Fable of Happiness Book One Read online

  I licked my lips and reached for a bottle of water, desperately thirsty now that I’d quenched a sugar-craving I hadn’t even known I had. Once I’d drunk my fill, I replied, “Eleven years or so. I don’t exactly remember.”

  You can.

  You just choose not to.

  She flinched and wrapped her fingers around the headrest as if my answer almost knocked her over. She glanced at the rope I’d tied around her wrists, her face revealing the battle of learning me and cursing me.

  Slowly, she exhaled, her shoulders dropping from around her ears. “That must’ve been incredibly hard.”

  Snatching a new chocolate bar, I unwrapped it and shrugged. “No harder than the eight years or so before that.”

  Her eyebrows shot high, disappearing into her tangled, filthy hair. Hesitation filled her, but she still asked the question I expected and didn’t want. “What happened in those eight years or so before?”

  I gave her the only answer that mattered. “We survived.”

  “We?”

  I shook my head and bit into the chocolate.

  That was enough for story time. Enough of straying too close to the edge of then and now. It was still dark outside. I’d already slipped. If I wasn’t careful, I might share too much and encourage the sludge of nightmares to find me again.

  In my current state, I remembered a little more than I cared to. The vagueness of knowing crimes had been committed against me, the uneasy notions of beatings, rapes, and punishments were losing their fussy forgetfulness.

  Keep your walls. Forget. Ignore.

  The past receded a little, feeling less like me and more like someone who I used to know—someone I didn’t even like.

  That helped. That distance kept memories devoid of emotion.

  It kept my life less like the sum of who I was and more like a sad, poorly directed movie that I’d barely watched and didn’t care at all about the main character.

  If she continued to ask, to push me closer into remembering, those walls would crumble, the movie would absorb me, and I would be the main character screaming out his agony with no one around to care.

  Stuffing the rest of the chocolate into my mouth, I threw away the wrapper and reached for another.

  “You’re having another one? A third and you’ll turn diabetic.”

  I scowled. “There’s plenty. For once in my life, I’m not having to conserve.” I gave her a thin smile. “Thanks to your stash, I can be a glutton.”

  Her huff of annoyance was loud, followed by the faint rock of the vehicle as she spun in her seat, awkwardly opened the door with the rope still imprisoning her, and leaped out.

  I exploded out of the tailgate, planting myself in front of her. “And where do you think you’re going?” Soft rain slicked us, gracing her nakedness with goosebumps.

  “Anyone ever tell you you’re hard work?” Pushing me out of the way, she opened the passenger back door. “You’re eating my food, idiot. I’m starving. I’m not exactly going to let you have a car picnic without me.” Scrambling into the back, she crawled with her hands together, unashamedly with her ass in the air and flashes of her pussy making me rock fucking hard until she leaned against the opposite side of the Jeep.

  The back seats had been laid flat, leaving the rear with more room for gear and possibly a sleeping space. Her boxes of supplies dotted like life-giving islands in a sea of scratchy carpeting.

  Tilting her head at me, still standing in the rain with my cock standing to attention, she asked sickly sweet, “Enjoying your shower, dearest? You’ve had your dinner and now getting ready for bed?”

  I gave her the finger, aware chocolate smeared my fingerprints. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a pain in the ass?”

  “Yes. Regularly.” She flashed a pained smile. “Joshua.”

  Jealousy heaved through me. “And who the hell is Joshua? Boyfriend?” I searched her left hand even though I knew there was no ring there. I’d noticed when she’d been unconscious within a few minutes of meeting her.

  She wasn’t bound to another, which made it scarily easy to bind her to me.

  Wiping her arms free from the fine haze of rain, she sighed as if my temper grated on her nerves. “You’ve strangled me, hunted me, fucked me, and stolen my food, yet you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you?” Her eyes shot up, locking me in place.

  My forehead furrowed. My memory knocked to deliver things she’d told me in the past. Things that were now firmly locked behind a door I could not, would not open.

