He looked older.
He looked exhausted.
He looked on the brink of that burnout he’d been running full speed toward.
His hand touched my naked thigh. “Please forgive me, Eleanor. Forgive me for putting you through that. Forgive me for scaring you, for being cruel to you, for not trusting what exists between us. I used that trick to prove to myself that I was stupid to feel so strongly for you. To school myself, once and for all, that you didn’t love me. You couldn’t love me. That I could never hope to be worthy of having you.”
He traced my knee, sending another flush of goosebumps up my limbs. “But…instead of breaking myself…I fear I’ve broken any trust you had. I fear that I’ve lost you, even while I touch you. I fear that I went too far, and that no matter what truth I give you…it won’t be good enough.”
He kept his gaze on my thigh. His touch warm and filled with that never-ending voltage.
My chest ached for him.
For his vulnerability. For his unshielded heart without his many, many walls.
Had he gone too far?
Could things be different now that we’d touched the end and both recoiled from it?
Only one thing would prove that this was salvageable, this was survivable.
One sentence to be said without any masks, disguises, or ways to take back his vow.
I placed my hand over his, pressing his touch into my naked thigh. The blue-flowered dress I’d worn in the hay barn had vanished, along with the hay, the boy, and the lace-ups.
It was just him and me.
A girl and a monster.
And an empty room full of possibilities.
Chapter Twenty-Two
MY HAND CAUGHT FIRE under hers.
I looked up, bracing against her rejection.
My heart lurched with panic because her grey gaze held one chance.
A single chance to fix this.
The knowledge of what I had to do blazed through my body.
She opened her mouth to ask. The first sound of her request fell from her lips.
But I intercepted her.
I didn’t want her to ask.
I didn’t want her to think she’d made me do this.
I wanted this to be the moment where she became mine…forever. Despite what I was. Despite what I did. Despite everything I’d done to her.
Snatching her around the waist, I yanked her naked body from the bare tiles and straddled her over my lap. The harness still trapping her jingled a little as her legs spread on either side of my hips, revealing her pussy, showing that she wanted me as much as I wanted her.
My erection strained against my trousers. My heart bashed against my ribs as our bare chests touched. I could barely breathe as I dived my hands into her hair and captured her head so she had no choice but to look at me.
Her long chocolate strands puddled over my legs. Her lips parted. Her eyes flared.
And I tore off my final mask.
For her.
I gave myself no going back, no pretending I hadn’t said such a thing, no way of convincing her she’d heard wrong.
“I love you, Eleanor Jinx Grace. I love you for your fire, your bravery, your stubbornness. I love that you’re not afraid of me. That you call me out on my bullshit. That you are the mirroring piece of everything that I lost along the way. I love that you are so kind to animals. That you are cursed with the same empathy I carry. That you’re a goddamn vegetarian. I love that Skittles fell for you, even though she’s the reason I lost everything I am. I lost everything because I gave it all to you the moment I saw her land on your shoulder. I love that you’re different from anyone else I’ve ever met. I love that every time we touch, we spark.”
I captured her chin, holding her firm. “I love you. That’s the curse you put on me. The reason I called you Jinx. The hex I felt the moment you stepped on my shores. And I’ll happily remain cursed for the rest of my godforsaken life if it means I get to keep you.”
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t lean in to kiss me.
She stayed staring into me, frowning slightly, letting the echo of my commitment puddle around us until we were an island in a sea of pledges and promises.
I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
I had no other card to play. I had no idea if I would win her, and I was too chicken shit to shake her and demand a reply because as long as she sat on my lap, then I hadn’t lost her.
It didn’t matter if she refused to give me an answer for decades. I would sit here and wait. I would hold her through every sunrise and sunset and wait.
I would wait until she gave me my freedom by admitting that she loved me back.
Please…
Slowly, she moved.
I sucked in a breath as she pushed upward with her knees, dislodging my hold in her hair.
I couldn’t lie.
My heart motherfucking broke.
After everything. After pouring out the nucleus of who I was, stained and tainted with the filth I’d carried inside me for so long, she’d made up her mind.
I’ve lost her.
I sighed heavily, slouching in place and letting my arms fall to my sides. I wouldn’t stop her from leaving. I would do whatever she asked. Even if that request meant she wanted me to keep my distance from her at all times.
Fuck!
My eyes bruised with grief, but I gritted my teeth and stayed stoic. I stared at her belly, unable to look into her stunning silver gaze as she walked away.
Goddammit, everything hurt.
My head.
My chest.
The very blood in my veins.
I’d felt loss before. So many times before. I’d watched pets being butchered and animals being tortured, and I’d mourned for them until I’d vomited up my uselessness to help.
But that pain was nothing compared to this.
She remained agonisingly silent as she poised over me, ready to push off and climb to her feet.
Only…
Her hands didn’t go to my shoulders for purchase to stand. Her hands went to my belt.
I stiffened as she unbuckled me, unbuttoned me, unzipped me.
