Fable of Happiness Book Two

by Pepper Winters

  That was the honest to God truth. The only reason I struggled so much with what I should feel toward this man and the reality that I’d gone past pity, past empathy, and I’d stepped entirely into his world.

  I’d seen where he’d slept as a slave. I’d witnessed a man scream in his sleep. I’d uncovered a boy who’d given his body to monsters in order to protect his family as much as possible.

  He’d sacrificed himself for those he loved.

  And now, he had nothing left.

  I clawed at his back, my heels kicking his ass as he surged again and again into me. “Please!” My tears caught in my barbed-wire-wrapped throat. “Please, stop, please—”

  “That’s right. Beg.” He rutted harder. “You said you always love it when I beg. Let’s see if I can learn to like it too.”

  His speed increased to outright war.

  He punished me for trying. He proved I was an idiot for caring.

  But beneath it all, he proved he was unreachable, even for a girl who wanted so, so much to help him.

  He kissed my cheek, softness in his viciousness.

  And I spaced a bit.

  My mind detached.

  I didn’t want to be here anymore.

  I couldn’t hate, and I couldn’t forgive.

  I didn’t know what that made me. Weak or kind? Brave or stupid?

  This wasn’t just a physical overtaking. It was emotional too, leaving me stripped bare and questioning everything. Questioning society and laws and the very foundations of humanity.

  “You feel special...more,” he grunted. “You feel...” He gasped as if he was the one being tortured. He cried out as if someone hurt him. He jerked above me with a keening cry.

  His pain brought me back.

  It locked me to him even as he rode me harder.

  And my body reacted.

  It sparked, it welcomed, it didn’t follow the same rules as my mind. All it knew was it was being claimed by a male who made me feel, who made me wet, who’d crawled into my head, my core, my heart.

  And I forbade it from doing such things.

  If I allowed a climax to happen, that would open dangerous doors in my mind to what sort of sex I enjoyed—forcing me to admit confessions I wasn’t ready to face.

  “This can’t be happening.” I spoke to the books. I implored leather bindings full of fantasy and fiction, seeking a way to save him and myself.

  I couldn’t allow myself to find pleasure from this.

  Never.

  I couldn’t allow him to do this.

  Even in his sleep.

  I needed magic to cure us. I needed something bigger than both of us.

  But the printed words were useless.

  It was just us.

  Me and him.

  Joined in unholy matrimony.

  “Kas,” I cried. “Fucking stop!”

  He reared up onto his elbows, sinking his hands into my hair, holding me still as he drove into me. His eyes were drenched with grief, with the blackest despair. “I can’t. I can’t stop. I can’t stop until it’s over.” He kissed me as his hips surged upward, sinking every inch inside me, claiming every part of my battered heart, ensuring I knew just how cruelly he’d been tortured, just how much he’d endured.

  He’d endured all that he could.

  He’d endured until he’d broken.

  And this was him, shattered beyond salvation.

  His tongue tried to enter my mouth.

  I kept my lips tightly closed.

  But it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.

  He wouldn’t let me say no to him.

  Just like no one had let him say no to them.

  His cock buried deeper into me, his balls slapping against my ass, his body locking mine against the carpet.

  And he kissed me.

  Hard.

  Vicious.

  Dirty and deep, filthy and feral.

  His tongue worshiped me even as his body defiled me. He was still in there, chained in the pits of his mind, screaming for someone strong enough to pull him into the light.

  Was I strong enough?

  Could I be brave enough to forgive, even while this man took away all of my control?

  He whimpered into my mouth.

  He nipped at me, clung to me, his violence threaded with utmost sorrow.

  And this time, it wasn’t my body that reacted. It was my soul.

  A wiser being than me. A celestial power that couldn’t be touched by flesh or fornication. A knowing entity that said if I could survive being locked in a valley and chained to a beast, I could survive a shattered man with no one.

  He’d shoved me past my hate, and wisdom had evolved me past rage.

  I understood him too much to condemn him.

  I gave in.

  I went limp.

  My arms fell to the side as if he’d crucified me. My head sank into his hands imprisoning my hair. My legs flopped wide, no longer denying his rapid plunging into my prone body.

  He fucked me deeper, taking what I’d given him. “Given up? Finally understood that you’re mine?” He licked my cheek like a wolf tasting his meal. “Or do you feel what I do? Feel the heat, the fire, the need.” His breath caught as if his entire system short-circuited with bliss. “How—” He swallowed a groan. “How does it feel to have nothing? To know you’re nothing. Nothing but filthy snow, destined to melt and die.” His voice was dirt and death and desire. “God, I—” His face contorted with pain. “You feel like...death. Like life. Like—shit....” He clawed at the carpet by my ears, driving deeper. “I can’t stand this.”

  He sounded twisted and lost, desperate and sick.

  And I hurt so fucking much for him.

  He was smothered and choking, dying from every black nightmare he’d lived through.

  I’d felt numerous things for this man in the month that I’d been his. I’d cared for him maternally, I’d cursed him eternally, and I’d fallen for the boy he once was.

