Fourth a Lie (Goddess Isles, #4)

by Winters, Pepper

  She shuddered as I pressed my body into hers.

  “I’m wet for the man I’m in love with.”

  “A man who no longer exists.”

  Goosebumps scattered over her skin. “Don’t say that.”

  “Don’t be honest?”

  Even in my fury, we were in sync.

  Her legs wrapped around my hips as I thrust into her pussy.

  Her lips rose as mine crashed down.

  Our kiss connected as our bodies joined.

  I stabbed into her.

  A vicious, unrelenting possession.

  Her cry echoed from her mouth to mine, but I didn’t stop.

  I didn’t let her adjust.

  I rode her all while dirt and decay sluiced down my body and onto hers.

  We fucked in absolute filth and I was neither apologetic nor contrite.

  Our kiss broke apart as I set a punishing rhythm. Our noses bruised, our foreheads bumped, our lips stayed wide and open, two silent screams as we clawed and attacked each other, sometimes kissing, mostly biting, both intent on destruction.

  Her fire combated the icy shower. Her salvation tried to dilute my rage.

  I pumped over and over, doing my best to punish her for ever showing me what happiness could be.

  I took her until the first tightening tangles of an orgasm clenched my belly and balls. I used her until the first clench of her pussy announced she reached the same pinnacle as me.

  And then, I stopped.

  I withdrew.

  I dropped her to the floor, wincing at my engorged cock and turning my back on her.

  I sadistically took us to the edge where we might’ve found peace and denied us.

  I denied us because we didn’t fucking deserve it.

  Her frustration puffed on my back as she panted. Her tiny mewl of need made pre-cum ooze out my tip. I trembled with the unbearable need to spin and finish what we’d started.

  But...I wanted the torture.

  I needed it.

  I needed to live in that blistering, brutalising pain.

  She could finish herself off. She could seek a cure for her agony.

  But I wouldn’t.

  Not while I wore the death of so many innocent things.

  Get it off me.

  In a sudden panic, my desire to be clean overrode the crippling need to come.

  Grabbing a bottle of coconut body wash, I dumped half the contents into my palm and scrubbed. I used nails to serrate my skin from entrails and innards. I attacked myself as if I was the enemy...because in reality, I was.

  I lost myself in the mantra of cleanliness, clawing and scratching until trickles of crimson sluiced down the drain thanks to the sleet pounding from above.

  Delicate hands touched my back. Sweet, formidable hands rubbing soap into my rotten flesh and down my spine.

  My chin fell on my chest as the heaviest groan slipped from my lips. Eleanor sniffed back all the grief I’d caused and systematically rid my back, ass, thighs, and calves of any remains of Serigala.

  I couldn’t move.

  My arms hung useless by my sides, swaying beneath the spray, corrupted and controlled entirely by a woman who would never permit me to send her away.

  Once she’d cleansed my back, she squeezed herself between me and the wall, her nakedness slippery against mine.

  Our eyes locked, shouting so many things.

  I hated that a stare wasn’t just a stare between us. A look wasn’t just a look but an entire paragraph of problems, turning into a battle of wills, forearming her with a rebuttal against anything I might decree.

  I love you.

  I know.

  You have to leave.

  Never.

  She winced as she broke our stare, tracing the shallow scratches I’d covered myself with. I hissed as she soaped me, the coconut wash stinging my wounds. I closed my eyes with a haggard sigh, permitting a sliver of softness.

  She washed me with reverence and worship, making my heart swell and suffocate.

  Her hands slipped down my belly, making me twitch. She slowly, steadily lulled me into accepting a ceasefire, all while my heart chugged with memories, and charred whiskers filled my nose, and my mind was an amalgamated graveyard of extinction.

  My rage blended with grief.

  My fury fused with despair.

  My muscles stopped seizing with nightmares and, just for a moment, I inhaled clean, untainted air.

  But then, she touched me where she shouldn’t have.

