Fourth a Lie (Goddess Isles, #4)

by Winters, Pepper

  A flash of worry came and went.

  He was bleeding.

  He was heading to open waters.

  Sharks.

  Sharp teeth.

  Death.

  Who cares?

  You’ll die if you don’t come.

  I gave up trying to beg and turned vicious instead.

  Thrashing out of his arms, I squirmed until he let me go as deep water cradled me.

  He grabbed my wrist. “Swim with me. The sooner we’re on Lebah, the sooner you’re safe.” Pushing off from the bottom, he struck into a powerful swim, keeping hold of me and dragging me beside him.

  Water cascaded over my head as I sank, then broke the surface again. My hair streamed behind me, the ocean teased me, and the blistering need to orgasm made me so unbelievably selfish.

  I climbed onto his back, twining my arms around his waist and finding his cock.

  He choked and sank.

  His hands shoved mine away, his feet kicking for the surface.

  He tried to push me off him.

  And I did the most unforgivable thing.

  I wrapped both legs around his, ruining any chance of buoyancy, sinking us like a stone.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  FUCK EVERYTHING THAT WAS fucking holy.

  She’s going to kill us.

  Either on land or sea by sex or gun, she’d just signed our death warrants because how the hell was I supposed to save her when she didn’t want to be saved?

  Drake would be occupied for hours. Jealousy had sacrificed herself in Eleanor’s place. I’d killed four of his guards, but who knew how many were left.

  The fact we’d gotten this far was a goddamn miracle.

  I ran on the dregs of energy.

  Tritec-87 had granted me accelerated healing and strength, but not enough to fight a demented creature thirsting for sex.

  Every muscle fought a battle of sickness and salvation. My body needed nutrition and stamina. My eyes needed more medicine and rest. And my peace of mind needed to get Jinx off this goddamn island before it was too late.

  But no.

  She had to be drugged and as high as a motherfucking kite with lust.

  And it wasn’t her fault.

  It was mine.

  I took full responsibility for this rescue disaster.

  But I still cursed her inability to fight it. Still hated that she’d fed me elixir and shown me what sort of agony she drowned in. That I’d experienced the shame, the pain, the unstoppable drive for sex first-hand.

  Of course, she couldn’t fight it.

  I hadn’t been able to.

  No one on this planet could win against a drug carefully designed to hijack the mental and nervous system of its host.

  My lungs burned as we fought beneath the surface. She was like a fucking octopus with her hungry tentacles and eager hands. She’d hate herself for this. This wasn’t her. She’d curse every heartbeat because she was the sweetest, most caring person I knew.

  I forgave her delays and demands even while I cursed her.

  But her actions would kill us...

  And I couldn’t permit that to happen.

  I couldn’t let her be her own worst enemy.

  Her legs tangled tighter with mine as she tried to swim around me. I kicked for the surface, breaking the seal and dragging a sharp breath into my lungs just as her lips wrapped around my cock.

  Holy shit—

  She sucked.

  Hard.

  She willingly drowned herself by blowing me.

  Goddammit!

  Dipping beneath the surface again, I pushed her mouth away, wincing at the threat of her teeth. She gasped as I yanked her from the depths. Water poured over her head, her hair rippled with the blackness of the tide. Her grey gaze reflected starlight with a manic kind of misery.

  She’d never looked more stunning or so sad.

  My chest ached for her. My cock throbbed for her. I cupped her cheeks as tenderly as I could, and whispered, “Please, Eleanor. Give me an hour. Swim with me. Ignore it. The minute we get to Lebah, I’ll fuck the ever-living elixir out of you. You have my word—”

  Wrong thing to say.

  She pounced on me like a water nymph.

  We both plummeted beneath the surface again as her legs wrapped around my waist. She became an anchor, a snare I couldn’t get free from. Her pussy rubbed enticingly against my cock, making my hips thrust instinctually.

