And I wasn’t open to selling.
Which meant I’d made more enemies from my VR creation than I had through my pharmaceutical formulations…which—honestly?—was fucked up.
Drugs were better than gold in today’s market.
Create a drug that granted happiness?
Instant billionaire status.
Conjure a drug that offered salvation to disease or pain, but in turn caused side effects that needed a whole other box of pills to cure?
Instant presidential status.
Control the health of the masses, and you became a true god in every sense of the word.
I’d had people bow to me for what my lab had created. I’ve had councillors and governors try to kill me for not conforming to their rules. For delivering drugs that didn’t cause the suffering that they so readily relied on to thin out the population and make money from their misery.
And now, I had jealous assholes who wanted my technology. Yet another reason I appreciated the seclusion of my shores. No one could sneak up without being fully visible upon the sea. No one could take what was mine without being murdered long before they could claim it.
“What do you want, Cal?” I massaged the base of my nape, cursing the persistent headache. I should probably pop an anti-inflammatory, but just because I pumped out pills and marketed medicine like new fashion lines didn’t mean I partook very often.
I preferred natural cures. Cures grown in my gardens rather than in my lab.
“I didn’t think you’d make an appearance today. Figured I’d screen any important emails so you didn’t have to later. Also, Jupiter is in Euphoria tonight. That Nathan Fisher guy’s fantasy is twisted.”
Cricking my neck, I rolled my shoulders. “Twisted how?” Did I miss something when I let him play on my island? Should I have revoked his invitation as I did so many others?
“He wants a full underwater experience.” Cal carved air quotations on either side of his head. “His words: I want a slutty, hornier version of My Little Mermaid, but not on land, in that cave where she has all those knick-knacks and forks and shit.”
I rolled my eyes. “He watched way too much Disney as a kid.”
“Either that or he has a fetish for fish. His last name probably predisposed him to marine life.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to code something like that?” I bit my lip, working through the computer algorithms that I’d have to write. The gravity wires in Euphoria would have to be used so they felt weightless underwater. Even without half my brain throbbing with agony, I doubted I could design a mermaid that could have decent sex. Where were their sex organs anyway?
They’re mythical, Sully.
They don’t have pussies because they don’t exist.
Ugh, my temper was the length of a shoe-lace and threatening to snap.
Ocean.
I needed to wade into that wet haven and drown away my pain.
Cal noticed my huff of annoyance. “I can write the cipher. No big deal.” He chuckled. “Be kinda cool to see what sort of human-world rules I can break.”
My eyes swooped to his. “I can do it.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to. That’s why you pay me. I do the crap you don’t need to—”
“When have you known me to take a sick day?”
He frowned, legitimately thinking. “You know…I don’t think you have.”
“Precisely.” I grimaced and straightened my spine. “I’ve put myself through worse and survived. This is nothing.”
“Yeah, but…” He came toward my desk, his suit pressed and slate-grey sleek. “I haven’t seen you that drained in a very long time. Ever since you—”
“Enough.” I gave him a warning glare. “It’s just another day, Cal. That’s all.”
“If you say so.” He sniffed with history, glowering with his own temper. “But you fucked up last night. You know that, right?”
“Quit it,” I growled.
“You shouldn’t have prepared her or removed her from the VR hook-up. You should stay the hell away from her.”
“For fuck’s sake—”
“No, just listen.” His jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth, knowing he shouldn’t say what he was about to but was going to anyway. “You never usually interfere with the everyday housekeeping…so you shouldn’t start now. And you know full well why.” Planting his fist onto my desk, he muttered, “You gave me one clear guideline when you started his place. One unbreakable rule that doesn’t make a shitload of sense to me, but you made me swear…so here it is. You said if you somehow forgot, I was to remind you why you choose animals over humans.”
I bristled. “I remember.”
“I don’t think you do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have done what you did last night—”
“I told you to back the fuck off.” I shot upright, ignoring the disgruntled pain of my body.
