Twice a Wish (GODDESS ISLES Book 2)

by Pepper Winters

  I nodded. He was right. No way did I want them to witness their tyrannical ruler wobbly and weak. I wouldn’t prove to them that I wasn’t a god after all but pure mortal. A mortal with wounds and worries and the god-awful premonition that I’d fucked up big time.

  I shouldn’t have put her in Euphoria.

  We walked in silence for a bit, allowing the buzzing cicadas to serenade us and the ribbits of tree frogs to fill in vacant conversation. Trailing down the pathway leading toward Nirvana, the waterfall I regularly rock climbed, Cal finally broke the insect-amphibian orchestra. “Why did you do it, Sinclair?”

  I shrugged.

  I doubted he’d like answers like: ‘I couldn’t help myself.’ ‘She’s different.’ ‘She’s messing with my mind.’

  “Next time, I’ll prepare and finish her. You don’t need to be around Jinx any more than absolutely necessary.”

  My hands balled.

  “All you need to do is focus on your guests, your lab, and the coding for fantasies, remember?” His green eyes flashed with light from the carved lanterns leading the way. “You did ask me, once upon a time, to remind you of what was important if you ever deviated.”

  Previously, I would’ve agreed with him. Those three things did keep me plenty busy without self-destructing thanks to a fascination with a goddess.

  But…that was before.

  Before her.

  I strode ahead.

  The lights of my villa beckoned me, granting the final dregs of movement. “I remember, Cal. And I also remember being the fucking boss around here.”

  He stopped, allowing me to continue on my own. However, his voice chased me over the sand. “At least she didn’t die tonight, Sinclair. The elixir didn’t push her over the edge.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered if she had,” I threw over my shoulder, wanting an end to whatever suspicions he had about me.

  “Yeah, sure.” His dark laughter echoed in my ears as I trudged up the two shallow steps and wrenched open my villa door. I could still feel his judgement long after I slammed the door, locked it, and planted face first on my bed.

  I was out cold a heartbeat later.

  Chapter Two

  Five Hours Before

  ELIXIR.

  My horror and haven.

  Suffering orgasms at my own hand while under its influence had been the most painful and shameful experience of my life.

  Until now.

  I screamed as the caveman mounted and speared inside me.

  One thrust.

  One swift stab of his hot, hard cock…and I shattered.

  My first orgasm snatched me with no warning or politeness. My body skipped past previous cues that hinted a climax was imminent.

  He entered me.

  And I existed no more.

  Undiluted, chemically-supercharged bliss shot me from my body and sent me soaring in delirium. I wasn’t aware of anything apart from my body splitting apart, wave after wave, squeezing and milking the carnal intrusion inside me.

  It went on forever, stealing all my energy until I blinked with blind eyes, doing my best to breathe and slip back into my skin that felt too hot, too sensitive, too much.

  As quickly as the catapulting of my soul happened, I ricocheted back into my body and collapsed. My elbows gave out, crumpling me to the floor with my cheek pressed into musty dirt.

  I didn’t care.

  All I cared about was the drum, drum of my frenzied heart and the lava of lust in my veins.

  I wanted to rest, to fade away into the stars where I’d just visited. However, my cheek rubbed rhythmically into the earth. My breasts swayed. And my hips remained high in the sky while the stranger rutted into me like a beast.

  Blinking, I glanced over my shoulder. I willed strength to push up but my muscles were totally useless. His eyes glowed with a hunger that tore apart my stomach and hollowed me out. His eyebrows shadowed everything but raw desire while his teeth stabbed into his bottom lip as he fucked me with unwavering obsession.

  I moaned as he threw his head back, driving his hips deeper into mine, filling me further. His throat rippled with muscles as he swallowed. Sweat ran down his scarred and muscular chest.

  I had no idea where he came from, and in some recess of my mind, I screamed to get free. To remove his body from mine and curl up in the corner. To bellow for someone to save me. But that timid little voice of propriety was instantly gagged by another torrential wash of desire.