  Her tight fingers fisted my cock, igniting pain and reminding me of my inadequacy. Reminding me that she shouldn’t fucking be here. That I was running out of time. That she wasn’t safe, no one was safe.

  She had to go.

  My temper barrelled through the thin veil of calm she’d granted. I grunted as her sinful lips encircled my erection.

  My back snapped straight. My body jerked with unshed desire. My hands landed on her head, holding her while I thrust into her hot, wet mouth.

  Fuck!

  My orgasm that’d never vanished took my distraction as permission to explode.

  The first splash coated her tongue as I drove to the back of her throat.

  My anger followed swiftly.

  My acrimony that she’d once again manipulated me raced through my veins and made me cruel.

  Shoving her away, I pinched the tip, refusing another wave of pleasure. I locked down my muscles. I gritted my teeth against the natural pulse of my body to spurt. I groaned as the climax tormented me with talons then slunk back down my legs with irritation.

  Eleanor remained on her knees, her grey eyes shadowed with annoyance. “Let me pleasure you, Sully. Focus on something else...it will help.”

  “Don’t tell me what will help. I know what will help. The second you’re off my island, I’ll be happy.”

  “Happy?” She snorted. “You’re so far from happy you’re in denial.”

  “And whose fault is that, huh?” I bowed over her, flinching as cold needles continued to stab us. My cock ached with every droplet of unshed cum, making me snappish and savage. “I’ll tell you whose fault it is. You and your goddamn curse. You’ve made me weak. You’re the reason I didn’t see this attack coming. You’re as much to blame for the blood on my hands as I am.”

  She braced her shoulders. “I’ll permit that one slander because I know how much you’re hurting...but do it again and—”

  “Get up.” I fisted my cock, throttling it in warning to stop torturing me. “Your stay on my shores has come to an end.”

  Regally, seductively, she stood. “You can’t send me away. We both know that.”

  This was the part I hated the most.

  The utmost assurance in her tone of my feelings for her. The presumptuous boldness that said she wasn’t afraid of me, that she could hear my lies even as I formed them, that she would always know the truth in my heart instead of the falsehoods in my mouth.

  Fine.

  She wanted the truth?

  I’d give her the goddamn truth.

  Wrenching off the shower, I grabbed her forearm and threw her into the bathroom. She tripped and skidded on the tile, quickly finding her balance to clash with me.

  “I don’t have the fucking strength to survive you.”

  She spread her hands in surrender. “I’m not asking you to survive me. I’m asking you to trust me—”

  “Trust that you’ll still be alive after I deal with Drake? Trust that you won’t push me to my limit and make me hurt you? Trust that you’re fucking immortal and won’t end up like the creatures strewn all over my goddamn island?”

  Her cheeks pinked with matching temper, water dripping down her bare form. “Once again, I’m not asking you to drag me into whatever war you have to win. I’m just asking you to admit you want me—”

  “Want you?” My nostrils flared, my hand still locked around my pounding cock. “Woman, I’ve never wanted anyone more.”

  “Then that’s all that matters. I�
��m yours and—”

  “I want you, Jinx...but I don’t want to want you.”

  Her inhale pierced her lungs, air doing its best to cushion my intended dagger to her heart. Her hand rubbed her chest as I struck a successful blow. “You’re walking a fine line, Sully. I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to convince me and yourself that what we have is cheap enough to throw away. That we aren’t linked by something far more powerful than either of us.”

  “It’s over, Eleanor.”

  “Like hell it is.” She planted her hands on her hips, spreading her legs, her pussy still wet for me, her breasts still swollen for me, her entire body primed for my possession.

  Jesus, I found her irresistible.

  The most stunning, infuriating, maddening, wonderful creature I’d ever seen.

  But if she died, the perfection of her would fade. It was her soul that made her perfect and her soul would escape the moment her body took its last inhale.

  I will not be fucking responsible for that.

  I can’t!

  I winced as an image of shovelling her broken body into a blood-soaked sack filled my mind. A rush of nausea swarmed me.

  What I’d seen on Serigala would be nothing if I had to witness her death. If the bones I crunched and cracked over were hers.

