“I’m in, Crowne,” he yelled at my back. “I’m finally in.”
Fuck him.
Fuck that dog.
Fuck this family.
I pounded down the hallway until his choking laugh dissipated. He was like Story, like everyone else, a user. I stopped short a few halls away from my wing. That wasn’t Story.
Fuck.
Story wasn’t that asshole. She wasn’t malicious. Story wasn’t conniving. She would set herself on fire to keep someone warm. Which meant my brutally honest nun had lied.
I tangled my hands in my hair again, catching a glimpse of myself in a mirror. My blond hair was wild, unkempt. My bow tie was undone, hanging askew off one side. Lipstick stained my shirt from when Lottie had rested her head on my shoulder while dancing.
“I’m sorry,” I said aloud to my reflection.
It sounded weak.
“I’m sorry?” I tried again.
Worse.
I worked my hands through my hair viciously, walking back and forth.
“I didn’t really mean to get her off—it just happened,” I laughed weakly. “She fell on my fingers.”
This is a fucking joke. There’s nothing I can say to her to make up for what I’d done. I tried to prove to myself that I’d be fine without her. That I didn’t need her. And instead all I fucking did was prove the opposite.
I dropped my hands on a sigh. “I want you a lot more than I should, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do come Christmas.”
“What are you doing?”
“Fuck.” I jumped at Gemma’s voice, finding my oldest sister with her arms folded. She’d changed out of her ball gown into sweat pants and an oversized sweatshirt but her rose gold hair, so similar to mine, was still done up for the party.
“What does it look like?” I snapped.
“Uh…it looks like you’re apologizing to yourself. And complimenting yourself. You really take narcissism to the next level. Be sure to avoid open pools of water.”
“Saw the Finsta hashtag,” I said. “Pretty gross, even for you. Didn’t think you fucked dogs.”
She glared. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
I don’t know a lot about what goes on between my sisters. There are three Crowne children, and two pedestals. My mom gave me one, and pitted Gemma and Abigail against each other for the other. The dirty secret? My mom already gave it to Gemma.
“You live in the World of Grayson. You don’t know what happens outside of it.”
I laughed. “And you are so empathetic to others?”
“I know that Abigail loves her dog, and he loves her. I know that her fiancé is a total psycho.”
“Anyone with two eyes can see that.”
“I know she was considering leaving him, leaving us, until tonight.”
Gemma kept walking, giving me no space to respond.
Give up everything. Not only disinherited but excommunicated. Could I do that? I wondered as I walked past my ever-present guards, into my lonely wing. Abigail was abandoning ship, but for me, it wouldn’t just be jumping overboard.
They counted on me to plug the leaks. To steer the ship. To hoist the sails. Without me, the boat would sink.
With an even messier head than when I’d left Lottie, I arrived at my room.
“Story, I’m—” I stopped completely, finding Story with a teetering mountain of items in her arms, like the first time she’d come to me. “Where are you going?”
“Back to Ms. Abigail. If she’ll still have me. If any of them will…”
She plopped the last cherry on top of her mountain, then attempted to walk past me. I grabbed her arm, spinning her until she faced my chest. Her mountain fell. Still, she refused to look at me.
“You think I’m done with you?”
She stared at my chest. I gripped her chin, forcing her stare, and she closed her eyes.
“You’re doing that again?” I gritted.
“This is who I am. Who we are.” She shoved me off. “You won. Let me out of my contract. She wants you. You’re kissing her. You’re doing…with…” She swallowed. “You’re getting married. Why am I here?”
If she would just fucking admit there was something between us. Give me something to grab on to before I jumped off the cliff. Before I destroyed everything. My family. My company. Everything I’d built.
“Because I own you until Christmas,” I said.
“In a few months you start your official engagement tour. Am I supposed to stay with you and your fiancée the entire time?”
“Why? Would that bother you, Snitch? Is there a reason you can’t do it?”
Just fucking say it.
