Such a profound perforating request.

“Move. Fuck me, Jinx.” He kissed me, our eyes wide open and so close. Understanding rife between us but words too afraid to make it true.

It’s not my heart in trouble this time...it’s his.

No...

His hips rose again, making him tremble and almost black out.

“Stop.” Suffocating on silent sobs, I placed my hands on his scorching shoulders and pushed away. “Please, stop.”

“I can’t.” He gathered me closer and sighed heavily, his messy bronze-tipped hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. His head tipped as he looked at where we joined. He bit his bottom lip as he watched the graphic impalement of his flesh within mine. “Make love to me, Eleanor.”

Tears rained down my cheeks as I followed his stare and looked at where we were linked.

I witnessed the raw and fundamentally basic connection between lovers.

The glisten of me and the steel of him.

And I did what he requested.

I moved.

I didn’t have the strength not to.

We never looked away from our joining. Of the heavy veins of his erection as I slid up, and the spreading of my folds as I sank low.

It was hypnotic, entrancing—doing its best to trick us that this was ordinary sex between ordinary people when really...it was rife with unsaid, unmentionable things.

His hands caressed my breasts as I settled on a rhythm.

Deep and drawing, a rocking that confirmed ownership over each other.

We lost ourselves to the beat. Our lips sought each other’s, and we kissed and fucked and made love and promised and vowed and fought every farewell and miserable goodbye.

The bed creaked as my pace grew faster.

His breath scalded my cheek as his nostrils flared, kissing me deeper.

Our tongues tangled and our hands touched and worshipped, memorizing every scar and imperfection, cataloguing it all because we were perfection.

Together, we were exactly what we were meant to be. Precisely who we were meant to find.

I sank deep, hitting the top of him with the top of me.

He quaked and tore his mouth from mine. “Jesus Christ.” His arms wrapped tight around me, holding on or holding me close—I couldn’t distinguish anymore.

I rode him and climbed the mountain of a climax that promised suffering instead of ecstasy.

He rocked me faster.

I fucked him quicker.

We clawed and thrust, gasping and begging for reprieve.

I closed my eyes and memorized what it felt like to have his body inside mine. The hardness, the heat. I savoured every touch and tingle. I swooped up and sank down, over and over, taking him, riding him.

I loved his mind, his soul, and his body. I loved the feeling of tenderness and threats in his arms. I treasured the sensation of his thirst for me and the swelling of his pleasure.

But most of all, I loved the way his love was a tangible, touchable thing. It glowed in his eyes, it scalded his skin, it set fire to the room with commitment and calamity.

I rode him harder, punishing both of us.

His entire body trembled, his heart continued to flounder, and his groans of need welded with his grunts of misery, finally punctured with a howl that made my tears turn inward and flood me.

Sullivan Sinclair reached his pinnacle and let go. His cock spurted inside me. Wave after wave as if his body knew it only had one last chance to come. His back rolled, his arms spasmed around me, and his teeth found my throat as I chased him.

My release focused more in my heart than in my core—a transmuted, diseased orgasm that offered no release, only a series of rapid clenching and palpitations.

It was the worst release of my life because it wasn’t a release...it was a cruel incarceration into whatever was about to happen next.

We clung to each other as the pulses of our shared climax faded.

Only once we could breathe again did I pull away from Sully, slip my leg over his lap, and disconnect us.

He winced as I disengaged and sat beside him.

I did my best to keep my stare off his mottled injuries, the black stitches in his leg or the new bumps that he refused to acknowledge.

This wasn’t the time to bring up my fears.

It wasn’t my place to get angry with him when he had no energy to fight back.

But...

We had no more time.

And it was my right to worry.

I’d done what he’d asked...now it’s my turn.

With his seed trickling out of me, I wrapped the blanket and my temper around my shoulders and prepared for war. I allowed my suspicions to whisper truth in my ears. I stopped being blind. I let logic reveal everything he’d hidden.

He thought I wouldn’t guess? That I wouldn’t remember?

Stupid man.

Stupid, idiotic man.

“You’re on borrowed time because of that injection Dr Campbell gave you...in the cage back on your island, aren’t you? Your heart is beating abnormally. You’re struggling to catch a proper breath. You wanted me, not because you needed affirmation that I’m okay after what Drake did, but because you’re afraid you’re about to pay for whatever you injected.”

For the longest moment, he didn’t reply.

Silence turned thick and tormenting.

“Answer me, Sully.” I crossed my arms, unable to stop shaking. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

His shoulders tensed, and he dropped his head into one hand. And then the faintest laughter shook him. “And that’s what I get for falling in love with someone vastly more intelligent than myself.” He looked up, dropping his hand and wincing again as he tried to shift his weight. “Your quick thinking would scare me if I had the chance to marry you as I’d hoped. I would never get away with anything.”

“You can still marry me.”

“You’re smarter than lies, Eleanor.” He smiled sadly. “And yes, you’re right...it’s Tritec that’s killing me.”

Killing...?

I winced. “But...he said it would kill you in a few days if it was going to. It’s been more than a few...” I stopped myself, cursing him for the shadows filling his face. “Goddamn you, Sullivan.”

He flinched and looked away.

“What aren’t you telling me? What did you do? Please tell me you didn’t take more. Please tell me you weren’t that stupid!”

Raking both hands through his hair, he groaned and made eye contact. “You’re right again, I had another dose. I was lucky the first time...I’m not so lucky now—”

“You took it because of me.”

“I took it so I could come after you.”

Rage exploded through me. Anger and pain and every fury on the planet. “How could you?”

“I didn’t have a choice.” He flinched and rubbed his chest, a greyness creeping over his sex-glowing skin. “I couldn’t let you die, not because of me—”

“And by taking more of that awful drug, you took away all my choices. Don’t I get a say in this?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, you don’t.”

I grabbed his arm, hating the ice chilling him already. “That’s why you want me to forgive you? You think I can forgive you for killing yourself for me? I love you, you son of a bitch, and you’ve just taken everything we had and burned it to the ground. How am I supposed to survive without you—”