He landed instantly, still cawing and cackling as if telling me all the reasons I shouldn’t be here and why I should’ve done myself a favour and kicked Jinx off my island days ago.
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Bringing my hand to my face, I nuzzled into the little bird. Letting him peck my lips and coo into my cheek. He settled, still jumpy from my rage at finding an empty bathroom but content that I still loved him, and it wasn’t him I was mad at.
A gentle slosh and a trickle of water ripped me around.
I blinked.
A wash of red-hot need fired through my veins.
She hadn’t run away…after all.
Jinx sat up in the bath, water streaming over her face and hair, flower petals sticking to her bitter chocolate strands. The scent of sandalwood, orange, and vanilla coated her skin from soaking in a specially prepared blend.
The bath held so much water that only her face was visible, but it didn’t stop my cock from thickening to a steel rod.
Her grey eyes flickered from me to Pika and back again. For the longest second, confusion blended with something akin to shock. Her tongue swiped on her lower lip, sipping the droplets left there. Her hands curled around the edge of the bath, white-knuckled as if my presence drove her to homicidal rage.
“You’re still here.” I stepped toward her, not caring that Pika flew from my finger and flapped around my face like a tiny annoying shadow.
She didn’t look at me, preferring to follow the feathered fiend and his aerial acrobatics. “You have a pet?”
I shoved my hands into my pockets. “He’s not a pet.”
“Pet. Pet. Pet!” Pika shouted, darting to the floor and then to the ceiling. He knew he had her utmost attention, and he loved being the main event. He’d continue showing off until his wings fell off or he flew into a wall.
Which he had a tendency of doing.
“He can’t be wild.” Her eyes narrowed. “He talks and clearly adores you.”
I shrugged. “He goes where he wants and hangs out with who he chooses.”
“Sounds like he has more freedom than anyone on this island.”
“He does.” I ran a hand over my mouth. “Even more than me.” For the first time in my life, I had no fucking idea what to say. The usual commands and curses would fit. I could order her from the bath, make her hurry; prove I was still in control. But…there was something different between us. Something languid and expectant…a pause in the next paragraph.
She didn’t rush to fill the silence, and I drowned beneath white lightning possessiveness. Had I really agreed to let that asshole Grammer fuck her? What had I been thinking? It ought to be me with that right. She belonged to me, goddammit. And I wanted her. So. Fucking. Bad.
Moving toward her, I couldn’t ignore the chugging of my heartbeat as lust I’d done my best to ignore smashed through my walls.
I’d thought keeping my distance would eradicate whatever curse she’d put on me.
It’d only made it stronger.
Fuck.
She huddled in the bath, sinking into the warmth until only her eyes were visible. The dark stone blurred her body, hiding her in shadows and illusion.
I fought against every fucking urge not to snatch her and take her for my own. Instead, I swallowed back starvation for sex, and grunted, “Why are you a vegetarian?”
A question that’d driven me mad. A question that kept me up at night and refused to let me masturbate in the morning. A question that could ensure her safety or her damnation.
She popped back up again, sucking in air, her eyes glowing grey with perplexity. “You want to know why I’m a…vegetarian?”
I nodded, gritting my teeth so I didn’t do all the debasing acts currently running on a highlight reel inside my mind.
Slowly, she shrugged. “Why is that important?”
It’s important.
Highly fucking important.
I shrugged, nonchalant and cold. “It’s not. Just answer the damn question.”
She flinched at my curt command. Droplets decorated her eyelashes like tiny diamonds. She blinked, scattering them onto her cheeks. “I’ve never liked the taste of meat. I just…one day, I decided I didn’t want to eat it anymore.”
I didn’t like her answer. It revealed nothing about her. It didn’t show me what I was beginning to suspect about her. The horrible conclusion that we shared yet another similarity. Our tempers, our desire to control until we couldn’t anymore, our stupid morals that got us into this fucking mess.
“That’s it?” I encroached on her, towering over her while she hunched in the liquid, water licking every inch that I wanted to.
“What else is there?” Her question was timid but also laced with fire.
“If you can’t answer that, then—”
“It was a moral obligation,” she blurted. Her gaze followed Pika as he hurtled himself toward a small orchid plant potted on the vanity. He slid down one of the slippery leaves, crashing into the centre of the foliage. “It’s recognising that a life is a life. There is no difference between flesh, feather, or fur.”
Well, fuck.
She’d just ruined any future she might’ve had.
“Stand up.” I moved until my shoes clacked against the quartz bathtub.
“What? No. I’m naked.” Her arms wrapped around her breasts.
“So? I’ve seen you bare. I’ve had my fingers in your cunt.”
“But…” Her cheeks pinked as if there was a difference between letting me see her naked while under the influence of elixir versus now when she was innocent and safe in the bath.
My temper ticked tighter and tighter the longer she refused. My lust amplified until I shuddered with need. I should leave before I did something that would null and void the agreement I had with Grammer. I should fucking walk out that door and not come back.
But…
This girl.
This confusing, disorienting, dangerous girl.
I wanted a taste.
Just one tiny taste before I handed her over.
