My questions mellowed in my mind as I continued grazing. Occasionally, my gaze would catch on the chair Sully had vacated, and I worried all over again.
Why me?
If what he said was true—about not being interested in his other goddesses but for some inexplicable reason was intrigued by me…why?
Why did I puzzle him?
Why had he made it a personal vendetta to destroy me in every way he could?
Alone, at last, the silence gave me far too much space to analyse and deduce. It allowed quietness to be honest, and I didn’t like the confessions that honesty brought.
Sully might be intrigued by me, but…I was intrigued by him.
I hated him—of that there was no doubt or question.
But…he also confused me.
He conjured terror beyond measure but also a heat that couldn’t be denied. His attractiveness was just as deadly as those plants that lured frogs and insects to their untimely death, killing them with beauty.
He was that plant, seemingly innocuous when his temper wasn’t spiked, carefully calm when he had his own way, yet…utterly ruthless when it came to its prey.
No, he’s not a plant.
He’s a shark.
Satin and silky, hidden by deep water, camouflaged by sunlight and ocean.
He might be the most attractive male I’d ever seen. He might have made me come. I might’ve sat on his hand and suffered the most debilitating bliss I’d ever had. He might’ve been kind enough to take me to a doctor. He might’ve been brutally honest that there was something we couldn’t understand linking us in this war.
But at the end of the day, he still paid money for my life.
He still believed he owned me.
He would still rent me out for his gain.
My hands curled.
My hate returned.
He’s a monster.
He was supremely dangerous, and I could never, ever forget that.
This island was dangerous. This food was dangerous. Everything about this place was perfectly orchestrated to lull me into acceptance, to cushion me with an existence I could accept, and nullify the fact that I had to pay for this luxury with my body.
No.
My mind turned to thoughts of escape. Without realising it, Sully had given me a blueprint to his empire. He’d told me that all the islands around us were his. Therefore, I couldn’t find help on land. He’d told me a farm cultivated his food close by. Therefore, there would be workers and staff who would turn me in.
The only way to freedom would be to either build a raft and sail away without anyone noticing or somehow learn to swim great distances. Both those options sounded as if I was castaway, shipwrecked, and fighting to survive.
In a way, I was.
I’d crashed from my normal world. I’d lost all those I cared about. I was as alone in this paradise as I’d ever been, and I constantly fought the urge to break down and cry. To give in to my grief. To beg someone, anyone, to rescue me. To keep from acknowledging that the only person who could save me…was me.
Because if I admitted that—if I fully accepted my situation—I might as well wade into the shallows and give up because the thought of fighting against Sully every day, of letting strangers enter my body, of going to battle every time that bastard appeared…it was too much.
I wouldn’t have the strength.
I wouldn’t trust that whatever storm brewed between us wouldn’t evolve into a full electrical hurricane, sparking fire, annihilating souls, breaking me apart bone by bone.
My hands shook as I reached for a banana leaf wrapped around jasmine rice and edamame beans.
Enough.
Relax.
Rest.
Recuperate.
By the time dusk fell, I’d done the best I could. Most dishes were empty and those that weren’t attracted a few finches and sparrows to partake with me. I placed a few pieces of pumpkin and pineapple on a napkin and left it on the sand, staying silent and still as hermit crabs inched close, sliced off pieces with their pinchers, and scurried back to the undergrowth to eat.
With peace came awareness, and the longer I sat on the deck, watching the golden glow transform to peach twilight, the more I reflected on myself and how strong I would have to be to endure this new fate.
If I never found a way free, could I withstand four years at his mercy?
If I stopped fighting, would I turn into the brainwashed victims that Sully took such great mockery in?
Either way, I had to persevere.
I had to stay ready.
Had to remain true to me.
To Eleanor.
Not Jinx.
Not his.
Never his.
* * * * *
I stayed in my villa for twenty-four hours.
Unmolested, untaunted—totally, utterly, blissfully alone.
I slept well, considering the events. I showered in the outdoor shower, serenaded by an inquisitive parrot and sharing water droplets with gleaming green tree frogs. They sat on the fern fronds, ribbiting as the sun warmed the world and the humidity level steadily rose with each minute.
Instead of welcoming more disaster into my life, I avoided going to the dining villa. Using the in-room phone, I requested breakfast, lunch, and dinner to be brought to me, slowly growing accustomed and stupidly thinking I was safe in my private villa where even Sully hadn’t knocked on my door.
A pretty staff member delivered a tray full of fluffy eggs, a mountain of tropical fruit salad, and still-warm croissants. Next to the freshly squeezed apple juice rested a bottle of pills with a small note in sharp, masculine handwriting to take one with each meal, doctor’s orders.
Between meals, I gradually grew stronger. My body was no longer woozy if I turned too fast, and my vision didn’t black out if I stood too quickly. Growing restless, I went for a walk along the beach, spying more villas in the lush foliage, tucked away with privacy, none of their inhabitants noticeable.
Did they house other goddesses?
Guests?
Staff?