“How is this going to work?” she yelled. “Why keep me around? How are you going to keep me around?” Her eyes found mine. “Or is it like father, like son?”
“What about you, like mother, like daughter?”
She shoved me again. “I didn’t ask for this. I just wanted to—”
“Disappear into nothing, hide away forever, hope no one ever saw you because if you don’t dream you can’t fail, if you don’t love your heart can’t break? You found me that night. You stole what didn’t belong to you. You started this. Finish it, Snitch.”
Her eyes found mine, locking. “You finish it.”
“Fine.”
I grabbed her by the waist, thrusting her against my chest, crashing my lips against hers.
Thirty-Eight
STORY
* * *
Bruising. Furious. Consuming.
His kiss was cruel, forcing my surrender. I shoved him off, but he just gripped my wrists and shoved me against the wall with more lips, more teeth, more tongue. I kissed him back even though I knew I shouldn’t. To punish him. To beg him. I wasn’t sure.
“I’m not going to stick around and watch you fuck her,” I said against his rose petal lips, biting the lower one, bruising it back. “I don’t care what you do. I don’t care about damages. I don’t care.”
I felt his fingers at my bodice at the same time I heard the rip, then cool air on my flesh, knowing he’d torn the pretty silver dress. He palmed my breast, tugging at my nipple, tweaking the bruise he’d just given me. Sparks of pain ignited pleasure.
I threw my head back on a gasp.
“Sure about that, Snitch?” he growled against my neck. “That sounds an awful lot like caring.”
Awareness froze the marrow in my bones. Because I do care.
Too much.
I shoved him with both hands, and he stumbled back. Hair wild. Eyes ravenous.
“I can’t fucking do this anymore.” Tears welled and undulated, made my view blurry. “Don’t do this to me. Let me go!”
He slammed both hands on either side of my head. “This is all just a contract to you!” he yelled.
The raise in his voice shocked me.
I haven’t ever heard him yell. He’s always so nonchalant.
“Tell me why you can’t do this anymore,” he said. “I’ll let you go. If this is all just a fucking contract to you, but first tell me why it’s so damn hard?”
I couldn’t lie, but I couldn’t tell the truth, either, so tears fell down my face. Weak, cowardly tears. Tears I’d promised myself I would keep inside.
He thumbed them with the savage curiosity of a wolf finding an injured deer.
“What is it? What has you crying?”
“I don’t like seeing you with her, okay?”
“Why?” He stepped closer, his thigh separating mine. “Why? Fucking say it, Snitch.”
I looked away, and he threaded his fingers into my hair, yanking my gaze back to his.
“You don’t like sharing me?” I glared at his beautiful sideways face. “I don’t like sharing you.”
The moment that followed my confession was too quiet. A snow globe shattered, glass everywhere, cutting the soles of my feet. He gave me nothing. No look. Nothing. My heart pounded for him to say something. Anything. But he jus
t stared at me silently.
So I shoved him off.
“Let’s just do it. We can do it now, and then you can let me go. Get it out of our systems. Why don’t you just fuck me and get it over with?”
He pulled me by my hair and my scalp burned. “You think I won’t?”
He spun me around, forcing my palms flat against the wall. Then his hand was on me, palming my pussy. I tried not to think about who he’d been touching only hours before. It lanced. It hurt. And going into that dark place would shred me.
“Are you gonna let me go once I fuck you, Snitch?” His voice grated my neck. “Will I be out of your head?”
He kissed my neck, my ear, and I arched back.
“Will you forget how I feel sliding inside your cunt?” Harsh words from such sinfully soft lips. I heard the rasp of a zipper; then I felt it. Him. Just the tip, but it stretched me deliciously.
“This was how it was supposed to be,” I said on a breath. “A secret that disappears and dies with us.”
He tangled his grip in my hair, pulling my head back on a painful arch, until I could see his piercing blue eyes and the addictive sheen of sweat on his sharp-as-glass jaw.
