Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point #4) - Mary Catherine Gebhard Page 0,1

screamed at the gentle touch.

He stepped back, but I could still feel him, knuckles featherlight beneath my chin. My stomach squirmed so I took a breath, holding it tight, as if I could protect the little thing inside it from him.

From this place.

He glanced at my hand a half second, then held out his own. I eyed it.

“Your phone,” he said lazily.

“But—I—”

I promised Grayson I would write him. All I’d managed was to send him one message.

Dear Atlas, I’m in Scotland. I’m safe.

But my data cut out, a message popped up asking me to pay for the international plan, and then West woke. The message never sent.

I couldn’t break my promise.

I couldn’t.

West arched a brow. I don’t know why I bothered; in what universe was he going to let me keep my phone?

I handed it over.

“Can’t have you calling Prince Charming.” He shoved it in his pocket and my heart sank. He folded his arms. Every second was strung out, pulled apart and stretched by the prodding, poking way he watched me.

“You haven’t slept in over eleven hours. Get some sleep, Angel.”

“I—” I swallowed, breaking off. Sleep? Here? With him? “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

His brow knotted. “You’ll sleep in the bed.”

Before I could protest, he turned to leave.

“You’re going?” Was he really going to leave me alone?

He paused, slightly looking over his shoulder back at me. Shadows of raindrops slid down his profile, along his prominent cheekbones and the slight arch in his brow.

“Do you want me to stay?”

I said I would get closer to West, I would get everything he had on Grayson so we could be free…but I wasn’t quite ready to lie at that level yet.

My silence was amplified by the dying rain, the tick-tock of drops falling off the towers and turrets.

“You’re right…I should go to bed.”

His deep voice drifted through the low light. “Am I the villain in your fairy tale, Story?”

Yes.

No.

I don’t know.

I turned around and focused on the silky canopy draped over ancient-looking wood posts.

Maybe West was like all of us, and his role had been corrupted, but he is the villain.

He had to be.

With everything he has done to me, to Grayson, there was no other role I could put him in. So why couldn’t I say yes?

I heard his footsteps behind me, and I regretted ever speaking. He’d been so close to leaving.

“I’ll be your villain, Angel,” he said softly, quietly. His breath warmed my neck. I stared hard at the sheets, as if he was a monster in my nightmares I could will away by simply wishing to wake up.

He spun me around violently as lingering lightning cracked across his feral gaze. I struggled against him and his grip turned bruising.

“The princess and the villain have a relationship too.” He dragged me closer until the heat of his lips burned mine. “Even if she hates it.”

Two

STORY

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have, because soft Scotland sun pressed on my eyes and the sweet trill of a songbird singing filled my ears. I rubbed my lids. The bed was strange, too soft, and smelled overpoweringly like lavender.

The princess has a relationship with the villain too.

Last night came back as if it were an old memory, his words stained and warped in sepia. I rolled over, drawing the sheets past my shoulder and up to my cheek.

As if they would protect me.

My mother named me Storybook because she loved fairy tales, but she never saw the irony in it while she stole happily ever afters. Because like the heroin that took her, she loved the rose-colored feeling, loved the idea of a prince whisking her away.

And like the heroin that took her, the reality was never as she hoped. In her fairy tale the princes were all taken, the fairy tale was always fractured.

Put on a show, Story.

I tugged the sheets tighter against my face, tight against the memories rushing through me. In the daylight, the room wasn’t so haunting. Directly in front of me, through a patchwork of ancient glass, an arched window showed a softened Scotland morning. Sun glimmered off the warped glass, and a strip of foggy morning sun peeked out beyond the green hills.

Put on a show, Story.

With an exhale, I rolled to my back and stared at the cracks in the ceiling.

Is this what you like, Story? Is this what will get you off? When he watches me fuck you?

There’s a briar forming in my chest, seeded two nights ago, and now it was