No more pain from my attempt at running way.
Only pain delivered as my punishment for returning.
“Good morning, Jinx.” His lips spread into a harsh smile. “I see he found you.”
I puffed up my chest. “I let him find me.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
“And how far did you make it? One island…two?”
I cocked my head. “You tell me. He found me on Serigala.”
His eyebrows rose with a faint tinge of respect. “Impressive.”
“How many islands is that?” I’d asked Sully, but he hadn’t replied. I’d also asked how far I’d still had to paddle before I would’ve been free. He’d also refused to answer that.
“Five.” Calvin pulled a key from his pocket and inserted it into the padlock. “Farthest a goddess has managed, so kudos to you.” His mockery made my anger flare.
I stepped from the cage, doing my best not to limp as he opened the door. “How many more miles before I was out of Sully’s dominion?”
Chuckling, he strolled to the exit, expecting me to keep pace. “Another thirty or so. But that doesn’t include the neighbouring islands that are owned by other rich bastards. Some holiday there, some live permanently, and some never visit at all. Either way, it’s a one hour helicopter ride to Java, so I doubt it would be kayakable…especially for someone untrained.”
“Why are you being so open with facts all of a sudden?” I placed a hand over my eyes as we stepped outside, granting much-needed shade from the golden glare. After being locked inside for most of the day, my body felt the slap of heat, brightness, and intensity of the island all the more.
“Because you’ve tried and failed. You won’t try again.” He smirked. “No one does. They accept. And… I’m guessing, you’ve accepted. Now you’ve spent a night in the lab?”
I shivered, still sore on my soles even with the soft sand beneath them. “So those cages did come from his labs?”
“His…and others.” He chuckled under his breath. “I keep telling him to bring a scientist over and test on the goddesses that are unruly. He refuses to allow animal testing…but human testing is okay.” He nudged my shoulder with his as if we were friends walking through a tropical paradise. “Pity he doesn’t heed my advice and just uses the cages as a timeout. If you’d been injected with half-cooked inoculations or smeared with untested ointments, then you’d have the true experience.”
My chin arched, doing my best not to be affected by Calvin’s taunts but suffering a chunk of ice in my stomach. “If he’s forbidden animal testing, how does he create products that work?”
He grinned like the devil. “By paying idiotic humans to be guinea pigs, of course. They’re the ones who use the stuff. They’re the ones who should die if they fail.”
I swallowed hard.
I agreed with Sully about refusing to test on animals, but I didn’t agree with testing on humans either. Wasn’t there some way to create a lab generated molecule that mimicked a human’s skin or system? I’d heard of meat being created in test tubes for a future set to be plant-based. I’d watched documentaries on scientists gleefully proving their ability to copy the enzymes in animal tissue and creating the perfect steak without ever having to butcher a cow.
Couldn’t something like that be conjured to be tested on?
My questions filled my head, and my feet drifted toward the fork that led to my villa. I needed to use the bathroom. To sleep. And then to eat…in that order. I’d always be grateful for the privacy and sanctuary of my own villa.
But harsh fingers wrapped around my elbow. “Ah, ah, ah. Where do you think you’re going?”
I forced myself to meet his cold eyes. “To rest. I’ve served my punishment. Surely, I’m free to—”
Calvin chuckled. “You truly are high and mighty. Sullivan has let you get away with far too much.” Dragging me away from the path that led to my villa, he added, “You’ll rest after.”
“After? After what?”
He smirked. “After Euphoria, of course.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I MANAGED TO STAY away longer than last time.
I spent the night pacing my villa, watching Nirvana splash in its never-ending water suicide, catching myself again and again as I stalked to the door with intentions of retrieving Eleanor from her cage and letting her go.
Of bringing her back here.
Of spreading her on the bed and—
Fuck.
Tens of times. Hundreds of times, I stopped myself. An endless night full of repentance and unease.
By the time the sun rose, I dragged myself to my office to work.
I did my best to bury myself in lab notes and read through pages and pages of successful and unsuccessful trials of new products.
By the time Calvin flew in from his little excursion, I sat with my hands buried in my hair and Pika sulking on my desk. The poor parrot had tried to cheer me up. Dancing his crazy dictator dance, throwing paperclips on the floor, shredding a Post-it note, and twittering a love song in my ear.
When all that failed, he’d plopped himself down on my laptop and stared up at me. He didn’t even try to tear out one of my laptop keys, his little wings drooping and eyes sad.
I tried to console him, but all I could think about was Eleanor.
Still trapped.
Still locked away like so many other pitiful things.
I’d wrenched up my head and tried to be the bad motherfucker who ruled his empire with no leniency as Calvin stepped into my space. He gave me a grim look, then folded into the chair facing my desk. Jetlag and overwork etched around his eyes. Just like me, he didn’t like international travel or large masses of humanity.
Thankfully, he provided a welcome distraction.
He told me in crystal detail the type of warning he’d delivered to my brother.
Courtesy of me. An extension of my wrath and violence.
Drake no longer had an operational lab in my building. He had a smashed and destroyed room with beakers and test tube glass glittering on the floor. The man himself no longer had an operational body either.
