CHAPTER NINETEEN

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I WAS DEFINITELY SCHIZOPHRENIC.

How else could I describe the switches inside my head? The painful evolution of who I’d been for so long, followed by the agonizing regression back into the darkness I was born in.

For the past seven days, I’d become a stranger to myself.

I’d had far too much time to contemplate and analyze. I hadn’t turned to cleaning or reading even though my idle hands craved to be busy. Any and all activities hurt my head and sent my balance spinning. I also had no strength to garden or prepare, and I’d promised Gemma a week to acclimatize, so she was off-limits.

I could’ve gone to her, but it wasn’t just her who needed space.

I didn’t understand what was happening to me.

One morning, I was the man I’d always known. I was cold and dark and had a fortress of bricks blocking my mind from memories I had no desire to face. But by afternoon, I was someone else entirely. I was calm and light with a petrifying contentment just knowing I wasn’t alone. Knowing there was another soul in this place, breathing, eating, existing.

I’d think of her and the urge to do something nice would overwhelm me. I’d dream of her and the craving to have her bowing at my feet would make me hard.

Both sides of me wanted control over her. The only problem was one side wanted to force that control while the other understood if she gave it to me willingly it would taste so much sweeter than stealing it.

Those sorts of thoughts terrified me.

They kept me awake at night until my concussed brain flickered out, sending me unconscious wherever I happened to be sitting. For a week, I stewed in my thoughts, slowly becoming less and less familiar with who I was. Who I wanted to be.

I had no distractions to throw myself into. All my usual crutches, all the tricks I used to keep my mental walls in place were no longer an option, and the forced self-reflection led me to one horrifying conclusion.

I’m mentally damaged.

I was sure Gemma already knew this. If I was stupid enough to go to her and tell her my revelation, she’d laugh in my face and ask why it’d taken so long for me to see.

But maybe that was the point.

If you were mentally damaged, how could you know you were mentally damaged unless someone else brought it to your attention?

What sort of checklist did you have to complete to finally figure out what was wrong with you?

Because things are wrong with me. Too many things to count.

In the hours where my eyes weren’t too fuzzy and my head didn’t ache too much, I’d skim the medical books in the library. I’d search for an explanation why, ever since Gemma’s arrival, I’d been slowly losing grip on my reality.

One book said schizophrenia was an imbalance of brain chemistry that distorted real events, created fictitious happenings, and generally fucked up the person diagnosed. Without medical and long-term care, they were a danger and menace to society.

Could that be why I lived out here on my own? Perhaps Storymaker and the guests never actually existed? Could I have made all of that up?

Those questions scared me shitless because if that was true, it meant my Fable family wasn’t real. It erased the only happiness I’d ever gleaned thanks to short, stolen moments of togetherness. Nyx and Wes, Jareth and Elise were all just fragments of my fractured mind.

But then my gaze would land on my scars and trigger a flash of someone’s cock being thrust into me or some woman’s mouth trailing down my belly, and I’d stop breathing.

That sort of filth could only have come from experience.

My mind might be sick but not that sick.

I glanced at the woman walking by my side. Her feet encased in boots, her legs bare and flashing beneath her skirt, soaking up the heat from the bright sunshine. Her blond hair was threaded with precious golds and coppers, glinting as her head ducked, and her hazel eyes followed the hop of a lazy grasshopper.

The sensation of her every footstep resonated around my waist thanks to the shorter chain binding us. She walked beside me as if we were equals, yet the soft plink of metal was a constant reminder she wouldn’t willingly walk beside me if given a choice.

And fuck, if that didn’t hurt.

Can you blame her?

I swallowed a growl. I might not be able to blame her for not wanting anything to do with me, but I could blame her for every other problem she’d caused. Life would be so much simpler if she’d just stayed the hell away. If I’d never been forced into this painful soul search and unwanted evolution.

Tipping her head to the sun, she lengthened her neck with grace and power, making my already hard cock twitch. She had shadows under her eyes, revealing her exhaustion from the past seven days.