I sucked in tattered gulps of air as her delicate hands went to my boxer-briefs and tugged them away.
I went lightheaded as she wrapped her small fingers around my throbbing hardness. I made a noise I couldn’t contain as she ran her thumb through the bead of pre-cum at the top. She pressed on the slit, sending shockwaves down my shaft and into my balls. The noise came again, torn from the bottom of my lungs, tangled with a snarl, a growl, a groan, a beg.
I was completely at her fucking mercy as she pumped my length, once, twice, then angled herself over me.
Without a word, she positioned my cock at her entrance.
Our eyes locked as my hands found her hips, holding on as she sank down my length. Slow and torturous, hot and wet and tight.
Fucking hell.
My head fell back as I gave myself permission to feel everything. Not just the physical part of what she did to me but the emotional part too. I let my heart bleed with affection. I let my lungs fog with devotion. I let my belly coil with so much fucking love for this woman.
As she sank the final distance, slotting my body into hers, enveloping everything I was as a man, she fucking owned me.
Every part.
All of it.
Forever.
Her arms looped over my shoulders, her fingers linking behind my nape. Her forehead pressed against mine so our eyelashes almost touched, blinking in shock and undiluted pleasure.
I’d never had sex like this before.
I’d never loved someone like this.
And when she moved?
I was no longer a man but full fucking beast. A beast who wanted to flip her onto her back and drive every inch inside her. To rut and mount and plunder and claim. But…thanks to Eleanor, I had a collar on. A collar that didn’t feel like imprisonment but freedom.
I belonged to her.
And I basked in her ownership.
I let her fuck me.
I shuddered each time she rose up and grunted each time she sank deep.
We found a rhythm together.
A rocking, quivering rhythm where each time we joined, we convulsed in absolute bliss.
I’d gotten Euphoria all wrong.
It wasn’t about how willing the women were or how wet they could become.
It was about this.
Love.
That was the ultimate drug.
The only drug.
I was high on it.
I was addicted to her.
I would die in withdrawal if she ever took it away from me.
My collar slipped a little and my hands skated from her hipbones to her hair.
Her hair.
The hair I loved and couldn’t stop touching. I shivered as the strands cascaded over my wrists and tickled the tops of my thighs. I gasped as Eleanor picked up the pace, riding me with lust as well as love.
We lost ourselves in each other on the bare tiles of a virtual reality room.
No furs, no fires, no caves in the middle of nowhere.
Just bare bones of what hid behind illusions. The harness, the starkness, the emotionlessness of sex without a bond.
I cradled her back as she leaned away from me, her breasts on offer for me to kiss and bite. Her breathy groan when I sucked my way down her cleavage and inserted her nipple into my mouth made me jerk with the warning of an orgasm.
I wanted this to last.
I wanted to stay inside her forever.
But my tongue amplified Eleanor’s desire, making her hips rock faster, her mouth parting with a plea, “Harder, harder, please God, harder.”
And that was it for my threadbare self-control.
Pushing up with my legs, I clawed at the harness buckle to free her then tipped forward, doing my best to protect her back as we tumbled from sitting to lying. She winced as I splayed on top of her, my weight pinning her to the ground, my cock still deep inside.
We paused for a second, staring at each other.
Shock and suspicion bright in both of us that this was happening.
That we’d once been two people with our own lives spread before us and now none of that shit mattered. All that mattered was I was hers and she was mine and the rest of the noise…it was gone.
Insignificant and totally fucking worthless.
I thrust into her, driving her against unrelenting tile.
She moaned and wrapped her legs around my ass, spreading wide, giving everything to me.
We weren’t high on elixir. I wasn’t out of my mind with desire and she wasn’t on the cusp of death needing a release. This lust between us was pure and real and no matter what I conjured in a lab—no matter the properties and pleasures my elixir could combine—it would never match this.
Planting both hands by her ears, I drove upward, giving her what she wanted.
Harder.
Deeper.
Fuck!
Her fingernails scratched my spine as I fucked her with a violence that might seem primitive and barbaric, but really, I made love to her with every molecule of my body.
I couldn’t stop the rabid need to completely fill this woman.
I couldn’t slow down the desperate pumping as I rutted and groaned, pushing her along the floor with each thrust, so fucking thankful that she’d forgiven me.
She hadn’t said it in words, but I tasted her forgiveness in the very aura around us. I saw love shining in her beautiful eyes as I ducked to kiss her.
Our lips met just as Pika and Skittles shot into the VR room. Soaring and cawing, circling us from above while my body drove into Eleanor’s. From their point of view, they’d see two creatures blind to everything else but their own need. A tangle of body parts and rocking hips, of moans and groans and slippery flesh.
I fucking loved it.
I loved her.
My tongue plunged into her mouth, and her body bowed beneath mine. “Oh, God. Sully.” She gave in to her orgasm, kissing me back with primal possession and greedy tongue, all while her pussy milked my cock with intense waves of release.
