Fourth a Lie (Goddess Isles, #4)

by Winters, Pepper

  I’d sat on his island, alone with my knowledge, and wished, begged it wasn’t true.

  But the second I’d seen him...God.

  His condemnation tainted him like a nasty aura. A fog thick with questions he didn’t have answers for. How could he be happy when so many lives had been taken? Who was he to take what I offered him when everything he cared for had been slain?

  The terrible thing was...I didn’t have the answers either.

  I just knew he couldn’t stop what we felt for each other because if he destroyed us now...we’d live a lifetime of aching regret.

  Shoving back my fear at losing him, I crawled up his powerful, unyielding body and kissed him harder.

  Pika and Skittles flew around us, their little wings buffeting us, neither of them attempting to land as if Sully’s horror and my terror created a force field around us that no arrow or parrot could break.

  I dove my tongue between his clamped together lips.

  I ripped off the lid of his anger.

  He snatched me.

  Ensnared me.

  His arms swooped around me, crushing me, sharing his filth and fury, plunging his tongue into my mouth, stealing my dominance and shoving me relentlessly back into submission.

  He kissed me as if he’d forgotten how to be a man.

  He kissed like an animal, taking all of me, attacking me, hurting me.

  He tasted of smoke and blood and death, death, death.

  He pawed me as if I was his enemy and not his ever after.

  Violence replaced the blood I’d lost in my heart, blistering and bright as the stars above, giving me a dagger of nastiness to match his diabolical, uncontrollable rage.

  I bit his bottom lip, making him snarl.

  He kissed me so hard, I gagged on his tongue. He poured a rumbling roar down my throat, complete with teeth and spit and carnage.

  And I lost it.

  If he wanted to hurt me, so be it.

  But I would hurt him back, bite for bite.

  I let loose.

  I kissed him with bottomless grief and endless stubbornness.

  I kissed him...but he devoured me.

  His fist curled in my hair, sharing the dirt on his hands, the blood under his nails, the strings of repugnant remains with me.

  I bowed in his arms, imprisoned and manhandled, no longer a participant in the kiss but just surviving his violence. My lips burned from his facial hair. My jaw ached with how deep he kissed me. I let him pour his pain into me, gagging on the rancid ruin he’d dealt with, choking on the lives he’d lost.

  And through it all, we argued.

  We’re over.

  Never.

  I don’t want you.

  Liar!

  His kiss tried to beat me into accepting his compulsory closure.

  My kiss ripped apart his determination and screamed a resounding no!

  I couldn’t breathe.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  We attacked each other until we almost fucked right there in the sand.

  Perhaps, that would work.

  Give him my body in lieu of his nightmares.

  Reaching between us, I fisted his rock-hard cock.

  He snarled and threw me away, panting hard, his chest straining with madness.

  I blinked at the wrathful god before me, and I saw past his lies before he ever uttered them.

  He loved me.

  But that wouldn’t change a goddamn thing.

  It wasn’t agony that’d changed him but tightly bridled rage. Rage that I had no power against because it was too ingrained in him to master.

  His entire body hummed with it. His nostrils flared with it. His skin crackled with it.

  Pure, undiluted hate that had no outlet.

  Once upon a time, I’d likened him to a volcano. His temper a steady flowing river of lava beneath the cracked veneer of decorum. He wore his civilised polish well, but he could never quite hide the diabolical vehemence inside.

  That volcano was so, so close to erupting. A hissing cloud of warning was the only precursor to his impending detonation.

  I understood his anger at losing Serigala.

  I sympathised with his inability to shed such fury.

  But I had no idea how to help him.

  How can I heal him when I don’t know what happened?

  He kept a palm planted on my sternum, keeping me at a distance he could cope with.

  Our eyes locked.

  And a large piece of me threatened to die just from witnessing his pain. He looked as if he’d been to war and returned the only survivor. Harrowed and haunted, his blue eyes muted and no longer luminescent with male virility. They were washed out and filled with ghosts of the creatures he’d lost.