  My bad leg bellowed as I kicked toward the surface. I did my best to focus on survival while her only capacity was for sex. I grunted as she worked her way up, looping her arms over my shoulders and pressing her clit against my cock.

  Christ, she was hot. Hot and bothered and miserable.

  “Eleanor. Stop—” I spluttered with a mouthful of salt as she totally ignored me and clawed my shoulders with greedy hands.

  “I can’t stop. I’m sorry. So sorry!” She arched her hips, seeking the tip of me, trying to angle us together to copulate.

  I hated that I was hard.

  That even though I fought with every part of me to get her to safety, I still wanted this mad woman.

  “Jinx...stop—ah, fuck.”

  I bucked.

  I groaned.

  I no longer had any worries in my head as she slid me deep inside her. My belly clenched as natural needs took over. I drove upward even though I had no purchase to push against. Just water around us and a reef beneath us and sharks most likely circling me for dinner as my blood once again rang the dinner gong.

  The level of insanity that she’d become made me doubt we’d ever get free. But for a blissful, brutal moment, I gave in as she locked her legs around my waist and sank down my final inches.

  She shuddered with desire amplified by a million percent. Her pussy fisted me as she came just from having me inside her.

  “Yes. Oh, God, yes!”

  Her inner muscles milked me. She came over and over. Her breath caught; her torture tangled with despair as she was consumed by ecstasy.

  Ecstasy that could very well be our demise.

  I held her up the best I could until the end of her climax. I fought the need to chase my own, focused on getting her to safety rather than indulging in something that could get us both killed.

  Pushing her away, I winced as we disengaged.

  She cried out, granting the salty sea her tears, adding drop by drop. “I’m sorry, Sully. I’m so sorry.” She dug both hands into her hair, yanking as if she could pull the elixir out by its root. “I’ll—I’ll fight it. I will. I’ll fight—” She moaned again as a rogue wave bashed us together, sending our legs sliding together with eddies. “Ah, God.”

  She attacked me.

  I wasn’t prepared.

  She dragged me below the surface again, sinking us to the bottom where predators hunted.

  Her feminine lubrication smeared over my leg as she rubbed herself against me. The moisture of desire so different to the moisture of the sea.

  My own release snarled in my balls, making me a traitor to our escape.

  As we sank, I fought her. I attempted to lock her hands together so she couldn’t touch me. I tried to keep her away with a foot planted in her belly. But she was like a siren who corrupted men. A medusa of the sea with tricks and triumphs, sinewing around me quicker than I could untangle her.

  My lungs began to hurt.

  My ruined, hazy eyes locked on the midnight sky far above us.

  Eleanor jerked in the beginning of a suffocation death dance. Her body at the mercy of lust when all her vitals wanted was air.

  She was me when I’d almost drowned in Nirvana.

  Fuck.

  She’d been the mermaid to save me. She’d brought me back to life. Damned if I’d fail her when given the same test.

  Grabbing her throat, I squeezed until she clawed at my wrist rather than my cock. Keeping her locked at arm’s length, I kicked for the surface as fast as I could. She jolted again, her mouth spread wide as she tried to
drink seawater.

  The urge to do the same crippled me. The relief as we broke into air was immediate.

  I inhaled gusts of fresh oxygen and she choked up salt, coughing and crying, her hair roped in seaweed coils over her face.

  Not giving her time to recover, drained of all energy and unable to face her attack again, I turned back toward the shore.

  I grabbed a handful of her hair, keeping her strewn behind me as I swam with the final effort I had left.

  By the time my feet hit the shallows, she’d recovered from her brush with death and moaned for life again. She crawled up the beach on all fours, her ass high, and pussy swollen to be taken. I collapsed to my knees, cursing every fucking deity that’d given me this disaster.

  She’d been there for me while I’d been in the height of my musk. Despite the danger and the imminent threat on both our lives, she currently suffered a curse she couldn’t wake from.

  What sort of man was I to let her suffer any longer?

  She’d suffered so fucking much at my hands already.

