Page 468 of Once Upon a Fable

I’d imprinted myself on her. I’d touched everywhere to make sure she was unhurt from strangers. She’d matched my chaos, fucking me back, hard and rough, letting me lose control in relief that she was okay.Wewere okay.

At least with the gardening supplies, I finally had something to occupy my time with while she created videos for work. I transformed her overgrown garden from pointless to productive. I dug neat veggie rows, read sites online that Gemma taught me how to use, and planted winter vegetables, doing my best to provide for her when all her money provided for me.

I sighed, doing my best to turn off my mind. I lay with my arms out to the sides and my legs spread like a dead starfish on the small grassy area beneath the boulders Gem was currently scaling.

Clenching my stomach, I sat up and reclined against my elbows. This was the second climbing expedition she’d brought me on outside. But it was the first where she’d asked me to run the video equipment.

I’d done what she taught me—set up the camera on the tripod, checked periodically that the frame was still centered, following her progress (thanks to the movement detection technology), and ensured that the lighting was still adequate.

My heart thundered in my chest as I looked past the cameras, through the empty field, and studied Gem, currently halfway up a massive boulder that looked mean with craggy corners and weathered rock.

Christ, she’s stunning.

Her teal leggings showed every muscle as her legs bunched and propelled her up the stone. Her tight T-shirt showed the lines of her sports bra underneath, rippling over her shoulders as she reached for the next hand hold.

She was so strong, so agile,so mine.

I grew hard as she inched closer to the top.

I always grew hard watching her climb. My mind teased me with the night when she’d run away from me. I hadn’t seen her scale the cliff after she hit me around the head with the shovel, but I imagined shelooked like she did now. Graceful and powerful, climbing her way into the sky with ease.

I still didn’t understand how she made money from this stuff, but I couldn’t deny, watching her was hypnotic. And even though there was money in online things, I’d yet to take up her offer to create my own YouTube channel. To me, it was a fucking scary place. A window where complete strangers could look into Gemma’s life, yet she couldn’t look into theirs.

After the comments that first day? The sexualized sentences about me. The cruel remarks.

I didn’t like it.

I glanced at the video timer.

Thirty-three minutes and she’d scaled this boulder twice already.

She said she like to film up to two hours’ worth of content to edit it down into a twenty-minute video. I’d learned a hell of a lot the past few weeks. Constantly amazed to see just how different the world was compared to the books I’d read in Fables.

I’d believed those books were modern and how the outside world was. Fiction authors swore it was contemporary and of this era, yet actuallylivingin this era? So many advancements were never mentioned in those pages.

My therapist, for instance, had put an app on the new phone that Gem had purchased for me where I could message if I was having a rough moment and earn guidance from him or another therapist in the PTSD field. With a few tiny buttons, I could access a camera, a dictionary, an entire library of knowledge, along with play movies, songs, and access things called emails.

When Gem had given me the phone on the same day she came home with a secondhand black car with off-road tires, I’d been embarrassed to accept yet more gifts that I couldn’t pay back.

I’d kept a tally of what I owed her.

The total was already in the thousands.

Gem suddenly leaped from her top hold and landed on her crash mat that she’d dragged from the car. The amount of gear it took to film one short video fucking astounded me.

Brushing chalky hands on her leggings, she folded the crash mat, lugged it onto her back, and came toward me.

I leaped to my feet, my cock hardening.

I wanted her.

I wanted her on her knees in the grass.

I wanted—

Whiteness flickered over my vision for a moment, courtesy of my quickening heart rate and thickening blood. My head ached a little but nowhere near as bad as a few weeks ago.

When my eyesight came back, I smiled at Gemma as she dropped the crash mat, stretched her spine out, and bent to turn off her video. I went behind her, cupping her breasts and pressing my hard-on against her back.