Fable of Happiness Book One

by Pepper Winters

  Once again, our eyes locked in the raining gloom.

  And once again, the world shifted.

  A cosmic shift.

  A transcendent punch that said he was more than just a bastard. He could be more to me than any other male, and how absolutely tragic that somewhere in his broken soul, some part of him spoke to some part of me, whispering that we could be perfect for each other.

  That this blistering, bulldozing connection wasn’t fate but fucking lunacy.

  “Get off me!” I turned mad. I fought like a feral wolf.

  And his blood ran quicker from my keys.

  His blood showed he was human. His anger revealed he was not. He was both monster and man, and suddenly, I wasn’t cold anymore.

  I was hot and heavy and so full of rage, so pissed off at life and luck that I screamed. I screamed to expel the unfairness, the grotesqueness, the rightness even while we dueled to the death.

  “Die!” I screamed the single word. The word he’d whispered to me as his fingers had suffocated my body when we’d first met. Back then, in his house of horrors, he’d won. Out here, in the rain of shame, I would.

  “Fuck’s sake!” He arched away, ducking away from my keys, doing his best to subdue me. “Just stop!”

  We rolled again. We fought faster, crueler.

  “I’ll never stop because I won’t let you hurt me!”

  “Your very presence crucifies me!”

  “Too fucking bad!”

  We both lost any rules and guidelines of how a man and woman were supposed to treat each other. He grunted as my knee landed in his ribs. I moaned as his hand pulled my hair. We groaned as we rolled and tumbled, kicked and bruised.

  We panted and gasped, one winning, the other losing, the roles reversing with each breath.

  Until finally, he played dirty.

  He slapped me, making my head ring. Then, in a wave of power, he rolled me until I slammed onto my back. His legs clamped over my legs, bringing his hips hard against me. His arms shoved mine away, giving him a heartbeat’s chance to grab my throat.

  The second his fingers wrapped around my neck, I lost something inside me.

  Sanity?

  Humanity?

  The very core of who I was.

  He wanted to take my life?

  Well, I would take his pain with me.

  My hands shot downward while his squeezed tight around me.

  My fingers dived between us, unzipping his soaking trousers and slipping into the damp heat of him.

  I wrapped both hands around his cock and balls. My right around his hard shaft, my left around the soft vulnerability of his testicles.

  And I motherfucking squeezed.

  I squeezed as hard as he squeezed my throat.

  He buckled over me.

  He strangled a cry.

  His fingers loosened around my neck.

  And then, as if all of this had been some twisted, tangled foreplay, raw, savage desire blackened his face.

  There was no pause.

  No thinking.

  His mouth slammed against mine.

  His tongue speared past my lips, bringing rain and pain, mud and darkness.

  His fingers switched from strangling me to clutching me as if I was his savior and seducer all in one.

  My mind blanked.

  My fingers continued to torture him, but his kisses were a different kind of torment. He kissed me as if he was the one suffocating. He bit my lip and swept his tongue deep into me—tasting me, feeding me his need—as though kissing me was the only thing he lived for.

  I choked on his lust.

  I twisted his cock and fisted his balls.

  I delivered agony to him.

  And all he did in retaliation was kiss me.

  He raked his fingers through my mud-soaked hair and opened his mouth so wide, he poured everything into me. Every inch of his tragedy. Every second of his trials.

  He gave me all of him.

  He tilted his head and stroked my unwilling tongue with his, but it wasn’t until a warm droplet kissed my cheek instead of cold rain that whatever mania infected him infected me.

  A tear.

  A single tear from a murderer.

  A man who I held by the balls. A man who I squeezed so damn hard he’d probably never have children. And instead of striking me. Instead of strangling me like he’d tried to do so often, he surrendered.

  He gave me his pain.

  He gave me his power.

  He kissed me.

  He clawed open my chest and crawled deep inside.

  He broke me until we were shattered pieces together.