  But now, now I opened my arms to the true monster this heinous mansion had created. I was brave enough, mad enough, caring enough to welcome a man who no longer belonged to himself. A man who fucked me with tears in his eyes while he repeated the disgusting things that’d once been whispered into his ears.

  He taught me that for all my empathy of what he’d gone through, it was nothing, nothing compared to living it. Of feeling the destruction it caused firsthand.

  The partitioning of your psyche.

  The corners in your mind.

  The walls soaring sky high to block any memory of the pain.

  That was what this was.

  A lesson.

  A teaching that I would forever remember. Always recall the fear, the loneliness, and the momentous understanding that just because I was human, just because our species was on the top of the food chain, nothing was guaranteed. There was nothing written that said we deserved happiness or hope, safety or sanity.

  Some of us weren’t so lucky.

  Some of us were forgotten and left to die.

  He thrust again, his entire body tensing as he chased a release. “Please. I need it. Just one second of pleasure.”

  Pleasure that his body might want, but his mind thrashed against. He was two people in one. The monster and the boy. The sane and the insane.

  He grunted with frustration. He howled with despair.

  He fucked me as if any second now something would snatch him, kill him, and leave him bleeding in the woods. His hips drove deep, and we both cried out. His cock hit the natural obstruction of my body, bruising both of us.

  His forehead furrowed as his speed increased, short stabbing thrusts as he lost himself to his nightmares. He snarled with bitterness. Driven mad with anger, grief, and failure.

  He was at a pinnacle.

  He was about to fall.

  I made the choice to be strong enough to catch him.

  Lifting my arms, I cupped his face. I willed heat and gentleness to my fingertips as I spoke from
the inner wisdom and power inside me. “Wake up, Kassen Sands. I need you to stop.” My tone wasn’t mocking or mean. It wasn’t cajoling or cruel. It was breathless with tears and broken with kindness.

  He froze for a second. His hips still pumped with the primitive instinct to copulate. He trembled. He panted. His eyes were glazed and lost to me.

  But I didn’t give in.

  I fought for him.

  Because no one else ever had.

  “Kas...look at me. See me.” I dug my fingers into his scruff, latching my nails into his soul and dragging him back from ghosts and demons.

  He blinked.

  I whispered, “Please...see me.”

  And then, the world imploded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT.

  Something was...wrong.

  So very fucking wrong.

  But even as my mind tried to understand, my body was too far gone. Too drunk on lust and full of desperate frustration to finish. My hips continued working against my control, chasing that ever-elusive release.

  I had to come.

  I had to feel happiness.

  Didn’t she see?

  Couldn’t they give me that tiny shred of joy before they took everything else from me?

  “Kas...look at me. See me.” Trembling hands cupped my cheeks, warm and gentle, so different from how others touched me.

  I blinked.

  “Please...see me,” she murmured, sounding so sweet and so, so far away.

  I blinked again.

  I slowed.

  I tried to see.

  And slowly, the black fog lifted.

  Snow flurries and blood-soaked carpets vanished, incinerating like pieces of paper chewed up by the fire.

  And then, I saw clearly.

  And I gagged.

  I retched.

  I died.

  “Oh, fuck! FUCK!” I jack-knifed up and withdrew. I skidded back so fast, I fell on my ass and sent a lance of agony through my broken arm.

  That was why I had that contraption around my forearm. Why I was hurting in places that hadn’t been touched in my nightmare. Why I suddenly realized how badly I’d messed up.

  I’d been dreaming.

  I’d touched her in my nightmares.

  I’d raped—

  “Shit, shit, SHIT!” I scooted backward until I collided with the wall of the library. I drew up my knees, complete with undone jeans still clinging to my thighs, and huddled into a ball, breathing hard, coated in sweat, my cock glistening from being inside her.

  From being inside her against her will.

  Against my will.

  Against everything that’d been right and true between us.

  No.

  Christ, no.

  I buried my face in my hands, my bones cracking as I began to shake. It was worse than the snowstorm when I’d been curled at the bottom of Levin’s bed. Worse than any ice or chill I’d ever endured.

  This shaking wasn’t because of an outward discomfort but because my heart was shattering, my soul was splintering, my very fucking hope at being human was lost.

  Gone.

  Shot to pieces.

  Just like that.

  The sound of Gemma sitting upright and the rustle of clothing as she readjusted the mess I’d caused made me moan under my tattered breath.

  I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop the pressure, the swelling mass of grief inside me.

  It quadrupled in size, clogging up my lungs until I gasped for air. It punctured my heart until it beat a dying drum.

  I couldn’t stand the agony. I couldn’t stomach what I’d done.

  “I’m sorry,” I grunted between my fingers. “So, so fucking sorry.”

  I couldn’t look up.

  Couldn’t see her.

  Couldn’t bear witness to what I’d done.

  But with my eyes closed, that debilitating lust came back. The whispers of doing to them what’d been done to me hissed in my ears.

  Take her.

  Finish her.

  Come in her.

  My hips rocked up on their own accord, making me almost vomit all over the carpet.

  God, when would this shit end?

  When would I be sane again?