  Something about a brother, perhaps?

  Bracing myself, I shrugged as if I didn’t care and slammed the car door shut. Marching back to the tailgate, I hopped inside, shoved away the mess I’d made, and adopted her position.

  Back against the vehicle, legs spread out in front.

  Two naked, dirty people who despised each other, sharing a respite from the rain with chocolate.

  The only lie in that sentence was I didn’t think I despised her.

  I fucking hungered for her.

  Licking her lips, she reached for the box full of candy, managing to fend for herself despite her wrists roped together. Her breasts swelled to the side as she rummaged for a Snickers bar. Her nipples hard from the chill in the air, her hair sticking to her stunning skin.

  And fuck, I suddenly no longer wanted chocolate.

  My balls ached, and my cock twitched, demanding some sort of friction. Without thinking, I dropped my eyes to it, fisting my hands so they wouldn’t get any ideas of touching it.

  The usual faint marks from my past had been replaced with bright wounds from our fight. Indents of her nails and bruises forming at the bottom of my shaft blazed in the gloom.

  It ought to have summoned my temper. To have me cursing her very presence.

  Instead, it granted a strange kind of kinship. She might not wear anyone’s ring. She might be tied in my rope. But in some sick way, I now belonged to her. She’d been the first in a decade to brand me. And, for the first time, seeing her punishment still embedded in my flesh filled me with lust instead of horror.

  “I’m sorry...by the way.”

  Her soft voice wrenched my head up. Her hazel stare on my cock only made my belly clench harder.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked, unwrapping her chosen meal and taking a huge bite.

  Christ, yes, it hurts.

  Hurts for you, goddammit.

  “No,” I snapped.

  “To be fair, I wouldn’t have had to hurt you if you didn’t have such a fascination with wrapping your fingers around my throat.”

  “If you stopped being such a menace, perhaps I’d stop trying to kill you.”

  “I’m the menace?” She pointed at herself with the half-eaten Snickers. “I think if others were watching this twisted relationship of ours, they would disagree.”

  “If others were watching, I’d tear out their eyes for seeing you bare.” I dragged my gaze down her mud-filthy beauty. “I’m debating between torturing myself watching you eat that chocolate bar or demanding you get on your knees.”

  She inhaled sharply. Her hands shook, wrapped around her chocolate.

  The small space of the car switched from awareness into lust-laced senselessness. The air was tiny fireworks, the oxygen we breathed electricity, and the carbon dioxide we exhaled a drug slowly drowning us.

  Ever so slowly, she took another bite.

  Her tongue licked her lips, her teeth bit down, her throat worked as she chewed.

  And I almost came.

  I throbbed, wanting inside her mouth, wanting to be the chocolate bar as she swallowed and devoured.

  Turned out, giving a woman to a sexually repressed, starving man was not a good idea.

  Snatching the half-full water bottle I’d drank from, I leaped from the vehicle and into the rain.

  “What are you—?” Her confused question halted as I tipped the bottle over my cock and gritted my teeth against the grotesque sensation of touching myself.<
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  I performed a perfunctory cleaning. That was all. Wrapping my hand around my hardness, washing away the dirt and mud from rolling around in the storm.

  A crest of sickness tried to push up through my guts, shoving aside cocoa and sugar, replacing good with bad, tainting everything with sordid reminders.

  I tore my hand away, tipping the rest of the bottle over my length, letting droplets trail to my balls.

  The second I was clean, I tossed the bottle to the side, crawled into the tailgate, and didn’t stop until I kneeled before her. Kneeled with trembling muscles and rapid heartbeats. Kneeled with desperation and a shitload of pain.

  I kneeled before her.

  Now, it’s her turn.

  My voice had gotten lost in the darkness inside me, echoing through my chest as I growled, “Kneel.”

  She froze. Her chocolate bar fell from her bound hands. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

  I merely shook my head. “You’re wrong. I’m already inside you.”