  I couldn’t do it.

  I can’t do this!

  He groaned as I squeezed his cock and balls until my hands shook and my forearms threatened to pop with pressure. Then he kissed me deeper, harder, fiercer than anyone. He kissed me as if he wanted me to end him. As if he was grateful to endure agony by my hand.

  He kissed me as if he’d never known kindness. As if pain was the only thing to set him free.

  I couldn’t stand it.

  Stop!

  He gathered me closer, kissing me with violence and anarchy, war and famine.

  I lost.

  I kissed him back.

  And.

  That.

  Was.

  It.

  The gun, the detonation, the very end of our existence.

  We clawed at each other. We tried to crawl inside one another.

  Our fight switched from one age-old grievance to another. From fighting to fucking.

  Rolling onto his back, he dragged me with him, splaying me over his stomach as his hands dropped from my hair, his nails raked along my back, and his fingers jerked the sweater over my head.

  The rain soaked everything, making the material slap lifeless beside us. He fought with my T-shirt next, yanking it up and throwing it into the slick mud.

  The moment my breasts were bare, he cupped them both. His fingers rolled my nipples, pinching me, electrifying the sick craziness in my blood.

  My hands switched from trying to wring his cock from his body to jerking him with pleasure. I stroked him viciously.

  His breath caught, and his hips pulsed into my palm. “Christ—”

  He smashed his mouth to mine. Our kiss tasting of rain and earth, blood and sweat.

  Another layer of propriety fell away.

  My nails dug into his cock. His back bowed as his mouth opened wider over mine. His tongue was slick and savage. His assault brutish as he kissed me so damn hard. We rolled again, fighting for dominance, our vehemence toward one another adding a ferocity to whatever this was.

  This wasn’t about forgiveness or apologies. This wasn’t about the pent-up connection or spine-snapping desire.

  This was about fire.

  Fire that burned in both of us.

  Fire that had incinerated us from the inside out and wouldn’t stop until we were both cinders on the forest floor.

  “I need you.” His voice resembled every shade of black in the night. “Fuck, I need you.”

  Not a question.

  A command.

  A matching demand within me.

  I didn’t think.

  I clawed at his pants, shoving them down, allowing his blazing erection to pop free. It was swollen and red from my punishment. Crescent moon indents from my nails showed how much pain I’d given him.

  He fell on me again, biting my throat, my jaw, my mouth. As his tongue hunted for mine, he rolled until I was pinned beneath him, his hands tearing at the fly of my borrowed, ruined slacks, ripping them off me as if they’d been doused in the very flames consuming us.

  We were too far gone.

  Far from human.

  I’d never been so drunk.

  So reckless.

  Our mouths continued to slip and slide in a heady, monstrous kiss. Our tongues clashed in a dance downright cruel and perverse.

  His dirt-covered hands painted my bare chest and hips a
s he angled me beneath him. Controlling me, manipulating me, spreading my legs with his knees.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t think.

  All I could do was feel.

  And fuck, he felt better than anything.

  He was wild and vile all wrapped up in the totality of twisted tenderness.

  And when he took me.

  When his cock found my pussy, and he mounted me with all the violence and pain inside him, I screamed for the second time.

  My legs snapped around his hips.

  My back bowed as he sheathed himself within me.

  I quaked as his body buried itself deep, deep, deep, linking us together.

  For a heartbeat, we stilled.

  My core pulsed around his hard invasion, and his cock pulsed with triumph at conquering me. We shared a stare. A glance that cracked open my ribs and let my treasonous heart free.

  Beneath the evil lust in his eyes something else begged me to see. Something caged within him, trapped behind bars, chained up in metal, secrets and memories slowly poisoning him.

  I gasped.

  I saw.

  And then, he moved.

  He withdrew then thrust forward. Hard and sharp. Deep and possessing.

  I cried out.

  I scratched his back and grabbed his bare ass.

