Fable of Happiness Book One

by Pepper Winters

I couldn’t breathe. “It’s just sex.”

  “It’s not, and you know it!”

  It’s not.

  I know it.

  I fucking know it.

  How had this happened in one night?

  This had gone too far. This was pushing me toward an edge I couldn’t survive.

  The haze came again, thick and cloying, an eraser that I’d perfected over eleven years of selective amnesia.

  Lies.

  All lies.

  Sex was just sex. Sex was power. Sex was pain.

  Sex was a weapon.

  The only weapon I know.

  “It’s just chemistry. Nothing more.” I touched her again, tracing her slickness. “I’m not going to stop.”

  She groaned into the vehicle’s carpet. “You’re destroying both of us.”

  “Am I?” I used my thumb on her clit, rubbing in time to the thrusting of my fingers. “Is it really destruction when we both know you want me to shove my cock inside you and make you come all over me?”

  Her whimper almost made me buckle. Almost made my walls shatter and throw me at the mercy of my mind. Almost made that softness, that happiness, that she’d conjured shine light on all my nightmarish pieces.

  “Tell me your name,” she whimpered. “Tell me, and maybe you can have me.”

  “My name doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters.” She moaned again as I continued to touch her, tease her.

  My head pounded, the haziness returning like clouds in my valley. I felt wrong. I felt very wrong.

  And she was the cure to all my wrongness.

  I couldn’t wait.

  I needed this.

  Need her to fix me.

  “We have a new agreement, remember?” Withdrawing my fingers, I clamped both hands on her inner thighs, spread her legs, then rose behind her. “I won’t try to kill you if you do what I command.”

  She trembled. “Don’t you even dare—” she hissed, looking over her shoulder, her hair chaos and eyes brutal. “If you do this. If you take me while I can’t fight you back, I’ll-I’ll—”

  “Scream?” I mounted her.

  I thrust deep, deep inside her. I let go of all the cages and prisons I’d erected and for a single breath, allowed myself to be free.

  Free to feel her, feel myself, feel us, feel the blissful, rightful, fateful link that was conjured from nowhere.

  It was heaven.

  It was hell.

  Her scream was a mixture of hate and heat. A female in need, torn apart by lust, naked in front of her own basic desires.

  She was wrong that she couldn’t fight me. That with her wrists tied and hips high, she had no way to wage war. She managed to fight me better than anyone as her ass soared back, forcing every last inch of me inside her.

  She met my insanity with her own.

  Her legs widened until her knees slipped to the sides, dragging me down with her. Flat on her belly, it gave her nowhere to go, no other way free but to buck against me, to scream and curse, to lose herself in the dementia we’d caused.

  I fucked her.

  She fucked me.

  We turned as wild as we had in the storm.

  Grasping her nape, I reared up and rutted into her.

  The tension in my balls, the bruises she’d caused, and the wounds she’d imprinted all surged with speed and recklessness.

  I wanted to come.

  As fast as possible.

  I needed out of this woman, away from this lust. I needed to remember how to breathe.

  “I truly hate you,” she groaned as she matched my manic pace.

  “I feel”—thrust, thrust, fucking thrust—“the same way.”

  “Liar!” she hissed, rocking her hips into the coarse vehicle carpet, her moans tattered as I drove harder into her.

  Liar?

  Who was the liar?

  Life itself?

  Fate?

  Hope?

  Definitely hope.

  I curled my fingers around the back of her neck and fucked with single-mindedness. I didn’t think about her well-being—no one had ever thought of mine. I wrung out my pleasure from her body, not caring if she came with me or not.

  Anger born from all the shit in my past washed over me.

  It was hot and black and toxic.

  I lost sight of the girl I was with. The girl called Gemma who had strength and safety in her veins, and instead saw every badness, sadness, and pain I’d endured.

  Every woman and man who’d thought they’d owned me.

  No.

  Not anymore.

  My anger switched to violence.

  My pace switched from manic to murderous.

  “God. Oh, God. Oh my...shiiiitt.” The girl beneath me detonated.