“And you told me to keep you away from anyone who threatened everything you’ve become. You told me that you’d rather stay alone than let someone else have a power over—”
“Leave.” I pointed at the door. “I know what I said, and I know why you’re reminding me, but I have things under control.”
He snorted. “Yeah, if this is you under control—unable to stay away from that walking Jinx of a curse—then you’re in deeper shit than I thought.”
My mind skipped back to last night. Of holding Eleanor. Of my heart kicking when she snuggled close. Of all the other bullshit that’d happened since she’d arrived.
It was a minutely struggle not to ask him how she was this morning. Not to stalk to her villa and make sure she’d drunk her smoothie, taken her vitamins, and stuffed her face with life-giving food.
Had she enjoyed Euphoria?
Was she in pain?
Did she hate me less or more?
Ah, Christ.
He was right. I let her have way too much monopoly over me…and I couldn’t fucking stop it.
Sighing, I sat down and pinched the bridge of my nose again, trying to squeeze out her curse like an ugly zit.
“Look, Sinclair…I get it. She’s unique. There’s obviously something going on between you two. You’d have to be blind as those fat-ass fruit bats you rescued. But…I’m only doing what I promised—” He held up his hand in surrender. “—Guarding your back.”
Before I could argue, apologise, or agree, Pika flapped through the see-through curtains and landed on my laptop. Squawking and doing his little foot-stomping dance, he attacked the letter K, going at it like a feathered Rottweiler.
“Ah, no you don’t.” Plucking him from the computer, I held his little body, so vibrantly aware of his tiny thrumming heart in his very breakable chest. His sharp beak pecked at my fingers. His black glossy eyes gleamed with mischief as he squeaked like a dog’s chew toy, trying to get me to free him.
“Ugh, why do you do this? Your cuteness is pissing me off.” I opened my palm, expecting him to fly away, but he flopped upside down instead, rolling on his tucked-in wings, a strange aerial version of a turtle on its back. I rolled my eyes at his scaly little legs waving in the air. “Yeah, yeah. Good morning to you, you little nightmare.”
He squawked loudly, making me wince. “Morning! Morning. Pika. Pika. Pika!”
My eardrums physically ached. A swim was definitely needed. I refused to waste the entire fucking day to this residual agony.
“God, you and that bird.” Cal scoffed. “Get a room.”
My lips twisted into a half-smile, glad our previous conversation was over and fully aware that Cal had a soft spot for this little menace, just as much as I did.
After all, Cal had been in my life almost as long as Pika. He’d been the first to learn of Pika’s origins. The only guy I trusted when it came time for my massive liberation.
My second-in-command held my stare for a moment, reliving the path we’d travelled together. I’d told him to go off on his own multiple times. He had the brains to cook something equally as profitable as I had. But, instead,
he decided to hang out with me, mastering the art of irritation.
Fuck only knew why.
Some might say it was a mistake bringing Cal with me to my islands. He wasn’t trained to be a personal assistant, manservant, or my second. He’d been a junior university geek when I’d taken over my parents’ pharmaceutical company. Training to be a pharmacist, he was doing some very underpaid research in the lab, so he could understand how drugs were mixed and blended, ready for the illnesses he’d be dispensing for.
We’d met in typical unplanned fashion.
I’d been nineteen; he’d just turned twenty.
I’d been head honcho of Sinclair and Sinclair Group for precisely five days. The policies I’d put in place had ruffled the delicate feathers of the stuffy board members. I’d done things they weren’t happy with. I’d implemented new rules they despised. But they couldn’t stop me as I owned the majority shares and had the wishes of an iron-clad will from my recently deceased parents.
Sullivan Aiden Sinclair…their new ruler and king.
My older brother, Drake, had also been in the will and testament. However, his inheritance came in the form of the ridiculously expensive mansion my parents owned, the summer house in Greece, and the entire contents of their lucrative bank accounts.
He was the golden child.