Good.

I was glad she was tired because I felt the same way. Even after everything I’d endured, I couldn’t remember a time I felt more exhausted, more drained. I couldn’t accept that some days I woke and for the full hours I was aware, I didn’t recognize a single piece of me. I didn’t want to accept that I suffered from a medical condition without a cure.

She sighed and scanned the valley, drinking in the river in front of us and the swaying grass that was past time for a harvest. She looked so grounded, so centered in who she was, what she believed in, and what morals to follow.

At that moment, I stupidly thought she could help. She could cure me of whatever illness I—

Fuck, no way.

If I showed her a shred of how truly messed up I was, she wouldn’t fix me like I needed her to but merely use it to her advantage. She’d already taken care of me, repairing my body after she’d pushed me off the cliff. She’d shown me kindness, and in return, I’d cursed her. I’d trapped her, making promises that ensured she’d die here with me as her only company.

Why the hell would she try to help fix any other part of me after that?

I strode faster, forcing my legs to stay stable and upright. At least the buzzing in my ears had faded, and my eyes were more reliable today, even in the bright sunshine. Tiny increments of progress, just not fast enough for my liking.

She had no choice but to speed up with me, her ankle tugging on the leather cuff as the distance grew too far between us. With a huff, she jogged toward me, then wrapped her arms around herself as she matched my pace.

My hands clutched around the two snares I’d brought with us. Traps I’d designed and crafted to catch smaller game. I should’ve started trapping a few weeks ago, using the sun to dry the strips of meat so it lasted the long winter. I no longer had salt to preserve with, and smoking took time and firewood. I’d freeze a lot of the meat, but if our electricity supply was intermittent, we could risk losing everything that way.

“Stop,” I muttered, ducking down to ram the stake into the summer-hardened ground and open the door on the small cage. Setting the mechanism, ready to snap closed when something entered, I withdrew a handful of lettuce leaves from my jeans pocket and scattered them in the back. They were wilted and damaged but would still entice a range of wildlife.

Standing, I sucked in a breath and fought the urge to reach for her for balance. The valley swayed, and the roar of the river turned excruciatingly loud for a second before I swallowed down my nausea and locked my knees for stability.

Her gaze danced with questions. I would happily answer whatever she wanted to know—after all, she needed to learn this stuff. And really, I needed her to talk to me—about anything at this point. I needed to know I was still me even if she’d systemically destroyed me every hour she was in my godforsaken life.

However, she bit her cheek, shook her head once, and stepped away, waiting with her back to me until I joined her, and we fell into a silent walk again.

As we drew closer to the river, I set the second trap, placing it along the natural tracks of prey. Once again, she watched my every move but didn’t give me a single word. If she knew how hard her stare made me, she probably wouldn’t even do that. Could she guess that her eyes felt like a physical touch? That my blood grew hot, and my heart pounded quick, and my cock...well, that’d been fucking aching for days.

Pushing upright, I tripped sideways. I braced to crash but instinct had her reaching for me, grabbing my unbroken arm and yanking me to her. I tripped the other way, falling into her delicious curves, planting my hands onto her hips with possessive control.

We froze.

Everything went quiet.

The hunger inside me turned to shaky starvation.

My head lowered, my tongue licked my lips, my brain fogged with a single purpose...to kiss her. To kiss her stupid so she kissed me back and I could take her in the dirt like before. I’d promised I wouldn’t fuck her today, but she’d touched me first. She was the reason we were breathing hard, flushed and wanting with so much unspoken shit between us.

I grazed her nose with mine.

She flinched and pushed me, upsetting my balance again and stepping out of my grasp. “Next time, I’ll just let you fall.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Just like you let me fall off the cliff?”

She sniffed. “I refuse to repeat that conversation.”

“And I refuse to let you continue giving me the silent treatment.” I pinched the bridge of my nose before dropping my hand. “I told you I don’t like it. If I wanted silence again, I’d just have disposed of you when I had the chance.”