As the sun completed its arc overhead, promising morning, then delivering afternoon, before finally condemning us back to the cloak of darkness, my heart worried more and more as evening settled.
He’d said I’d be entertaining tonight.
He’d threatened that I’d be used against my will.
Not wanting to return to my villa, but afraid of what would happen if I was found blatantly searching for methods of escape, I returned to my parcel of crystal sand, shed my summer dress, and slipped naked into the tide.
There, I waited.
My eyes trained on the deck leading into my villa.
My ears pricked.
My heart kicking.
My hands curled and ready to fight.
Chapter Twenty
SWIMMING WASN’T MY ONLY form of exercise.
I had weights in my villa. I ran in the soft sand ringing my shores. I regularly used the landscape of rugged hillside and rock face, splashing up the waterfall and scaling slippery crevices to sculpt and hone muscles that might get lax without use.
But none of those activities could wash away the mess inside my mind like the ocean could.
Yesterday, I swam until I could barely drag my carcass from the tide.
Tonight, I swam without getting winded or waterlogged.
My energy was through the fucking roof.
My sexual hunger past the realm of controllable.
I’d avoided harassing Ele—Jinx all day. I’d woken to find the bottle of pills the doctor gave her mocking me on my nightstand. I’d snatched them with the full intention of marching to her door, using them as an excuse of why I meddled in her life, and demanding her to get on all fours.
My morning wood was more than just blood trapped after sleeping, my entire belly coiled and roiled to fuck. My balls were tight and trapped against my body, begging for a release.
I’d suffocated the bottle of pills in one h
and and throttled my cock with the other, fully aware I stood on the edge of a full-on goddamn meltdown. If I went to her, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I’d be on her, in her, all over her the second she opened the door.
But then the phone rang, and Cal announced that the winning bidder to initiate Jinx into Euphoria was Markus Grammer. He’d already paid the full one-hundred-and-fifty k. He’d extended his stay thanks to Jinx needing three days to recover from her weak spell, and he’d willingly given me whatever budget he’d had for expensive toys and indulgences…all for the pleasure of touching what was mine.
And that’s good.
That’s what she’s here to do.
I liked money.
But I didn’t need it.
His cash wasn’t wanted because I wanted to be the one to fuck her.
Ah, for fuck’s sake, Sully.
Digging my arms into the sea, I increased my speed, trying to outswim such persistent urges. All I wanted to do was rewind a couple of days to the email when the traffickers announced they’d found the perfect girl and reply that they could keep her. Kill her. Sell her to someone else far, far away, so I never had to lay eyes on the one person to make me feel anything less than in complete control.
Perhaps, I’d caused this predicament, not her. Maybe I’d bottled up my lust for too long while living on a tropical paradise with extremely willing women. After all, a man could only go so long without sex.
When I’d opened this playground, I’d promised myself not to shit where I ate, so to speak. The girls were commodities, and as long as I treated them as assets destined to benefit someone else, they couldn’t turn into liabilities.
When each one arrived, I’d been cordial to them, kind even. I’d welcomed their shyness and stark fear, knowing that eventually, they’d be all too happy to trade four years of their life for an existence that took away every stress ever invented. They didn’t have to cook, clean, pay bills, raise spawn, or fawn over useless lovers.
All they had to do was relax on the beach, ring for cocktails, and, once a week, take a liquid that ensured every touch was a pure aphrodisiac.
Their plight could be a hell of a lot worse.
I dived under, welcoming the oppressive blackness found beneath the surface. As the sun had set hours ago, the flickering torches around the island had been lit, and the lanterns decorating the sandy shores were beacons to any wayward traveller or nymph washed up from Trident’s city.
Tiny pinpricks of light from the exquisite galaxy above glittered through the surface, painting the reef beneath me with silver spires. Lazy fish meandered past. An eel undulated in the current. A manta ray blotted out the tiny pinpricks of silver, dappling its oily body with starlight.
It truly was a magical world down here.
Simple.
Accepted.
The meek bowed to the powerful.
The prey avoided the predator.
Everyone had their place, and nature ensured everything behaved within the boundaries of their species.
But not her.
Not that fucking woman who spoke to me as though a queen, glowered as if I was her underling, and even in her fear refused to acknowledge my rule over her.
My lungs burned for oxygen.
Kicking to the surface, I broke the sea without a ripple, sucking in air and tasting salt on my lips. A feminine chuckle skipped over the wetness and licked down my back.
Three goddesses stood silhouetted by moonlight on the beach. Two held cocktails, adorned in scraps of bikinis, and one pranced around like she governed my empire, wearing a see-through gauzy dressing gown with nothing on underneath, open and fluttering in the slight balmy breeze.
I grew instantly hard.
Not that I wasn’t constantly hard these days, thanks to that hexing witch.
I should’ve sent her away the moment I laid eyes on her and felt that warning kick of intrigue.
That had never happened before.
I’d heard other men boast how they’d met the one, and they just knew…instantly. But I wasn’t a romantic fool, and I didn’t believe in destiny or soul mates. I believed in logic and explanation, and it made me fucking rage not to have an answer as to why every part of me locked onto Eleanor and hummed at high attention. Why I found her more beautiful than any girl on my island. Why I suffered such fury at the thought of renting her out. Why I couldn’t stop fucking thinking about her.