  He was a stunning specimen of a man. Big in all the right places. Hairy on the parts that oozed masculinity. Brutal and ruthless with an aura of an animal who took what he wanted and often.

  I was totally at his mercy, his fingers bruising my hipbones as he continued to thrust unforgivingly. I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t tell him to stop. He wouldn’t let me go until he’d debased me in every lewd and aggressive way.

  That ought to make me cry.

  To make me fight for my freedom.

  And I would.

  I should.

  But…the elixir had turned me into an enemy.

  The longer I watched him taking everything from me, the longer I swayed and pumped to his rhythm with his cock still buried inside my drenched pussy, the more my lust amplified.

  Unlike the day when Sully gave me the elixir, and I’d had no outlet to release the pain of blistering pleasure, today…I had an outlet.

  I wasn’t slowly dying from a build-up of agony that had nowhere to go.

  I wasn’t tired from my release.

  I wasn’t annoyed at his continued rutting.

  And I definitely wasn’t sated.

  I would use him as much as he used me.

  I welcomed his cock because it was the painkiller to my disease.

  I encouraged his rhythm because it gave my overworking, overstimulated senses something to cling to.

  My back arched. A ripple of need ran down my spine.

  He grunted and fucked me harder.

  I groaned as he collapsed over me. His huge hand splaying over my nape, trapping my cheek against the dirt. His chiselled belly crashed into my ass each time his hips pistoned forward, stuffing his throbbing erection deeper into me. His sweaty chest smeared on my spine as he put his weight on me, pinning me immobile, his pace growing fast and shallow as he chased his own release.

  His grunts filled my ears, sounding entirely like a bear and not at all human.

  And fuck, it turned me on.

  Tears oozed from my eyes as another full-body quake appeared out of nowhere, responding to his sexual treatment, the unapologetic way he claimed and controlled me, the delicious way his body consumed mine.

  His tongue licked my skin where salty tears fell. He swallowed once, twice, his lips opened and guttural, lust-raspy words spilling out. “You’re crying because I’m fucking you?” His hips drove forward, accenting the word fuck. Reminding me exactly what he was doing. This was a take-over—hostile and violent—and because of the drugs swimming in my blood, I wanted it more than air.

  I whimpered as he rolled his hips, digging into me as deep as he could. “You don’t like this?”

  I squeezed my eyes, shaking my head as another wave of bliss added to the first, getting ready to squeeze my womb and ripple down my core.

  “You don’t want me to fuck you?” His hand dropped around my waist, his fingers finding my clit just as his voice licked into my ear.

  My second orgasm wrenched a sob-scream from my lips.

  Once again, I vanished from the physical plane and shot into the astrophysical. I bounced around glittering, pulsing stars as my body came undone. I literally couldn’t tolerate the intensity, the magnitude of every atom committing suicide with rapture.

  He growled as my inner muscles squeezed him, his pace turning erratic and hungry.

  His strength scooted me forward along the earthen floor, smearing my cheek with dirt, painting me in the filth of what we were doing. My tears continued to rain, needing an outlet for my confusion just a
s my body needed his for relief.

  His fingers threaded through my long hair, tethering me all while holding my nape. Breathing was difficult, my spine ached, and my knees burned, but all I could think about—all I cared about—was wringing out another orgasm and another and another…chasing the right to my own body again, determined to be sane and not this wild, unhinged creature.

  His hands clamped on my hips, jerking me back as he snarled in some ancient tongue, jettisoning his release into me.

  No condom.

  No protection.

  Just this stranger who’d claimed me for his own.

  His body lost its throbbing tension as he withdrew. A splash of his cum mixed with mine and landed on the ground. I shivered as he slowly skated his hand from my nape and down my spine, over my ass crack to the slippery wetness between my legs.

  I winced as he rubbed my clit, moaning and wanton as yet another climax demanded to be shed. I had too many stored inside me. I could see them. Little glowing orbs of sinful need, blinking blood-red eyes like demons, biting at me with lustful teeth. There was an entire nest inside me. A nest of rabid monsters, straining at their leash, desperate to escape and chew me apart.