Thanks to Calvin’s chat, Drake had two broken fingers, bruised ribs, and possibly a fractured ankle.
I shouldn’t take such glee in my brother’s pain, but…he fucking deserved it.
I owed him plenty more. Most of the bones in my body had been autographed by his torments in our youth. And, apart from the incident where ropes had gnawed their way down to bone while Pongo was murdered, my parents never fully took my side again.
They buried their head in the sand that they’d birthed an abomination. A boy who had a taste for mutilating his kin.
The board had also been dealt with.
Calvin had explicitly reminded them that just because they oversaw my interests, gave advice on our standing on the global market, and provided day-to-day care of my investments, it didn’t mean they were above the law.
Above me.
Five were fired.
Six heavily reprimanded.
Three served warnings.
Meanwhile, Peter Beck and his lab assistants had been given a million-dollar grant to focus on whatever leads he felt worthy of pursuing. And another million to invest in additional lab equipment.
Calvin had done well.
It still fucked me off that he’d been the one who’d laid a hand on my brother, but…if I had to choose again, I would still have chosen to run after Eleanor.
And that was the goddamn, disgraceful truth.
After our discussion, I’d snuck another look at my watch.
Three p.m.
I’d agreed for Roy Slater to enter Euphoria at four. I still had to program his fantasy. A fantasy that I frankly found disgusting based on his close relationship with his son and daughter-in-law, but the money had already been deposited into my account.
A deal was a deal.
A bargain non-negotiable.
Opening th
e software to begin cyphering the virtual reality world that would whisk Eleanor from my control and into Roy Slater’s, I fisted the key from my pocket and tossed it at Calvin. “I appreciate all you’ve done and, you’ll receive a bonus reflecting my thanks, but get back to work. Go and release my goddess. Take her to Euphoria.”
Calvin’s eyebrow rose. “She serving?”
I pinned him with a stare that dared him to speak out of line. “You know she is.”
He stood with the key to her padlock fisted in his palm. “You’ll prepare her…like last time? I don’t suggest you do that. Your cock was inches away from—”
“Stop.” I bared my teeth. I went to say of course I wouldn’t prepare her. That I wasn’t stupid enough to touch her again. That I had more sense than to let my lust control me. I should shake my head and lock myself deeper into this nightmare I’d found myself in.
If I went to her now, who knew what the fuck I was capable of.
But my eyes strayed to the apothecary cabinet holding the vials of elixir, and I found myself standing and burying my fists in my desk. “She is mine to do with as I please. Just as you are employed to obey me.” Sitting back down, I fixed my stare on my laptop, ready to code a fantasy. “So go do what you’ve been told, and inform her she has one hour.”
* * * * *
Three-forty p.m.
Twenty minutes before Roy was due to have the best goddamn sex of his life with the girl I couldn’t stop wanting, and I’d once again made a colossal mistake.
I entered Euphoria with the elixir vial burning a hole in my palm. I strode past Jealousy, who’d no doubt offered moral support for Jinx while she’d prepared herself, and entered the virtual reality room where Eleanor already waited.
She’d been washed, cleansed, and harnessed.
Naked and magnificent, her body glowed perfect alabaster instead of sun-pinked. The minor scratches on her chest had faded, the painful sores on her hands reduced. With her luxurious hair that begged to be fisted and her grey smoky eyes that held countless secrets, I was hard within a fucking millisecond.
A staff member appeared from the bathroom door, wheeling the trolley with all the sensory applications to turn a fantasy into reality. The girl stopped short and waited for a command.
I shouldn’t be here.
I should place the elixir on the trolley and leave.
But my hand rose, and I waved the staff away.
Eleanor’s head tipped up as the girl nodded, left the trolley, and hightailed it back into the bathroom. The same bathroom where I’d yanked Jinx from the bath, stuck my tongue down her throat, and come to the shit-scary idea that I wanted her more than just physically.
My lust hid something deeper.
Something that made me die a thousand deaths a second.
Our eyes caught as I stepped toward her. Her nipples pebbled, her skin puckered with goosebumps, and she shuddered in her binds. Her body welcomed me, but her eyes blazed silver fire, smouldering with ire.
Placing my hands into my pockets, I clutched the vial of elixir as I stopped before her. I demanded my fingers to remain inside the material and not to cup her swollen breasts. “Pleasant night?”
She bared her teeth like a feral cat, showing sharp canines and rage. “I didn’t think you’d show.”
“Disappointed?”
“No…relieved.”
I sucked in a breath. “Relieved?” A scowl pulled my brows low. “How so?”
“It means I can stop repeating all the things I want to say to you. A speech I’ve rehearsed while my feet bruised from the wire and my dignity was shredded thanks to peeing in a bucket.”
“So you didn’t find the cage inviting?” I cocked my head. “What a surprise.”
She sniffed with temper. “I have so many things to say. So many curses I want to deliver. I want to tell you that you’ll never put me back in that place…but I know there’s no point. You can, and you probably will.”
Her head tipped up as I stalked toward her. “You have control in that, you know. Obey, and you live in luxury. Disobey, and the cage becomes your new home.”
