Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

It was unlikely, right? She’d have to be, like, crazy fucking fertile.

I reached for her. “Lottie.”

She flinched at my touch. “I just…I need a minute.”

My hand was still outstretched when there came a knocking on the door. Lottie snapped her head at the sound, then at me, eyes wide. She scrambled across the bed, lunging on top of me.

My face must have betrayed my confusion.

“Can you just act like you aren’t totally repulsed by me for five seconds?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at what sounded like someone coming up the stairs.

“Lottie, I’m not…do you think that?”

“We can use her,” she whispered. “If it will help, we can use her in the bedroom.”

Use Snitch, as if she were nothing more than a toy?

It had been done in the past, when girls were seen as nothing.

I would never fucking do it.

But I couldn’t respond, because whoever had come to get the sheets had arrived. I lifted my head off the pillow to see who had come, and all the air left my body.

Story.

“I’m here for the sheets.”

Seven

STORY

* * *

Lottie naked. Gray naked. Lottie on top of Gray, flushed from exertion. Her lips flushed. The sheets stained red.

“Story,” Gr

ayson breathed as if he’d been punched.

I swallowed. “They are requesting the sheets, Miss—Mrs. Crowne.”

Slowly they got off the bed. Grayson stared holes into me. Chiseled arms. Back exerted. Muscles slick. Lips plump from kissing. Hair wild.

Bed sheets messy.

I gathered the sheets in my arms, silky and soft, and red. Red and bloody. Once again I was reminded of the beginning, when I’d come here with a mountain of my only belongings. Now I was back with a mountain of their wedding sheets.

I swallowed. “Thank you.”

I turned from Charlotte, catching Grayson’s eyes. Brittle, bruised. I said I would learn to hate Grayson Crowne, but I wasn’t sure I knew how.

“Stay,” Charlotte said, and I froze. “My girl is supposed to finish what you started.”

Lottie spread her legs, and I saw sticky white drip down her thighs.

I froze.

“Lottie.” There was iron in Grayson’s words. Between them passed a look I couldn’t read, but it made shivers run up my spine.