  I dug my nails into his skin, pulling him deeper, deeper, deeper.

  He snapped.

  He thrust and thrust, grunting with each impalement, his face highlighted by lightning as thunder crashed around us.

  Mud was my bed, and rain was my sheets as I lost whatever innocence I had left to a monster in the woods.

  I spurred him on.

  I begged for more.

  I dug my heels into the back of his thighs and shoved my hips up to meet his, crushing our bodies together, rubbing my clit on the base of his cock so sparks and pinwheels of gunpowder ignited.

  “Oh, God.” I moaned.

  My body tightened. Quickened. Pressurized.

  His mouth found my ear, biting my lobe all while his haggard breathing revealed how lost he was in me.

  Gem no longer existed.

  Just this creature he’d created. A creature who only existed for this manic kind of pleasure.

  His fists landed by my ears, squelching into the mud as he rode me harder, deeper, brutal and unkind.

  And that was my trigger.

  The release of an orgasm that convulsed and cracked me. That didn’t just clench my core but annihilated it. It poured gasoline in my womb and blazed with shooting stars down my pussy.

  I came around his cock.

  I came for a man who I didn’t even know his name.

  I came harder and more spectacularly than I’d ever come before.

  His back tensed. His hips switched from fucking to rutting.

  He chased my release. He howled as he buckled over me, crashing his mouth to mine, choking me with his tongue, feeding every inch he had into my body.

  His spurts within me went on and on.

  He well and truly claimed me in that storm, ensuring I had no other master, lover, or friend.

  I was his.

  Entirely and irrevocably.

  For that night only.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HOW DID ONE EXPLAIN insanity?

  Was it doing something again and again, expecting different results?

  Was it believing in something completely false and refusing to see the truth?

  Was it surviving hell and thinking you deserved happiness at the end of it?

  Or maybe...it was this.

  This madness smeared in mud. This woman who’d not only concussed me but also made me forget. Forget that sex had always meant shame and poison, molestation and abuse. There were places on my body I could no longer touch nor look at because the memories were always there, just lying in wait to drown me. Scars did their best to whisper what I’d done and been subjected to.

  Yet...

  Her.

  She’d given me something no one else ever had.

  She’d given me peace in her violence. Connection in her fight. She’d met my rage with her own, not just letting me fuck her but fucking me right back. Forcing me to take her harder. To snatch up every morsel she offered. To let myself feel for the first time in my sorry excuse of a life.

  Feel wanted. Feel desired. Feel powerful when I’d been so successfully stripped of everything since I was a kid.

  Wedged on my elbows, looking down at blond hair now caked with mud and a pretty face now streaked with rain and midnight, I struggled to stay with her.

  To not let my past sweep me away from the most perfect, most wonderful moment I’d ever had.

  She didn’t move, even though most of my weight pinned her into the dirt. Her pussy continued to ripple around my cock, echoes of her pleasure.

  Pleasure.

  She’d found pleasure...with me.

  She’d hurt me like they had. She’d left wounds on my body like them. But she’d given me so fucking much in return. She’d shared herself with me. We’d burned together. We still burned together—our skin pressed tight, our heartbeats quick, our bodies twitching with the aftermath.

  And I didn’t know how to deal with that.

  Closing my eyes, I shook my pounding head. My temples felt as if pokers stabbed inside me, drilling into my skull. My forehead had swollen, a throbbing bump thanks to her whack with the shovel.

  She cleared her throat, wrenching my eyes open again.

  Only this time, it wasn’t the girl who’d trespassed in my valley. Not the woman brave enough to fight me—truly fight me. To meet me in the madness and battle for her life or mine.

  It wasn’t Gemma.

  But Quell.

  The girl who might’ve grown up to look like Gemma with her blond hair and hazel, flickering eyes. A girl who’d wiped away my tears after I’d been raped. A girl who I’d rocked as she’d sobbed in my arms. A girl who’d been utterly destroyed, like all of us.

