Fable of Happiness Book One

by Pepper Winters

You’re already interacting with her.

  You’re feeding her, housing her, wanting to fuck her.

  I balled my hands, distrust overshadowing my sudden compulsion to keep her spilling her secrets.

  “What’s your name?” The question was sour on my tongue.

  What the fuck?

  Why would you ask that?

  Who cared?

  I didn’t.

  I didn’t plan on keeping her around long enough to know why she camped or climbed or didn’t care about dirt.

  She was dangerous.

  I knew that now.

  I couldn’t keep her as a pet. I couldn’t house her during winter and use her body whenever I wanted.

  She has to go.

  Gritting my teeth, I steeled myself against any other unwanted softenings.

  I would carry out the unpleasant task of her demise tonight. Today. This very fucking moment before it got any more complicated.

  I raised my hand. “Don’t. Don’t answer—”

  “Gemma.” She bowed her head as if coming to the same conclusions I had. Spying a weakness in our boundaries, knowing that the more we conversed, the more connections would spring.

  It was inevitable.

  It was human nature.

  It was the oldest trick in the goddamn book.

  It had also been used against me far too many times to count.

  And I won’t let it be used again.

  “Gemma Ashford. But everyone calls me Gem.”

  “I don’t care.” Dropping my gaze to my plate, I snatched a strawberry and shoved it into my mouth. First, I would eat. And then, I would kill.

  She was nothing more than a creature caught in my snare with a broken leg and a bloody hide. I was doing her a favor. She’d thank me for—

  “What’s your name?” she asked, her voice quiet but strong.

  I kept chewing and ignored her.

  “What is this place?” She waved around the cell. “How many live here? Is it just you? Where are you from originally? Have you been here long—”

  “Shut up. Eat. I don’t have all day to finish this.”

  “Finish what?” Her voice caught with fear.

  I looked up.

  We made eye contact.

  She sucked in a breath, reading the truth of what I meant. Not finish breakfast. Finish her.

  Shaking her head slightly, she bit her bottom lip. “Why?”

  Once again, I ignored her, grabbing the bread and tearing a mouthful off with my teeth. Her questions had made my own spring up. What was the world like these days? Where had she used to live? Did she have a husband back home? Would anyone miss her when I buried her in the garden? What was her favorite season?

  I need to know everything.

  I don’t need to know a thing.

  Stuffing a snow pea into my mouth, I chewed hard and fast.

  Sensing my animosity, she reached for her own plate. She went to grab a strawberry, but then she paused. Throwing me a suspicious glance, she watched as I selected a stick of celery and crunched.

  Swallowing, I cocked my head. Her stare made my hair stand on end. “What?”

  “You tried to kill me yesterday, and you just admitted that’s still your intention. Is this how you’ll do it? Is that why you’ve given me food?”

  “I’ve given you food so you don’t die on an empty stomach. It’s called being kind.”

  Her nose scrunched in disgust. “Kind is letting me go. Kind is not touching me. Kind is letting me live.”

  “Then eat, and you’ll live a little longer.”

  She held up the berry I’d painstakingly nurtured from seed to fruit. “Is it poisoned?”

  I turned to chilly stone. “I’d never tamper with food that way.”

  “Yet you’ll tamper with my life.”

  “Different.”

  “How is that different?” She glared at me as if her hatred had just grown a thousandfold.

  “I want the strawberry. I don’t want you.”

  Her shoulders went to slouch, only for steel to force her straight. “You wanted me last night.”

  My hands curled around my plate. “That won’t happen again.” Those four words were spoken in honesty, but they tasted like the worst lie I’d ever told. Would I be able to end her life before touching her a final time? Would I truly deny myself the chance to be inside her before she turned lifeless and cold?

  She studied me silently, dropping the strawberry back onto her plate. She scanned the breakfast I’d generously provided, her eyes slowly filling with an empty darkness.

  Once again, I was familiar with that look.

