Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

What if I really let West pick up the pieces?

Grayson’s cold voice drifted over my shoulder. “We have servants for that.”

I startled and the ice fell out of the cloth with a stuttering clunk into the sink. I turned, facing Grayson, locking with his piercing blue eyes, gripping the sink for support. My heart thumped. The air suddenly thick. Muggy. Hot.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting ice. For my husband. The one you beat up.”

“You’re getting him fucking ice?” He leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, one leg propped behind him.

I went to the freezer, trying to ignore Grayson, but it’s like trying to ignore a storm. It breathes and consumes your air.

“I’m sorry I’m not the black-and-white person you want me to be. For three years, he was my best friend before he was the guy who raped me. I loved him. He did something awful, but I didn’t stop loving him, even though I knew I should, even though I wanted to. You should understand that.”

“Are you comparing me to him?” he growled.

“I’m saying I don’t have the answers you want. I can’t make myself stop feeling something just because I know I should.”

“Do you still fucking love him?” Grayson stepped closer until only a sliver of darkness separated us.

I was assaulted with Gray’s features in the dark, the messy, bedhead blond. His cruel features softened in the shadows. I missed him at night. I missed us in the night.

Before, I’d always been alone, and now that I’d had someone to share the loneliness with, I was bereft without Grayson.

I was afraid it was impossible to love anyone after Grayson Crowne. But after what he did to me, he didn’t get to know that.

“Yes,” I lied.

His eyes narrowed. “You’re lying to me, little nun.”

“You should go back to your wife, Grayson Crowne.”

“You should go back to your husband, Story Hale.”

But when he took a step to me, I didn’t move. Tingles rose along my shoulders, little needle pricks.

Wrong.

Heady.

An excitement you get when you know you shouldn’t do something.

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs.

I spun away from him, facing the sink. Silence spread and spread. I stared at the porcelain as the ice melted.

Then I felt him. The hard packs of his pecs and abs, pressing into me, forcing my gut to bite the sink. We both breathed together, jagged and hot, his exhalations warming my neck, as if we were riding the high of the tension that had been threading between us for months.

Then he gripped my thighs, dragging his hands up and down. Feeling. Digging. Bruising.

My head fell forward as a sigh escaped my lips.

“Tell me whose baby is inside you. Tell me who fucking owns you.”

“It isn’t you.” I lifted my hand, flashing him my ring. “It won’t ever be you.”

He tangled his fist in my hair, jerking my head back so I had to watch when he ripped it off my finger, tossing it to the ground with a clank. His blue eyes locked with mine as if he wanted me to feel the pain in them. Then he pulled my finger to his lips before I could speak, biting it.