Pinpricks of pain from her nails punctured my rapidly fading consciousness. My eyesight traded clarity for ghostly mirages.

Down and down, deeper and deeper.

Quietness.

Peace.

No more need for sex.

No more need for oxygen.

Thankfully.

Heavenly.

Sanity.

I let go, grateful to finally be free.

Something sharp shredded my hard-won serenity. A lash of pain across my cheek. And another. Followed by lips on mine, air forced down my throat, and painful compressions on my chest.

Pressure repeated over my heart, determined and ruthless, reversing my slip into silence, dragging me back into mania and pain.

The explosion from dying to alive sent daggers of misery through my entire nervous system. My eyes flared wide. My mouth opened to breathe. A gush of water spewed out.

“There you go. That’s it. Come on. Breathe, Sully. For God’s sake, breathe.”

I choked and wheezed as the lightness of air replaced the heaviness of liquid, my lungs faltering over the new concoction. The mermaid helped me roll to my side, slapping my back with agonising strength.

“Stop,” I croaked.

She didn’t.

“Stop!” I tried to crawl away, only to find water keeping me buoyant and rocks behind me. I blinked, waiting for the mirages in my eyes to fade back into precision. As Nirvana came into view above and the paradisiac garden appeared around me, my brain kicked back into gear.

Along with thoughts came the nasty, insidious hunger licking around my mind, sending blood back into my cock.

You’re not done.

Not yet.

My heart pounded the message, electrifying my heavily depleted system.

Fuck, please not again.

“Sully…are you okay?” Soft hands cupped my cheek, guiding my face to hers.

Eleanor.

Jinx.

The worst goddamn curse of my life.

A dream turned nightmare.

A goddess who should never have existed.

A purchase I should never have made.

Her.

Take her.

Fill her.

Fuck her.

My hand had a different master, obeying the elixir’s fierce control rather than my weak pleas to stop. It shot upward, grabbed her around the nape, and dragged her down to my mouth.

I kissed her.

I traded drowning in water for drowning in her.

I rolled us over until she lay on the rocks beneath me.

Water had rinsed us clean. No more sand. No more dirt. No more blood. I chose the illusion that I hadn’t hurt this incredible creature. That I’d only ever been gentle and worshiping and so fucking grateful for her creation.

She. Was. Mine.

Not because I traded cash for her life, but because she’d been born for me. The universe birthed me first, then listened to what my heart ordered—the complex desires I had, the unique wishes I held—and created her just for me to find.

That was why I’d dreamed about her.

Why I’d asked traffickers to steal her.

Why I couldn’t stop myself as I kicked to propel us higher onto the shallows and swam on top of her. Why I groaned as my cock found her entrance. Why motherfucking tears came to my eyes as her heat and slippery wetness welcomed me to slip home.

Home.

Fuck, she was my home.

Not this island.

Not this planet.

Her.

This curse.

This gift.

This priceless, irreplaceable goddess.

She squirmed beneath me, her grey gaze flaring with equal passion and terrible concern. “Sully, stop. You need to rest. You almost drowned.” She pushed at my chest, trying to pry us apart. “Stop.”

She could never pry us apart as we were two pieces of the same whole. I belonged to her as much as she belonged to me. I’d told her that. When she’d asked me my name on our first time together, I’d told her, “I’m yours.”

It didn’t matter I wore a different face to my own. That I went to her as a guest and hid behind a lie—

My thoughts scattered as I claimed her mouth again. She tasted like a crisp waterfall and warm sunshine. She tasted like redemption.

Her tongue fought me back. She tried shifting her head to dislodge our kiss, but I didn’t let her go. I threaded both hands through the hair that I found such a fucking turn-on and held her still.

The water kept us weightless while I thrust into her. Our bodies floated but locked together, straining hard and needy.

Leaving my left hand tangled in her hair, I slipped my right one down her chest, squeezed her perfect breast, then kept going, stroking her curves, finding her centre, rubbing against her clit so she felt a fraction of pleasure that I did.

Her body bowed in mine, her lips parting, allowing me to kiss her deep.

Her fingernails dug into my lower back, pulling me into her so my cock filled her until there was no space between us. No way to pull us apart.

I’d fucked this girl.

I’d mauled this girl.

But there, in my private waterfall, I made love to this girl.

Time lost all meaning as we rocked and grinded. Her legs wrapped around mine, her hips answering mine in an ancient language we’d both begun to understand.

A language that belonged entirely to us, deciphered only when our hearts accepted what this disaster of a bond meant.

I was falling for her.

Fuck.

I kissed her harder. I bit her. I crawled deeper into her. And she responded to my violence with her own. Her teeth punctured my bottom lip, her hips arching into mine.

And the elixir allowed me to savour this moment, to live on that precipice of plummeting and pausing, surrounded by shards of pleasure, fully aware how excruciatingly brutal the release would be.

We kissed.

We fucked.

And when I fell off that precipice, we fell together—groaning, moaning, clawing, biting—doing our best to break each other apart.

Chapter Three

SULLY JERKED IN MY arms, groaning with agony as his orgasm bled him dry.

The waterfall splashed and sparkled, pounding into the deep blue pool. Heavy trees full of vines and flowers, misty rainbows, jewelled butterflies, tree frogs on leaves, and insects flittering in spiels of golden sunlight.

I could be forgiven for thinking this was heaven.

It was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen.

Yet it had almost become a graveyard.

My heart lurched with remaining panic. If I hadn’t sprinted after Sully. If I hadn’t arrived just in time to see him collapse into the water and vanish beneath the surface…he’d be dead right now.

He would be dead because of me.

Because I’d drugged him, broke him, reduced him to a single vocation.

I clutched him to me, shivering as his head fell heavily on my chest. The crisp water kept us floating even in the shallows, my hair tickling my skin, the sensation of being sand-free a huge relief.

Sully’s mania quietened for a moment as his body buckled beneath the insane urges of procreation. His lips glided to my nipple, kissing my breast, ducking his mouth and nose underwater to lavish me with sweet affection.

“Don’t.” I cupped his chin and pulled him back into air. How did he still have energy to fuck me? He’d almost drowned.

His gaze couldn’t focus entirely on me, hazy then clear, smoky then lucid. I didn’t know if he saw me or a fantasy, but terrifying things glowed behind his exhaustion. Emotions that chiselled open my chest and stuck a dagger deep inside my heart.