  I’d seen it staring back at me in mirrors before I’d smashed them, and I’d seen it in the eyes of my prey. She’d stopped fighting against the inevitable. Her instincts sensed there was no way out. She was dead, regardless if she wanted to be or not.

  Normally, with that realization came a hollow kind of peace. But in her case, she looked lost, terrified, and painfully alone.

  Eating another snow pea, I tried to ignore the tug in my chest. The sensation of empathy that I’d long since crushed.

  She placed her plate silently onto the floor.

  That affected me to the core.

  She’d been so grateful for the food only moments ago. And now, even in her immense hunger, she refused to take a single thing from me.

  A stalemate sprang between us.

  Her despondency made impatience and annoyance fill me, but beneath that, a minor trace of compassion burned.

  Silence ticked for a while.

  Her stomach grumbled.

  I snapped, “Nothing is poisoned.”

  It was her turn to ignore me.

  “Would I be eating if it was?” I growled.

  She didn’t look up, staring at her hands in her lap. “You could have just poisoned my share.”

  “I value food too highly to ruin it. On that you have my word.”

  Her hair slid forward, obscuring her face.

  Needing her to look at me, I said coldly, “And why would I poison you, anyway? It would deny me the pleasure of squeezing your delicate neck again.”

  She swallowed hard, her swirling eyes flashing up to mine. “You’re a monster.”

  “No, I’m dealing with a problem.”

  “Let me go, and I’ll no longer be a problem.”

  “Let you go, and you’ll bring a thousand problems in return.”

  She crossed her arms, trembling hard. “Go on then. Finish the job. Kill me.”

  I tore off a piece of bread, a sudden coldness flashing through my heart. In the few short minutes of conversation, I’d remembered something that I’d so successfully forgotten.

  With her trespassing, she’d brought life back into this place. She’d chased away the quietness that’d settled so deeply inside me.

  After years alone, you tended to forget.

  If enough time passed, you could even pretend it never existed.

  But thanks to her, I remembered why I’d struggled so much in those first few years. Why I’d spent a year catatonically drunk before I’d had to make the choice to live or die. Why I’d turned my back on those who’d turned their back on me.

  Loneliness.

  It was a disease that once caught, there was no cure.

  Its endless vacuum sucked up every emotion and thought until the only thing left was a husk. A wordless husk with bones so hollow, I expected one day just to shatter into dust and be done with it.

  “Well?” she snarled. “I’m done waiting. You made me wait all night. If you’ve made up your mind to become a murderer, then just do it already.” Tears glittered in her angry eyes, a final attempt at hope blazing. “But...if you’re still looking at your options, I have money. I...I’ll pay you to free me. What do you want? A million? Two? Put a price on my life, and I’ll pay it.”

  I paused. “You expect me to believe you have that sort of money?”

  “I do.” She balled her hands, warming to her
crusade. “I’m successful online. I haven’t had anything to spend my income on. I’m...a good saver. If I have to buy my life from you, then so be it. You can have every penny I have if you let me go.”

  I sat back, stunned once again at her beauty. This time, it wasn’t her looks that made me hard but her fierceness. Her fury and skills at negotiation. She hadn’t accepted her end, after all.

  When I didn’t speak, she licked her lips and rubbed her arms. “Well? Do we have a deal?”

  She didn’t need to know that money meant nothing to me. What would I spend it on out here? It couldn’t be used to buy food, not when I couldn’t afford to reveal my existence. I couldn’t plant a dollar bill and have it sprout into parsnips.

  It wasn’t the money that she was willing to give me that made interest and hesitation billow. It was the fact she was willing to offer me anything at all.

  It made my cock twitch.

  It made me wonder...

  Picking up my final strawberry, I ate it slowly, savoring the sugar and licking at its juice. “I don’t know.”

  She froze. “But...you’re open to discussing it?”

  I shrugged. “I’m unsure at this point.”