  I would spend my life in purgatory. I would sprout heinous blasphemy. I would hog-tie her and throw her on the helicopter gagged and trussed before I let that happen.

  I balled my hands. “I gave you your freedom. It’s time to take it.”

  “My freedom isn’t worth a damn if I’m not with you. I wasn’t free the moment I met you!”

  “I rescind my ownership of you, Eleanor. Whatever bond you think we have—”

  “God, you’re a bastard. You think you can just snap your fingers and what I feel for you stops? You honestly think you can cut me from your life by sending me away?”

  “Just accept that this is not open for discussion. My reasons are my own and will not be swayed. You are no longer welcome—”

  “Argh!” She paced, her motions jerky, her breasts bouncing. “You know what, Sully, I called you a coward before and I’ll use that word again. You. Are. A. Coward. You were a coward about admitting you were in love with me, and you’re a coward now for trying to say that you don’t. You’re a coward for throwing me away the moment things get hard.”

  “Things get hard?” A sarcastic bark slipped my control, even as my cock swelled with deep-seated pain the longer I watched her.

  I needed her.

  Fuck, how I needed her.

  She was walking fucking temptation.

  A spitfire with temper crashing and igniting against my own. Every slur we threw at each other made the bathroom drip and shimmer with need.

  “For fuck’s sake, I’ve just wiped up the intestines of hundreds of animals. Do you think I want to wipe up yours, too?”

  “My intestines are staying right where they are. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “Then why are you—”

  “I’m not worried about what might happen, Eleanor. I know what will happen. You. Will. Get. Hurt. It’s a fucking guarantee. You are my weakness. He will use you against me, and because of the shit that I’ve done, fate will deem it fitting to allow him to hurt you. If you stay, he will hold you over me, and you. Will. Die.”

  My body clenched with warning. I was near the ledge. A ledge that would only destroy both of us.

  Breathing hard, I snarled, “I’m doing my best to stay calm here, Jinx, but I did warn you. I’m hanging on by a goddamn thread. I’m running out of time. If you continue to fight against me I—”

  “You think he’ll hurt me?” She crossed her arms, pushing her breasts up, making my cock weep cum. “That’s the only reason you want me to leave?”

  I laughed again, icy and cruel, so turned on I couldn’t fucking see straight. “You mean, I need a better reason than you will die?”

  “Do you still want me?”

  My eyebrows tugged low, shielding my incredulous stare. “What a stupid fucking question. We just covered that.”

  “It’s not a stupid fucking question. You’re the one trying to convince me that you don’t.”

  Anger had mutated to sexual frustration.

  Despair had morphed to erotic stimulation.

  I loved her for fuck’s sake.

  Yet I couldn’t seem to protect her.

  I gritted my teeth, answering her with clipped finality. “Whatever I feel is irrelevant. We’re done, Eleanor. I no longer have any interest in keeping you because we have no future. We have no future because you will die by his hand or mine, and I fucking refuse to hurt you anymore.”

  “You’re hurting me right now. You’re acting as if you don’t know me. You seem to think I’m some girl who won’t stand up to you, won’t fight you, won’t fight for you.” Marching into me, she planted her hands on my overheated chest. “You can lie to my face, Sully, but you can’t change the truth.”

  My eyes snapped closed at her proximity.

  My cock bounced with its own pulse, desperate to thrust inside her, hijacking my entire nervous system with hunger.

  Her fingers were tiny electrodes, shooting current into my heart, down my belly, into my legs. Her closeness was a furnace, searing my flesh, making me sweat pure sin.

  Her breath caught as my hands slammed over hers, digging her fingers deeper into my chest. My hips rocked, nudging my cock against her belly.

  She moaned.

  My eyes shot wide.

  Our fight reached critical cataclysm.

  Panting breathlessly, she dug her nails into my pecs. Her smoky eyes turned hazy, drunk and drugged on the potent, powerful thirst between us. “Are you forgetting Euphoria?”

