“I’m not. You don’t know anything about—”
“You are! How do you know I didn’t fuck you the other night? That Euphoria abomination can turn anyone into anything. How do you know it wasn’t me? I think it was you I was with. We shared a moment, remember? I hugged and kissed you and told you I’d fallen in love with you, and you asked me to help you. You straddled me and said you’d be mine if I ever found you outside of that world.” He crushed me harder to him.
I bit his neck, doing my best to get free. “Let go of me!”
It didn’t stop him from stroking my hair, pressing my body flush with his. “Shush, it’s fine. I’ve got you. I’ve found you. I’ll protect you.”
“Stop!” I roared, my temper reaching its snapping point. “Get the fuck off me!”
He pulled back, his gaze finally showing pinpricks of surprise. “But, I—”
“You know nothing!” I shoved him away, relieved when he let me go.
“But Eleanor—”
“Don’t use my name.”
“Well, don’t be so stupid to think this place is normal. You’re a brainwashed, drugged, and raped victim. I’m offering you a chance at freedom. Are you so fucking broken to refuse it?”
I inhaled through my nose, clenching my fists until my nails dug into my palms. My skin was covered in sweat from fighting off this idiot. My heart raced a gazillion miles a minute.
I needed to find Sully. I needed to fling myself at his feet and tell him if he had cameras or microphones on this island, listening and watching our every move, it wasn’t me who’d told this man my name.
He’d done that.
Sully.
Sully hadn’t been careful while he’d kissed me, touched me, bowed to what I’d asked.
I didn’t want to leave. I fought to stay.
He has to know that. I need to find him.
Now!
“Come on.” He held up his hand. “Or are you too scared to trust—”
“Trust?” My spine braced as I lost control, allowing fury to rampage through my blood. “Trust? How about you trust what I say? I. Don’t. Want. To. Leave. You are mistaken.”
Glancing at Jewel, I tried to swallow back the words scalding my tongue, but I couldn’t.
I turned as possessive as Sully toward me.
I wanted them to know how wrong they were.
How I’d found happiness instead of hell.
How Sully was mine as surely as I was his.
I opened my mouth and—
Chapter Sixteen
“MY NAME IS ELEANOR Grace, and I am a goddess on this island. I was bought by Sullivan Sinclair, and I serve at his command, but I—”
“JINX!!!!” I boomed.
My voice was a battering ram, a missile, a trebuchet with flaming hot oil and arrows.
How fucking dare she?
What the fuck was going on?
Fucking hell, I was an idiot.
A goddamn motherfucking moron!
I thought she felt the same way for me, yet here she was, telling a goddamn guest her goddam name! Telling him how she came to be here. Telling him shit that would get him fucking killed.
Eleanor spun to face me. Her hair whipped around in slow motion. I loved her hair. I loved her smoky eyes, her sexy voice, her soul.
I loved her.
And she’d just fucking betrayed me.
I laughed at the absurdity of it. I laughed like a fucking imbecile because if I didn’t laugh…I’d fucking kill her.
She was my karma.
She’d lived up to the curse that I’d named her after.
She wasn’t just a jinx but a fucking pandemic upon everything I had left as a man.
“Sully!” Her eyes flared to silver orbs, her lips spread in utmost panic. “It’s not what you think. Please, let me explain.” All colour drained from her skin, all hope died in her eyes.
I knew that look.
I’d seen it in possums as they were shot for fur, in pigs as they waited to be gassed, in foxes as they ran from the hunt master.
She knew she’d just signed her fucking life away.
It’s over.
Done.
The cunt beside her—a guest who worked for a big-time Wall Street exec who’d told him to grow a pair if he wanted to join the big leagues—grabbed Eleanor’s elbow, stopping her from running to me. “Stop. I’ll protect you. I promise.”
His hands on her.
His face as he looked at me as if I was some despicable creature.
His gallant act at saving my own goddamn possession from my brutality.
It made my chest fold in on itself in a bloody, gory, agonising mess.
It made me want to fucking slaughter him.
“Get your hands fucking off me!” Eleanor screeched, scratching the man’s forearm, granting no mercy with her nails.
The guest hissed in pain, recoiling backward. The second she was free, she bolted barefoot toward me and threw herself into the sand at my feet. She clutched my ankles, wrinkling my expensive charcoal suit, smudging my polished shoes.
I wanted to be sick.
I wanted to finish what the other goddesses had started and wring her fucking neck.
“I didn’t tell him my name! I promise. You did. He heard you last night when we—”
“Get up.” Squeezing my fists into boulders, I kicked her away from me. “Stop fucking lying.”
“I’m not lying!” Her eyes blazed with terror, but no tears rained. This was beyond tears. Her treachery would not be forgiven with such pitiful, unbelievable excuses.
I’d gone to her villa this morning to announce I’d done what she’d asked.
That Calico, Neptune, and Jupiter had all been returned to loved ones.
I’d planned on taking her out on the water. Just us. Just us and vast open waters where we could finally drop our protections and be real. To see if what we felt could be long-lasting. To see if I could trust what she offered me.
A chance at happiness.
True happiness.
A date…the first date I would’ve been on because I’d never let anyone get close to me like I’d let Eleanor. I’d gotten my kicks from sex clubs around the world. I’d fucked women who’d remained faceless and distant because I chose that.
I chose not to trade emotions, not to catch feelings that might end up destroying me.
I’d been right to be wary.
I’d been so fucking stupid to think Eleanor goddamn Grace could cure the burnout that’d steadily been creeping over me since I’d killed my parents.
Not trusting anyone was exhausting.
Not dropping my guard was beyond tiresome…it’d become debilitating to the point where I craved the ability to set down my grudges and guards, begged for a woman to love me for me…the dark parts, the dangerous parts, the parts that would go to fucking war in her honour and place my life at her feet.
Eleanor could’ve been that girl.
But she’d proven there was no such girl.
No such angel worthy of a monster…no such goddess faithful to a god.
My anger blended with heartache. I studied her bowing before me, drenched in my shadow, and I felt empty.
Achingly furious and murderously mad, but beneath that heat was the ice-cold dagger of disillusion. Just like my dream girl, Eleanor had turned out to be a fiction of my idiotic hopes.