Goddammit.
Lying on my back, I let the drifting current carry me toward the shore.
Tonight, I would send another email. I would request a different girl. Someone to be delivered quickly. Someone who was the exact opposite of my most recent curse. And that new acquisition wouldn’t join my stable of goddesses; she’d be my own personal toy.
I’d use her nightly.
I wouldn’t be intrigued by her.
It would be purely basic, brutal sex.
That was all I needed. Just like exercise cleared my head, a good fuck would clear my system from its inconvenient obsession with Eleanor Grace.
Letting my legs sink to the bottom, I shivered as my toes threaded into warm sand. Relief came from deciding, but my cock remained hard as a fucking palm tree. I couldn’t walk out of the sea with it sticking out the top of my shorts—not with three tipsy goddesses giggling and having far too much fun.
I wasn’t kidding when I told Eleanor that the women who’d been here long enough to know the good thing they had all wanted into my bed. They’d grown spoilt and lazy and enjoyed the hierarchy of being adored and lavished with gifts and luxuries.
They didn’t want to go home.
And I couldn’t fucking blame them.
Goddess Calico was the latest to try to seduce me. She’d picked the lock on my villa and slipped into my bed a month ago. She’d served three-and-a-half years. She was due to return to her humdrum life in six months.
She’d reached for me. I’d stopped her.
She’d tried to kiss me. I’d pushed her away.
She’d made mistake after mistake, trying to make me keep her.
That was why I had the four-year contract—signed by me and them. There was an ending, for both of us. A timeline of togetherness before going our separate ways. Because, in reality, I didn’t want to have to be responsible for them as they grew older and less likely to perform.
Just like thoroughbred horses were bred, bloodlines were favoured, and hundreds of thousands of foals were destroyed if they didn’t prove they could race, I kept my goddesses in the best possible care for as long as they were useful.
Four years was the optimum time for their sexual use.
After that…they weren’t valuable to me anymore, and why should I pay for the best upkeep, care, and nutrition if they were no longer a worthwhile investment?
How was I any different to any other consumer?
I used a product from prime to retirement and then sent it to pasture. At least I didn’t kill them when they stopped being of use. I paid them the four hundred thousand dollars that I hid in the fine-print of their contract—paying them for their time, and ensuring their servitude had been mutually beneficial.
It also provided an alibi that they’d been well compensated for their ‘employment’ if they ever went to the police. A signed and sealed contract, blatantly advertising what they willingly did. All they had to do was take the money and stay quiet, or give it back and fight to survive in a world that wasn’t paradise.
Too bad Eleanor Grace, the stubborn twenty-something with silver embers in her eyes, couldn’t be as grateful as her predecessors. If she knew how desired I was, she might understand how honoured she was to enjoy my company. How goddamn privileged she’d been that I’d dared let her ride my fingers.
She’d had more of me than any of these willing girls, yet she acted as if I was the devil.
Well, luckily, I’d reined myself in, and from now on, I wouldn’t be touching any of them.
Especially that spirited hellcat who
I couldn’t leave the hell alone.
The soft current pushed me forward and back as the waves lapped noiselessly against the icing sugar sand. I debated swimming to the other side of the island to avoid the women, but in truth, I wanted to write that email. I wanted to get it over with so I could stick with my plan and not do something psychotic when it came time for Jinx to be handed over in two days.
But…I also knew what I’d face the second I stepped onto shore and the goddesses noticed me.
Fuck it.
Yanking my black swimming shorts down with one hand, I fisted the aching heat of my long-suffering erection. This was purely medicinal. Nothing more.
Keeping my eyes on the gossiping girls, lulled into the fantasy that they were untamed creatures there to ravish, I stroked harder, faster, creating ripples around my body.
I didn’t need long.
I’d been on the razor edge of coming since I’d poured elixir down Jinx’s throat. The halted orgasm I’d almost had in her presence lurked in every cell. The pain it promised hinted this wouldn’t be a typical release. This would fucking rip me in two with pleasure.
Biting my bottom lip, staying as silent as I could, I gave in to the brutalising pace to make myself come. The girls didn’t see me, surrounded by dark ocean. No one knew I masturbated in full view.
My head tipped back as a lacerating lightning bolt shot from my heart to my belly, dragging claws around my balls.
Ah, shit.
Shit.
A guttural groan couldn’t be contained as liquid fire built to a furnace, scorching blood and bone, crippling me in ways I hadn’t felt in a very long fucking time.
On the cusp of letting go—on the blinding, blistering precipice of spurting seed into the sea, I opened my eyes.
I didn’t know what made me look.
Why my attention searched, found, and snarled as I found the one person I shouldn’t associate with pleasure.
Eleanor stood in the shadows of ferns and palms, hiding in the pockets of blackness, eavesdropping on my goddesses.
Once a Myth (Goddess Isles Book 1) Page 15