“Maybe the cure is easier than you think.”

“You think we can reverse this…disease, now that we’ve accepted the diagnosis?”

“I think lying about it won’t stop the truth.”

I stiffened. “You’re calling me a liar?”

She nodded. “Utterly pathological when it comes to avoiding things you don’t want to confess.”

A groan slipped from my lips, fertilising the ground with all the bullshit I’d been trying to shove into my heart and believe. “Stop. Just stop—”

“Stop forcing you to admit that common-sense says we’re absolutely stupid but we’re past listening to that nonsense?”

“Stop being everything I fucking want…without even knowing it.” I raked a hand through my hair, my temper spiking. “Stop making this impossible for me.”

I thought this infatuation would cease as abruptly as it’d begun. I figured, the more I got to know her, the more I would be turned off. I’d convinced myself that whatever bond we shared would diminish, because there was no other way forward for me.

I wasn’t planning on discovering that with each conversation, with each new touch, kiss, and whisper that I’d struggle all the more.

My infatuation had swiftly become fascination and could quickly mutate into obsession if I wasn’t careful.

I meant what I said in Dr Campbell’s surgery.

“Why are you so perfect…for me?”

How could a girl who’d been born to different parents, raised in a different household, and experienced different things, somehow end up the perfect shape and size to fit into my jagged, haggard edges?

My dream fantasy couldn’t even compare to her anymore. That hallucination had been based purely on looks I found madly attractive. Now, Eleanor was the very utopia I’d tried to create on my cursed islands. She was bottled elixir and the magic of Euphoria…a fantasy manifested into reality.

She was inherently, dangerously risky because unlike Euphoria, this had no end. There was no waking up from this…only death could stop it.

Hers or mine…or both.

“I’m not trying to make this impossible, Sully.” She sighed softly. “I’m trying to…ugh, I don’t know. Prove that you don’t have to push me away? Prove to myself that I’m not crazy for wanting the very man who bought me. Prove that we’re both…not at fault.”

“You’re saying there’s something else to blame for this mess?”

“I’m saying it’s nature’s way of ensuring survival of each species.” She paced a little, needing to move while solving her strange interpretation. “Why can’t we look at it that way?” Her eyes lit up. “You’ve segmented animals from mankind because you see us as the problem. And you’re right. We are. Humans are a plague upon resources, environments, and everything else we come into contact with. You’re right to despise us as a collective…but you’re forgetting one thing.”

“And what’s that?” I crossed my arms, not liking where she was going, afraid that this would make way too much sense to me and I’d have no more arguments to brick up my walls.

“We are still just animals at the end of the day. Nature ensures most creatures pair up for life. They enter into a covenant the moment they meet. They raise a family. They protect each other. They survive because of each other. It’s not us…it’s nature. Our need for each other is just that…biology. Our affection is biology. This whole damn confusing connection is—”

I snatched her.

I kissed her.

I shoved her against the raised garden boxes where seedlings had never seen anything so explicit in their existence and stuck my tongue down her throat.

She moaned and kissed me back.

Violence with violence, lust for lust.

I kissed her because I couldn’t allow her to spill another word. She made it seem so easy, yet it was the hardest thing in the fucking world.

Our tongues clashed. My cock thickened. I arched my hips into her belly, blatantly showing her what sort of voodoo she cast over me. How much I wanted her, even still sore from elixir.

She gasped as I captured her bottom lip with my teeth, biting down, ceasing our kiss with a threat of pain. Her breath skated over my mouth, sweet from raspberries and kiwifruit.

Our eyes opened, so close, too close. Everything was hazy with need, and the grey smokiness of her eyes made me come face to face with the ashes of whatever I had left. Just dust and ashes and the lies I kept telling myself.

If I let go entirely, what would that mean? Where would we go from here? What the fuck sort of future would we have? I already had complete ownership over her in the form of a trafficker’s contract and hefty funds exchanged.

I didn’t need to marry her to get her to obey me.

I didn’t need to put a goddamn ring on her finger to keep her forever.

I’d skipped past those silly human rituals and used commerce to secure her instead.

While my mind ran headfirst into walls I didn’t know how to erase, she pulled her lip from my teeth. Wincing a little, she completely annihilated me by not stepping out of my hold as I expected but by wrapping her arms around my waist and snuggling her entire face into my chest.

Ah, Christ.

Her kiss was one thing.

Her hug?

It fucking demolished me. Towers, barricades, gates and all, leaving my chest an empty wasteland where my heart lay totally exposed, begging her to save it.

I shook as she pressed a kiss into my t-shirt. She murmured something I couldn’t hear. My ears throbbed to know. To have her be the first to admit that we were well and truly fucked by finding each other, but when I slid my touch under her chin and angled her face to look up, I wished I’d kept her request silent. “What did you say?”

“I asked what Calico’s, Jupiter’s, and Neptune’s real names are.”

I froze but answered her question. After all, I’d just familiarized myself with their files since this nasty catastrophe. “Calico is Sonya Teo, Jupiter is Lucy Hall, and Nep is Ally Bishop.”

“And what do you have planned for them?”

I bared my teeth. “You won’t let that go, will you?”

“No. I…need to know.”

My nostrils flared. “I plan on reminding them of their place. I’ll ensure they’ll never even look at you again. That reminder will keep you safe.”

She flinched. “I know what will keep me safe.”

Stranding them on an island with bare necessities? Selling them to a guest? Locking them in wire-bottom cages for the rest of their contract?

Eleanor sucked in a breath, searching for courage as she whispered, “Send them home. It’s homesickness that’s upset them. They’re confused and lost and seeing us…seeing what we’ve found…it’s pushed them too far.” She kissed my chest again, shivering. “They deserve to go home, Sully. Please…let them go.”

Chapter Thirteen

THE ATMOSPHERE BETWEEN US went from tentative truce to dark and ominous. My stupid request to give the girls their freedom smashed apart the strangely sweet aloneness on Lebah, ensuring Sully withdrew into himself.