  “What would make you sure? Why are you so intent on killing me? Tell me that, and maybe I can—”

  “You don’t belong here. I need you gone because I don’t know any other solution. Because you have nothing to offer me other than complication and will end up demanding more than I can afford.”

  Silence tumbled between us, heavy with thought and consequence.

  She let her arms uncross and hands settle into her lap. Her breathing turned slow and deep as her forehead scrunched. I watched it all as she shook her head, her eyes narrowing on the puddle next to her.

  I couldn’t guess what she was thinking, but whatever it was took all her concentration. All her courage. Everything she was.

  Finally, after what felt like forever, she lifted her chin and captured my eyes.

  She studied me. Her gaze dropped to my mouth, swept to my hair, then glided down my body.

  She nodded once.

  Inhaled hard.

  Then murmured, “I have something else to offer.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I ALMOST CHOKED.

  I have something else to offer.

  Six simple words yet the worst sentence of my life.

  My captor stiffened before me. Ever so slowly, he pushed away the remnants of his strange breakfast.

  I’d never been a stickler for meal plans and rarely stuck to menu suggestions, but his odd combination of celery, peas, and strawberries made me wonder if he truly was uneducated, or at the very least, uncaring about routines and practices.

  Cocking his head, he eyed me in his severe, strict way. “Go on...” He waved a hand. “What could you possibly have to offer me?”

  I licked my lips as a wash of shivers darted down my back.

  If I did this, I already knew I’d lose parts of myself I’d never really known. If I offered up my body in a trade to keep my soul, I could quite possibly end up losing both.

  He could fuck me and kill me anyway.

  He could keep me alive and never return my freedom.

  What was worse?

  Certain death or unknown sexual servitude?

  Inhaling hard, I rubbed at my chest where my heart hurled itself against my ribs. The palpitations were full of fear, adrenaline, and a fair amount of shock.

  Alone in the dark, I’d tossed and turned all night.

  I’d asked myself how far I would go to stay alive. What would I do at his bequest if he agreed to let me go?

  My answers had varied.

  They’d switched from stark, rage-filled refusal to stupidly giving him anything: accepting death and dying innocent and soon, or crawling on my knees in enslavement and doing whatever he asked in order to survive.

  By the time the sun had risen, I’d been no wiser on what my choice would be.

  Turned out, I’d just made it.

  Survival instinct was too strong to ignore and everything else paled compared to death. I wanted to live. I’d barely begun. I would make any trade that would ensure I saw another day.

  That includes letting a bastard like him touch me.

  I looked at him.

  I drank in the long shaggy hair, the silvery scars, the angry burning eyes. I studied the man who would most likely possess me in ways no other man had done before. He would know me better than any other.

  And he would do it without my consent.

  Sure, I was about to give him the right to touch me if he refrained from killing me. But it didn’t mean I would be a willing participant. I would lock away my mind and fortify my heart. I would give him the shell of who I was to retain the most important part of me.

  Sex.

  Would this make me a whore? Bartering my body for my life? Would I feel shame as he took me or vindication that I was brave enough to endure whatever it took to live?

  My eyes skittered over to the PLB and its saluting antenna. It’d been hours since I’d activated it. If help truly was on the way, didn’t I owe it to them and myself to extend my lifespan? To give them a chance at finding me alive instead of some corpse hidden in this secret valley?

  You can do this.

  It’s just sex.

  Just physical, nothing more.

  Just an act that doesn’t mean a thing.

  Raising my stare, I embraced every icy crystal in my blood from sleeping in this tomb and said as clearly, clinically, and coldly as possible. “My offer...is me.”

  His eyebrows tugged low, shadowing his dark eyes. A spark of lust gleamed over his pupils. His nostrils flared as if scenting my disgust at such an offering, and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Once again, he looked at me as if his gaze could strip me, finger me, tongue me, and claim me.

  My nipples pebbled as he stared at my breasts and licked his bottom lip. My core tingled with disgusting acknowledgment as he looked between my legs and made a cauldron of hate and unwanted need answer back.