  When could I trust what I saw and what I heard were real and not my rotten-riddled past? When would I be myself again? Be that kid who’d loved others more than himself? Who knew that violence against violence only equaled more pain? Who still believed he was worthy of something good?

  I wanted good.

  I wanted kind.

  I wanted safe and sheltered, love and peace.

  I wanted things I’d forgotten I could never have. Things that I’d forgotten the meaning of. Things I didn’t fucking deserve.

  My eyes burned even as my cock still begged for a release.

  I wanted to cry.

  I wanted to come.

  I wanted to rip apart my ribs and throw my fucking heart out the goddamn window.

  I dug fingers into my eye sockets, doing my best to erase the images of sex and sadistic pleasure. I could barely breathe, I teetered on a panic attack, yet my cock continued to bob between my legs, continued to frustrate me with need, to ooze with cum that I would never spill.

  And suddenly, it was all too much.

  I couldn’t contain it.

  My body wasn’t strong enough to bottle up such suffering. It was gnawing at me, hissing at me, ripping me into bloody pieces.

  Soaring to my feet, I staggered sideways as vertigo threw me off balance. Kicking off the goddamn jeans, I spun to face the wall and drove my fist into the embossed wallpaper. “Fuck!”

  I grunted as my knuckles bellowed.

  “Fuck you!” I bellowed as I struck again and again. I hurled fist after fist, left and right, pummelling the only thing strong enough to embrace my rage, my agony, my misery. “Fuck all of you!”

  Something cracked in my hands.

  My arm gave up screaming at me to stop punching a wall with a broken bone. My entire body shut down, giving me the quietness I needed just to strike and strike and strike.

  To smear the wall with my blood and do my best to stem the tears running down my cheeks.

  I lost all sense of time.

  I gave over every shred of myself, feeding every molecule into my fuckedupness.

  I beat that wall until my hands were pulp and the wallpaper hung in tatters by the light switch.

  And then...only then...

  Only once I gagged on air and sweat dripped off my eyelashes did I spin to face her.

  Only once I couldn’t remain standing did my arms fall to my sides and my chin raise, and I forced myself to look at her.

  To look at how much I’d failed her.

  Failed because I failed at everything. I’d hurt her because that was the only thing I remembered how to do. The only example I had to follow.

  I was exhausted.

  Done.

  I had nothing left.

  No evil whispers, no manic delusions, no awful reality.

  I was swimming in misery.

  I crashed to my knees as my eyes caught hers, and I grunted with so much fucking pain.

  She sat primly on the floor, her cheeks glittering with tears, her hair full of static and crowning her like a halo.

  She looked as if a bear had mauled her. As if she’d gone to war with her biggest enemy and only just survived. Her lips were swollen. Her shirt torn. Her legs red from rubbing on the carpet.

  And even now, even while my heart dissolved into a pile of worthless acid, I still wanted her. My cock still throbbed for her. My body still tormented me until the end.

  Bowing my head, I braced myself for her hatred.

  I cowered for the curses I deserved.

  I would do whatever she asked. I would free her. Love her. Worship her until I could make this right.

  But...in that never-ending moment full of wretchedness and wrongness, she just gave me the tiniest of shrugs.
>
  A shrug with glossy eyes and lips that quirked into a watery half-smile.

  A shrug that somehow granted understanding. That wobbled with forgiveness. That miraculously accepted that I’d hurt her even when I didn’t want to. That I’d fucked her against her control.

  A shrug that said...it’s okay.

  And that fucking shrug broke me into smithereens.

  I curled into myself.

  I hugged the body that’d forsaken me.

  I fell forward over a cock that still tried to control me.

  And I screamed.

  I screamed for help.

  For salvation.

  For deliverance from this never-ending nightmare.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WOULD never be confessed to anyone.

  No matter if I managed to get home.

  No matter how hot these secrets burned.

  No matter how good it would feel to hug my mother and brother and tell them what I’d endured.

  No matter if I climbed back to my life, my friends, my career...I would never utter a single word of what happened between Kas and me in that library.

  Not because he’d raped me while trapped in a nightmare of his past.

  Not because I knew now what it was like to have every inch of my power stripped away by a man so much larger and stronger than myself. And not because I’d left the kitchen, after doing his bidding and cooking him dinner no less, merely to find myself on my back with him rutting between my legs.

  No.

  None of those facts ensured this night would be swallowed until I died.

  It would remain my biggest secret, not because of what he did...but because of what I did in return.

  I didn’t understand it.

  I couldn’t untangle it.

  But watching the monster who’d trapped me, chained me...raped me...come apart in violence and grief, switched all my tears from my own pain to his.

  I cried for him.

  He’d shown me what he’d endured. What his life had been like. What it felt like to be stripped of everything—to be ignored when pleading, to be used when begging, to be unseen even while being so intimately joined.

  He’d been nothing to them, just like I’d been nothing to him.

  He’d been discarded and scrunched up, thrown away into the dark only to be dragged back out whenever they wanted him. He’d been scarred far, far worse than the wounds on his body. And those sorts of wounds (soul wounds) would never heal. They’d festered too long without company, without help, without compassion. He was a lost cause. He had nowhere else to go and no one in which to turn to.