and he lunged before they could hit me.
Suddenly West was on top of me, and he didn’t move. I didn’t move either, and I didn’t ask him to. He looked like he wanted to kiss me and I remember wanting that so badly. I’d never been kissed, let alone by someone I liked.
It started out magical.
But he didn’t kiss me, his hand slid up my inner thigh.
“You were so different,” West continued. “You were so shy and so…not. Your eyes grew so wide when I slid my fingers inside you. I lost my mind a little. I couldn’t think beyond seeing every look, every sound. I didn’t pay attention to anything else.”
He looked down, brow furrowing.
Shame?
No. That’s not right.
“Was I your first?” I asked.
The vulnerability vanished from his eyes, and he came to me, shadowing me over the vanity.
He reached down, thumbing my cheek. “The night you let me fuck you”—I jerked away but he tore me back with his other hand, gripping my chin.
He continued to stroke down my cheek, softly, like his grip wasn’t bruising.
As if his words weren’t cutting.
“The night of the masquerade, when he came in the room, your eyes grew again in the way I’ve dreamed about for years.”
My eyes watered. “Stop.”
I had no choice but to look at his eyes. It was either there, or his thighs, where he’d grown hard.
“Then you let me come in your cunt without a condom.” His eyes dropped to my thighs, like he was picturing it. And then I couldn’t not.
He licked his lips. “How did it feel?”
Twisted and dirty and like I’d given power to something I didn’t even know still existed inside me.
I would never tell him that.
Nostrils flared. “He fucked you out of me.”
“I don’t share, Story. I never did. But I realized something.” West trailed his knuckles along my cheek, past my enraged glare and through my tears. “I will do anything to see that look on your face.”
“That look doesn’t belong to you,” I gritted. “That look is his.”
His eyes flashed. “If you loved him, then why did you sleep with me? You don’t love him, not the way you think you do. Because if it’s love, then you wouldn’t have sought me out, Angel.”
He dropped his hand with a vicious jerk, then adjusted his erection.
“We should probably go. We don’t want to be late.”
It wasn’t a big turnout, but then I’d imagine the only Crowne who really would have wanted to come to her funeral was already dead—Grayson’s father. I knew the only reason the living Crownes were even in attendance was for appearances’ sake.
West stood next to his father—whose beady fucking eyes were on me throughout the entire fucking ceremony. Grayson stood next to Lottie, eyes on me. I was alone for once, alone since my uncle’s funeral.
It was nothing like my uncle’s funeral, or what I can remember through my foggy grief-stricken brain. Everything was white with winter. The beach powdered in snow, the sky silky ivory. The only color came from the waves, a deep iron.
I stared at the triplets, an idea forming in my mind. If Josephine knew about the coin, was it possible her children knew something as well?
The triplets were the darker versions of the Crownes. To the naked eye, they were just your average, beautiful and spoiled rich kids, but if you looked deeper, something was off about all of them. They belonged on the moors where their mother had spent her life.
Josephine “Jo” St. Germaine’s eyeliner was smeared around her big, doll eyes—yet no crying redness lined them.
From between his fingers, a cigarette curled smoke around Charles Junior’s sharp jaw and bored pout.
Keller’s dark and silky, shoulder-length hair barely showed one vicious eye. He was the only triplet not named after a Crowne, though rumor had it, he was named after a long-dead St. Germaine.
None of them seemed the least bit phased at their mother’s death. With the porcelain skin of their mother and the high cheekbones of the Crownes, they had all the beautiful parts of their mother and father. And, I suspected, the darkness.
They stared at their mother’s casket like they were on a museum tour of fossils. At one point, Jo took out her phone.
“I have a riddle for you, Story…” I straightened at Lynette du Lac’s soft voice. “Where does a mistress and her lover live happily ever after?”
I shrugged, knowing she didn’t give me permission to speak.
“In the ground.”
A while ago, a threat like that would have terrified me,