We broke on a breath, his forehead pressed to mine. A glimmer of the dying sunset sparkled on the iron-blue ocean between us. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and I could almost make him out. Messy blond hair, sharp, angular features.

No.

It can’t be. He wasn’t supposed to be in this part of Crowne Hall.

Each Crowne had their own wing, and they stuck to them like someone had demarcated the lines with lava.

“You came,” he said.

Alarm rang my heart like a bell. I know that voice. I didn’t want to believe it, but I hadn’t come anywhere. Of course it made more sense that I would be mistaken for someone, than that I had a secret admirer.

No one admired Story Hale.

I wasn’t the girl you looked at; I was the girl behind the girl.

“I always wondered what you’d kiss like now.” He dragged a closed fist down my cheek. “It’s so much better than my imagination.” The groan strangling his voice nearly toppled me. I still had some small hope that maybe this man wasn’t the person every sign pointed at.

But then my eyes adjusted, and I knew for certain.

Blue stared back—the notorious steely blue reserved for almost all Crownes. A color as vivid and cutting as the ocean on a stormy day at Crowne Beach.

I should’ve stopped then. Looked away. Run away.

There’s a rule at Crowne Hall: no servants can look the Crownes in the eyes—ever. It was one I’d obeyed religiously. Yet I couldn’t avert my gaze. There was a look in his eyes I’d only ever dreamed of receiving.

Grayson Crowne, playboy prince, heir to Crowne Industries, was staring back at me. It wasn’t to knock books out of my hands and laugh like in high school. It wasn’t to kick over my bucket of soapy water while I cleaned his floors. Gray Crowne was looking at me like he wanted me.

“You’re so goddamn perfect, you know that?”

He pressed me against the wall, abs and chest flat with mine, hips sharp. Every rigid and sculpted piece of him pressed deeper and deeper into me, until even lungfuls of air brought him inside me. He smelled expensive and heady and unobtainable.

“Do you know what I want from you now?” He grew hard on my hip, and suddenly I couldn’t speak. I swallowed and shook my head.

“Honesty. Bloody, raw, jagged truth.”

Alarm bells rang louder than a tornado siren, blaring in my gut. I knew I should pull away, but with him so close, and his breath hot on my lips, I couldn’t.

I wanted that too. Oh my God, I didn’t know how much I wanted that until he said it.

I had no right.