A second kiss and it was just as explosive as the first.
Just as wrong because he kissed me under false pretenses.
And just like the first, I couldn’t stop my reaction to him.
I kissed him back.
Our tongues touched and retreated. Our heat matching. Our desire igniting.
I could no longer make sense of anything.
His feet tripped backward, pulling me with him. His hands kneaded my ass, his fingers strong and demanding. With his mouth on mine, he guided me away from the door and toward his carpet bed.
Common sense tried to make me stop him. The sane part of my mind screamed warnings and strategy, but with his tongue dancing with mine and his fingers massaging me as if he’d never felt anything as exquisite, I was lost.
The soft lumpiness of blankets appeared beneath my bare feet.
He stopped pulling me and dropped to his knees, yanking me down with him.
His lips were on mine a second later. His breath hot on my cheek, his dark taste making me drunk with each sweep of his tongue.
“Wait—” I tried to break the kiss. To breathe.
“No.” He grabbed my chin and captured my mouth again, deepening the kiss, pushing me backward until I lay beside him.
He continued corrupting me, kissing his way along my jaw before dropping to bite my neck.
I shivered.
I grew wet.
I had to put a stop to this before it was too late.
Planting a hand on his naked chest, I pushed. “Stop.”
I anticipated a fight, but he pulled away, his lips red and scruff almost as wild as his long, knotted hair. He paused, a question in his stare. A question that seemed to hurt him—hurt him enough that he wasn’t prepared to voice it. He looked as nervous as I felt.
That nervousness made me want to kiss him again. To give him some assurance that his past was over and whatever happened in the future, he would never be subjected to things outside his control again. However, something else burned my tongue, and I had to ask.
“Who...who do you think I am?” The question fell heavy and solid between us, a rock in the night.
He frowned as if I’d asked a stupid thing, then scowled deeper as if he couldn’t put a finger on an answer. Slowly, his face fell, his eyes darting to the left as if the knowledge was just out of reach.
Letting me go, he exhaled and rolled onto his back. He flinched as if his bruises and cuts from his fall only made themselves known now. Cradling his broken arm, he stared at the ceiling.
I was grateful to the scant moonlight; without it, I wouldn’t see the carousel of thoughts on his face.
For a long while, he was quiet. He stayed on his back, and I propped myself up on my elbows, watching him from my stomach. Finally, finally, he whispered, “I don’t know who you are.”
I sucked in a breath, even though I’d expected such an answer. “Who did you think I was...before.”
He half-smiled, self-deprecating and frustrated. “When I realized you weren’t Quell, I thought you were my fable.”
I reared upright. “Your fable? What does that mean?”
My mind shot back to the dorm upstairs. To the identical books on each pillow. To the fable each kid was named after.
Kas had chosen one based on a genie and giving his wishes to others. How could he think I was—
“You look like the genie who visited me when I was out-of-my-mind drunk.” He snorted. “I should’ve known I was drunk when I started seeing beautiful women.” He scoffed harder than he snorted. “A beautiful woman who wasn’t trying to rape me, that is.”
I didn’t know what the hell to say to that, so I stayed quiet.
Another few minutes passed before he added, “She said it was my turn. That the wishes I’d given others were now mine, and all I had to do was ask for what I wanted.”
He didn’t continue, forcing me to ask, “And did you?”
“Wish?” He turned his head, his tangled hair splaying around his head on the pillow. “Yes. I had nothing else. No one else left to gift the wishes to. I was free to be selfish and think of myself.”
“Thinking of yourself doesn’t make you selfish, Kas.”
He shrugged, looking away. “I asked for three things. Two of which she granted me.”
“Can you tell me?”
He kept his eyes downcast, murmuring, “I wished for this place to be forgotten. That all the people associated with it would die.”
“And?”
“And that my family would be kept safe.” He looked up, almost shy as if I’d mock him for such a noble wish. Didn’t he see that even though he’d used his wishes, he’d still used them to benefit others? There was nothing in those requests about him personally. Nothing to help—
“My third wish never came true, though.” Running his fingers down the splint binding his broken arm, he shrugged again. “I understand why. I’ve done too much. Caused too much damage.”
Kneeling beside him, I couldn’t fight the urge not to reach out. Resting my hand on the top of his, I asked quietly, “What was your third wish?”
I already knew.
I knew the fable.
I’d read the book.
And I saw the wish in his eyes. The haunting need to believe he was worthy of it someday, even though he still believed he didn’t.
“Happiness,” he breathed. “I wished for happiness.”
And once again, I found myself playing along with his hallucinations. “Well, you’re in luck, Kassen Sands.” I bent over him, whispering in his ear. “I am who you think I am. And your third wish will come true. I’ll make sure of it.”
He sucked in a breath. His entire body vibrated. Then he grabbed me, spun me, and tucked my back against his front. Spooning me with his body, he threw his leg over mine, trapping me better than any rope or chain.
“I’ll be yours forever if you grant it.” He nuzzled the back of my neck. “Completely yours. Eternally in your debt. If you make me happy? God, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you in return.” He placed a delicate kiss on my nape, inhaling me as if he couldn’t bear to let me go.