“You should’ve done what I said.” My voice massacred each and every syllable. Before she could fight back or argue, I bent down, shoved my hand into the delicious thick wetness of her hair and jerked. I yanked her from the sweet-smelling water. I fisted her hair and used it as a rope to wrench her onto her knees in the bath.
And then, before I could stop myself, I pulled a little harder, bringing her mouth to mine, slamming our lips together with pain and pressure.
She cried out.
I groaned.
I hadn’t kissed anyone in a very, very long time.
An eternity really.
And this wasn’t a kiss.
This was domination. This was taking. This was beyond any fucking kiss that ever existed.
Her lips tried to stay locked against mine, but I’d never been good at asking permission. I took what I wanted. I carved out my own rules on a slate tablet and enforced every commandment.
This girl would obey me.
Fuck, she had to obey me. Otherwise…
I stabbed my tongue past her lips and into her mouth.
Her teeth tried to bite, but I jerked her head back, clamping my free hand around her throat. Trapped, I had her completely at my mercy as I plunged my tongue in, over and over, tasting her, destroying her, destroying myself.
Water sloshed all over my trousers as she fought to get free. Her chest pumped with erratic oxygen. Her body floundered in the bath.
But I didn’t let go.
I just kissed her deeper.
I let myself have one thing of hers. To be the first to kiss her. To be the first to steal her soul.
Her hands clawed at my tie, forcing me to bend deeper.
For every attack she punished me with, I retaliated tenfold. I licked every dark place inside her. I wrapped my fist deeper into her hair, holding her forever. I tightened my hand around her jaw, feeling our tongues nudge against her cheeks as she fought to remove me fro
m her mouth.
Only…our fight somehow turned into a desperate war. Her teeth caught my tongue, drawing blood. My teeth caught hers, threatening payback.
My heart pounded. My back ached. My entire bottom half was drenched.
And I couldn’t get enough.
Jerking hard, I pulled her from her knees to her feet. She rose from the bathtub like some nymph from the sea. Water sluiced over her, swirling over tight nipples and gliding through trimmed pubic hair. Her flat stomach, her long legs, her delicacy and strength and—
I didn’t stop kissing her, biting her, fucking drowning in her.
My hand dropped from her jaw to her throat and down to her breast.
I squeezed her hard, fingering her nipple until a deep-seated, feral moan escaped her kiss-bitten mouth.
I’d never been so fucking hard.
Our eyes locked as I continued slaughtering her mouth.
She not only battled against me but also herself. One second she lost herself, kissing me back, violently, explosively. The next she retreated, snapping and wriggling, trying to dislodge my control.
But no matter her disgust or her desire, I continued to take everything I could.
Dragging her from the bathtub, I plastered her to my body and thrust into her naked, wet body. My cock throbbed in agony, trapped behind drenched material and an unforgiving belt.
She snarled as I kissed her, then spun her around. Pushing her, she stumbled and automatically clutched the bath lip. She looked over her shoulder where I frantically scrambled at my zipper.
Every tattered heartbeat told me to claim her, fuck her…own her before another could.
Take her. Take her. Take her.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Kicking her feet apart, I managed to pop my button and winced in torture as my cock pierced the top of my pants.
She shuddered.
Tears spilled down her cheeks, mingling with her bath.
And for the first time since I was nineteen, I let someone tell me what to do.
“Please…don’t,” she whispered. Not crying. Not begging. Just…asking me quietly not to rape her.
I stumbled back.
Life came crashing in.
How quickly I’d changed the vibe in this bathroom from sensual and humid to tense and treacherous.
Pika squawked and landed on her head, brandishing his little wings at me, his eyes bright and accusing. The flash of his green, yellow, and white feathers looked like a centrepiece of her invisible crown.
Condemning me.
Revealing just how far I’d been prepared to go.
Swiping both hands through my hair, I tripped to the door.
I couldn’t even twist my tongue into dialogue. I couldn’t remember how to talk.
She demoted me to nothing more than a beast.
Pika flapped again as I unlocked the door and tripped through it, slamming it shut behind me.
Jealousy jumped up from her reading nook, her eyes wide and face white. “Sullivan—”
“Get out! Get. Out!”
She dropped her e-reader and scampered.
And I slammed to my knees, digging a fist into my belly, trying to control the madness inside me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
WHAT THE HELL JUST happened?
My knees gave out.
I crumpled to the floor, holding onto the bath as I did. The little parrot called Pika perched on my bare shoulder, his tiny talons digging into my skin. He twittered and squeaked, grooming my hair with his beak.
All I could do was sit.
Stupefied. Stunned. Shocked to my very core.
He’d kissed me.
He’d used violence to take what he wanted but…violence inside me had responded. Something I’d never known that lurked within me had ignited in an explosive gust of power—black power, erotic power—a power laced with cyanide and dynamite, poisoning me…or perhaps, poisoning him?
Poisoning both of us.
I’d gone from holding my breath under the water, giving myself the biggest pep talk in history, preparing myself to just get the sex over and done with, to being snatched by some demon and given a kiss to end all other kisses.
I brushed a shaky hand over my mouth.
