“You can write while taking care of him.”
“Yeah,” was all I gave him.
I don’t know how many minutes passed as I lay on his hard chest. I kept telling myself to get up, to yell at him, to not let him get away with it. But he was warm, and his fingers were soft and loving, and I was weak.
“I received a really thoughtful gift from my fiancée today,” Gray said. “A green pen.”
“Oh,” was all I managed.
“I keep wondering how the fuck she knew to give it to me.”
“She’s your fiancée. You love her. She should give that to you.”
I sat up, angry.
Angry that he had the audacity to ask me such personal questions. To be sweet to me. To act like what he did to me never happened.
“What do you see in me, Story Hale?” His words were jagged and cutting, like the look in his eyes.
This is where I should tell him nothing.
After what he did to me, after all he said to me, I should tell him I see nothing in him. I couldn’t lie, but I couldn’t tell him the truth—it was too damning. An Atlas carrying a world of expectations and responsibilities. A lonely prince who pretends he doesn’t care but cares so much he’s isolated.
I see the only person who sees me back.
So I stroked the broken ridges of his nose, because it was the closest to a confession I could get.
His eyes burned and broke and cracked. “Everyone who gets close to me, who gets close to the real Grayson Crowne, never likes what they see.”
“I see you,” I said brokenly. Hating myself for not hating him.
“Trust me, Snitch, I’ve only ever been good at making people hate me. At the end of this, you’ll hate me too.”
He pulled my fingers into his mouth. His tongue twirled around them, hot, demanding, reminding me how he’d done it to my pussy.
I groaned. “Gray.”
“Tell me more, Snitch. Tell me to keep going.” He dragged me back to him, wrapping his body around mine, pulling me against his hard cock, sliding a hand beneath my panties.
It felt like an apology, a surrender.
Like what he was really asking was for me to say it was okay, what had happened before was okay. And the thing was…I was so close to it, so close to giving in.
“Fuck you’re wet.” He bit my ear at the same time he thrust. The pain and pleasure colliding. “God I love your pussy.”
He grasped my breast harshly, not giving me a chance to respond. I sighed as his lips found my neck, then my ear, biting and pulling on the lobe. Leaving marks only he and I would know about. Ripping a gasp from me.
So close to giving in once more…but I shoved him off.
Breaths heavy between us.
/>
“No.”
He arched a brow.
“You take and take and take.”