Our eyes collided and the breath rushed out of me. A bit of the mask dropped. Gone. Raw. A glimpse of Olympia. Grayson.
I felt like he was a second from pouncing on me.
And…I wanted that.
“I want to know what your face looks like when you stretch around my dick,” he said. “The sounds you make taking me in.”
“What about Lottie?” I whispered.
Something flickered in his eyes. Guilt?
His jaw tensed. “Maybe I’ve started rooting for you to fail.”
My eyes popped.
His own narrowed, like he’d realized what he’d let slip. In the same instant, he dropped my wrist, dropped me, and rolled back, staring at the ceiling.
“Get on the floor,” he said.
Nineteen
STORY
* * *
For days after Grayson let me into his bed, he ignored me. I woke up and he was gone, and that was the pattern for the next few days. He made sure to not look at me, not acknowledge me, never be alone with me. There was no party save the looming Fourth of July tomorrow, so I stayed in his wing. Tiptoeing like the ghost I was.
I don’t know why I expected anything different.
This day, instead of sitting in his wing waiting for him, I’d taken a shower, gone to town, and taken a much-needed break from Grayson. From the Crownes. The entire time I kept waiting for Grayson to pop up and tell me I’d broken some rule. I didn’t get to leave.
But now, as the sun sat high in the sky, I was back, and he wasn’t there. My fear was for naught. I twirled the green pen I’d bought on a whim, feeling like a fool.
Tomorrow was the Fourth of July, and the Crowne Fourth of July party was the biggest nightmare—I mean party—of the year. To the world it was a spectacular, exclusive event. To us, it was months catering to the Crownes’ insane whims. Fireworks shaped like various Crowne family members, or sand that shimmered gold in the night, to name a few.
I counted at least a hundred servants outside; they looked like a murder of crows on the pristine white beach.
The morning after the Fourth of July, the Crownes were to go on a European family vacation that would start in France and end in Switzerland. It was always our—meaning the servants’—little unofficial vacation, too. We still worked at the Hall, but it was a respite from the Crownes themselves. Now I wondered, would I be going with him?
“Story.”
I sat up at my uncle’s voice. He would have finished cleaning Grayson’s room hour’s
ago. Yet he watched me.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“No I haven’t!” I hadn’t been avoiding him, but I haven’t been seeking him out. I had nothing good to tell him, nothing that could make this okay.
Red rimmed his lids. “I can’t leave you until I know you’re going to be safe and taken care of, Story.”
“Leave? What do you mean?”
The ocean crashed behind us as my uncle’s silence stretched.
“Are you going on vacation?” I tested, already knowing the answer.
Woodson Hale didn’t go on vacation; he didn’t retire. He’d once told me he would die here, and we’d come close. When he looked away, fear rose like acid heartburn.