Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

She blinked, surprised. “You’d have to eat steak every day for a month.”

I swiped my thumb across her lower lip, fighting the urge to push it between her teeth. “Easy.”

“A lifetime supply of spaghetti. Once I’m…not so averse.”

A smile flickered on my lips. “Done.”

“You’d have to be honest,” she said with a quiet rasp. “With everyone. Let them know you donate your clothes. Tell them the truth about who you are. You’re a good guy. If you embraced it…maybe this place wouldn’t be so suffocating. So…so haunted.”

I frowned, lifting my eyes from her lips to lock with hers.

“Stop lying to me. Unbury your heart. Don’t keep me in the dark any longer. I can see it in your eyes. I can see the weight on your shoulders.”

I paused.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her everything.

How I’d tried to divorce Lottie.

How I was trying to get rid of my grandfather.

But in the end, what if it all amounted to nothing? What if I pulled her into a promise that fell apart at our feet like last time?

“I don’t want to break any more promises with you, Snitch. Not with you. I can’t promise you forever…yet”

Pain and anger crackled in her eyes.

“Then why are you in my fucking bed?” She shoved me, but I gripped her wrists.

“Get off. I’m not going to be your fucking mistress.”

“I’m not sleeping with my wife, Story. I should be, but I’m not.”

She paused, brow crinkling, then her elbow nearly hit me in the face. I pinned her to the mattress, but she didn’t stop fighting.

“You’re a fucking liar, Grayson Crowne. I carried the bloody sheets! You taunted me with it. Does it turn you on knowing you’re getting sloppy seconds?” she mocked darkly.

“I didn’t sleep with Lottie.” I pressed her wrists into the mattress. “Do you want to know what our bedroom looks like, Snitch? It looks like you.”

“Stop.” She attempted to knee me, and I slid my leg between her thighs.

“I can’t get hard without Lottie pretending to be you. Our marriage bed is a twisted, dark, fucked-up thing. You slid into it the same way you slid into my veins.”

Her lips parted, and my eyes dropped to that, to the angry way she swiped her tongue across her bottom lip.

This was the closest we’d been in too fucking long. I flexed my grip on her wrists, trying to ignore Snitch hot and writhing in anger beneath me.

“Lottie isn’t even in the same fucking universe as you. You’re all I think about. All I dream about. All I care about. All I’ll ever want. I might be married to her, but I’m lost in you.”

She shook her head, spirally curls flying beautifully—distractingly—across her face.

“I owe Lottie so much,” I said. “I owe her a family. I owe her a heart. I owe her so much that I can’t give her, because you already own everything.”

She froze, walnut eyes wide. Then she shook out of it.

“Friends aren’t supposed to hear this. Friends aren’t supposed to get excited over hearing this.”

Excited.