  The power he held over his sexuality was the worst kind of weapon. The fact that he didn’t hide what he thought. That I knew exactly what he felt when he studied me. That he was moments away from snapping and mounting. That my offer had removed the shackles he’d put around his wrists, granting an almost sickening kind of disappointment.

  He’d been looking forward to the fight. He’d wanted to be told no.

  Why?

  To humiliate me further? Because he had secrets of his own when it came to sex?

  Either way, he nodded once, and a soft growl rumbled in his chest. “You.”

  I curled my hands. “I’ll...do whatever you ask if you allow me to live and let me go.”

  His eyes narrowed, pinning me to the floor. “Kneel.”

  I blinked.

  I opened my mouth to question, to argue.

  He just wiped a hand over his lips and repeated in a guttural whisper, “Kneel.”

  Had he accepted my offer, or was this a test?

  Goosebumps multiplied over my body. I’d never been so powerless, so stripped of choice or refusal.

  “Kneel!” he snarled, making me jump.

  My knee nudged the PLB, tipping it over. The clunk was a reminder of why I’d offered, why I had to do this. With shaking hands, I righted the locator beacon and made sure the antenna faced toward the sky.

  And then, I pushed aside my untouched, possibly poisoned breakfast and kneeled.

  His harsh inhale made my stomach clench in ways I didn’t want to analyze. The heady huff of a male who didn’t hold back how desperate he was. How much his body burned. How much his lust broke him.

  If I wasn’t being forced, I would’ve found his desire the headiest aphrodisiac. My skin would’ve scorched beneath his intensity. My core would’ve melted. My legs would’ve trembled to open.

  In all my searchings for a suitable partner, I’d never come across a man who affected me
on such a visceral level. A level devoid of humanity and conversation. We’d spoken a handful of words to each other, yet the heaviness of his need blanketed me.

  It made my skin sizzle and my breasts burn. It made me sway on my knees as I forced myself to make eye contact with him and wait.

  For an eternity, he just stared at me.

  The longer he stared, the darker his stare became. He began to tremble, his hands shaking, his body quaking, his lust shattering him from the inside out. A part of him looked ferocious, like any killer, rapist, or devil in history. But the other part of him looked bewildered, afraid, and recklessly inexperienced.

  My heart pounded so hard, I heard it in my ears, I felt it in my veins. I swore he could hear its rapid rhythm, slamming drums against the basement walls.

  Suddenly, he shot to his feet.

  His bare toes planted onto the damp concrete, kicking away his mostly empty plate without thought. Taking two steps toward me, he stood over me. Towered above me as he reached down with his left hand and dug strong fingers through my leaf-tangled hair.

  Cupping the back of my head, he stared into me as if he was seconds away from shattering. With our eyes knotted, he used his right hand to work the button and zipper of his slacks.

  He fumbled and yanked, splaying the front of his trousers to reveal the bareness of his cock. No underwear. No modesty. The hard length of his arousal sprang upward as his unfastened slacks fell to his ankles.

  His fingers dug deeper into my hair, asking for something.

  I waited for him to jerk me forward. For him to fist himself and shove the thickness past my lips.

  But he did neither of those things.

  He trembled harder, his cock weeping pre-cum, his balls drawn up so tight they were almost invisible in the dark thicket of hair.

  His lips drew back in a snarl, baring his teeth as a growl echoed in his belly.

  I waited for instruction.

  I needed to be told what to do.

  Didn’t he get that? I wouldn’t willingly touch him. I couldn’t. He had to make me do this. He had to release me from the shame of using sex for longevity.

  His right hand fisted by his side, swinging slightly in time to his raging heartbeat. His drummed as fast and as heavy as mine, a chaotic song that made the cell pulse around us. Made the air spark with danger and longing.

  He breathed hard. He groaned low in his throat. His hips rocked in time to his quaking. And still, he didn’t touch himself or drag my mouth to his cock.