“So you want me to finish it?” he asked, sliding a little bit more inside.
My mouth opened to form words, but he bit my shoulder, and all I could do was gasp. Next came his free hand, sliding between my thighs, finding my clit. A shaky, jagged groan slipped from my lips.
Sparks. Butterflies.
“So fucking wet,” he groaned.
He had me speared, spread, but only enough to tease, to madden. I tried to push back, and his other hand slipped from my clit, holding my inner thigh in a vise grip. His self-control was such an aphrodisiac. Every muscle in his body was strained, and I had to imagine he wanted to plunge in.
Had to.
He’d been waiting so long.
He thumbed me again. I scythed my nails into the wall. It was like the butterflies in my stomach were sparking, electrified from that one perfect spot between my thighs. But it wasn’t enough. I needed more.
It had never felt like this with West.
I never knew it could feel like this.
“God, fuck, yes. Come apart on my dick, Story.”
I groaned as he slid another torturous millimeter inside of me.
“Fuck me,” I begged, stupidly, wantonly, high on the little doses he’d allowed me.
He froze, fingers digging into my hip.
I should’ve taken the out.
“Please,” I said, finding his eyes. “Fuck me.”
His blue eyes burned. “You want more?”
I nodded fast.
“I don’t have a condom with me, Story,” he said, sounding suspicious, but more than that, greedy.
“What about the one in your wallet you’ve had since you were twelve?” I asked. “You know, just in case you got lucky?”
Something dark flashed in his eyes, and I was sure I was dead.
“Jokes?” He growled, pushing more. “You’re fucking joking?” But he didn’t sound mad. He sounded as desperate as I was.
I should’ve pushed him off right then. I wasn’t on birth control, after all. “More.”
He groaned, a broken, rocky sound.
“When I fuck you, Story—really fuck you—you’re mine.” His voice was rough, darker than anything I’d ever heard. “I’m not letting you go. Ever.”
“What?” I gasped, face contracting. “But…that wasn’t…you said you would let me go.”
He shoved me off. My legs were weak, and I stumbled into the wall, letting myself fall to the floor. He towered above me, looking every bit the mythical man magazines and blogs made him out to be. His dick jutted out from his tuxedo pants, thick, veiny, beautiful. Loosely unbuttoned dress shirt giving me a view of abs carved with slick sweat.
The boy. The legend. The god.
Through it all, his eyes blazed—on me. Darting back and forth from my face to between my legs. I moved to close my thighs, but a single twerk of his jaw stopped me.
I must have looked a mess, clothes ripped and naked, but the way he watched me had me feeling like a goddess. He bent down between my legs with that casual, entitled grace I’d come to expect from Grayson.
Close your legs, idiot, some distant self-preservation screamed in my head.
“You said you would let me go…You said all you needed was sex. You said—”
I broke off on a jagged, rocky sound, as he pressed two fingers between my legs, cleaning up all the wetness, all of us. His eyes focused on mine. Then he stood.
Licked his fingers. “Game’s changed.”
He left, leaving me to ruminate on the fact that he’d said not if I fuck you, but when.
Thirty-Nine
STORY
* * *
I’d always read that soulmates were beautiful, pretty things. They fixed you, made you whole. But that doesn’t make sense to me. Souls are ugly, twisted, and dark.
It makes sense when you finally found yours, the torture is equal to what lurks inside.
“Storybook,” my uncle’s voice lifted me from the floor, the very same spot I haven’t moved from since last night. In a panic, I scrambled to find clothes and change out of the dress Grayson had ripped and ruined.
“Storybook, are you still here?” His voice grew closer.
“I…uh…yeah, one second.” I grabbed one of Grayson’s sweatshirts and a pair of sweats, hoping he didn’t notice, hoping I could change before Grayson got back. I wasn’t sure where Grayson was, but he wasn’t there when I woke, and he didn’t come to me in the night.
