, angry.
Angry that he had the audacity to ask me such personal questions. To be sweet to me. To act like what he did to me never happened.
“What do you see in me, Story Hale?” His words were jagged and cutting, like the look in his eyes.
This is where I should tell him nothing.
After what he did to me, after all he said to me, I should tell him I see nothing in him. I couldn’t lie, but I couldn’t tell him the truth—it was too damning. An Atlas carrying a world of expectations and responsibilities. A lonely prince who pretends he doesn’t care but cares so much he’s isolated.
I see the only person who sees me back.
So I stroked the broken ridges of his nose, because it was the closest to a confession I could get.
His eyes burned and broke and cracked. “Everyone who gets close to me, who gets close to the real Grayson Crowne, never likes what they see.”
“I see you,” I said brokenly. Hating myself for not hating him.
“Trust me, Snitch, I’ve only ever been good at making people hate me. At the end of this, you’ll hate me too.”
He pulled my fingers into his mouth. His tongue twirled around them, hot, demanding, reminding me how he’d done it to my pussy.
I groaned. “Gray.”
“Tell me more, Snitch. Tell me to keep going.” He dragged me back to him, wrapping his body around mine, pulling me against his hard cock, sliding a hand beneath my panties.
It felt like an apology, a surrender.
Like what he was really asking was for me to say it was okay, what had happened before was okay. And the thing was…I was so close to it, so close to giving in.
“Fuck you’re wet.” He bit my ear at the same time he thrust. The pain and pleasure colliding. “God I love your pussy.”
He grasped my breast harshly, not giving me a chance to respond. I sighed as his lips found my neck, then my ear, biting and pulling on the lobe. Leaving marks only he and I would know about. Ripping a gasp from me.
So close to giving in once more…but I shoved him off.
Breaths heavy between us.
“No.”
He arched a brow.
“You take and take and take.”
Both eyebrows popped up. “You weren’t saying that when you were screaming more, thighs digging into my head.”
My face was hot, and I prayed it was too dark to see my embarrassment.
“No kissing,” I said. “No looking into your eyes. Who was my orgasm for, Gray?” Something flickered in his eyes, but it was gone before I could see. “You take but pretend you’re giving.”
He stretched his neck, raising chiseled golden arms. “If you want my cock, just ask for it, Snitch.”
I know what he’s doing. I’m starting to see through it. He thinks if he’s crude and brash it will scare me away. Because then no one gets close to Grayson Crowne. Grayson Crowne holds the key to his heart, his soul, and if you happen to stumble too close to the gate, he throws the key in the fucking sewer and acts like it never existed.
“Would you really give it to me?” I rubbed over his sweats, along the hard, tapered outline of his cock. “I think you won’t.”
“Go for it,” he said, sounding choked.
“What if I said I wanted you inside me? Isn’t that what you’re waiting for?”
His back was rigid against the bed, but his eyes were locked on mine, burning. Searing. Jaw clenched so tight.
I slid my fingers beneath the waistband, grasping hot flesh. He wasn’t wearing any underwear, and my fingers barely fit around his girth.
“You don’t want me to look you in the eyes. You don’t want me to kiss you. You don’t want me.”
I climbed down his chest, further down until I was at his jutting hips, his hard cock.
“I see through you, Grayson Crowne. You’re not ashamed. You’re not saving yourself for someone better. You’re scared.”
His eyes sharpened on a glare, but then I lowered his sweats a fraction of an inch, and he released a rocky breath.
“You were the little boy whose nose was broken because he dared to care; now you’re the man who refuses to let that happen to his heart. I understand what my uncle meant now. You have the biggest heart of anyone, so you wrap it in thorns.”
“You think I care about you?” he gritted. “Don’t read into this, Story. I’m just another person in your life who doesn’t want you.”
His words ripped into my chest, tore jagged, irreparable lines down my soul. But I wouldn’t let him see that. He’d already taken too much.
I stared back, unflinching. “The thorns make you bleed the most.”
His eyes burned raw emotion.
There he was again, my Grayson.
I tore down his pants, exposing his iron-hard cock.
“Can I look you in the eyes like this?” I asked, finding his eyes. “Can I kiss you like this?” I wrapped my lips around his cock.
“Fuck.” He threw his head against the carved wood headboard, still watching me.
I followed his lead, swallowed, sucked, licked him, anything to get his jaw tighter, the look in his eyes burning darker. He pulled the hair out of my face, fisting it, like he wanted a clearer look at me.
I think two kisses shouldn’t be enough for me to love him. I kept thinking that, even as the days wove into weeks. I kept waiting for something inside me to snap. I’d worked for the Crownes for years. I knew humiliation. But the thing inside me grew.
Maybe it isn’t love.
Maybe it’s obsession. Maybe I’m obsessed.
“I’m going to come,” he gritted. “Stop right now if you don’t want me in your fucking mouth.”
I kept going. Going until hot, wet spurts laved my tongue and hit the back of my throat while he groaned my name. My name.
Story.
His eyes burned with something that looked a lot like love.
Moments afterward were still. Unaffected. Tender.
“Get up here,” he growled.
I crawled up him, and when I was in reach he dragged me the rest of the way by the waist. He stroked his thumb across my lip, pushing the rest of his come in my mouth. Then he kissed my jaw. He kissed my chin, my nose, my cheek, my forehead. Everywhere but my lips.