  He reeked of sooty smoke and metallic blood, and his body tensed as I studied him, his muscles locking beneath his squalid clothing.

  He flinched as my heart pounded beneath his palm, revealing the aching pity I held.

  “Don’t pity me,” he growled. “Pity them. The countless creatures who died...because of me.” His fingers twitched and dug into my chest as the rest of him stood stoic.

  “This wasn’t your fault.”

  He laughed icily. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.”

  His voice physically scarred me, but I kept my temper from unfurling. He was allowed to be angry. And I had to be the calm where he could find quiet.

  “I know more than you want to admit,” I murmured. “I know you love me. I know that I love you—”

  “Stop.” He dropped his hand, curling his filth-blackened fingers into fists. “Just stop.”

  He looked satanic.

  He’d left a man and returned a demon. A macabre mannequin who wore Sully’s face and puppeteered Sully’s body but had switched souls with him, leaving him with nothing but darkness.

  My heart hiccupped with pain. If he’d closed every door to me...how the hell was I supposed to scratch my way back in? How could I teach a loveless titan that he could be both vicious and vulnerable with me?

  He didn’t have to push me away because of what he’d done and would do.

  He didn’t have to hide any part of his personality with me.

  The urge to hug him crippled me.

  I couldn’t offer much, but a hug was a start. A hug was home and a haven and a place where he could unload and be exposed. No one should have to deal with what he’d seen and not have a place to vent or sift through his trauma.

  But he shook his head to whatever invitation I gave, his jaw clenched in denial. His haunted eyes locked on the sand as if he couldn’t bear to look up and see his untouched paradise and a goddess who loved him after surviving hell.

  Without his condemning eyes hurting me, I was able to study him. His hair no longer had bronze-tipped strands—soot and dirt stained every strand black. His tanned skin was barely visible beneath streaks of gore, blood, and ash. His heavy five o’clock shadow held flakes of charred fragments, and his hands were unrecognisable with lashings of blackened blood.

  His t-shirt was no longer white. The parts that weren’t soaked in grim fluids of doomed animals were torn and smeared with charcoal. Every inch of him blared the fate of Serigala, and tears spilled over my eyelashes.

  Just as I’d known he’d decided to stop our relationship the moment I’d watched him step from his helicopter, I knew precisely what’d happened on his island.

  The playful otters.

  The curious pig.

  The rabbits and dogs and birds and mice.

  They’re all gone.

  And their last mortal remains clung to Sully as if unwilling to say goodbye to the man who’d rescued them. The man who’d buried them, mourned for them, turned rogue for them.

  Daring to touch him, I stepped closer and stroked his forearm. “You need to shower.”

  “You need to go.”

  I ignored my full-body quake of fear. “There’s time to discuss—”

  “That’s where you’re wr
ong, Eleanor goddamn Grace. There is no time.”

  “There’s always time—”

  “No.” He bared his teeth. “I’ve made up my mind. You’re leaving. Immediately.”

  It took everything I had not to buckle at his feet. I reinforced my spine with steel and narrowed my eyes. “You’ve made up your mind, have you? But what about my decision?”

  “You don’t get one.”

  “We’re equals, Sully. I get a vote in whatever madness you’ve decided.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I brought you here. I can evict you just as quickly. You can scream and beg, but the fact remains, you will not change my mind.”

  I prickled with anger. “And you think by sending me away that I’ll remain unhurt?”

  He nodded savagely. “You’ll be away from me. Therefore, you’ll be safe.”

  “I’ll be in more pain than I’ve ever felt if you send me away.”

  “Pain means you’re still alive, so I’m okay with that.” Arching his chin at the helicopter, he muttered, “That’s your ride.” Snatching me around the wrist, he tugged me down the beach. “Get as far away from me as you can.”

  My temper might’ve been locked up while I offered a haven for a broken man, but those gates smashed wide apart when faced with a stubborn jackass who ran on exhaustion and emotional bereavement. “Don’t do this. If you send me away when you need me the most, you’ll be the one who suffers.”