So many pieces of me screamed to run, hating how vulnerable I was. I’d permitted him to once again disarm me, bind me, and place me entirely at his mercy.
I couldn’t keep doing this. Couldn’t continue letting a damn kiss scramble my mind.
You can’t forget he isn’t normal, Gem.
He was unstable, violent, and had an abusive history—all perfect ingredients in creating a mass murderer with mental issues.
I didn’t stand a chance against him physically. I knew that.
My only hope was to stay immune to him. To ignore my moronic heart and guard myself against the multiple pieces of him all scrambling for salvation.
I stiffened in his arms, calculating how best to untangle myself from his hot embrace.
Only, he felt me shift. He groaned sleepily, nuzzling into my hair again. “You want to leave me, too?”
I swallowed hard. If he was falling asleep again, I ran the risk of a different Kas waking up. “We left dinner across the room...I’ll-I’ll go fetch it.”
“I’m not hungry.” He kissed my neck, sending shivers down my spine. “Stay. Please...don’t go.”
My stomach knotted in pain. “I’m not leaving. I’ll just—”
“I’m happy with you in my arms. I’ve never felt so...calm. Stay. Just a little longer.”
The knot in my belly twisted into barbwire. Once again, he imprisoned me with brutal honesty and a voice layered with loss.
Closing my eyes, I squeezed back tears.
“Say you won’t go. Not yet.” He inched closer, flushing our bodies tight together. “I don’t want this to end.”
I thought of my brother and how distraught I’d be if Josh ever suffered what Kas had. I thought of Kas’s family, none the wiser to his torture—most likely thinking their son was dead after so many years.
I thought of the deca
de he’d been alone with no one to speak to, to touch, to hold.
And it was no longer a choice to stay or to go.
My body relaxed in his comforting cocoon. Exhaustion crept over me, gleefully sucking me into darkness now that I’d finally stopped fighting. Clouds entered my mind, foggy delirium from the past nine days of doing my best to keep him alive, all while surviving the madness of this forgotten house, popping like iridescent bubbles.
“I’ll stay.” I yawned. “I’ll grant whatever happiness I can.”
He didn’t reply.
His breathing leveled with sleep, soft and even. His arms loosened around me.
I stupidly snuggled closer.
I felt safe.
Protected.
Wanted.
For one night only, we were friends who fell into happy dreams together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COMING BACK TO LIFE had a strange texture.
Awareness came over me gradually. The return of sight as I blinked and looked around the dawn-glowing library. A chair that looked big enough to be a throne pushed against the many shelves housing fictional classics and non-fictional manuals. Blankets strewn on the thick carpet, creating mayhem in orderly perfection.
The room was familiar.
The scent of leather and pages not jarring or foreign. I recognized it. Ghosts flittered in my mind’s eye. Girls and boys scurrying in the dark to borrow books. A man standing guard at all times with his whip.
I tried to focus on those ghosts, only for them to dissolve into dust.
I blinked again, the visions fading, leaving only a familiar room curtained with secrets.
Movement came next, the urge to sit up sending shockwaves of pain, bruises, and bone-deep agony through every part of me.
Christ.
I sat upright slowly, swaying as my nervous system assessed why my body hurt so much. I scanned the splint bracing my arm, the blackened bruises along my legs, the bandage around my shin, the countless scrapes and cuts on my chest.
What the hell happened to me?
My heart suddenly raced, remembering things my mind refused to share. Panic hissed in my blood. Something about this room. This house. This place.
Raising my good arm, I ran fingers through my long hair, finding it combed and tended instead of the usual knotty mess. Come to think of it, my body was clean—despite the obvious trauma it’d been through.
Who had looked after me?
There’s no one here.
My mind unlocked that fact as certainty. Eleven years. Just me.
Unfortunately, with that memory came a cascade of sickness and images.
I choked and buckled over my knees, tumbling into chaos.
The fractures inside me were widening, sucking giant pieces of me, erasing all my valuable parts, my worthy, positive, and honorable parts, leaving me with gaping holes of excrement.
I needed my family.
I needed their light to keep me from the dark.
I didn’t care that it was late afternoon. I didn’t worry that it’d been weeks since I’d said goodbye and had no clue how to find them.
I couldn’t stay in this place for another moment.
I’d done what I needed. I’d memorized the files Storymaker had on us. I’d burned them to ash so no one could follow, and I’d buried the guests who would never hurt another person.
I’d waited as long as I could to see if anyone would arrive. If any of Storymaker’s contacts would investigate why Fables had gone so quiet.
But no one had ventured here in over a month.
I’d been patient. I’d been wise.
But now? Now, I was being eaten alive by this monstrous house, and I had to go.
Packing a bag with some food and water, I stepped out of Fables for the last time.
And, in some serendipitous, ironic, cruel-as-fuck timing, three men smiled from the front garden.
A man with a groomed white beard and expensive suit glittered in the sunlight, flanked by two fierce guards, their hands resting on the holsters of their guns.
