My lips parted, wet. “So why won’t you fuck me?”
He turned me on my side, pulling me flush against him. He held me, arms enveloping me. Everything was Grayson. I could see our future together, lying in this bed that had first been our stolen secret from reality.
He pushed aside my curls, kissing my neck.
“Can I fuck you in the ass when you’re pregnant?” His hand rounded my belly and he slid his thumb inside my ass like I was a doll to use, his words filled with bored curiosity. While I was burning up inside.
“Yes!” I gasped. “Do it. Please.” I pushed farther back into him.
“I don’t think I can, little wife.” He filled me up more, two fingers scissoring inside me. I scythed my nails into his thigh and he didn’t so much as flinch.
“You can.”
Blind with it. Begging. All I could feel was him.
That bored tone twisting my stomach up in knots.
“Nah. Because when I fuck you like this, I want to go hard.”
I groaned at the mental image, coupled with the hard thrust of his thumb.
“Do it,” I begged, my throat and voice ragged like the beat of my chest. “More.”
He slid out of me.
“This is all you get, Snitch,” he gritted. “Stop pushing it.”
The tone in his voice butterflied in my chest.
I grasped his forearm. “Why?”
“Tell me all your words, little nun.” He sounded desperate, pleading.
“I have.” I don’t know what else to say to him.
He slid a different finger inside of my pussy and I arched into him.
“Fuck, you look good like this.” He tangled his free hand into my curls. “You can tell me anything. Anything.”
“I…” He rubbed his throbbing dick up and down my ass. I was wild with need. Insane. It was burning me up inside. “I don’t know what else to say. Please.” Our eyes connected, his blue ones edged and half-lidded. “Grayson?”
I saw the moment he broke. The moment he caved. That notorious Grayson Crowne self-control shattering. He shoved his cock up to my cunt, I arched but he gripped my thigh, bruising. At the entrance but not in.
“Tell me your fucking secrets so I can fuck you.” His tone was hoarse and animalistic, words punctuated with a slight but powerful thrust inside of me.
Fucking—thrust.
Fuck—thrust.
“What the hell does that mean, Grayson?” I groaned. I was drunk, blind, heady and lost inside him. The room was a swirl of shadows and starlight and him. “You know me, you know all of me. Fuck me.”
He took a breath, nostrils flared, holding himself back. He bruised his palm from my neck across my tits, paying special attention on my swollen stomach.
“Please.”
His cock teased my entrance, pressing just a little bit inside.
A long, needy groan left my lips.
Or maybe his.
We were almost there…
“Fuck!” He shoved me off.
“You still won’t fucking tell me?” he growled, his lips to my ear, his voice a throbbing promise like the erection at my spine. “I’ll have to rip them from you. Rip him from you—”
A loud clatter from the other room shattered the moment. I blinked, and noticed the clock.
It was eleven.
“I have to go.” Tears welled at the surface of my eyes. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to ever go again.
He gripped my wrist, tugging me back as I tried to leave.
I swiped at my eyes. “I wasn’t supposed to stay past ten.”
“I don’t give a shit.”
His gaze was frayed, his grip bruising. He was at the edge of his rope and so was I. I couldn’t keep living like this, in our stolen moments.
“If you go to his bed again, I will rip you out by the hair.”
“And I’ll let you,” I sighed, melting back into him. “Grayson, tomorrow is the baby shower. I am done. I’m having this baby in just weeks and we are no closer to that coin. Everywhere we look, it’s like someone already beat us to the punch.”
He looked away. “We still have plan B.”
“I don’t like plan B, Grayson. Plan B is you leaving me—oh! Oh my God! Grayson!” I grabbed both of his hands. “Lottie told me West’s password earlier.”
Grayson’s brows popped. “What? How?”
“It’s songbird—like from my poem. She said he uses it for everything. I feel dumb and…a little violated. I don’t know. Like, he’s using that piece of me.”
His grip tightened on my wrist, pulling me slightly closer to him. I let him, falling into his embrace. Forgetting the clock, just for a moment.
Grayson dragged me close to him. “Well, we’ll use that piece against him, little wife.”
“Let’s end this tomorrow.” I fell deeper into him. Into his warm, hard chest. “Do you trust me?”
Forty-Seven
STORY
“You have to let me go,” I said as Grayson pressed the thousandth kiss to my lips.
Instead, we lingered in his doorway. He’d given me a white shirt to wear. It was a soft, cotton thing that probably cost hundreds.
“It barely fits around my stomach.” I played with the buttery-soft material, trying to stretch it.
When I looked up, his eyes were on my stomach, jaw clenched so tight the muscle feathered. “I would walk you back if I didn’t think it would draw attention.”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“Tomorrow.”
He let me go with a lingering touch to my hand, and I felt his eyes on me as I walked down his stairs, tiptoeing through the shadows of his wing.
The door to Lottie’s wing was open, yellow light drenching the floorboards. I heard the same sound I had upstairs with Grayson, but louder, clearly coming from inside.
I looked at the clock—now eleven-thirty. I knew I shouldn’t go to her, but I couldn’t help but feel no one was watching her. No one saw what was happening to her.
She was falling apart.
So I went to her.
Lottie was sitting on the floor of her bedroom, staring at a dress hanging against the gilded arched window. She didn’t even flinch when I spoke.
“Lottie?”
She barely looked at me. “If you’re worried that I gave up our secret, my mother found me sitting in the hall. I made up an excuse.” She eyed my T-shirt outfit. “Do you need something to wear?”
“Um…” I tugged on the shirt he gave me.
Honestly? Probably.
“This is supposedly centuries old,” she said, gaze turning back to the window. “You should be wearing this dress. The jewels.”
“It’s for the shower?”
She nodded. Lottie stared at the dress. It reminded me of a princess dress from the medieval era. An empire fit made of periwinkle silk with a slight silver shine. The christening jewels hung over the neck.
“I thought my mother was the only one who loved me. I thought…” she trailed off, exhaling.
“I understand.”
Lottie blinked, jerking her head to mine with a glare. It was like in the bathroom, a mask fell over her face and whatever glimpse I saw vanished.