I was the second born kid who didn’t fit in with their family squad. I hadn’t been left cash or property—I’d been gifted Sinclair and Sinclair, not as a reward but as a punishment.
However…I was grateful. And I’d used it to my full advantage.
On the sixth day of my ownership, I’d sent out a blanket email announcing the immediate ban on all animal testing. I didn’t care what it was for—face cream, acne prevention, cancer eradicator—all animals were forthwith freed from their miserable existence.
When I’d bumped into Cal on the elevator, a monkey was wrapped around my neck wearing a diaper, his skin peeling from the latest tests and his eyes bloodshot from a new form of conjunctivitis medicine. In my left hand, I held four leashes, all tethering timid and terrified beagles to my heel. And in my right, I had a cage holding a dozen dying mice.
He’d stumbled into the mirrored elevator, lost in the humongous skyscraper of Sinclair and Sinclair, and came face to face with his boss’s boss’s boss who also happened to be evacuating a zoo.
Without a word, he’d taken the beagles.
We’d descended to the glass-caverned, travertine-coated lobby, and he’d helped me stuff the diseased and ill-gotten creatures into a massive truck destined for the airport.
That had been the beginning of an incident I was both deeply proud and immensely ashamed of. It’d also earned me a ruthless reputation.
Before I’d moved permanently to my Goddess Isles, I’d heard what they whispered in the fancy corridors. Human killer. Animal lover. They claimed I had the heart of a wolf instead of a man—choosing four-legged beasts instead of his own brethren.
They meant it as a slur.
I took it as a compliment.
Because it was true.
Humans deserved the worst from me. Animals were guaranteed my protection.
From anyone.
Pika fluttered to my shoulder, nibbling my ear.
I shivered and nudged him away with my chin. “Fly away, little flea. I’m busy.”
He twittered and tweeted, mimicking the sparrows and other birdlife that regularly serenaded the garden outside my office. My headache crested with each of his little chirps, not finding comfort in his song, when usually, my heart would settle and my stress would evaporate.
Fuck it.
Standing slowly, I pinned Cal with a stare. “You code Nathan Fisher’s fantasy. I’m going for a swim.” I smiled cynically. “And who knows…maybe I will take a sick day, after all.”
I left before he could rub my downfall in my face.
Pika fluttered after me, his wings snapping in the humidity.
Chapter Four
I SPRAWLED ON THE sand like a discarded toy that’d had all its stuffing removed.
The sun was at its zenith, directly above me, doing its best to chargrill my skin, even with the generous lashings of sunscreen I’d applied.
I willed myself to sit up. To eat. To focus on this stunning, glittering day.
But…the sand cradled me too well. The effort of clenching stomach muscles and corralling arms to push up was too much.
So, I lay there. The sun painting bright red patterns on my closed eyelids, stealthily streaking my dark hair with strands of bleached copper. I’d always been a sun lover, acutely attuned to its alternating shades and strengths in different countries.
Ozone played a large part, along with distance from the equator, and air pollution to its heat and colour, but here, on Sully’s island, the gilded orb had the warmth of a thousand cosy blankets, pressing into me, reaching through my pores and blood to my bones beneath, easing out the tiny pinpricks of pain and melting them into nothing.
I was washed in gold, inside and out—the perfect healer to my exhaustion.
At least I was outside and no longer in bed. To be honest, I was surprised I’d achieved that small goal. It’d seemed like an impossible task when I’d first woken and been assaulted with aches and bruises, tenderness and overuse in literally every extremity. Even my little toes hurt when I gingerly slipped out of bed and hobbled toward the bathroom.
There, I’d swayed as blackness crawled over my hazy vision. Once again, my blood sugar levels were dangerously low. My stomach clutched on emptiness. My hands quaked with hunger.
My core wrenched a moan from my lips when I clenched my pelvic floor, my feminine attributes highly aware they’d been touched, licked, fucked, and sampled far, far too many times.