Swollen and sore from his teeth and five o’clock shadow—extremely aware that I’d never been kissed like that before. That I’d been kissed by a man who wasn’t Sullivan Sinclair: island mogul and trader of women. The man who’d kissed me had been an unhinged, highly sexual being who’d escaped his leash of self-control.
His fist banged on the glass door. “Hurry up. I’ve been patient long enough.”
I jumped.
He didn’t come in, but his shadow moved behind the frosted glass, pacing like a caged tiger.
What the hell was that?
That kiss.
That…awakening.
I shivered, doing my best to corral my legs into obedience.
Why had he kissed me?
And why did I feel completely lost? As if he’d shoved aside the old Eleanor—the girl loyal to Scott and fixated on escape—and called forth a coquettish goddess who’d just woken up.
Just been born.
Just felt the touch of someone who surpassed all other’s touches. A touch belonging to someone who fit. Someone who, deep, deep beneath circumstance and control, was the very creation of magic and mystery I’d been searching for.
Stop it.
I crawled to my feet, wincing a little as the parrot dug his claws into my shoulder for purchase.
Don’t be stupid.
I swayed and touched my bruised mouth again.
My stomach had chiselled itself into a chipped piece of stone. My heart hadn’t remembered how to beat properly. And my body—under no manipulation from elixir or chemicals working against me—was heavy and wet and achy.
The damn man had drugged me just with a kiss.
Pika flapped around my head, landing on the floor and fluttering his feathers in the spilled water. He preened and nibbled at his belly, coating himself in the deliciously scented liquid.
Sully’s fist came again.
Knock.
Knock!
“Get your ass out here, Jinx. Don’t worry about clothing. Naked is your new uniform.”
Searching for a towel, I grabbed one and huddled into it.
He might’ve have stolen me with a kiss and tossed me into a universe I could no longer understand, but it didn’t mean I was okay with any of this.
How could I be okay when my enemy had the power to cinder me to ash but also incinerate me into flame? How could I survive, knowing that something was between us? Something he felt, I felt. Something that was mortally alarming and oh, so deadly.
“What do I do, Pika?” I whispered, towelling myself off and picking up the brush to run through my wet hair. The little bird chirped and flew to sit on the vanity tap, slipping on the chrome. “Pet. Pet, Pika!”
I tried to smile, yet another catastrophe hit me.
Sully was heartless and haughty and held the view that all humans were as disposable as any other living, breathing creature. That man I found terrifying. A man with such black and white ideals that there wasn’t a single shade of grey in his entire soul.
But the man who’d stood before me when I’d come up for air in my bath, the man nuzzling into a tiny parrot and smiling such a soft, sincere smile…he made my heart pound for entirely new reasons.
Unsafe and unhealthy reasons because it made me thaw toward him just a tiny bit. To know he had a heart, after all.
“Jinx!” His snarl shot through the glass.
I dropped the brush, letting it clatter to the vanity. The noise made Pika squawk and launch into the sky, circling my head indignantly.
For a second, I allowed a glance at my reflection in the mirror. I’d avoided looking at myself much since I’d arrived. I didn’t want to see the girl I knew, trapped and alone, homesick and afraid. I didn’t want to see the pain in my eyes or t
he helplessness.
Balling my hands, I caught my gaze.
And once again, my heart scrambled to find a lifesaving beat.
Who was that girl?
Who is this total stranger?
As I touched my cheek with a trembling hand, my reflection mimicked me, but I didn’t recognise the woman staring back. Her skin glowed a golden hue instead of the permanent snow of white heritage. Her hair seemed longer, darker, coils and ropes protecting her back and shoulders. Her breasts seemed bigger, her limbs leaner, her stance like a warrior ready to battle.
But it was my eyes and mouth that betrayed me the most.
My eyes were wild but also surprising clear. Two grey crystal orbs full of bad omens and concerning premonitions. And my lips looked exactly what a vixen who served men would look like. Bright red, plump and bitten, thoroughly well used by a man who hadn’t been given permission.
I’d never been a superstitious girl. I’d always accepted facts and made conclusions based on reality, but standing there, with a parrot landing on my shoulder and a body I no longer recognised, I felt like a seer suffering some awful clairvoyance.
Sully Sinclair will change my life. My world. Me.
In so many more ways than I feared.
With a gulp and a shudder, I broke the trance between me and the mirror, squared my shoulders, and strode toward the door.
Chapter Thirty
THE DOOR OPENED.
A naked goddess stepped from the humid bathroom with her neck arched, her body braced, and a flitting little parrot flying beside her.
I had more than a visceral reaction.
I had a full anatomy incineration.
I didn’t know this girl.
We’d barely spoken.
Hardly touched.
Yet…fuck me.
She was different.
Different to anyone I’d ever met.
Only she made me act like a monster and a moron all at once. Only she made my pulse pound and sweat soak under my suit. Only she made me fucking rage at the weakness and sexual starvation she caused.
Why?
What made her special?
And most importantly…how did I fucking stop it?
I couldn’t speak as she padded toward me. Her jaw clenched and damp hair still releasing glistening droplets on the tips, allowing moisture to temptingly roll down her flawless skin.
Once a Myth (Goddess Isles Book 1) Page 21