I went with her.
I shuddered each time her climax fisted me.
I growled when my own ending rushed from my body in spurts of goddamn rapture. My body jerked with each pulse. I bit her throat as it grew far too intense. I crushed her and worshipped her and relished in the bruises I shadowed her with as they marked her as mine forever.
Our hearts thundered to the same erratic beat as desire hammered us into pieces.
With a final cry, she went lax beneath me, panting with exertion. I let my weight go, blanketing her, loving the heat of her, the wetness, the knowledge we’d done something that couldn’t be undone.
Our shared release left us limp and loose. Her hair looked like a million serpents covering the floor around us, and her hands stroked my spine as I returned to earth. Giving me gentle after I’d given her rough.
I nuzzled into her neck with overwhelming ecstasy.
That was what she was.
No, not just ecstasy.
She was harmony.
She brought harmony to my out-of-sync soul.
Peace.
She was peace.
And I was the luckiest fucking bastard alive.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“WHERE ARE WE GOING?” I padded beside Sully, bare feet in warm sand, my cotton dress thrown back over my well-fucked body, the remains of our lovemaking trickling down my leg.
My skin begged for the ocean.
Afternoon had replaced the morning, and the humidity level had exceeded comfortable. The sun managed to sear my skin even with the canopy of palm trees above us and the overall brightness of the island promised a scorcher of a day.
The only place to survive the intense heat would be to wallow in the sea, occasionally returning to shore for an ice-cold glass of fresh lychee juice.
I tugged Sully’s hand that’d permanently snagged mine. Our fingers entwined and palms glued together, neither of us caring that a slick of sweat blended us together. “Do you want to swim? I’m hot.”
He chuckled, bringing my hand to his mouth and kissing my knuckles, never breaking his pace. His thick five o’clock shadow tickled my skin while his lips were so soft. “You’ve read my mind.”
I frowned, doing my best not to be distracted by how much I still wanted him. How much I danced on air. How crazy all of this was.
What he’d done in Euphoria was unforgivable.
But what he’d said and done after was unbelievable.
Both incidents cancelled each other out. Hate plaiting with love, proving that both had to survive to make a relationship real. To ensure trust could blossom because I’d seen his bad parts, I’d endured his temper, cruelty, and darkness. His flaws were visible to me, and that allowed my heart to make an informed decision.
He wasn’t perfect.
But neither am I.
Our beginning wasn’t a cutesy story we could share over dinner because it began in the blackness where Sully had dwelled for so long. However, I wouldn’t trade it for the world because meeting him this way was ten times better than meeting someone at a bar or on a train or at a friend’s barbecue, only seeing what they wanted me to see. Asking me to base my choice on their rendition of who they are…not the nucleus of their truth.
There were many things about Sully I might never accept. I didn’t know how I felt living in paradise, all while he asked traffickers to deliver more women like me to his door. I couldn’t be selfish and ignore others’ plights, just because my own had taken a turn for the better.
But I also didn’t want to be a martyr and throw away what I’d found.
I wanted to keep him and save him.
Save them.
Save myself.
Because, as incredible as this revelation was—as much as my heart had sprouted little parro
t wings and hovered with a mass of hummingbirds in my chest, I was still his prisoner. I was still his ward with no freedom to contact my family or go home.
Not that I want to go home…yet.
Leaving now would be the worst possible thing. This was too new. Too fragile. We’d fought against the inevitability of falling in love, but our journey wasn’t over.
I doubted any relationship ever reached a point where either party didn’t stop fighting to keep the other. After all, a relationship was inherently selfish. Selfish to continue feeling this way. Selfish to keep your lover close. Selfish not to share the happiness that you’d found with each other.
Love could potentially be the best thing that’d ever happened to Sully and me…or it could be the worst disaster we’d ever have to live through.
Sully continued to escort me down a jungle pathway, going farther and farther away from the beaches ringing his island. I squeezed his fingers gently. “If we’re going for a swim, the ocean is back that way.”
He looked down at me, his height another thing I loved about him. I found it intimidating and protecting at the same time. “Who said anything about swimming in the ocean?”
I doubted he wanted to swim at the private pool for his goddesses. We didn’t exactly want an audience after we’d stripped away our shields and let each other in. I didn’t want to see anyone. I wanted him all to myself so I could stare into his beautiful blue eyes and see what he’d confessed to me.
To assure myself I hadn’t dreamed it.
To convince myself this was real.
He loved me.
He’d told me without a mask on. He’d removed my sensors and destroyed the illusion until all that existed was us.
And he did it for me.
I wanted to hug him. To squish him close and never let go.
“Stop.” I pulled on his hand, slowing him to a halt. The sandy laneway protected us from others. A few peals of masculine laughter sounded in the distance along with the raised flirty voice of a woman. The island had an uncanny ability at hiding its inhabitants, making it seem as if we were the only ones here…until I listened closely.
How many goddesses did he have exactly?
How many guests stayed here at any one time?
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