  Her voice did painful things to me, dangerous things.

  “Did you not feel what I did?” She pressed her nails deeper, trying to claw out my angry, aggravated heart.

  My skin, tight and tingly with passion, puckered beneath her touch, begging for more.

  “You’re trying to tell me you don’t feel that?” She dared kiss one of my cuts, lick at my wounds, make me lose every shred of control I had left. “I touch your body, but you feel it in your heart, Sully. I see it in your eyes. I sense it in my soul. If you want to lie, by all means. But don’t expect me to believe—”

  I broke.

  Seizing her from the floor, I stalked toward the vanity, spun her around, and folded her over the hard marble. “I suggest you hold on.” Grabbing her hands, I planted them firmly on either side of the bowl. “I’m not going to be gentle.”

  Chapter Six

  MY HEART BOLTED LIKE a rabbit, darting and weaving, seeking a hole to hide in.

  I looked at him in the mirror behind me.

  Our eyes snagged and a cloak of dark depravity consumed him.

  Instinct blared to run.

  Basic survival said I would not like what was about to happen.

  But I was trapped, turned on, and tangibly consumed by hate and love.

  With a snarl, he jerked my hips back, kicked my legs apart, and ran his fingers from my clit, over my dripping entrance, to my crack and asshole.

  I flinched as he pushed his finger against the tight ring of muscle.

  I gasped as his cock found my pussy.

  I screamed as he thrust both unforgivingly inside me.

  His cock and his finger, claiming me two ways, ensuring he scrambled me, controlled me, punished me.

  My knees buckled, digging my hipbones into the vanity as he mounted me without apology.

  His hungry grunts and barbaric thrusts made me swell with my previously denied climax. My imprisonment and his nastiness only added gasoline to the fire he’d struck inside.

  I billowed with it.

  Orange and red and yellow.

  I burned with it as he fucked me as if I was every nightmare he’d ever had.

  He was nasty and reve
ngeful.

  He covered up his pain with blustering malice.

  But I didn’t care.

  I surrendered to his spite because I found every facet of this man utterly irresistible. He was a weapon of lust even while my body screamed at me to run.

  To run and come.

  To come and run.

  To give in.

  My legs spread wider.

  He snarled as his cock hit the top of my pussy, locking us together in carnal copulation. His finger in my ass only made his invasion tighter, deeper, dancing on the border of pleasure and pure pain.

  My body switched from my ownership to his.

  His touch filled me, defiled me, and sullied me in every way possible.

  I rose on my tiptoes as he claimed me with every lash of his rage. His other hand grabbed my breast, kneading me, pinching my nipple, attacking me until I writhed in his hold.

  “Please, Sully...God, please.” My vision turned hazy as I looked at him in the mirror—watched the way he pawed me, flushed at the wildness he’d conjured in me.

  All I wanted, all I needed was to be thoroughly fucked by this man.

  A man who had no control over his actions. A man thoroughly hollowed out by an animal holocaust.

  “Fuck...fuck!” He tore his finger from my ass and wrapped his hand around my nape, keeping my head facing the mirror, our eyes trapped on each other.

  We watched each other fuck.

  We learned how ugly we were, how hungry we were, how utterly desperate to convince ourselves that life would continue if we weren’t together.

  And we failed.

  Because we no longer needed linguistics or lyrics to share our love, it was there.

  The brightest flame, the loudest scream, the darkest disease imaginable.

  My hands slipped on the vanity, sending me forward while his fingers around the back of my neck dragged me upright.

  He sank every inch within me, clamping his fingers on my hip, holding me tight as he drove into me again.

  And again.

  He pulled me back until my spine bent and my breasts jutted forward. He kept my stare as he unsheathed his teeth and sank them piercingly into my throat.

  I cried out as he nuzzled me, bit me, confused lust with loathing and handled me with peril instead of protection.

  My legs buckled as he dragged me backward, sinking all he had to give inside me, rubbing his balls on my clit, keeping me pressed on the vanity and contorted in his hold.