  And fuck, the guilt.

  The motherfucking guilt...it crushed me, ravaged me.

  I was supposed to keep her safe.

  Instead, I’d fucked her in the dirt all because she’d dared stand up to me.

  No!

  Withdrawing from her wet heat with a wince, I swooped to my feet and almost tripped over my sodden pants still clinging to my ankles.

  My heart rate exploded.

  Trapped.

  You’re trapped.

  A snarl crawled up my throat as I bent and tore my feet out of the slacks and threw them as hard as I could. They slapped against a tree, tangling in the branches in the rain. Needing to move, to assure myself I was free, I paced.

  I stalked the clearing and dug hands into my hair. I massaged a head that was full of rocks and cotton. Sharp edges and foggy corners, memories and realities, heavens and hells.

  Nyx’s blood oath came and went. Wes’s suffering. Jareth’s conditioning. Elise’s initiation. Zanik, Maliki, Sarez, and Neo. Every Fable kid entered my mind and reminded me why I was alone. Why people were dangerous. Why this woman, who’d successfully made me hope, was the most dangerous of them all.

  Turning on her, I glowered as she stood gracefully from the mud. Streaks on her thighs and waist, dark blond curls between her legs as she kicked away her own soaking pants.

  We stood there, naked and filthy, breathing hard with what we’d done and my mind switched again. What was I thinking? This woman wasn’t sweet little Quell. This woman was too brash, too brave, too damn beautiful.

  Too beautiful to be innocent.

  With her hair darkened by water and her eyes shaded by night, she reminded me of another. A guest who’d taken great joy in breaking me before riding me. Who’d tied me up so I couldn’t move, gagged me so I couldn’t beg, and sucked me until I had no choice but to give her what she wanted.

  Mrs. Dita had been devious in her debasement of me. She’d shared her bed and her meals. She’d touched me
kindly until it pleased her to touch me cruelly.

  That was the woman standing before me.

  A viper who could never be trusted.

  Not bothering to hide her body, Gemma dropped our heated stare and glanced at the ground. She moved away from me, back to the spot where I’d stalked and tackled her. Rain continued to splash on our skin as she ducked in the mud and grabbed a handful of gunk.

  The second I saw the flash of metal in her hand, I charged forward and snatched them.

  So this was her weapon. The slicing agony she’d rained upon my face.

  “Hey!” She reached for my fist, her touch sending electricity through my blood even now. Even after what we’d done and the fact that I was sick to my stomach for enjoying something that only came with prostitution and persecution.

  “Think you’re going somewhere?” I held up the keys to the rain, washing away as much mud as possible.

  “Those are mine.” She planted both hands on her hips, bold in her nudity and scrambling my mind even more. Arching her chin at the beige 4WD, she added, “I’m done here. After what we just did, surely that will convince you that I mean you no harm.”

  I chuckled blackly. “No harm?” Wiping my bleeding forehead and the numerous cuts she’d given me in our fight, I grinned thinly. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “You know what I mean. I need to go home. I need to see my mother and brother. I won’t tell anyone that you live out here. Your secrets are safe with me.”

  I went still. “And what secrets are those exactly?”

  She paused. Her hands slipped from her hips and crossed against her belly, subconsciously sheltering herself from me.

  She didn’t answer.

  Clutching her keys, I cocked my head. “Well? You think you know me now? Please...do tell. Tell me what my secrets are.”

  Inhaling, her chest rose with indecision. Her eyes flickered from me to her car then back again. Clinging to courage, she tipped up her chin and said quietly, “I know you’ve been abused. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand you have some deep-seated issues. You’ve been hurt...far too many times. Your scars are external and internal. The fact that you won’t tell me your name says you have epic trust issues. The clue that you live in the middle of nowhere with technology decades outdated and no modern conveniences hints you would rather die alone than try to live with others.”