Third a Kiss

by Winters, Pepper

  He made me do it.

  “Take off your clothes and put the harness on.” His voice resembled an iceberg. Impenetrable, icy blue, and cold, cold, cold.

  Heading toward the cupboards ringing the arena where sex took place between two people who saw an entirely different world to the one we currently resided in, he yanked open a door and removed a trolley full of black boxes with a purple orchid stencilled on the top.

  The sensors.

  Swallowing hard, my stomach ached even worse. A tumbling, tightening mess of worry of what would happen after this and an excruciating feeling of loss.

  I’ve lost him.

  Before I’d even had him.

  Tears prickled my gaze, but I sniffed them back and did what he’d asked. Grabbing fistfuls of my dress, I pulled it over my head and threw it to the side. Standing in a turquoise bikini, I undid the bows behind my nape and lower back, tossing the top piece aside and repeating with the bottom half.

  Sully’s jaw locked as he stole a glance, bringing the trolley to a stop beside me.

  He remained in his expensive suit, looking every bit a pissed-off mogul with no mercy. My nakedness dressed me in goosebumps. Not from the cold—the island was never cold—but from the coldness of the man who I’d given my heart to.

  I’d rescued him from drowning.

  I’d accepted his body into mine.

  We’d shared parts of ourselves that we’d never shared before.

  And to be on the precipice of throwing all of that away made me sadder than any other time in my life. Sadder than when I’d been stolen, trapped, and sold. Sadder than when I didn’t think I’d see Scott or my family again.

  I was sad when my past had been ripped away, but now…now my future had been taken too and that was far, far worse.

  Sully could’ve been a wonderful future. A future I would’ve gladly, gratefully accepted, turning my back on everyone else because he was worth it.

  He was the singular reason I’d been put on this earth.

  And also the reason I wished I’d never met him.

  He’d awoken my heart only to pulverise it into dust.

  Tears once again tried to spring. A well inside me, crashing with waves up the sides, doing its best to escape through my eyes. To make me weak. To make me beg all over again.

  Damn man.

  Damn—

  “Put the harness on, Jinx.” His gaze tore itself off my breasts, his hands ruthlessly tearing open boxes.

  “Don’t do this, Sully.”

  His teeth glistened; his lips thin over sharp canines. “Your right to call me that has once again been revoked.”

  “Sullivan, then.” I balled my hands, laughing a little crazily. “Mr. Sinclair.”

  “Shut the hell up.”

  “Nope. I have something to say to you.”

  “I have no interest in—”

  “I fucking love you, you son of a bitch.”

  He refused to look at me, icing me out all over again.

  This wasn’t how declarations were meant to go. Anger should never be the main ingredient in professing the terminal diagnosis of falling in love, but…so what. I embraced my rage, using it as a shield against his. “You know I love you. I know you do. You saw it the moment you looked at me after you laughed on the boat yesterday.”

  I tensed every muscle against the painful memory. The way he’d jolted when he’d read the message clear in my eyes. When he understood the unspoken language literally howling the truth in his face.

  And he’d looked at me with the same raw connection. He’d tried to stop it. He’d gritted his teeth and looked away and returned to driving the boat as if nothing had happened.

  But something had happened.

  Something that could transcend this wreckage.

  If he was prepared to fight for us…for me.

  If he was ready to put his past behind him and choose a new kind of future where trust was the foundation that could sprout such happiness.

  “You have nothing to say to me in return?” I hissed. “You’re honestly going to pretend you feel nothing?”

  He ignored me, continuing to shred boxes apart and rip out their contents as if it was me he systemically destroyed.

  “I love you, but I damn well hate you right now, Sully.”

  His jaw clenched. His entire body seethed with the visible restraint of not entering into the war I was so desperate to have.

  He wanted to prove he felt nothing?

  He wanted to hurt me this much?

  He wanted to throw me away without allowing common-sense and the truth to fix us?