She stiffened. Her belly filled and flattened as she inhaled. Her nakedness caused my lust to swarm like a thousand wasps, hissing through my veins, filling me with venom to take. I hated that I’d done that to her. But I’d do it again if it meant I could protect myself from her.
This woman.
Christ.
“That cage…who did it belong to?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You say who, but don’t you mean what?”
She frowned, mulling over my point that all humans spoke of creatures as a thing and not a soul. “Did the animal have a name?”
My stomach clenched. “Of course.”
“Then my question still stands. Who lived in that cage?”
My heart shed off its heavy hive of lust in favour of a deadly pounding potion of interest. She continued to surprise me. And each surprise punctured my defences a little more.
Clearing my throat, I murmured, “Ace. A chimpanzee.”
“How long did he live in there?”
“Before I sent him into whatever afterlife there is for apes? Years. Decades.”
She blanched. All colour slid from her cheeks, faded from her chest, pooled by her feet. “Decades?” She shook her head, sending hair whispering over her perfect skin. “On that wire floor?” Tears coated her grey gaze, turning them into rain clouds. “God.”
I’d come here prepared to battle with her temper. To antagonise her into fury because having her hate me was the only way I could fool myself into thinking I didn’t want her. But I wasn’t prepared for her empathy. Or for the way her mind switched from her own uncomfortable night, translating that to the pain of the cage’s prior resident.
A poor monkey whose days included being injected with drugs, hair shaved, and chemicals applied to delicate skin, being placed into crushes so he couldn’t move while scientists dropped all manner of so-called miracle medicines into his eyes to see if he’d scream. No part of his body was his own. His ears, his mouth, his anus, his flesh. All of it had some role for testing.
I cleared my throat again, chasing away the chill under my suit.
Eleanor blinked back her grief, her shoulders no longer tense with fight but rolled with sadness. She actually laughed once. A single sound of mirthless misery. “You know…I actually thought I was coping pretty well with my new reality. I refused to talk to the traffickers because my silence put me above them. I lived through your sexual initiation. I set aside my embarrassment and faced Euphoria as best I could. I didn’t let a chance of escape pass me by even though I knew it was probably futile.”
Licking her lips, she added, “I even felt a bit of pride. Can you believe that? Pride that I hadn’t broken. That I stood up to you. That I kept waking up each day myself and not some broken replica. But wow…” She shook her head again, dropping her gaze to her feet, standing on one leg to study the faint red marks on her sole, courtesy of the cage wire. “I’m nothing compared to Ace.”
A tremble began in my thighs, infecting my body and hands. I wanted her to shut up…before she could ruin me in an entirely new way.
But her delicate voice fell with a harsh whisper, “Abuse comes in so many forms. A single moment or prolonged event. After one night, I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to never spend another in that cage…and because I can talk to you—because we speak the same language, I probably stand a good chance of achieving that goal. However, a poor chimp or dog or cat—any creature at the hands of prolonged abuse—doesn’t have the ability to speak. Even though they’re probably begging for death, they still wag their tail when their owner comes, hoping that today will be the day they get a scratch instead of a kick. Each time the cage opens, they trust that maybe they’ve been good enough to be freed. That there is an end to a punishment that they didn’t deserve. And each day the kick comes, and the cage closes, and they wonder what they did wrong.”
A tear spilled down her cheek unchecked. She didn’t try to wipe it away. She didn’t stop staring at her feet as if the tiles had become a crystal ball, a seer’s tool to peer through classifications of mammals and segregations of species to not just witness the animal’s nightmare but to live it. “So…in answer to your question if I had a pleasant night? I want to change my reply and not complain about myself. I won’t complain about my discomfort because the other inhabitant of that cage couldn’t. He couldn’t voice his pain. He couldn’t beg for a reprieve. He just endured. Every damn day. For decades.”
When she looked up, I struggled to keep my façade in place. The mask I’d worn for so long that I’d forgotten I had another face beneath it. A mask that caused grievous bodily harm because it was his right to do so. A disguise that allowed me to be the monster my brother was, the heartless people my parents were, the superior over everyone.
She saw that slip. Her gasp gave her away. Her eyes danced over mine, diving deep, tearing through my walls until I felt her inside me. Her tiny hands clutched at my sins. Her dainty feet ran over my scars. In a heartbeat, she’d run riot in my psyche and left utter destruction in her wake.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I dropped the barrier against my lust and my sanity.
I ripped my hands from my pocket and dove my fingers into her hair. Our bodies went flush, fitting together as if we’d always had, her female liquidity against my male rigidity, and…
I kissed her.
I pressed my mouth to hers and tore my way into her just like she’d torn into me. My tongue was a knife, slicing her to ribbons; my saliva was a poison, killing her before she killed me.
The harness around her body held her steady, but her arms were free to move. I jolted as her touch scalded my neck. I shivered as her fingers became nails, digging into me as I dug into her. My hands dropped down her spine, gathering her harder against me so she’d feel how much I struggled. How much I fucking wanted her.
Her lips widened under mine, and I kissed her harder.
I kissed her until all I could taste was her, all I could remember was her, until bruises painted our lips blue.
Twice a Wish (GODDESS ISLES Book 2) Page 19