“There you are.” My uncle’s bright, smiling face appeared. In his one-toned gray suit and closely cropped white curls. “Want to help me clean? Like old times?”
“Sure…” His kindness was off-putting. He’s been sure to be cold, like everyone else. To let me know how little he approves of what I’m doing.
We cleaned in silence, dusting Grayson’s sparse furniture, polishing what needed to be polished. I keep waiting for a lecture, something.
We headed up to the second floor, and my heart beat faster. I took one corner of the sheets, and my uncle took another as we removed them to put on a fresh pair of linens.
“I’ve found you a place,” my uncle said casually.
I paused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you need somewhere to work. I found you somewhere to work. You can’t work here anymore. You must know how the servants view you.”
“Well, yes, I do.”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, Story. I know you’re smarter than this. I have to assume something else happened, more than simply looking him in the eyes. I’ve found you somewhere to work, an estate in Scotland.”
Scotland.
I looked at the linens in my hand and back again to his bed that I’ve slept in, where I’ve done more than sleep. We’ve whispered secrets, we’ve shared pieces of our soul, but when it comes down to it, this is who I am.
I change his sheets.
Gray always said the contract wasn’t about sex, because I would give it to him. If I could just last until Christmas, I’d have enough money to set Uncle up for life, but I don’t know anymore. There was one escape clause—leave Crowne Point forever.
I never thought I’d even consider it.
But I can’t be my mother.
Now Uncle was giving me a place to escape to.
A crash pulled me out of my thoughts. Uncle dropped his side of the sheets, falling into Grayson’s night table, pushing the lamp off, shattering on the floor.
“Uncle?” Fear strangled my throat. “Uncle!” He was awake, but cross eyed and loose limbed, barely held up by the nightstand against his thighs. I ran to him, grappling with his body, sliding my arms under his as his body weight transferred to mine. We both slid down, when suddenly the weight lifted.
Grayson.
My heart pounded with his arrival. I’d started to expect
his hardened voice. His shadowy presence whenever things were starting to go south. That was wrong. That wasn’t good. Because I knew without a shadow of a doubt there would come a day when Grayson wouldn’t be there.
When I would have to carry the weight on my shoulders alone, once more.
I looked up at him, wide eyed. If he noticed my stunned reaction, he didn’t show it. Grayson lifted Uncle up, putting one arm over his shoulder as I did the same, and silently put Uncle to bed—in his bed. My heart lurched. The Grayson the world knew would never do something like this.
The Grayson I knew? I wouldn’t doubt it.
So why was he always trying to show me the lie?
Grayson ripped out his phone, muttering fast, furious words into the receiver. I caught ambulance, doctor, paramedic. Meanwhile I stared at my uncle’s passed-out, white-as-a-sheet face, the truth I didn’t want to acknowledge staring back at me.
Grayson turned to me, furious. “What the hell is happening?”
“Cancer,” I croaked, barely above a whisper. I swallowed, saying more clearly, “He has cancer.”
And apparently wouldn’t fucking stop lying about it, either.
“It’s back? How long have you known?”
“I mean, since right after the Fourth, but he said…he said he was getting better.”
He turned from me on a curse.
A thought popped into my head, and a new fear bubbled up my throat. I grabbed Grayson’s wrist, trying to get him to face me.
“Please don’t tell anyone, Grayson. Please. If word gets out, he’ll lose his job.”
Grayson’s eyes narrowed. “We don’t fire people for having cancer.”
I rolled my eyes. “And you call me naïve.”
An awkward silence bloomed.
I let go of his wrist, realizing I was still holding it.
“That’s why you agreed to do this. The contract. All of it. Because of him.”
I couldn’t exactly deny it. It was the truth, after all. Somewhere along the way, though, I’d stopped thinking about it.
Grayson rubbed the ninety-degree angle at his jaw, and I noticed it looked like he hadn’t shaved.
A strange look crossed his face. Guilt? That couldn’t be right.
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