“Hah!” She smiled nastily. “And what chance was that? The one when you tried to strangle me the first time? Or was it the second? Oh wait, no, it was the third time, wasn’t it? The time you ran after me and pinned me into the mud?” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “But wait, that time you kissed me instead. You chose to make love to me instead of kill—”

“I didn’t make love to you.” I stood straight, temper crackling down my spine. “I fucked—”

“Yes, yes, you taught me a lesson by fucking me senseless.” She waved her hand. “Consider me terrified.”

“I—”

Goddammit, this woman.

I opened and closed my mouth, not quite sure what to volley with. My temples pounded, and I struggled to keep track of what we were arguing about. Wait, was this even an argument? I was confused and horny and dangerously close to just grabbing her and doing whatever I wanted. I wanted her ever since latching that cuff around her ankle. I’d wanted her every fucking second or every fucking day, and the fact I hadn’t taken her yet confounded me. I was no stranger to forced sexual contact. It was easy to get others to grant whatever twisted pleasure you were in the mood for. I should know. I’d been summoned far too many times to count. Yet for some idiotic reason, the longer I kept her—choosing to care for her like any good owner would his pet—the harder I found it to take her.

Probably because, no matter her denial, I’d never actually forced her. That time by her car had been entirely fucking mutual. And the second time in her car...shit, that’d been hot as hell, devastatingly erotic, and Christ, I needed back inside her.

Running both hands through my hair, I scowled. “What’s your point? I’m assuming you have a point? Or did you just feel like being a bitch for no reason?”

Her hands balled at my slur, but she kept her chin high and voice clipped. “My point, oh incredible master, is just like I don’t seem to have the power to kill you, you do not have the power to kill me.” She marched into me, stabbing my T-shirt with her finger. “Ergo, we are both doomed to live with threats and ultimatums but both too stupidly weak to do anything about them.”

“Speak for yourself.”

She snorted. “Okay, fine. Good luck proving me wrong.” Stomping off, she only got a few feet before the chain around her ankle yanked on the one around my waist, making us both grunt with discomfort.

Swallowing back rapidly unfurling anger, I stalked to her side. “I’m glad you’re so full of energy. That’s going to be convenient for the next task.”

She scowled. “What task?”

“That.” I pointed toward the river with its crystal water. Parts of the blue waterway followed sedately with barely a ripple, while just before the calm pool, rapids danced and bounced over rocks. Those rapids were responsible for eighty percent of all electricity power at Fables, and whatever had damaged the hydro plant needed to be fixed well before ice arrived.

Luckily, the rapids were the last part of the river to freeze, normally waiting until early spring to turn solid completely, meaning the solar panels could pick up the slack as sunlight hours increased. However, during the dead of winter, every kilojoule generated by this river was valued and sorely needed.

“Come.” Tugging the leash around my waist, I gave her no choice but to follow me to the water’s edge. She came grudgingly, her body tense and lips pursed in frustration. My heart chose that moment to skip a stupid beat as the memory of her in the foyer slammed into me. “Tell me what we need to do.”

We.

In that second, she’d accepted that there was a we. That whatever separate paths we’d been on were now unarguably threaded into one.

That memory vanished as quickly as it’d arrived, dumping me back by the river.

And fuck me, I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there or why.

For a terrifying second, I glanced around at a foreign land, and I didn’t have a goddamn clue who I was, where I was, or what I was supposed to be doing.

Oh, God.

Clammy sweat drenched me.

I sucked in a shallow breath.

Panic flowed swift, only to screech to a halt as my mind suddenly flooded with answers.

My valley. My river. Me.

Gemma.

I spun to look behind me, my heart unwilling to beat in fear that she’d been a mirage this whole time. That I’d made up the past few weeks. That I didn’t have anyone to call my own.

But she was there.

