mouth, I knew the truth.
Nothing stopped a Crowne event.
Not Mother Nature.
Certainly not something as pedestrian as a death.
My eyes found his slowly, fear seizing my gut.
He gripped my cheeks. “Everything will be fine.”
Will it, though?
I don’t know what it meant that the two most powerful families in the world thought I had what they wanted. All I knew was that I was woefully underprepared.
“I guess…” I said quietly.
I think he read the disquiet in my eyes. “Every moment we can, we will meet in our room.” He let me go, voice gravel, as he trailed his nose along my neck. “When we can’t, you will write me your letters, and whenever I see your eyes, I’ll be able to speak to you. Let the world try to divide us. We’ll always be connected, Story. Because when you kissed me, you slid inside me.”
“Let’s have a code word for when everything gets scary and overwhelming. A code word for when I want you to hold me, to tell me you love me, but you can’t.”
His eyes softened. “What would our code word be?”
I think of the poem by Pablo Neruda, the one that I’d always felt connected to Grayson.
“What about…Neruda?”
He pressed a kiss to my lips. “Neruda, then, little wife.”
“When this is over, let’s still live in Crowne Point. Somewhere far enough away from their influence, but still close so you can visit your family.”
Some emotion clouded Gray’s eyes, something dark, and he pulled back.
“This will work, right?” I held him, forcing him to stay close. “We’ll both be free?”
He pressed his forehead to mine, but his eyes still ached. “Yes, little wife. We’ll be free—”
West’s laugh broke us apart. “Were you planning on fucking her while I slept in the other room?”
In an instant, Gray’s grip on me tightened to a bruise.
West leaned in the door, eyes traveling down my exposed thighs. Grayson yanked the material down and West’s eyes traveled back up.
Grayson slowly stood off the bed, arms folded, blocking my view of West and his of me.
“Still am,” he said with the trademark Grayson Crowne ice, the very tone that had shivers down my spine months ago.
Something crackled and popped between all three of us.
Something wrong.
West exhaled, shaking his head at me. “My darling mistress, I keep finding you in the most compromising positions.”
For a moment, it looked as if West was going to force me back to him, but then his attention landed on Grayson.
“Are you ready to talk?”
West and Grayson shared a look, and again it was as if they were speaking in a silent language.
Grayson turned to me. “Neruda.”
I love you.
Without so much as a second look in my direction, Gray closed the distance between them. He placed his hand to West’s chest and shoved him out of the room, slamming the door shut behind them.
My prince and my villain, alone together.
Leaving me with our tangled sheets, and the prickly reminder: two jealous men who refused to let me go and also refused to share me, a single shaky truce between them, and only one happily ever after up for grabs.
The stakes? Well…other than death?
Our already fragile hearts.
Twenty-Five
GRAY
War makes for very strange bedfellows.
Words my grandfather used to say echoed in my head as I was caught in a staring match with West du Lac, fighting the urge to pummel his face into the fucking wall.
“You know if you kill me now it’s just straight-up murder, right?”
“Debating whether or not I give a shit,” I said lightly, scratching my pinky along my bottom lip. “I made a promise to Story, about what I would do to you if you hurt her. I don’t like breaking my promises to her.”
“I haven’t laid a hand on her.”
He’s been hurting her in other ways.
Fucking with her head.
Her heart.
He seeded the briar in her chest.
But, I knew if I told him that, he’d see it as a win.
So I stayed silent. It was only us in the sitting room now, with just the crackle and burn of the fire for light.
“You said I’d need you. At this point, I see no reason to trust you. So let’s not trade in trust,” I said. “Let’s trade in secrets.”
A secret for a secret…
I gritted my jaw at the unwilling memory, waiting for him to speak.
West grinned. “Good idea. You go first.”
I rolled my neck. Yeah. Right.
“Fine.” West exhaled. “I’ll go first, but then I’ll choose your secret.” Before I could say Yeah fucking right, he continued. “Let me tell you what my