  Fine.

  Fine!

  “You’re a coward, Sullivan Sinclair. A goddamn coward.”

  He stilled.

  A subtle shift of sizzling tyranny settled into blistering self-control. His hands stopped massacring the boxes. His shoulders turned stiff, his very breath slowed from harsh to hardly at all.

  Terrifyingly slowly, he turned to me. His eyebrows raised mockingly while his blue gaze remained on lockdown from feeling. “Interesting choice of words, Jinx.”

  “What? Coward?” I narrowed my eyes. “No, actually, I think it’s the perfect one.”

  “A dangerous slur to slander.”

  “Truth is never dangerous.”

  He smiled with daggers of frost. “Truth is the most dangerous thing of all.”

  “Is that why you run from it?”

  “It’s why I deal in lies.” He rolled his shoulders, doing his best to stay in control of the volcano I poked. “I created this island and filled it with hypocrisy and fraudulence. I embraced the fact that all life is a lie. All feeling is fiction. All trust ends up being deceit.”

  “Trust is hardwired into us. It’s a fundamental law for co-existence.”

  “And yet, I’ve survived just fine without it.”

  “Trust me, you’re not fine.” I pressed a fist between my breasts, imploring him. “Survival is not happiness, Sully. Survival is a damn imposter for living. Truly living. To laugh. To be free. Can you not remember how good it feels to relax? To have faith. To trust.”

  He laughed with a scary chill. “You ask me to do something I’ve proven is the one thing I am incapable of doing.”

  “You’ve just trusted the wrong people.”

  He swooped toward me, snatching my jaw with no sympathy. “I trusted those I called family.”

  I flinched against his aggression. “Family doesn’t automatically earn a free pass.”

  His eyes darkened until I stared into a black hole. “Family are supposed to be the one network that’s got your back.”

  “Family we’re born into can make mistakes.” I struggled to speak with his tight grip on my jaw, but I wriggled until I had enough freedom to mutter, “Family we choose to share our life with can make mistakes. But the family you choose with your heart, your soul, that’s worth trusting. Trust is ninety-nine percent of what makes being in love so magical. To know you’ll be cared for in sickness and in health. To know they accept you…regardless of your flaws and—”

  “Trust is the one reason I will never be in love.” His gaze flickered to my lips before narrowing back on mine.

  “You’re already in love, Sullivan Sinclair. You’re just too chicken to admit it.”

  His eyes snapped closed.

  His fingers dug into my cheeks until I tasted blood. “I suggest you stop antagonising me before I do something we’ll both regret.”

  “You’re already doing something you’ll regret.” I poked his unrelenting temper with a stupid twig of truth. I knew Sully had the potential of exploding. Of cracking the very earth I stood on, of suffocating me in smoke, of burying me in lava.

  But it didn’t stop me.

  It only made me wilder, stupider, reckless and careless and desperate.

  Desperate to stop him from being such a stubborn asshole.

  My temper had always gotten me into trouble. I’d kept it silent in Mexico. I’d done my best to k
eep it tethered around this man with unfortunate results.

  But here?

  Now?

  I couldn’t contain the tempest inside me. I was the sea whipped by the wind. I was the sky pierced by lightning.

  This could get me killed.

  Or…it could save us from a mistake that would ruin both of us for life. Because if he did this—if he gave me to another man after our hearts had tangled into this messy, tricky chaos, then he would lose me.

  As surely as I’d lost him.

  Men in love don’t share.

  Men like Sully, who wore possession like expensive diamond cufflinks, did not rent out the woman they’d chosen.

  If he could do this.

  If he could give me to another.

  Then…what I felt for him was a lie.

  And what he made me think he felt in return was the worst kind of forgery.

  This whole damn island was full of deceit and distortion and the very myths he traded in.

  And I was done trying to yank at the curtain, doing my best to get it to tumble down, frantic with the need to shatter the illusion Sully had trapped himself in.