  “Threats now?”

  “Just truth.”

  He stumbled as if I’d driven an ice pick into his heart. Swallowing hard, he growled, “And if I don’t send you away, then you will suffer.” He kept his eyes far from mine, not denying that this would rip him into pieces, just ploughing ahead with his agonising choice. “I’ll take the suffering, Jinx. I need you gone. I have too much blood on my hands to add yours.”

  “What makes you think you’ll have my blood on your hands?”

  He stopped and spun so fast, I smashed into him.

  Our bodies collided.

  Our chemistry ignited.

  Lush, lusty connection that would never fade.

  Our fight scrambled as our bodies primed for a different kind of battle. My nipples hardened to diamonds as his body shifted from raging to raw need.

  His fingers spasmed around my wrist as if he had the uncontrollable need to break my bones, make me bleed, and fulfil his prophecy that my life force would one day stain his hands.

  In his wild, washed-out stare, I saw just how stricken he was. How wretched and wounded.

  And I didn’t think.

  I just acted.

  We moved at the same time.

  His head came down.

  My mouth tilted up.

  Our lips crashed and collided.

  Our kiss was everything that love wasn’t.

  There was nothing gentle or kind, just nasty and noxious, sloppy and savage.

  His gruesome hands cupped my head, twining his fingers deep within my hair, trapping me to kiss me deeper, rougher, with an unholy appetite that spoke of the hell that he’d stepped from.

  I moaned as our kiss turned obscene with how much lust and loathing we shared.

  Thanks to our bond, secrets couldn’t hide, lies couldn’t convince, and in the end, it was love that turned out to be our greatest suffering because it gave us nowhere to hide.

  Nowhere to pretend.

  We were both the poison and the antidote, killing and reviving each other with every plunder of our tongues.

  His hands dropped from my hair, down my back, and grabbed handfuls of my ass. He hoisted me up until my tiptoes barely tickled the sand, and drove his hips into my belly, imprinting me with the pulsing hardness between his legs.

  I choked on his tongue as he groaned so brokenly, so ferociously.

  I pulled away and bit his ear, ensuring he listened with his body and not his mind when I hissed, “Don’t say goodbye when you’ve barely said hello.” I rocked my hips against him, making him shudder. “We have time, Sully. Take me home. Fuck me. Remember me. Keep me.”

  He grunted with tattered violence, tore me from the beach, and stormed with me in his arms away from the helicopter, away from our ending, away from the ghosts that haunted him.

  Chapter Five

  “FUCK!”

  I dug my hands into my hair, dislodging a rain of ash and death as I bellowed at the ceiling and motherfucking destiny who’d given me a woman who shared a piece of my filthy soul.

  A woman who knew exactly what I was going to do before I’d even decided.

  Who sensed my decision before I’d even gotten up the strength to go through with it.

  Who had an intuition about me.

  Who defied me.

  Who goddamn ruled me.

  How the fuck was I here, inside her villa, primed to fuck her while covered in the massacred carcasses of rodent and canine and not waving goodbye as she flew away?

  Pika and Skittles—who’d followed us from the beach on whispering wings—squawked at my violent, bitter curse, peltering around the rafters with green feathers.

  In the clutch of my fury, I only saw them as more things to die because of my failures. I wanted to cage them up, ship them away, extract them from my calamity so they could be safe.

  Just like Eleanor.

  Yet she was still here.

  On my shores.

  In her villa.

  Walking into my goddamn arms.

  I stiffened as her embrace wrapped around my waist, her ear pressing against my heart, her body resting flush to mine. She dared kiss the absolute butchery of my t-shirt, making my stomach roil and pulse stutter with so many aggressive things.

  “Sully...speak to me. What did you see? What happened? You can tell me.” Her arms squeezed my waist, lying to me that she was strong enough to handle the spillage of such horror. Doing her best to convince me that the imagery of mangled paws blown from bleeding cadavers and snouts with broken teeth wouldn’t turn her into what I’d become.