Watching me warily, her forehead pinched and teeth chewing on her bottom lip. “What? What happened?” She balled her hands as if she didn’t want to ask but felt like it was her duty after nursing me through the worst. “Are you...are you okay?”

Was I okay?

I don’t know.

What just happened?

I was used to my mind being riddled with barricades and embargos so memories couldn’t suck me down, but I’d never been so vacant before. Never forgot the fundamental pieces of my life.

It’s over.

You’re fine.

Don’t let her know.

Grunting, I cocked one shoulder as arrogantly as I could. “Of course, I’m okay. It’s a beautiful day and I’m with a beautiful girl.”

“Beautiful prisoner, don’t you mean?” she muttered.

“Beautiful regardless of ugliness between us.”

She sucked in a breath.

I didn’t like how I felt...tight and hot and needy. And I definitely didn’t like the words that’d spilled uncontrolled out of my mouth. I hadn’t meant to say such things. I hadn’t meant to have a blackout while still awake. I hadn’t meant to be this screwed up, fucked up, and totally floundering for help.

“Get naked,” I snapped. With our eyes locked, I reached behind my neck for my T-shirt and yanked it over my head. “Now.”

Her eyes trailed over my chest despite her annoyance. “Is this a striptease? Do you expect me to swoon at your feet?”

I smiled thinly, unbuttoning my jeans and shoving the zipper down. “You saying my body could drive you to swoon?” I kicked away the denim and, in the same move, shoved my black boxer briefs down my legs to join them on the pile.

She choked as her eyes fell on my naked cock. My very hard, very eager cock. “So this is where you plan to force me—”

“I told you, I have more important things to worry about.” Of course, if she showed a minuscule amount of interest in having me, I’d pounce on her and have her on her knees before she’d even said my name. The name she still hadn’t earned the right to use.

Do you want me like I want you, Gem?

I paused, searching her face for any sign that, beneath her exhausted fury, she was as wet as I was hard. The moment stretched, then ended. I nodded with disappointment, slowly growing black inside.

How long would I let her deny me? How soon would I snap and take her anyway? How would I cope knowing she’d hate me even more when I finally did? Did she think living with me came for free? She was only alive because I found her irresistibly attractive, conveniently arriving at a time when my body was making my life a living hell.

She’d been the pawn in which to bypass all the dirty shit inside my head. She could touch me; I could not. She could make me climax; I would never give myself that pleasure.

That was all I wanted from her, regardless of all the messy new thoughts and strangeness inside me. The moment my heart got in the way of my orgasms, then we had a whole other disaster to deal with.

“Undress,” I barked.

She bared her teeth. “No.”

“Fine.” I was in too much pain for another argument. Heading straight to the river, I waded in and exhaled heavily. God, it’d been too long since my last swim. The water never failed to calm me, clean me, and give me a sense of clarity from the tar inside my mind.

“Hey, wait!” She scrambled along the shore, hopping toward the edge as I waded deeper, the chain pulling her with me.

“You’re the one who wanted to stay fully dressed.” I ducked under, letting the world go quiet as water lapped around me. It blocked the buzzing in my ears, and it ran through my dirty hair. It fondled my cock, mimicking Gemma’s wetness without the heat.

A splash sounded beside me, the ripples of displacement rocking me beneath the surface. I kicked off the bottom and popped back up, blinking away droplets as my gaze latched onto a drowned girl.

A hazel-eyed, golden-haired, entirely vexing and insanely beautiful girl.

“You bastard.” She splashed and shoved hair from her face, her beigey shirt billowing around her. “You could’ve said something.”

“I told you to undress.”

“I thought you wanted—”

“I want to fix the hydro generator.” I arched my chin at the large manmade structure in the middle of the rapids. A concrete box that’d been built by whoever Storymaker had enlisted to create Fables. “It ferries the current through smaller channels, pouring over a turbine that constantly turns, generating friction which causes electricity.”