  The illusion that trust would hurt him. Trust would bruise and kick and punch him. Trust would kill his animals, his sanctuary, his heart.

  My voice lost its heat, mimicking the ice he cast himself in. I arched my chin in his hold. I locked eyes with the one man I was made for, and hissed, “You make me serve a real guest, Sully, and whatever this is between us, is dead. No resuscitation. No reincarnation. I will never speak to you again. I will never look at you again. I will treat you as you’ve treated me. With disdain and impatience. I will turn my back on you when you summon me to serve. I will spit in your face if you touch me. I would rather sink to the bottom of the ocean than ever let you fuck me again.”

  I sniffed, unable to hold back the two droplets of pure fury as they cascaded down my cheeks. “You do this, and you are invisible to me.”

  His hand fell from my cheeks.

  His chest strained in his suit. His arm trembled as he raked fingers through his bronze-tipped hair. Stumbling toward the trolley, he growled, “Put the harness on, Jinx.”

  For a second, I heard a fairy-tale. I heard him say, ‘I love you with all my fucking heart. I’m sorry. You’re right. I do trust you.’

  Instead, reality slapped me in the face, and I nodded with finality.

  He chose to believe what he’d seen. That I’d betrayed him and given my name to a guest. He ignored my explanation. He rejected what Adam Marks had said.

  He’d survived for too long without love or trust.

  Jealousy was right.

  Sullivan Sinclair was rushing headfirst toward a crash and burn break down. A burnout of his own making because he refused to allow anyone to carry a tiny piece of his heart.

  I nodded slowly.

  Another cloak of goosebumps settled.

  My temper vanished with a silent scream of frustration.

  My heart stopped thumping with violence and turned sick with loss.

  So be it.

  With sudden shakiness, I grasped the harness and quickly slipped it around my waist, shoulders, and thighs.

  I didn’t look at him.

  I kept my part of the bargain.

  He was invisible.

  He was nothing.

  He’s gone.

  Sully stood by as I secured the clasp, ruthless with silence.

  The snap of the lock made me wince.

  I let my arms fall to my sides, closing my eyes when Sully’s fingers grazed my belly, testing the latch, ensuring I’d obeyed and properly secured it.

  With a fierce grunt, he passed me the small jar of oil. “Smear this over yourself.”

  I swallowed back the sand and coral in my throat, ready to speak over the rubble left by our argument. To ask why he didn’t do it himself.

  But he’d made his decision.

  And I’d made mine.

  I would never speak to him again.

  Snatching the jar, I tipped a glistening puddle into my spare hand and rubbed it over my skin. I kept my teeth gnashed together as I diligently spread and coated my entire body.

  The silence festered between us, rotten and full of goodbye.

  His nostrils flared as I passed back the empty jar.

  His five o’clock shadow seemed darker around his mouth, shadows swallowing him whole. “You have to take responsibility for your actions, Jinx. This is entirely on you. I will not prepare you. I will not make this any easier on you.” He leaned forward, his body heat scalding my chill. “Trust isn’t given…it’s earned.”

  My eyes snapped up.

  What does he mean by that?

  That I had a hope of earning it?

  That this wasn’t as black and white as my normal dealings with him?

  Keeping my stare, he held up another box.

  The mouthwash.

  I cracked the lid and swilled without complaint.

  My mind that’d logically accepted my defeat and my heart that’d painfully cast him out, slowly nudged me alive with idiotic optimism.

  Trust isn’t given…it’s earned.

  Did he expect me to prove myself by sleeping with another man? Prove that I would do whatever he commanded?

  What would that achieve?

  That I’d finally accepted my place as his belonging and not a woman with her own free will and thoughts?

  No…that doesn’t make sense.

  I bit my bottom lip, trying to rip out his secrets with just a stare.

  He avoided eye contact, handing me the roller of scent deception, waiting while I smeared it beneath my nose.