  Her pussy fisted me, milked me, rippled and stroked.

  She shoved me out of the darkness and into the splintering light.

  “Oh, fuuuuck—” My stomach tightened, my balls pulled up, and an orgasm gathered, full of reminders that every release since I was twelve had been blank and infertile. Courtesy of the Storymaker. My master. My hell.

  On the cusp of bliss, memories tried to steal me.

  My mind flickered with Fables, with my family, with the blood-soaked end that I’d reaped.

  I was falling, losing, tumbling back into the past.

  But then...just before I turned rogue and killed everything breathing around me, the girl who forgave me for things that should never be forgiven, moved.

  Her head twisted to the side. Her lips kissed my fist that was planted on the floor by her cheek.

  I had no idea why she’d kissed me. Why she’d dropped her guard. Why she’d done something so...nice when I was being so cruel.

  Her gentleness, her sweetness, her wonderful, courageous forgiveness.

  It broke me.

  It shoved me over the edge into a splintering, shattering release.

  I punched into her, over and over, jerking and grunting as pulses of heat shot up my cock and into her.

  Again and again.

  Eradicating some of the filth from me to her.

  Christening her into my twisted world.

  Ensuring what I said was true.

  She was mine.

  Not just for tonight.

  Not just for tomorrow.

  But for every single day of my sorry existence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I HAD A DREAM.

  A dream where soft fingers trailed through my hair, gentle kisses pressed on my temples, and a warm blanket cocooned my naked body.

  I dreamed those soft fingers and gentle kisses gathered me close and held me tight, all while I slipped from aware to unaware.

  Whispers invaded the night. Whispers that weren’t just whispers. Whispers that had the power to conjure images in my head, paint a story I never wanted to see, and force me to endure a different kind of life to my blessed one.

  There was a boy. Lots of boys. There was a girl. Lots of girls. They all lived in a gilded prison and were only allowed out to play when monsters paid for their company.

  They slept with joined hands. They ate with bare fingers. Their tears and blood had blended so often, they were no longer just one but all.

  Family.

  Married by circumstance, adopted by survival, and forged with unbreakable bonds.

  My dream swirled with blacks and grays, revealing a circle of children, waxy skinned and haunted eyed, clinging to each other as the door opened to select another for playtime.

  No.

  I didn’t want to see.

  I didn’t want to know.

  This wasn’t a dream but a nightmare.

  “I’ll go in your place,” a boy murmured. A boy with long dark hair and darker eyes. “I’ll protect you.”

  I thrashed. I tried to scream. Didn’t the boy know not to offer? Not to sacrifice himself to the monster?

  Don’t!

  The boy squeezed the other boy’s hand, looking once at his family
of broken members.

  And then, he walked out the door.

  Blood cascaded from the ceiling.

  No, stop!

  Children’s screams filled my ears.

  Stop!

  I couldn’t take the agony.

  I threw myself against the wall of sleep.

  “No!” I woke up gasping.

  For a moment, I was lost.

  My bearings were wrong; my location made no sense.

  Then I recognized the ceiling of my trusty Jeep, the stain from an old owner on the door panel, the comforting scent of adventure and pine air freshener.

  Shoving myself upright, a blanket tumbled from my shoulders as I switched from lying to sitting. Snatching the vibrant orange fleece that I packed for emergencies—that’d somehow ended up draped over my nakedness—I sucked in another breath.

  My captor sat on the other side of the Jeep, his feet planted, knees up, elbows dangling with hands linked in the air. His position was exposing. I saw right between his legs. I studied his scarred cock, the soft sack of his useless testicles, the hair of a man who hadn’t shaved in years.

  For a horrible heartbeat, I forgot the past few days. My mind erased the imprisonment, the erotic servitude, the mind-bending sex in the rain. All I saw was a man hiding from a new dawn in my car. I saw him without prior opinions and assessed him as a stranger instead of my enemy, and my arms ached to wrap around him.