  “I asked you a question.” His voice lowered, his breath coming in quick exhales. “Three, actually.” Smearing our combined wetness on my thighs and up over my hipbone, he murmured, “Why are you crying? Because of what we did, what we will do, or because you liked it so much?”

  With Herculean effort, I pushed myself off the ground and swivelled until I sat on my knees to face him. My breasts rose and fell with tattered breath, and even now, even after two of the most blistering orgasms of my life, I still needed more. The ache still brewed in my teeth and fingertips. My skin still sparked with sex and sickness. My heart skipped and tripped; unable to find a calming beat, it settled for mayhem instead.

  He sat on his knees too, his cock still hard, glistening with our mixture. Angry and veiny, threatening me as much as tormenting me. “So?” He raised an eyebrow, playing with me.

  Our gazes collided, and I swallowed back loathing, disgust, and, most of all, shame. I was ashamed of what I was. Mortified that I’d allowed him inside me without even knowing his name or his past or if he was safe to be with in this manner.

  But Sully had said his elixir eradicated shame. That it freed us from the rules and barriers we’d put on ourselves. So why did I still fight?

  Why, even though my body had given in…why did my mind still revolt?

  My hands curled, and a flash as bright as a burning comet blazed with temper. I hated Sully. I hated what he’d made me become. That he believed I’d enjoy this.

  Enjoy what exactly?

  Being stuffed in some otherworldly dimension with a caveman who’d just taken his fill? Who already looked ready to take me some more? Or the fact that I already squirmed in place, fighting the urge to touch myself, biting my cheeks to ward off the overwhelming need to stick my fingers inside me and come.

  Again.

  Again.

  With a sigh, I dropped my chin so my hair curtained all around me. Each strand had a tongue, licking my sweaty skin. Each crackle from the fire had heat, stroking me. Each icy breeze from behind the fur entrance had fangs, lacing me with frost, only to melt with my desire.

  “You can talk to me…here, in this place.”

  My hands balled as I looked up. My fingernails sliced into my palms, and instead of wincing in pain, I stifled a moan of drunken desire. Pain matched other pain. Bruises would help ease some of the deliria inside me.

  “I’m no longer crying.” I stiffened, sitting prim even as my hips moved to a silent erotic beat.

  He reached forward. I flinched back. He still caught me, running his callused thumb over my cheekbone and revealing a droplet of salt. “You are.”

  I swiped under my eyes, my fingertips coming away wet. “I’m not crying…not by choice, anyway.”

  “Yet sadness continues to fall.”

  “It’s madness…not sadness.” I dropped my hand, expecting it to land as I wanted it to on my lap. But the elixir had other plans, hijacking my control, planting it over my breast instead.

  I moaned loudly as I pinched my nipple, and the need to be filled again descended over me like a black thunderstorm. A cloud with no visibility or reason, crackling with electricity, filled with the power to maim.

  The shame I felt popped like tiny bubbles. The fight I clung to vanished under the cloak of heavy lust. I was sucked down, down, down…back into the singular obsession of need.

  He noticed my downfall and pounced on my weakness. Pushing my hand from my breast, he cupped the weight in his massive palm. He kneaded me, and my tears fell harder.

  “I hate this.” My teeth bared with truth, but my body swayed into him, relinquishing to my lies. “I don’t…” I cried out as his other hand traced the wetness between my legs. My hips shot forward, seeking more.

  “Are you so sure you hate this?” Pulling me forward by my nipple, he ran his nose along my chin to the dip of my collarbone. “I can make you feel better.” He licked me, worshipped me.

  I mumbled something I couldn’t articulate. Words no longer inhabited my brain. Only sex. Only raw, basic coupling.

  His arm wrapped around my waist, dragging me from my knees and positioning me over his lap. His cock pulsed upright, ready to claim me again.