  She gasped.

  For the longest second, we stared at each other. I physically felt as if her eyes were chains, slinking around me, holding me immobile as locks snapped into place. Padlocks with no keys, chains with no weaknesses, a cage of knots and fastenings that would never be undone.

  I couldn’t catch a breath as heat filled my heart.

  A heat filled with knowing that she was right about our connection. That it burned bright, despite our war. That it was more powerful than the both of us.

  The longer we stayed together, the harder it would be to undo. Even now, pieces of me were being erased—for good this time, not just behind a wall I hastily erected. It erased fragments of the cruelty inside me, the distrust, the violence, the heavily conditioned boy who knew death better than he knew living.

  For a single heartbeat, everything felt right.

  Easy.

  Peaceful.

  God...peace.

  She gave me peace after a lifetime of distress.

  She gave me the silence I sought every second that I was awake. I didn’t need to run around the valley. I didn’t need to absorb myself in a book. I didn’t need to hide from the mania inside my mind.

  All I had to do was look at her.

  Be with her.

  Sink inside her.

  A sudden pain struck me in the temples, making me wince. My vision blacked out for a second, the weird vertigo I’d suffered from her striking me with the shovel returning.

  The worst headache I’d ever felt came then faded, leaving me swaying and turned upside down.

  What...what had I been thinking about?

  I’d been...happy.

  Something had made happiness grow in my heart.

  But it was fading.

  Popping.

  Turning black and cold.

  “Hey...are you alright?” Her touch landed on my thigh. A hesitant, wary touch from someone who recognized the man in front of her wasn’t entirely sane. “You blacked out for a second—”

  “You concussed me,” I bit out. “I’ve had a headache ever since you hit me.”

  She stiffened and turned prickly. “I wouldn’t have had to hit you if—” Inhaling hard, she forced herself to stay kind, giving me things I didn’t deserve. “Maybe sit back down. Have another chocolate—”

  “Quiet.”

  There was magic in this woman. Viperish magic that’d somehow twined around me while we’d been sitting in this car. I didn’t know how she’d done it, but she’d made me soft, made me vulnerable.

  Never again.

  Never again would I be taken advantage of.

  She needed to be reminded of that.

  Immediately.

  Shutting my heart down, embracing the man I’d become after losing everything, I snarled, “Are you deliberately disobeying me? I said, kneel.” Grabbing the rope around her wrists, I jerked her forward.

  “What? Stop! I was trying to help you—”

  “I don’t need your help. I need your body. I need you to obey.”

  “I’ll never obey a madman.”

  I chuckled as she tumbled to the side. “I’m not mad, Gemma Ashford.” I manhandled her hips, twisting her until she landed on all fours. “I’m just not available for others to use anymore.”

  “I’m not using you, you monster. You’re the one using me!”

  “And you’re even more delicious than chocolate.”

  I drank in the sight of her, falling forward onto her elbows, wrists locked together, her bare ass beckoning me. Her pussy still glistened from when I’d eaten her in the rain. The orgasms she’d denied both of us would still be there, waiting for me to finish.

  She would give that to me.

  It’s mine.

  I ran a fingertip down her spine.

  She quivered, a pained groan spilling from her lips. “Please...”

  Her plea did terrible things to me.

  I’d never wanted anyone so badly.

  It gave me a dose of the power I’d briefly tasted.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  She scoffed. “What I want is the right to say no.”

  “Truly?” Gently, ever so gently, I ran my fingers down the crack in her ass.

  She shot forward, trying to get away. “Yes, truly!”

  “Why do you want to say no to something you yourself admitted is out of our control?” Down, down, I slid my touch to her pussy, rubbing the wetness around her folds, dipping lower to her clit. “Doesn’t it burn when I touch you? Doesn’t your belly cramp and body clench for more?”

