Page 113 of Once Upon a Fable

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 fuckinghungeredfor 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 brightwounds 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’mthe 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.

Ithrobbed, 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.