  A sorry, pitiful, raging, rabid human who would give anything for his own claws and fangs—to be a powerful predator so he could rip out the jugular of his enemies and feel the gush of blood down his throat. To be able to kill in primal, chaotic ways instead of being so weak to require weapons to do his massacring for him.

  A knife wouldn’t be enough.

  A gun wouldn’t be enough.

  Nothing would be good enough to exterminate the life of my brother. The brother who threatened my creatures and my goddesses.

  Who threatened her.

  Snatching her chin, I arched her face up and stole her gasp with my teeth.

  I kissed her brutally, brokenly. I kissed her until blood tainted our taste and something inside me snapped.

  She thought she could help me?

  She thought she could convince me to keep her?

  I’d prove otherwise.

  I’d show her just how dangerous loving a monster like me truly was.

  It’s still over, Jinx.

  You’ve just delayed the inevitable.

  Seizing her from the floor, I carried her into the bathroom.

  The same bathroom where she’d painted herself in magic, dressed in myth, and came to me gowned like a goddamn queen, all so she’d trick me into keeping her.

  It’d worked then.

  I’d fallen to my knees.

  I’d fallen in love.

  And look what happened as the result.

  If I’d sold her to Roy Slater, my creatures would still be alive. They’d be barking and bleating, cooing and cawing. Instead of being silent for evermore.

  Shoving her against the vanity, I snarled, “Stay right there. Do not move.”

  She licked her lips, tonguing the small cut where I’d bitten her, and nodded.

  With my gaze locked on hers, I tore off my t-shirt, kicked off my boots, and ripped off my socks, jeans, and boxer-briefs, leaving the blood-soaked pile on the floor.

  I shredded myself from ma
terial, revealing the putridity of my skin beneath. The bruises from kicking tumbled buildings in pure rage. The cuts from rubble and the blending of my blood with animal.

  My body was as branded as my clothing.

  I stood before her naked, a symbol of vulnerability, but I seethed with rage I couldn’t shed so easily. Her grey eyes cast over me, lingering on the scars of my past, the lacerations and singes of my present, and the angry pulsing erection between my thighs.

  I was desire and death all in one.

  I scared myself with my ricocheting, ravenous needs, yet Eleanor just stared with an elegance I’d never been able to ruin, and a tranquillity that said I was safe to put aside my hate...just for a moment.

  To find solace in her bravery and kindness.

  A small part of me did want that. He wanted to drop to his knees and have her curl into his lap and rock. But the part of me that’d snapped no longer accepted her invisible crown or ethereal control over me.

  I wanted her to hurt.

  I wanted her to feel a tenth of the pain I carried.

  Walking into her, I snatched her wrist again and yanked her into the shower.

  I needed Nirvana.

  I needed freshwater to surround me, drown me...but this would have to do.

  Ripping on the cold water, I wrapped my arms around a struggling Jinx as she tried to outrun the icy liquid raining over us.

  I added no heat, no comfort.

  I needed the sleety needles.

  I needed my temper to be extinguished before I did something I’d always regret.

  Stay, Eleanor.

  Please, Eleanor.

  Fuck, Eleanor.

  She gasped for air, the cold water stealing her breath. While she squirmed in my arms and her wet hair clung to her shoulders, I pawed at her black dress. I yanked it over her head and threw the heavy weight to slap drenched by the drain.

  She was naked.

  Her skin flushed despite the ice falling over us.

  Her nipples puckered, her belly quivered, a slick of lubricant glinted on her inner thigh.

  My cock hardened to the point of excruciation. “You dare be wet for a monster like me?” I shoved her against the wall and, once again, grabbed two handfuls of her gorgeous ass. I spread her cheeks, hauled her up, and slammed her against the iridescent tile. “Do I turn you on? Knowing I’m barely human? Knowing I’m hanging on by a thread?”