  “Don’t throw my words back at me,” she groaned. Her back bowed. Her head fell forward, pressing against the rough carpet of the car. “Please...don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Don’t admit that I can’t breathe without wanting to fuck you? Don’t confess that you’re doing things to me that I can’t seem to stop? Doesn’t that make you happy? Knowing that you’re not the only one screwed up by all of this?”

  “God, you’re messing with my mind.”

  “And you’re messing with mine.” I shook my head as the fog and unbalance from being struck in the skull returned. I felt strange. Loose. Burning up. “You’ve drawn my blood and bruised my bones, and you dare try to say no to me?”

  “Fair’s fair.” She gasped as I swept my finger back to her entrance, dipping inside to my first knuckle. “Holy—”

  “Fair’s fair?” I laughed coldly. “Nothing’s fair about this. You weren’t supposed to trespass on my fucking heart.”

  Christ, what the hell?

  The fog was crushing me, stealing control of my thoughts and mouth.

  She shivered. “Is-is that true? Am I—”

  “You’re mine. That’s all you need to know.”

  “I belong to no one but me.”

  “Yet here you are, bound, spread, dripping for my cock.”

  “Don’t flatter—” she cried out as I pulsed my finger, teasing her “—yourself. My wetness doesn’t mean I want you.”

  “Are you so sure about that?” I bent and licked my way around her hipbone, keeping my finger shallow in her pussy, making her crave, causing her inner muscles to flutter with greed.

  “If you weren’t trapped, would you really kick me away? Knowing how good it feels when I fuck you? Knowing that I’ll pleasure you, worship you, make you come harder than you’ve ever come before?”

  “This isn’t happening,” she moaned.

  “I can assure you that it is.” I drove my finger in to the second knuckle, pulsing in her heat. “You’re soaking.”

  “Oh, God.” Her entire body snapped up, then folded forward.

  Her pussy clenched around my finger, the shockwave traveling through my hand, up my forearm, into my bloodstream, and directly to my cock.

  I thickened to unbearable levels. Wetness oozed out the tip, starving for her.

  Withdrawing my finger, I rubbed her clit again. “You want me.
”

  “You’re an asshole,” she moaned again, her words almost slurring.

  “Asshole, huh?” Dipping my finger back into her pussy, this time, I didn’t stop at the first knuckle. I drove it inside her. Pushing, diving, feeding her the entire length.

  Her reaction almost made me come.

  Her hips shot backward, her knees slid wider, her back lowered until her ass jutted into the air. “Fuck you.” The curse came out more like a beseech.

  “Christ, you’re beautiful.” My mouth watered, and my belly hungered. Concussion or not, this woman was my medicine and disease all in one.

  “Tell me to mount you,” I grunted. “Tell me how much you want me to fill you.”

  Her head snapped left and right, clinging to rationality all while the electricity in the vehicle incinerated it. “Never.”

  “Say it.” I fucked her with my finger.

  She couldn’t control her reaction. Her desire. “...No.”

  She wanted me, didn’t she? She felt this too. Her trembles couldn’t be faked. Her wetness couldn’t be hidden.

  Stop lying to me!

  I need to believe in this. Believe in something.

  “Tell me to fuck you.”

  “I’m telling you no!”

  My head swam. How could she deny us after the mutual destruction outside? She’d kissed me back. She’d come on me. She’d let me into places inside her that no one else ever had before.

  I needed back in there.

  I needed to feel that peace.

  To hear it wasn’t a lie even while I knew it was too good to be true.

  Her continued denials clawed deep tracks through my heart. A heart that I’d done my best to patch up with glue for a decade. Scorn and hate combined made the perfect bandage against loss and loneliness.

  The only problem was, she seemed to be a solvent that gave me nowhere to fucking hide.

  Tearing out my finger, I joined two together and speared them into her. “Tell me you need me as much as I need you.”

  “Holy shit—” She rocked on my penetration, her pussy greedy for more.

  “Tell me!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not just taking my body, you’re taking my damn soul!”

  I froze.

  I broke.