Page 498 of Once Upon a Fable
“God, Kas. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you did.” His arms tightened around me. His hot body pressed to mine. His clinginess. His passion. He pulled me even closer, his thigh going between mine, rubbing against my cock. “Thank you. Thank you so—”
I lost it.
I snarled.
I shoved him.
I leaped over him even as he fell to the floor.
I bulldozed through men in tuxes and women in dresses.
All of them.
So fucking naïve. So pretentious. So self-absorbed.
None of them cared that Jareth had freed someone we both loved. Someone I’d rocked to sleep after the bastards had used her. Someone who I’d wiped away her blood as she cried in my arms. Someone who’d spent eighteen goddamn miserable years being a toy to absolute cunts.
And for eleven years, I wasn’t there to save her.
Quell had always been a favorite. She’d always had an angelic grace that the bastards wanted to stamp out.
Without me there to take some of her punishments...
Oh, fuck—
I retched.
Vodka splashed on my shoes.
Eyes watched me.
Men whispered.
Women gossiped.
And I couldn’t do it anymore.
I kept running.
Running.
Motherfucking running.
Out the door, through the night, away from everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
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“I’M SO, SO SORRY, Gemma. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Tony’s millionth apology set my teeth on edge. For four hours, we’d searched for Kas, driving from the expensive hotel on the outskirts of town where the gala was held through streets, shopping districts, and parks.
An hour or so into the search, I’d found a pair of discarded dress shoes, kicked off in the middle of the street with a pair of black socks not far away, as if the man wearing them was shedding the unfamiliar and returning to what he was.
An animal who might never fit in with humans.
I sighed and rubbed my eyes, not caring about smearing my makeup at this point. My hair was a mess, and my mascara had long since run down my cheeks from all my crying. I was exhausted—mentally and physically—but I couldn’t rest until Kas was found.
