Page 253 of Once Upon a Fable

She was my enemy.

But goddammit, she felt like fucking heaven.

The smell of death saturated my mind as snowflakes became flames, and flames became snowflakes, and we fucked in a circle of flickeringorange disaster.

All their tricks, their taunts, their tortures.

I’d lived through it all. I’d protected my family. I’d given myself in their place. I could’ve run. But I never did because they would be the ones punished.

I was theirthing.

But now...she was mine.

Ideservedthis.

I rutted deeper, taking what I was owed.

This wasn’t about pleasure.

This was about purging my body of every black and twisted thing. I needed to come to be free. I needed to pour out the nightmare inside me before it smothered me.

That was why she’d appeared. Why I’d never seen her before. Why I’d never been dragged in chains to serve her nasty whims.

They’d known that the moment I touched her, things would be different.Iwould be different. I would take and steal and covet and hoard because touching her was better than anything in my entire disgusting world.

I drove into her, again, again, feeling the spasms of her body, the tightness of her pussy. She tried to deny me, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but coming inside her and finding that perfect release.

The tingles of pleasure shot down my spine.

So close.

So,soclose.

I could drown in it.

Lose myself in it.

It could be my salvation if only I could finish.

The power of her touch, the uniqueness of our connection.

She was pure in this soiled, sullied world. She was the only thing I ever wanted after a decade of living in the revolting dark.

Fuck, I couldn’t stand it.

I wanted nothing else. Her. Only her. No breath, no heartbeat, no future. I just wantedher. One second of euphoria and then she could kill me. Every guest could butcher me alive, and I would accept it gladly because for the first time, Ilived. I knew what it was like to be a man and not the slave.

I drove into her.

She cried out. “Stop. Please, stop.”

Her voice was like precious diamonds, sharp and sparkly with tears.

I wanted her to cry. I wanted to lap up her every salty sadness and claim them as mine.

But something was wrong.

The sizzle between us twisted. The fire licking around us turned black with abhorrence.