The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales(145)

“Are you sure you want to know? This is the kind of thing—”

“That will ruin my life. I heard you. Don’t try and pretend now that you care, just say it.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched as he stared down at her. “She got pregnant with you. They kept her prisoner in The Tower, and you were even born there.” He tapped the third drawer down with his foot. “Dr. Haisch caught you himself. He was quite proud of that fact in the notes he wrote up.”

“And then she died?”

He shook his head, a wry smile lifting one side of his mouth. “Oh no. See, they’d had so much trouble making you, they wanted to repeat the process. If you ask me, I think daddy dearest just wanted a son.”

“I wasn’t asking you,” she sneered, slamming the drawer back into the cabinet before resting her head against it.

“Well, princess, do you want to ask why Daddy calls you Rapunzel?”

“Why?” Turning to look at him, she waited, but he just raised an eyebrow. “I’m waiting.”

“I’m waiting for you to ask me.”

“You’re such an asshole,” she growled.

Reaching forward, he grabbed her by the hair, flipping her around to slam her back against the next set of cabinets, his body crushing her against it. The handles dug into her ribs, air hissing between her teeth as the sting raced across her scalp. “It is taking every ounce of my self-control not to fuck you over the end of this table right now, and if you want to continue being a disrespectful little brat I can treat you like one. So, do you want to hear the rest of Mommy and Daddy’s story, or do you want me to chain you up again?”

“I want to know the rest.”

“Then ask me nicely.”

“Why does he call me Rapunzel?” Rebecca forced the words out as he brushed her hip, and she tried not to think about him bending her over the table, ignoring the pulse of need between her thighs.

“Say please,” he purred, angling her head back until she had to meet his eyes.

“Please.” The word came out between her teeth, but he smiled and released her, moving back to one of the filing cabinets.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Running his hand over the front of the place she’d found the first file about her mother, he shrugged. “Haisch had some wild theories, mixing a belief in science and magic, and one of Haisch’s changes in diet for your mother was to add campanula rapunculus. It was in salads, omelettes, side dishes for meals.” He smiled a bit as he tapped a drawer. “It’s more commonly known as rampion, the same plant the pregnant woman craves—”

“In Rapunzel.” Rebecca flinched.

“Haisch was convinced it had old world fertility properties, that it was the reason it was selected by the Brothers Grimm. And,” he shrugged, “maybe he was right. But they tried the same techniques with her, again and again, and whatever magic created you was never replicated. She never got pregnant again.”

Her skin was on fire with the aftershock of his touch, her mind twisting in knots as she tried to find a hole in the information.

The contracts are real.

Those horrible notes are real.

The police and medical reports are real.

And Clarissa Warren was absolutely her mother.

Rebecca swallowed, her eyes tracing the drawers of her mother’s cabinet, full of a history she wasn’t sure she wanted to know—but there was one thing she couldn’t ignore. “You said you knew about her death.”

A low laugh rumbled out of him as he paced across the other wall, in front of the filing cabinets full of nightmares. “Yes, princess…” He crossed his arms over his broad, firm chest and leveled his gaze at her. “Do you finally believe me?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

“Can you tell me your last memory of her yet?”

“No.”

“Try,” he urged, his voice taking on a strange quality like he was waiting for something.

“I don’t remember her!” she shouted, dropping heavily into the chair before she cradled her head in her hands.

So many twisted flashes, broken images.

Real or not real?

“What do you remember then?”

A frustrated growl escaped her chest. “You want to know what I remember? I remember a woman crying behind a door that I couldn’t open. I remember my father reading me Rapunzel, while a woman shouted in the apartment. I get quick flashes of things that I can’t really remember. I thought they were just nightmares, but I don’t actually remember anything, and I don’t remember her. I don’t, so just stop asking me!”

“Fine.” In a few steps he was back in front of her mother’s filing cabinet. He flipped through a few folders and then plucked out a simple Polaroid, the instant kind, and slid it across the table to her. “What about now?”

Rebecca’s eyes went wide as she lifted it delicately. It showed a blonde woman with her face tucked next to the rounded cheeks of a blonde toddler.

Holy shit.

It was the woman from her mind. They were both smiling, but the dark circles under the woman’s eyes spoke volumes. As Rebecca stared at the face, it was as if the world shuddered around her. A rush of images appeared and disappeared in her mind, and the harder she tried to hold onto them, the faster they faded. Like capturing water in a sieve.