Page 272 of Once Upon a Fable

I didn’t think it would take him long to come. He’d been on the knife-edge the moment I’d sank over him, but watching him combust, hearing him gasp with bliss and knowing I granted that pleasure made my core clench in need.

There was something between us.

Something that hissed and licked and sparked.

And I wanted to feel what he did. I wanted to explode in his arms.

Like all the secrets of tonight, I had another. One I would bury deep, deep down because I would never admit that taking him this way had turned me on. While I’d ridden him, he’d worshiped me. I’d been hiseverything. I’d felt invincible as he’d forbidden himself from touching me until the very end, allowing me to rock and coax, greedily takingevery inch of what he offered.

That was a heady thing indeed, having control over a man who’d only moments ago attacked me.

He’d gifted himself to me entirely, wholeheartedly.

Not as a slave who believed he didn’t have a choice but as a man who’d only just remembered how to live.

I gasped as the truth of that crowded my mind.

Kas was rough and wild and unstable, but perhaps that was the healing process for someone who’d only just come back to life? He’d spent a decade just existing, turning off his humanity, willingly slipping into silent loneliness and endless monotony.

Maybe I didn’t continually hurt him like I believed, but maybe, just maybe, I was making him come alive again. Maybe he’d begun the journey back to being healthy, to being whole.

Maybe this is the turning point, and everything will be better now.

He jerked one last time with a soft grunt, then his arms fell away, and his head tilted to the side. If shame had a color, he’d be painted in it from head to toe. He gulped. His hips shifted beneath mine, trying to disengage.

He couldn’t look at me.

His cock still rippled inside me.

But the longer we stayed joined, the more he withdrew until goosebumps scattered down my spine.

My heart pinched, and I couldn’t stand the feeling of him distancing himself from me, not after everything that’d just happened.

Shifting on my knees, I pushed upward.

His body slipped from mine, and I winced with frustration as I stepped away.

My own arousal still hummed in my blood, unsatisfied. A part of me wanted to be selfish and return to him. To find an equal completion.

But if I did that, then I would be as bad as the guests who’d used him. Whatever the reason he’d just pulled away, I had to accept it and not push. To push was to get hurt. I was sure of it.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I shivered with ice, becoming suddenly, horribly unsure.

Had I done the right thing? Had we reached a turning point, or had I just made things a hundred times worse?

I shivered again, fear rising as my mind raced for my own safety.

I should run before he snapped again.

I should—

Enough.

I gritted my teeth and stopped my unraveling thoughts.

This wasn’t about me.

It’d never been about me.