  I passed it back, and he threw it onto the trolley. Selecting the box of earbuds, he shoved them into my hands.

  This time, our eyes did lock. And the sea-blue of his gaze was as deep as an abyss filled with sharp-toothed sharks. He looked as if he wanted to bite me. To make me cry out. To make my vow to ignore him meaningless.

  Keeping his threatening stare, I inserted the buds into my ears.

  The room muffled, amplifying my own heartbeat and breath.

  Sully took the empty box and handed me the eye lenses without a word. Our transaction was void of anything but clinical interaction.

  Gingerly, I fumbled with how to insert them.

  Sully held up a mirror, being patient while I unwillingly learned how to plant contacts over my pupils, flinching with foreignness, once again hating how my vision went hazy, waiting for my brain to figure out how to see past the unwanted film.

  Only once I stopped blinking and could see enough not to be taken by surprise, did Sully put down the mirror and pick up the final box.

  The fingerprint sensors.

  The one thing I wouldn’t be able to do myself.

  With a heavy inhale, he murmured, “Give me your hand.”

  I braced myself and placed my fingers into his control.

  The second our skin collided, a supercharged current of want and wicked hunger zapped from him to me. I winced as the power bolt fizzled up my arm, through my heart, and into my core.

  For the first time since he’d dragged me here, my body melted instead of tensed, preparing for love not war.

  He vibrated with fraying self-control as he ignored the hissing, hurting bond between us, tearing off the sensors from its sticky sheet and placing them firmly over my fingertips.

  With each sensor he glued on me, I grew hotter, wetter.

  With each caress of Sully’s touch, it made me want to slap him, then kiss him, then slap him all over again.

  By the time he’d done all ten fingers, neither of us had control over our breathing, or the nightmare our bodies had shackled us with.

  I was wet.

  He was hard.

  Yet we would find no satisfaction in the other.

  There would be no kisses before he loaded me into the arms of another man. No tongue on my clit while he tried to convince himself he didn’t want me for himself
.

  I’d never seen him so resolute or pig-headed about a decision that would only bring aching regret.

  With a fierce squeeze of my hand, he let me go, unable to look at me. Avoiding me as if he walked the narrowest road where if he veered off course, just for a second, he’d choose a different path.

  A fork in our destinies that had appeared the moment we met.

  Does he see it, too?

  Did he see the different destinations on offer? The dark, dismal ending if we turned our backs on each other, compared to the bright, hopeful beginning if we fought to be happy?

  It was a shame really.

  Such a shame we were so similar in all the ways that mattered.

  We had the same morals, same ethics, same personalities.

  We could have been amazing together.

  We could have been forever.

  With a tummy-clenching grunt, Sully backed away from me. He balled his hands against the tug of togetherness. He revoked fate’s incessant pull.

  Stubbornness ought to be a sin.

  A deadly penance-earning, hell-inducing Biblical sin.

  Then again, stubbornness could also be confused with pride. The way Sully braced his shoulders, standing tall and majestic, and embracing what his goddesses called him—an emperor upon this island—the more I didn’t know if it was pride that Sully refused to shatter or his stubbornness.

  Either way…it would end whatever we had.

  Yanking his phone from his trouser pocket, he planted his legs into a fortifying stance and typed on the small screen. He typed for longer than usual when loading me into Euphoria.

  He typed so long that I grew impatient.

  I wanted this over with.

  I wanted some pill to swallow to remove him from my head and heart.

  I wanted a drug—

  Wait…

  He didn’t give me elixir.

  I looked up, studying him as he continued to type. His jaw set and eyes tight. His forehead furrowed with signs of his emotional exhaustion and inflexible stubbornness.

  How had he forgotten to give me elixir?

  And why did that worry me the most?

  My heart kicked with worried flutters.

  You know why.

  I reached for the harness clasp around my waist. Sully typed a final sentence. His nostrils flared with pain.