  I wanted to fill the hollowness in his eyes with happiness. I wanted to be the reason those stern lips smiled. I wanted to hear him laugh. To experience joy and peace because I honestly didn’t think he’d ever been acquainted.

  You kissed his hand last night.

  You let him into more than just your body, Gem.

  I flinched, recalling my moment of weakness. The overwhelming rightness of him inside me, smothering me with his body, driving into me as if I was the only thing that would save him.

  Leaning forward, he narrowed his gaze, his attention falling to my exposed breasts.

  Heat ignited between us. Familiar need and unfamiliar connection.

  In my hazy state between sleep and awake, I gasped in shock.

  He’s the man I described on that stupid online dating profile.

  Looking for: A man who’s dominant and dangerous. A man who knows how to grant pleasure. A man who knows how to cook and clean. A man who...is a man. A man who will sweep me off my feet but allow me to fly free, all while he makes me come alive beneath his tongue.

  Too bad he’s ripped off my wings and stuffed me in a cage instead.

  If our circumstances were different—if we’d met in normal ways—I suspected I would never have let him go. I would’ve fallen head over heels. I would’ve threaded my fortune and future with his without a backward glance.

  Something inside me knew that.

  It was terrifyingly black and white.

  I didn’t know why I knew but whenever I looked at him, everyone else paled. First, it’d been because he threatened my life. Now, it was because he threatened everything.

  He was pain.

  Pain in my heart, my soul, the very core of my common sense.

  He stiffened as we stared at each other, waiting for someone to strike. Distrust and unease laced between us, just as strong as our chemistry and desire.

  Just because he rivalled any other male I’d met, didn’t mean I willingly accepted the strangeness happening between us.

  I still wanted to run.

  I would still do everything in my power to be free.

  “Did you sleep?” I tipped up my chin, my hands balled in the fleece.

  If our eyes weren’t locked, I would’ve missed the tightening of his shoulders. The flare of his nostrils. The flicker of fear in his soul.

  In this instance, he wasn’t so easy to read. He was cryptic and coarse, throwing a question back instead of an answer. “Do you always wake so violently?”

  I swallowed back my nightmare. He already knew too much about me. He didn’t need to know my mind had spun stories, inserting this scarred, angry man into the agonising role of a child beaten into servitude. “Only when I’m in the company of my jailer.”

  His fingers linked tighter together between his legs. “I think I’m more than just your jailer at this point.” His gaze once again dipped down my body, his pupils hot with possession.

  I was warm now the sun had risen, but in a flash of defiance, I lifted the blanket to cover my breasts. A cover I didn’t have when I first went to sleep. “You gave me a blanket. You wrapped me up.” I tilted my head. “You stroked my hair and kissed my—”

  “You’re mistaken.” Unfolding his legs, he shoved away the empty chocolate wrappers that we’d devoured after he’d taken me on my belly and shot out the tailgate. Sun dappled his bare skin, dancing on silver scars, highlighting sinew and strength.

  He was a beautiful man, even with his flaws.

  He was rugged and untamed and far too similar to the bears and bobcats that prowled these parks. All he needed were claws and sharp teeth.

  Stretching, he bent backward then dropped his hands to rake through his shaggy hair. Without looking back at me, he strode to the trees by the faded ribbon that’d survived the storm and snatched his damp pants from the branches.

  Keeping his back to me, he went to put them on but swayed to the side. Stumbling, he tapped the side of his head with his palm as if trying to tune up a fuzzy frequency in his brain. Shaking his head, he tried again, slipping one leg then the other into the rain-wet clothing.

  Hoisting them up, he turned and swayed again, his lips twisted and forehead furrowed.

  Maybe he’s right that I concussed him.

  Was that the reason he hadn’t slept beside me? Why I had the feeling he’d stayed watch all night, whispering to me, revealing pieces of himself that he never would while I was awake?

  Buttoning up the torn, filthy slacks, he returned to the tailgate and cleared his throat. “Get up. Time to go home.”