  Almost as if she’d given up hope that I’d help her, she flopped onto her back and brought her knees up. Wedging her heels into the wet sand, she spread her legs and pressed her entire hand against her pussy.

  Her eyes closed and spine bucked, and I couldn’t fucking do it any longer.

  Crawling to her with blood gushing through my bandage and every part of me screaming for cures, I swatted her hand away and dropped to press my face against her.

  I feasted.

  The second my mouth latched onto her pussy, she turned into the sister of Hades. A goddess who wore the souls of men as her empress gown while that damn invisible crown of hers glinted with the gruesome remains of the hearts of her victims.

  She dug her nails into my hair, dragging my face deeper between her legs. She thrust up, panting, hyperventilating as I speared my tongue deep, deep inside her.

  My lips spread over my teeth as I fucked her with the entire length.

  She sobbed as my nose bruised her clit, and I gave up trying to catch my breath. Instead, I willingly drowned on the clean, sea-washed scent of her.

  Her fingernails dug into my scalp as her fourth release slammed through her. Her legs tried to scissor together, crushing my head and making me punish her with my teeth. I bit her clit as she throbbed and shuddered, milking my tongue until my hips thrust into air, caught up in her magic, desperate to fill her.

  She hadn’t finished coming before I reached my limit.

  Ripping my mouth from her, I leaned back, grabbed her hips, and flipped her onto her belly.

  As gentle waves lapped up the shore, I plunged my entire throbbing length inside her.

  She screamed.

  “Quiet!” I clamped my hand over her mouth, driving her cheek into the sand, not caring that her hair became tangled with the stuff. I held her down, prone for my taking as I punished her for making me do this.

  We should be halfway to sanctuary by now.

  I should be getting reinforcements for Cal and Skittles, and sending an army to save Jealousy and my empire. Instead, I was fucking a demented goddess on the shores of my island that wasn’t paradise but the worst illusion imaginable.

  This was hell.

  And I was the devil who’d corrupted this girl to the point of becoming a succubus. A succubus custom-tailored to drip me dry from sanity, health, and everything else I held valuable as a man.

  I closed my burning eyes, cutting out her fuzzy form as I continued fucking her, harder and deeper, dropping all my barriers and not caring in the slightest if I took her too roughly.

  There was no such thing as too hard while in the clutches of elixir.

  She might not be able to walk after this...but this was what she begged for.

  Her fifth release started in the caverns of her and quickly fanned out with mind-scrambling ripples. She moaned behind my hand, her eyes closed and face flushed as I drove again and again. She came on the heels of her last orgasm, sobbing as her entire body betrayed her.

  I went with her.

  I choked on my growl, trying to stay silent as I pumped my load into her and died with pleasure. My release was brutal and blinding, cruel in its intensity and condemning in its whispers to run.

  The second I finished, I withdrew, somehow pushed to my feet, and plucked her from the mess of our ruin. Breathing hard and dripping cum, I snapped my boxer-briefs into place and dragged my broken woman into a run.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I WAS MOVING BEFORE I fell from my climax’s clutches.

  I didn’t know how my legs found coordination to move but they did, hauled forward by Sully’s vicious grasp.

  He jerked me up the beach and down a path I hadn’t explored before.

  The guest area.

  Villas for billionaires and princes instead of lowly purchased women.

  A cough and a curse sounded behind us.

  Company.

  Sully froze, dragging me close and looking over his shoulder.

  “Ah, fuck.” His face resembled an animal on its last-ditch for freedom. “Fuck!” Throwing himself into a painful lurch, his bleeding bandaged leg left a trail of droplets in the sand.

  I saw his blood.

  I witnessed his pain.

  I felt his panic.

  But all I cared about was having him again.

  My heart rate was berserk.

  My loyalties all scrambled.

  I’d tried to stop it, and I couldn’t.

  I’d done my best to find an antidote that didn’t include sex, but there wasn’t one.

