Page 183 of Once Upon a Fable

His eyes went black, his shoulders bristled, the spark of tinder ignited,coaxing a flame from embers, shoving us back into the forest fire that never failed to roar between us.

I couldn’t catch a proper breath—partly from the pressure of his fist on my sternum and mostly because of the unmistakable need drowning in his stare.

“I suggest you yield,” Kas growled. “Don’t make me knock you out like you did me.”

“I didn’t knock you out—”

“I’ve never liked liars.” His fist spread out over my chest, splaying burning fingers over the swell of my breasts. “My second suggestion is you shut the hell up.” His eyes flashed as his thumb touched my nipple.

Accident or not, I shivered like an idiot.

Really, Gem!?

Common sense swiftly shut down any inklings of lust. I tightened my hands on his splinted wrist. “Let. Me. Go.” I added heat and anger with a fair dose of haughtiness. “I won’t ask again.”

“Keep asking all you want. You’ll just keep getting the same answer.” He bent over me, his nose kissing mine. “The chances of you being free again are zero.”

I gulped at the raw honesty on his ferally handsome face. The blatant cruelty in his bottomless, hollow-hallowed eyes. If I hadn’t witnessed him breaking apart in this very room, if I hadn’t washed his brow free from nightmare-sweat, and curled up beside him as he’d screamed in the dark, I would’ve shrunk into nothing and accepted that this was how I died.

This man could snuff out my life with a single finger.

He believed he owned me.

Unfortunately for him, I’d seen his secrets, I’d listened to his suffering, and I couldn’t be afraid of someone who desperately needed to be understood. To be given a chance to work through his torment. To trust someone to help instead of hurt.

That was the main problem.

The biggest one I’d surmised while he’d woken in fits and spurts over the past week. He’d suppressed far, far too much. He’d swallowed every shitty memory, ignored every scar—he’d hidden his true self so deep, deep inside him only layers existed now.

Violent layers.

Bloodthirsty and desperate, ungovernable and disturbed layers.

All of them could snap and hurt me, I knew that. But I was also willing to gamble that the sweet man who’d begged for happiness last night and the boy who’d kissed me last week were still inside him, quiet and unlistened to, kneeling in the wasteland of his past.

“We need to talk.” Doing my best to keep my temper, I arched up and looked over his shoulder. “As equals.” Kicking my leg, I tried to jostle off the unfastened leather.

Rearing off me, he grabbed my knee, digging his fingers around the sensitive joint. “Hold still.”

I ignored him, kicking as much as I could with him pressing my leginto the blankets. “Look, you’ve just woken up. Truly woken up for the first time in almost two weeks. I get that this is probably overwhelming. I can’t imagine what sort of horrors you’ve been reliving while lying here. But you have to trust me—”

“Trustyou?” He laughed so coldly, so darkly, my shivers turned to terrified quakes. “I’llnevertrust you. Two weeks? You say I’ve been in and out of consciousness for two fucking weeks, and you think...what? That I’ll bow at your feet in gratefulness for keeping me alive?” His fingers dug deeper. “You’re the one who did this to me.”

“I didn’t do this to you. Not at all. I’m trying to save you!”

“So you deny being the reason I have the worst fucking headache and can’t keep my thoughts straight?”

“No, I’m not denying that. You fell.”

He laughed. “Fell, huh?”

I winced but pushed onward. “I might have had a role to play in your current agony, but I’m also the one who looked after you.”

“Did Iaskfor a nursemaid?”

“No, but you certainly needed one!”

“Only because you threw me off the goddamn cliff!”