I’d wanted to soak away my discomfort in a bath, but with my knees almost buckling, I opted to sit on the plush bath mat by the huge wave-carved vanity instead of risking a fall.
Putting my head between my legs, I waited for the wooziness to pass, breathing as deeply as I could, doing my best to tame a tattered heartbeat. By the time I looked up again, I’d formulated a flimsy plan of crawling back to bed, ringing for some food to replenish me, and spending the rest of the day in misery.
Hauling myself to my feet, I blinked back new stars, focusing on the large stone bathtub. As if by magic, warm water bobbed with frangipani flowers, aromatic with sweet blooms and comforting vanilla.
How?
Did someone come in and draw a bath while I’d slept?
My shoulders rolled with utmost gratefulness. Tears even came to my eyes as I clutched the lip of the bath and carefully slipped a leg inside. The warm water embraced me instantly, deleting some of the strain.
I melted, and that was the extent of my strength.
I allowed myself to plop like a pebble into the comforting water world, holding my breath as I ducked under. My ribcage grumbled with aches as I held my breath, slowly easing by the time I came up for air.
Some guardian angel had foreseen my need for bodily rehabilitation. If only I had something to eat, I could wallow away the rest of the morning, allowing the bath to work better than any pill or painkiller.
Wiping away water droplets from my eyes, I blinked again.
What on earth?
There, on a small bamboo table with a small vase holding three freshly picked frangipani flowers, two bottles of sweet-smelling lotion, and a box of anti-inflammatories, rested a dewy, blue-glossy smoothie.
Oh, my God.
Had I been so blind not to notice these gifts when I first entered the bathroom or was some of the magic from Euphoria spilling into reality?
I bit my lip, looking around the bathroom to see if an invisible staff member poised with yet more offerings plucked straight from my wordless wishes.
But I was alone.
Alone with the tweets of birds, gentle slap of waves on the shore, and the tropical heaviness of humidity.
Wincing as I employed muscles to reach f
or the smoothie, I grabbed the dense drink and slipped back into the warmth again. Only my head and my hands remained dry, tipping the weighty glass to my lips and slurping huge mouthfuls of deliciousness.
I moaned as if the flavour explosion was another orgasm. My system instantly clamoured to convert food into life-giving glucose and minerals. Blueberries and banana, cinnamon, coconut, and a blend of too many other things to pinpoint.
Thick and wholesome, I devoured the entire thing, gasping with brain freeze by the end.
Contentedness spilled through me, and I reclined in the bath again.
I stayed there until the warmth turned to air temperature and the smoothie navigated from my stomach to my muscles. Only once I could stand without black spots dancing in my vision did I grab a towel, dry off, slip into a silver rhinestone-studded bikini, and apply liberal sunblock.
Even that amount of exercise made me very aware of how weak my body was. How all it craved was more nutrition and somewhere to rest. I padded through the airy villa and followed the sweet, spicy aromas coming from the deck.
Once again, my mouth fell open in shock. The table, resting under a giant umbrella, groaned with a plethora of dishes. Earthen pots holding rich curries, banana leaf plates presenting fluffy pastries, white china with fresh fruit, and dishes with lentils, vegetables, and barbecued halloumi, all waited to be chosen.
Saliva coated my tongue. I selected a huge piece of ripe watermelon, a handful of lychees, and a still-warm chocolate croissant before descending the two steps from the teak decking to the sugary sun-warmed sand.
I ate my beach picnic in record time, then lay back and…the rest was history.
I couldn’t move.
I didn’t want to move.
I’d made the mistake of lying down in paradise, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t let guilt push me into motion.
My body wanted to rest.
I will rest.
I had no one to please, no chores to complete, no parents to obey.
Just bird song and wave chorus lulling me into a state of utmost lazy leisure.
Unfortunately, while my body might be able to switch off all signals to move, to lie like a corpse and be grateful for its respite, my mind began to race.
Twice a Wish (GODDESS ISLES Book 2) Page 4