  I was the villain in this because Sully had tried to rescue me, and I’d been the one to drag him back. Drag him back into a nightmare where death welcomed us with open arms. If he’d attempted to swim across to Lebah, I would’ve drowned us.

  And that confession prevented me from entering the uninhabited stage of elixir. I found no release in letting go. I entered no freedom for accepting my drunken needs. I merely sank deeper into misery, gasping with an irregular heartbeat, crying over my weakness to ignore synapses and systems that had become the worst kind of enemy.

  Sully tripped and limped, ignoring the fact that his leg once again needed severe medical attention. A villa existed up ahead. Luxury accommodation that could perhaps protect us while I continued to destroy us.

  “Come on.” He broke into a haggard sprint, dragging me with him.

  I fell even more in love with him.

  This man.

  This insanely wonderful, protective man.

  He could’ve left me behind.

  He could’ve turned his back on me and gone for help.

  Elixir would’ve kept me free from whatever happened to me.

  He could’ve claimed back his island, his fortune, his goddesses if he’d only forgotten about me.

  But he hadn’t.

  No matter what I’d done to him.

  No matter how aggressive and wild I’d been in my lust, he’d never even thought about abandoning me. He’d pulled me to shore in the middle of my haunting heat. He’d given me what I’d needed all while our freedom sifted through our fingers. And he’d threaded his life with mine, ensuring that if I died, he died.

  We’d both die.

  I love him.

  I owe him.

  If we survived this, I would marry him and promise him anything. I would sign my life into his care. I would sell him my very soul. I would vow to obey, cherish, care for, and adore him for as long as we both may live.

  If he still wants me after this.

  I’m so sorry, Sully.

  Throwing me into the villa, he slammed the door behind us.

  His chest pumped air, his muscles etched in stark relief. Even covered in wounds and blood, he was still the most staggeringly handsome man I’d ever set my eyes upon.

  Oh, no.

  My short siesta of love rapidly mutated into lust.

  I didn’t just love him. I needed him...now.
r />   I buckled, wedging a fist in my belly.

  No.

  Not again.

  I’d had a reprieve.

  A short reprieve but one that’d lasted longer than all the rest.

  But...

  I was slipping, sliding, falling.

  I went from sane to insane, grateful to gluttony.

  I backed away from him, stumbling through the airy foyer and into the lounge of a guest’s villa. Similar to a goddess’s accommodations, the ceiling was vaulted with thatched roof and exposed rafters. A large TV sat on a sidebar, acting as a partition to the office area overlooking the private beach. A white couch with teal cushions and a dining table with a bowl of fruit by the window all welcomed.

  The bedroom waited to the right, a set of double doors announcing a grand entrance for the extra-large bed, pristine mosquito net, and large seagrass woven mat.

  I wanted to see only furniture.

  I forced myself to focus on material things.

  But in my current predicament, I only saw places to fuck.

  I could be ass up over the coffee table, bent over the couch, plastered against the window, or on all fours in the foyer.

  I shuddered as every cell demanded I do something about the crawling, consuming hunger growing rapidly once again. I was in a famine. An utmost famine for orgasms and touch.

  Looking up at Sully, I shook my head in shame. “I can’t...I can’t stop it.”

  “I know.” He came toward me, gathering me in a tight embrace.

  It was the worst thing he could do. The best thing he could do.

  I tensed and tingled in his embrace.

  Our connection vivid and vibrant. Our lust vicious and violent.

  Seemed there was no pleasure without pain, no softness without aggression.

  I wanted both.

  I wanted it all.

  I wanted him forever, but only if he filled me, fucked me, promised to be mine for eternity.

  “Sully...” I groaned as my fingers disobeyed me and crept between us. I hunted for his cock; I struggled to open my legs for his taking.

  His arms tightened, imprisoning them unforgivingly by my sides. “Just breathe, Eleanor. Breathe. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”

  The warning in his voice tried to slap sense into me, but I was too swept away by lunacy. I moaned again, jolting as the sound of the front door being kicked in smashed around us.