Page 34 of Once Upon a Fable

He wasreadable.

And in that, I had a weapon.

“You want me.”

He stumbled backward, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Shut up.”

I bowed my head, not out of respect but because with knowledge came a plan and that plan meant I had to get him to see me as a person. Not a prisoner. Not someone to use as he saw fit. I was like him. And maybe, if I made him see that, he’d let me go.

“I’m sorry I trespassed.” I looked up between my eyelashes. “I never intended to go where I didn’t belong—”

“Quiet.” His hand slashed through the air. Another dose of scorching fire set his dark eyes flashing, and the air of the cell turned positively thick with need. I couldn’t breathe without tasting it.

Heat rolled off him, kindling little flames over my skin. It wasn’t my body reacting to his; it was the intensity of his own making everything so muchmore. More intense, more desperate, more strange than I’d ever experienced.

Whoisthis man?

Breathing hard, he crossed his arms, making the seams of his shirt strain. He didn’t cross his arms like a CEO would, using the stance as dominance. He didn’t use it as aggression or as a cage to contain the obvious rage inside him. Instead, he used it as protection, almost as if he hugged himself—as if clinging to the shreds of his self-control, searching for answers,same as me, trying to figure this out,same as me.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“Stop,” he growled. His nostrils flared as he inhaled, the last remaining buttons down his shirt threatening to pop. The silky material splayed over his chest, giving glimpses of a muscular body with a dark snail trail leading into his trousers and a splattering of hair over his pecs. Apart from those areas, he was smooth—unless I counted the scars.

Then, he wasn’t smooth at all. He was damaged.

“I—”

“Don’t say another fucking word,” he hissed.

I nodded and fell silent. For all my scheming and willingness to fight, I would pick my battles wisely.

The cell throbbed with energy. My nipples tingled as he paced in front of me, his erection stabbing upward in his slacks. He paced through puddles and over cold concrete with bare feet.

More time stretched as he threw me dirty looks, and an animalistic grumble echoed in his chest.

His footfalls thudded in time with my heartbeat, counting down to my end.

Tearing his gaze from me, he shook his head as if fighting every dark instinct inside him. His back braced. His thighs bunched. He walked faster with fury.

Every time his eyes landed on my body, it seared. Every time, he sniffed or bared his teeth, my body stiffened with a primal reaction.

He was a trapped beast, and I didn’t like the sensation of being trapped in here with him. I didn’t like the unpredictability. The real fear that he might snap, and I’d either die or wished I had.

Was he contemplating whether to finish the job?

Did he hate that I hadn’t died in that bedroom?

The way he watched me...it made me think he’d been denied company for decades. He looked woefully unprepared to deal with me, violently reckless to get rid of me, and the undeniable confusion of what he truly wanted.

His dark eyes bounced between palpable lust, explicit hate, downright disgust, and absolute turmoil.

When I couldn’t stand the silence or his pacing anymore, I swallowed and flinched past the hurt. “Who...areyou?”

Massaging my throat, I watched him carefully. I expected him to order me to be quiet again. Instead, he stopped. He locked his knees and turned to face me like a soldier conscripted to battle.

Wiping a hand over his scruffy jaw, he once again crossed his arms. With impatient anger, he chewed on words before snapping, “I ask the questions.”

His accent was strange. Almost rusty, it slipped over vowels and lingered on consonants in an unusual manner. He sounded American, but with an edge of gentile sophistication. A level of education that didn’t mesh with the current location of his home or the state of his dishevelment.