I pushed him away, a knot in my chest.
He still won’t kiss me.
Because I don’t mean anything.
He dragged me back.
“Mr. Crowne,” I whispered.
He rolled off me. I was cold, so cold.
Grayson Crowne is the cruelest person in the world, and I’m hopelessly in love with him, but his love only bloomed in the dark.
Thirty-Four
STORY
* * *
The rest of the trip passed with Grayson barely acknowledging my existence. I couldn’t believe it was almost August, that the summer was almost over, and this thing between Grayson and I was getting closer to the end.
I kept telling myself he was marrying Lottie, and I needed to get used to being invisible again. My heart hurt, was breaking each second he kept choosing her, each second I let him keep choosing her. Until one moment it cracked in two, when everything changed, the night of Abigail Crowne’s engagement party.
I heard rumors about her fiancé.
Abigail was supposedly marrying a horrible, abusive man. I think it bothered Gray…he acted like it didn’t, refused to let the world see anything save his perfect mask. I tried to tell myself I had no right to wonder, let alone ask.
He had a constant frown, his shoulders were slumped, and anytime he left me to go spend time with Abigail’s fiancé, he looked ready to throw something.
The day of the engagement party he stopped talking to me completely.
He lounged on a dark-leather couch overlooking his private beach, one leg propped on a glass table, scrolling through his Instagram feed.
“I’m going to visit my uncle,” I declared, both telling him and testing to see if he would try to stop me. A little spark in my gut hoped he would. I don’t know why I liked it. I was a servant. I shouldn’t like being told what to do.
But I missed it.
He didn’t come for me at night anymore, didn’t acknowledge me in the day, and for the thousandth time I wondered why he kept me around.
I took a step toward the door, and when he didn’t so much as lift his head from his phone, I kept walking.
The house was buzzing with energy for Abigail Crowne’s engagement party. Servants cutting and preparing fresh flowers, a multistory ladder erected so they could shine the sparkling two-ton chandelier that hung from the domed ballroom. Paparazzi being escorted into the press room. I paused when I saw Ellie, hoping she would say something…but no one looked at me, not even to glare.
I was afforded the same treatment as a Crowne, or a Crowne’s guest. Yet I was not a Crowne. I was in an in-between world. Not belonging below, not belonging above. As a result, I was the loneliest I’d ever been.
When I reached the servants’ quarters, my uncle’s heavy black door was already open. Silver was piled high on his bed, and he lay against the headrest, polishing.
“Uncle?” I asked, eyeing the silver.
“Story.” He smiled when he saw me. “Good to see you.”
“How are you feeling? You haven’t been responding to any of my phone calls, texts, or emails.”
He waved a hand, going back to polishing. “You know how things get around here. I’m fit as a fiddle with a clean bill of health. I told you it was nothing to worry about.”
Again, I eyed the silver. You don’t take silver down to the quarters. You don’t move it from its spot, period. You shine it where it is.
“You’re doing better? Really?”
He smiled. “Would I lie?”
Woodson Hale was the most stringent, rule-abiding person I’d ever known. If he saw a servant so much as move a piece of silver to the left, that servant would get a talking-to. My uncle wouldn’t sit with a pile of it for no reason.
“You can tell me, Uncle,” I said softly. “I’m not a child anymore.”
He set down the silverware. “With you gone we’ve had to make some concessions. It would take too long to go around and polish these. Much faster to do it all at once.”
Guilt slammed into my chest. “I’ve missed you.”
He picked up the chalice. “Missing me one place?”
“Search another…”
He smiled softly. “Walt Whitman. Do you remember when I first read that to you?”
“The anniversary of Mom’s death.”
Some people were sung lullabies or read bedtime stories, my uncle read me poetry. I was a little too old for bedtime stories anyway, but I never got bedtime stories, and Uncle always said with poetry, for a moment, you could fix the unfixable.
There were so many things in my life that needed fixing.
“I might have time in my schedule for a poetry reading.” He winked. “After this engagement dies down. I do miss your poetry, Story,” he added, eyes bright, waiting.
The Crowne phone buzzed on the wall and saved me from answering. Still I watched him a moment longer. It had been so long since we’d done a poetry reading. Since we’d just sat and talked.
I paused as I was about to exit. In the corner of his room was a toppling mountain of shoes, what looked like Grayson Crowne’s sneakers. The ones he wore once and then never again.
“What are these?”
Uncle was too busy on the phone, but I looked closer. They were labeled donations. Why did Grayson Crowne always act like he cared the least, when he cared the most?
I gently shut the door behind me as I left.
Abigail’s engagement party was starting soon. I had no idea if Grayson was going to want me there. For every event since the vacation, he’d had me stay in his room. Still, I hurried.
You can write while taking care of him.
Grayson’s words echoed in my head as I walked back to his wing. It was getting late, the light waning in long, gaunt shadows along Crowne Hall.
I could. I can write anywhere. But every time I put pen to paper, I froze. I’ve hidden for so long I didn’t know how to show my soul.
What if people see me, and they don’t like what they see?
When I got back to Grayson’s wing, shouting stopped me short in the hallway.
Stolen Soulmate Page 19