She glowered. “God, you annoy me. All of you. Every single piece of you drives me up the wall. Just so we’re clear.” She huffed, her fingers flying to the delicate buttons of her shirt. She undid one, then two, then three.

My mouth suddenly went very, very dry.

I couldn’t look away, not even if an asteroid chose that moment to smash us into dust. I would be happy dust. Dust with a hard-on for the stunning, infuriating girl currently tugging off her soaking wet shirt, leaving her in a tight teal sports bra.

Her eyes glowed with green and shadow as she threw the wet shirt toward the shore, deliberately slapping it onto my dry clothes.

I narrowed my eyes. “Witch.”

“You deserved it.” With a quick inhale, she ducked beneath the surface. Her hair continued to float on the surface as her curves beneath the waterline twisted and contorted, yanking off soaking boots and pulling her skirt over her head.

I shuddered as a wave of debilitating lust shot down my legs.

My hand strayed to my thigh. My cock pulsed for touch. It would be so, so easy to come. A single stroke. One delicious pump.

“Stuart!” Ms. Blain yelled. “Get in here.”

The door opened, depositing Storymaker directly into my current nightmare. I was bound and cuffed to a wooden cross. Ankles spread, arms wide, my neck chained in place so I couldn’t move. I was merely a thing to be ridden. To be taken against my wishes. To be molested however Ms. Blain decided.

This was her favorite game. To tie me up and torment me for hours. The awful thing was, she wasn’t even supposed to be my guest. I’d begged to be her plaything the night Zanik couldn’t stop vomiting in fear when he saw her name on the registration book. He was normally stoic and quiet. The one who helped me keep the others calm. But seeing him like that? Watching him flinch each time the door opened and Storymaker summoned a new Fable slave to serve, broke my damn heart.

So, I’d gone to her on my own. I’d knocked on her door. I’d strode past her when she opened, and I let her use me in every way she wanted.

I had no one else to blame for the blood running down my chest or the fact that I’d pissed myself when she’d shoved a dildo up my ass after ten hours of keeping me bound.

My bladder had given up. And with the release of pressure from needing to piss, my cock had turned soft.

In punishment, she’d shoved the phallus so deep inside me, I was sure I’d rip in two. If she was trying to get me back in the mood, bleeding out of my ass ensured I’d never get hard again.

“What? What is it, Annette?” Storymaker frowned, looking at me in my naked, piss-covered glory as if I was nothing more interesting than a boring book on a nightstand.

“He’s gone soft, and no matter what I do, he won’t get hard again.” She leaned into him, whispering loudly. “I gave him a Viagra a few hours ago. Aren’t those things supposed to last all night?”

Storymaker strolled in, eyeing up my flaccid cock with disgust. “Unfortunately, those wonder pills don’t seem to work as well on Kassen as the others, do they, boy?” He tapped my cheek, ending with a harsh slap.

My head shot sideways, sticking to the wood of the cross. I didn’t care. I was past caring.

“Unbuckle his right hand.” Storymaker spun to face Ms. Blain by the door. “Make him jerk off. Mr. Wilby showed him how to arouse himself.” Turning back to me, he grinned. “He knows the consequences of not being able to serve a guest in all ways they require, don’t you, Kassen?”

He grabbed my chin, jerking my face to him. I hoped he didn’t see the tracks of my tears or hear the brutal pain howling in my chest. “You’ll masturbate good and proper. Get that thing stiff. Annette here hasn’t finished her fun, and you know how important it is to keep our guests entertained.”

My right wrist was released, my shoulder flaring in agony.

Storymaker snatched my hand and shoved it between my legs, forcing fingers to wrap around my abused cock, squishing the softness until fresh tears sprang to my eyes. “Fuck yourself, Kassen. There’s a good boy. Don’t disappoint me. You know what will happen if you do.”

“Kas! Kas!” Hands on my chest, fingers in my hair, a warm curvy body against mine. “You’re okay. It’s just in your head. You’re here, with me. Not there. They can’t touch you—”

Touch?