“Well, well.” The man tipped his head. “And just who the fuck do we have here?”
Stop.
I rocked with my fingers digging into my skull.
Just stop.
I didn’t want to see this. Didn’t want to remem—
I ran.
I was weak.
I dropped my bag and bolted back into Fables with its bleached carpets, disinfected air, and spotless bedrooms hiding all signs of a massacre.
“Get him!”
A shot rang out as one of the guards fired at me. All concepts of tackling the new guest and killing him like I’d killed Storymaker fled.
I’d lived with demons for too long not to recognize one.
Run!
Gasping, I shoved away the memory, recalling the discipline required to shut the doors and turn the keys, reinforcing the walls between my past and present.
I wasn’t strong enough.
I fell back into nightmares.
The interrogation lasted days.
I lost track of time. I lost too much blood. They broke my bones, my mind, my hope. I lived in a never-ending merry-go-round of questions, abuse, and torment.
The silver lining in being tortured was my sanity finally snapped.
I drifted into a place they couldn’t reach.
“Tell me what happened here!”
“Where is Stuart Page?”
“Where are the guests, the guards, the slaves?”
“Tell me!”
Each question came with pain.
Pain that would never be strong enough to make me give up my family.
I swallowed down answers until they were so far inside me, they’d have to kill me, resurrect me, then murder me all over again to access.
Time flickered.
The shouting and torture stopped.
Silence was my friend until the door opened and light entered and the man with a white beard squatted by my broken face. “Unfortunately, our time together has come to an end. I have a pressing engagement that requires swift attention.” He patted my cheek, grimacing as my blood stained his fingers. “I was going to kill you like you killed everyone here, but...I have a worse punishment for you.”
Standing, he braced himself over me. His heavy boot pressed against my throat. “I’m going to give you a parting gift. And you’re going to die slowly, painfully, all fucking alone in this valley. If I ever hear that you’ve survived or that you climbed out of here like a sewer rat, then I will slice you apart and feed your pieces to my dogs.” He laughed. “You think you stopped us? You think this place is the only one?” He ground his boot harder into my neck. “Stupid boy. No one, especially not you, can stop the lucrative peddling of flesh. Ponder on that while you die. Know that there are others, children, obedient little possessions all kneeling for their masters.”
In a burst of suicidal rage, I fought him. “You fucking son of a—”
And that was the last thing I remembered.
His boot crunching against my head.
Over and over and over...
Fuck, stop!
Throwing myself forward, I didn’t care about the shooting pain up my broken arm or the many aches and stiffness. I crawled out of the blankets and tripped to my feet. I stumbled across the room and slammed into the wall, my breathing shallow and quick.
Clutching a bookshelf, I swallowed hard, doing my best to calm my galloping heart and forget.
Forget.
You’ve done it before. Do it again.
Forget!
Slowly, the sharp horror in my head faded, transforming into grimy water that swirled down a drain and vanished. Only once my breathing leveled out, and I no longer shook with nausea did I turn around and face the room.
I sighed gratefully.
Just a room.
Nothing more.
No ghosts. No memories. Nothing but a—
What the fuck?
I
stalked forward, noticing for the first time I hadn’t been alone in the blankets on the floor. A girl lay on her side, blond hair tangled on the pillow, exhaustion creating deep shadows beneath her closed eyes.
She slept heavily. Her forehead furrowed as if she suffered bad dreams. Her body curled up protectively.
Just as the library was familiar, so was she. I didn’t know her name, and I didn’t know where she’d come from, but she wasn’t a stranger.
Was she friend or foe?
I moved closer, my hands balled, violence simmering in my blood.
Who are you?
Whoever she was, this house was mine. Mine.
I would never have given her permission to stay—
A savage kiss in a storm.
A soul-altering moment as I sank inside her, her body welcoming me, her heart granting me peace, her kindness giving me a sliver of happiness.
I reeled backward.
Fuck.
Fuck!
Her.
Gemma goddamn Ashford.
I shook my head as more images poured through me. Recent ones instead of tarnished with history. These fresh recollections couldn’t be shoved behind rusty doors. These were far too vibrant.
Trespasser.
Seducer.
A witch sent here to ensure I found my way to hell after living so long in purgatory.
She twitched in the blankets as if she could sense my growing animosity.
She’d been my prisoner. Mine to do whatever the hell I wanted.
Yet...somehow, she’d overthrown me. She’d fought me. Cut me.
She threw me off the goddamn cliff!
I snarled in the dawn.
Who would’ve thought that the closest I would come to dying was at the hands of a woman half my size? A woman who was meant to obey me. My own twisted version of a slave.
Who was she to be so pious and grandiose to think she had the right to sleep in my house? Why was she not in the basement where she belonged? How long had she been free? Rooting through my things. Touching my books. Walking through the dirty archives that this house held.
How dare she!
I bared my teeth.
My naked feet took another step toward her. Pink-gold light from the new sun peeked through the windows, dancing over my body.
Fable of Happiness Book Two Page 8