  “My home is hours away. It’s in a quaint little suburb, and my front lawn needs a serious mow. If we’re going there, I’ll need those keys you threw away last night.” I swiveled to sit on my knees, rolling my sore wrists still bound with my climbing rope. “Is that the home you speak of?”

  “Let me rephrase.” He gave me a mocking smirk. “Let’s go back to my home. I need to get back.”

  “Why? Is someone missing you?”

  “I have chores.”

  “Chores?” I laughed quietly. “I’ve seen how clean you keep that house, but surely, dust doesn’t warrant you bolting back in a hurry.”

  He grimaced with annoyance. “I preferred you when you were sleeping.”

  “And I preferred you when you were being gentle. When you kissed my cheek and whispered to me, all while you thought I was sleeping.”

  “You were sleeping.” He scowled. “You dreamed it all.”

  “If I dreamed everything, why do I have a blanket covering me?”

  “You grabbed it yourself.”

  “And you know that how?”

  He crossed his arms over his bare chest. “Unlike you, I didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t sleep.”

  I stilled. “Not even a cat nap? You must be exhausted.” Come to think of it, shadows did etch under his eyes, darkening his skin and revealing fine lines.

  “I’ll sleep when we’re home.”

  “Why don’t you sleep now, before we start the long journey back?”

  His jaw clenched as his temper spiked. “Is this you nagging me out of concern or just to piss me off?”

  “Neither. I just want to know why you can’t sleep.”

  “I can sleep.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  He dropped his arms and balled his hands. “Christ, if this is what it’s going to be like living with you, I’m leaning toward the gag idea.”

  “Gag me, and you’ll have a serious problem.” Rage heated my blood. “If you won’t tell me your name, at least te
ll me something. You’ve been inside me twice. You’ve taken it upon yourself to own my freedom. Why can’t you sleep—”

  “I need the valley, alright? I need my dorm—” He choked and cut himself off. “Just get the hell out of bed. I want to go. Now.”

  My back prickled at his anger. I should stop. I shouldn’t push him. But something urged me to keep nettling him. To nudge and nudge until he snapped and revealed something I could use to my benefit. “I’m rather enjoying our little camp. Let’s stay another day.”

  “No,” he growled.

  “Why?” I raised my eyebrows. “Think there’s someone worse than you out here?”

  He stiffened. His chest rose and fell. I expected him to scoff and slap my question away. To perhaps grab me from the Jeep and force me to walk where he commanded. Instead, his eyes went cold, and his voice turned almost dead. “There’s always someone worse than me.”

  I sucked in a breath, aware I’d poked a predator who might not have sharp teeth or claws but could devour me all the same. I felt a small pang of guilt. I’d gleaned enough to know his past was not a pretty one. He’d survived something I couldn’t begin to imagine. Yet his life was not my life, and my life was currently in jeopardy because of him.

  Keeping eye contact, I let truth slip into my murmur, “Not from where I’m standing.”

  He flinched, then tossed me a savage sneer. “If you’re so aware of what I can do to you, then perhaps you should do what I say.” Throwing me the bag holding my spare clothes, he snarled, “Get dressed.”

  Clutching the bag, I didn’t let it go. “What happened last night?”

  “What?” His eyes jerked to mine. “I fucked you. Twice. You came. Twice. That’s all—”

  “Still determined not to acknowledge it, huh?” Standing on my knees, I let the blanket fall away, revealing every inch of me. Dried mud, pebbled nipples, and a stupid core that never seemed to stop wanting him.

  He sucked in a breath as I crawled awkwardly through the remains of our Jeep picnic and swung my legs off the edge of the tailgate.

  My heart raced as that undeniable attraction once again infected us with madness as I dropped to the ground and stood nude before him.

  He hissed low in his chest as I looked down, locking onto his rapidly hardening cock.

  Last night...God, last night.

  I shivered as fragments of thunder, lightning, thrusting, and coming all rained down on me. When he’d taken me against my will, I should’ve been appalled. I should’ve vowed to end his life the moment I had the chance. Instead, I’d spread my legs like a hussy and let him take everything.