  “You have the choice,” he whispered, husky and harsh in my ear. I shivered as he licked my lobe, biting it gently. “Sit on me…or don’t. Use me…or use yourself.” His body trembled with barely held restraint. “I have all night to fuck you. So…I’ll be generous and let you fuck me instead.” His eyes flashed with brittle obsidian, looking down at my pussy, spread and bare above his erection.

  He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, groaning under his breath, but he didn’t try to force me down. He trembled and waited, staying true to his word.

  My thighs spread, wanting him despite my still struggling mind. I dug my fingernails into his shoulders, wrenching a hiss from him.

  I became transfixed on his mouth. On the roughness of his jaw. On the softness of his lips. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, making me gasp.

  I’d never seen something so enticing, never had a full-body clench just from looking at a man’s mouth before. His large hands walked slowly up my spine, then dived into my hair and threaded strands over strong fingers. He held me captive, but he still didn’t push me onto his cock.

  Instead, he pulled me forward, inch by inch, gentle but authoritative. “Is that what you want?” he murmured, bringing me closer and closer. “A kiss?”

  I shivered.

  Goosebumps speckled my flesh. I almost came just from the word.

  How?

  Why did a kiss have such power over me?

  Why did tears slip down my overheated cheeks at the very thought of being set free by something so normal?

  Pulling me the final distance, he brushed my nose with his. Once, twice. Our foreheads pressed together. Our eyes locked.

  And I lost myself to him.

  I lost because of the depth within his stare. He wasn’t just a man here to fuck a tied-up, confused, scared, and forcibly-horny girl. He was here because he wanted what I did. He wanted to let go and find salvation in connection. To transcend simple sex and share something on an instinctual level.

  Sucking in a breath, I sank down of my own volition.

  Sliding over his thighs, my mouth opened wide as his hard length slipped inside me.

  His fingers pulsed in my hair, holding tight. His chest rose and fell with shallow sips of air. And we both released a soul-deep groan as I sheathed him completely within me.

  His flesh within mine.

  His vulnerability mirroring mine.

  His hunger matching mine.

  I hadn’t expected this. To find a moment’s peace in the arms of a total stranger.

  “What’s your name?” I moaned, drunk on the size of him, intoxicated by the
fierce way he held me.

  His hips soared forward, stabbing his erection deeper. “I’m yours.”

  I cried out, only to have his mouth capture mine.

  “Just like you’re mine.” He fed the words into my mouth, kissing me brutally deep.

  The second his tongue pierced my lips, I spindled outward.

  My third orgasm caught me completely by surprise, but in a way, I should’ve expected it. To know that I lived on the permanent edge of shattering.

  His tongue swept deeper, kissing me ruthlessly. My eyes rolled back, and my internal muscles squeezed his cock in reply, in welcome.

  I came.

  Over and over, wave after wave, heaven and ecstasy all in one.

  He vibrated around me, his rhythm staying fierce and deep, thrusting into me even as I came apart. His kiss never stopped, his tongue tasting all my shadows, his teeth biting my bottom lip, his finesse as archaic as mine.

  Wrapping my arms around his head, I deepened the kiss.

  With every minute that ticked past, each rock of our bodies and tangle of our tongues, my mind gave up its fight to boycott this illusion.

  It accepted that the fire was real, the cave was real, this man was real.

  Sully and his Goddess Isles had been the dream. The nightmare.

  I accepted that my world was no longer firmly based in truth but had deviated into nonsensical.

  And that was okay.

  Because I couldn’t keep fighting anymore.

  My strength had popped. My disbelief fading beneath the pulsing demand of my body.

  And with that freedom, the second part of elixir came into effect.

  First, it stole my senses. It made sex my only reason for existing. But the second part, the part that hadn’t occurred when I’d been alone in my villa, sobbing in agony and struggling to relieve myself, cannonballed through my ribcage.

  Peace.

  The final tethers of society’s requirements, the mess of political correctness, and the strain of living in a world filled with stresses fell away.

  I found freedom.

  True freedom.

  Freedom from my own thoughts and expectations. Freedom from my need to run from this because it was wrong.