Fable of Happiness (Fable #2) by Pepper Winters

She didn’t look up.

I cleared my throat.

She didn’t acknowledge me.

I coughed pointedly.

Her eyes stayed locked on the magazine.

“The silent treatment will get old real fast around here, you know,” I muttered, entering the stagnantly humid conservatory and leaning nonchalantly against the glass wall. I leaned to give an air of “I don’t care,” but I also used the stable surface to catch my breath and train my knees into being trustworthy instead of trembly.

Surprisingly, I was feeling better than yesterday. The short walk had woken me up and my internal war on denied orgasms and wanting a woman who I had a lifetime to fuck and grow old with blew away the smog in my head, leaving me slightly more coherent than before. Perhaps it was the carbs from dinner; maybe it was knowing she’d lasted a night, and I was still alive. Maybe it was because I’d finally accepted something had been missing inside me for so fucking long, and she’d somehow filled that void.

I’d say all of those things were worth celebrating.

Despite the fact that her living here wasn’t voluntary, I couldn’t argue that her wrath was worth more to me than her disappearance.

She sniffed and thumbed over a new page, her body language screaming at me to leave her the hell alone. She was so prim, so proper, so exquisitely beautiful. It was unfair really, how gorgeous I found her. It wasn’t just physical attraction—it was so much more than that. It was too much more. Too much for me to acknowledge in my current concussed condition.

Sitting so demurely, she glowed with power. After all, she did have the power to kill me. I’d gladly given her that power if it meant I got to keep her until that day, but I didn’t think she understood just how desperate I actually was for...

Companionship?

Civility?

Co-fucking-habitation?

It wasn’t fucking her in the rain that’d switched my heart. It hadn’t been my humanity that’d steadily been waking up. It’d been our conversations, our arguments, our volleys of hate and hurt.

“Where did you sleep?” I asked softly. “You look...rested.”

She looked ready to slay me and not just climb up the cliff but fly.

She gave me nothing but silence as her hair glimmered with darker gold, hinting she’d had a shower in one of the three downstairs bathrooms. The subtle scent of lavender and pear from the tissue-wrapped soaps set my mind alive with images of her naked under a cold spray, her hands teasing her breasts, feathering down her belly, cupping between her legs—

Christ.

I shifted, willing my stubborn hard-on to fuck off.

A small growl sounded beneath her breath as she snapped another page over, glowering at some poor TV star as if she’d happily rip his head off and crumple it into a paper ball—mainly so she had a weapon to throw at my head.

With the sun bathing her and anger still dripping off her like the addicting liquor I’d consumed during my year-long party for one, I physically couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving. My stomach didn’t just clench; it tore itself in two. It bled. It slid into my feet and died.

How had I ever thought I could kill her?

She. Was. Mine.

After all, why had she found me if I wasn’t meant to keep her?

Yet you tried to kill her how many times?

I scowled.

That was before.

Even just yesterday, I’d woken with the full intention of hurting her. But now? Now, I would do anything to protect her because she was never permitted to leave me. I was grateful I’d thrown away her car keys. When I was stronger, I’d climb up that damn cliff with the last dregs of gasoline that I’d been saving for a special occasion (instead of powering the ancient generator), and set fire to the car that still waited for her.

Was it normal for a man’s thoughts to flip from one decision to another? To exist as two entities inside one’s head? I was both the master and the monster, the fallen and the friend. Maybe I wasn’t concussed but schizophrenic, and I hadn’t noticed it while living out here alone?

I stilled.

Maybe, despite my relief that she wasn’t going anywhere, those tendencies to end her life would come back, and I’d do it anyway? I’d strangle her before I could confess that if she ever left me—by her choice or by my mistake—I wouldn’t choose to keep living here.

I’d do what I should’ve done at the start of my solitary confinement and let nature have me.

Crossing my arms, I tried again. “Are you one of those girls who has a crush on a celebrity?”

Her head tilted up, her narrowed eyes catching mine. “Leave. I have no intention of talking to you today. Or any day for that matter.” She flipped a page, revealing a copper ball gown on some starlet. Something that would look absolutely stunning on my gorgeous captee.

“If you fancy dressing up, you can claim any of the gowns in the wardrobes upstairs.”

She laughed sourly. “Oh, how very generous of you. Dead women’s clothing. No, not just dead women. Dead rapists.” She rolled her eyes in my direction. “Excuse me if I don’t leap to my feet in joy.”

My arms crossed tighter, sending a flash of agony down my broken one. “You’re wearing something of theirs right now. What’s the difference?”

She glanced down at the pearl-colored shirt with silver buttons and black skirt. Her toned climber legs seemed to go on for miles, their creamy expanse ruined by the cuff on her ankle.