Fuck, no.

Not again.

Never again.

I grabbed the person who dared to touch me. I latched around their throat.

I squeezed.

Nails sliced across my face as a reedy scream sounded. “It’s me. It’s Gemma! Stop—”

A choking sound. Legs kicking against mine. Cool water lapping around my body.

That name.

It wasn’t a guest’s name.

Something about it tugged me, called to me, whispered that it was the most important name in the world.

“Sto...p.” The kicking grew softer. Their fight fading...

Gemma!

My eyes shot wide.

It took a split second for everything to pour through me. Her arrival, her imprisonment, her kissing me, wanting me, talking to me. Her kindness, and her perfect, perfect heart.

“Fuck!” I ripped my hands off her.

She slipped under the water.

I snatched her back, wading to the shore, oblivious that my broken arm blared with fresh agony or that my legs struggled to stay upright with the vertigo in my mind and the river pushing with its currents.

All I focused on was getting Gemma, getting my friend, to safety.

It took all my strength to climb from the weightlessness of the water and back onto dry land, hoisting her body until she lay like a dead bride in my arms. “Come on. You’re okay. Open your eyes. Please, for God’s sake, open your eyes.” I kneeled next to my clothes, laying her gently in the grass, placing my hands over her heart to do CPR.

I pressed my mouth to hers, exhaling hard into her lungs, bracing with power to compress her chest.

She coughed.

She convulsed upright.

I helped turn her onto her side as she spewed up river water. Nasty red marks lined her throat, yet another collar of goddamn bruises left behind by my fingers. Spluttering, she pushed me away, her hands shaking and lips blue from shock.

It went against every instinct, but I let her go. I moved back. I gave her space.

Slowly, her coughing subsided, giving her enough strength to sit up and wrap her arms around her knees. She did her best to hide between her legs, revealing her lower body was naked, her skirt and boots still somewhere in the river. I supposed, just like she couldn’t wear leggings with the cuff, she couldn’t put underwear on either.

I didn’t know why that killed me, but it did.

Such a simple piece of fabric protection. Yet another piece of her modesty and sanity that I’d stolen.

Fuck.

I ran a hand through my dripping hair, crushed beneath the ever-growing boulder in my heart. I hadn’t seen her this bare since that night in the storm. I wanted to see more. I hated that it made me both sick with desire and distraught with regret.

She had bruises down her arms from whatever tasks she’d completed while nursing me back to health. She had scrapes on her legs and shadows on her chest from things she wouldn’t share with me, yet the worst thing? Her body was different from when she first found my valley, and I stole her.

The power that’d attracted me to her. The raw strength in honed muscles she’d crafted from years of discipline and climbing had faded.

She’d lost weight.

Lost enough to see the outline of her ribs as she heaved for breath and watched me with terrified eyes. Enough to turn her already flat stomach concave as she hugged herself and fought the urge to rock with panic.

Yet another mark I’d put on her. Another flaw of her captivity. I’d laid my hands on her and caused her pain, yet even on the days I kept my distance, I caused her untold misery.

I wasn’t feeding her enough. I wasn’t giving her the sustenance she needed to survive.

I was used to living on nothing. My body was lean and capable of existing on the low end of nutritional requirements. Hers, on the other hand, wasn’t used to such poverty.

Our eyes caught, and my heart squeezed into a bleeding pile of excrement.

I wanted to say sorry.

I wanted to explain it wasn’t her who I’d tried to hurt. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. Entirely, insanely mine. I should tell her that my mind was broken. That she should stay away from the loner in the valley who suspected he had schizophrenia on top of a whole mansion worth of issues.

But...my throat closed up.

I couldn’t be there anymore.

I couldn’t witness the betrayal in her stare.

With a grunt, I climbed to my feet, grabbed the key from my jeans pocket, undid the chain between us, and dove into the river.

I couldn’t fix her or myself.

But I could fix that fucking generator, even if it was the last thing I’d ever do.