He spasmed as his climax wrung him dry, his body tumbling forward until his chest pressed against my back. His lips kissed between my shoulder blades. His breath panted on my spine.

He grew heavy. His cock remained hard inside me while aftershocks of my bliss milked him. We stayed like that for a minute, doing our best to calm tattered heartbeats and remember how to be human.

I waited for him to withdraw, to climb to his feet and continue carting me to wherever he needed to go. But his cock continued to throb inside me, and his hips pressed forward, inserting every remaining inch he could.

He took me for the third time in the exact same position without ever slipping free. His arm slid around me until his right hand fondled my breasts. One at a time, pinching my nipples, squeezing, he laid claim to both of them.

I whimpered and writhed beneath him as he kept me bound in such a prone position. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t stop him. His entire body plastered over mine as his hips rocked with long, dominating strokes, filling me, sliding deeper than anyone thanks to his multiple releases and my shameless drenching of lust.

The noise of our coupling ought to be embarrassing—the joint wetness, the shared fluids, the most intimate of connections—but I only felt pride.

Pride that I was strong enough for this man to fuck.

Pride that I’d willingly drugged him to find out the truth.

And instead of just finding out one truth, I’d found two.

One, he did care for me.

Two, we’d been together before.

Under the guise of a fantasy bought by another guest.

But…Markus paid you with a diamond.

I turned icy as Sully continued to thrust into me, hammering deeper and deeper the more my mind tried to pluck holes in my confidence.

If I hadn’t slept with Markus, then why had he given me a diamond?

And if Sully had kept me for himself in the caveman illusion, how could he then give me to Roy Slater in his daughter-in-law daydream?

Frustrated tears glossed my eyes as Sully groaned and came again, pumping yet more of his essence within me.

How stupid that I blistered with pain, worrying that Sully hadn’t been the one to take me after all, when he was the one who derailed my life. How utterly wrong that I was filled with jealousy at the thought of him being with anyone else, even while he was still inside me.

My temper sprang into existence, shoving aside my need and granting strength.

Digging my nails into the sand, I pushed up with power.

I caught Sully by surprise, knocking him backward as I scrambled forward, crawling like a helpless animal.

I wanted some distance between us. Distance to think about this. To analyse my hope that it was him in the cave and not some idealistic fantasy. My belly clenched with misery as I shoved to my feet and ran.

Sully’s growl chased me.

He was in the midst of elixir now. His sanity was well and truly buried beneath brutality.

I’d made yet another stupid mistake.

Running when he was this primed and highly-sexed?

What he’d done to me already would seem so tame to what he’d—

Arms viced around me.

His inertia sent me plummeting to the sand. We fell together, tangled in legs and arms, the impact of our fall jangling my bones. Sand coated us, sticking to our sweat, our desire. It dusted my lips, entering my mouth as he shoved me onto my back and kissed me.

He kissed me breathlessly, maliciously. He kissed me until my lips swelled and stung from his coarse five o’clock shadow. He kissed me even as his fingers noosed around my throat and he squeezed with terrifying power.

My eyes shot wide, staring into his drowning blue as he positioned himself between my legs and drove his cock inside me.

He fucked me in timeless missionary, but he choked me with endless violence.

The two combined to create a terrifying recipe of ultimate control. I’d never been manhandled so roughly. Never been so utterly possessed.

I waited for panic.

I drowned beneath pleasure.

My mouth fell wide as his cock hit the perfect button inside me, and his thumbs trapped my pulse.

I came in a blistering supernova of surprise.

His lips twisted as he watched me shatter beneath him. His fingers tightened around my neck, his eyes flaring with shock as if he had no control over his own strength, afraid of his own savagery.

His hips plunged into mine, over and over, creating a niche in the sand where we lay, digging a bed for ourselves for him to take and fuck and claim.

And when he came, he broke apart, sweat gleaming over every inch of him. A droplet ran down his throat, continuing between the ridges of his pecs.

I wanted to lick it. To taste him. I needed everything he could give me.

Light-headedness dragged me back from sensation and sex, bringing bruises and pain, revealing the dangerous tightrope we walked of erotic play and true suffocation.

I can’t breathe.

My fingers scratched at his knuckles, self-preservation finally making an appearance, trying to get free.

He didn’t notice. Consumed by the body-wracking orgasm he rode, he grinded into me, rutting as deep as he could, jerking with every clench of desire.

Only once his face went lax and the madness receded from his eyes did he look down and freeze.

Chapter Two

THE FOG OF ELIXIR lifted for a few horrifying seconds.

Eleanor gasped below me, her lips a tinge of terrifying blue, her face white with blood streaking her cheek.

Fuck.

Fuck!

I ripped my hands from her neck.

What the fuck are they doing around her neck?

Wincing, I withdrew and crawled away from her as fast as I could. The world swam, the corners all black, the world nothing but a sexual mist.

I’d done that to her.

I’d hurt her.

I’d been inside her, taking everything, and I’d been too consumed with my own needs to notice.

She coughed and rubbed her throat, swallowing a few times as she slowly stood.

Goddammit, her entire body looked as if it’d been mauled by a monster. Scratches on her chest, a bite mark on her shoulder, red finger impressions around her throat.

I shoved myself to my feet, desperate to get to my villa and lock myself inside.

This was why I told her to keep her goddamn distance. This was why I’d told her to run.

Raking hands through my hair, I yanked at the strands, trying to get control of myself, very aware that sand covered every inch of us. We glittered with the fucking stuff. It stuck to my cock, to the moisture glistening between her legs, to our very lips.

The minute my gaze found her mouth, my vision crept dark with crimson need. A fugue blew in like rainclouds, consuming rational thoughts, descending me into hell.

The fire in my balls returned. The excruciating drive to grab her, impale her, and fuck her until I came again and again and again.

Christ!

Bending over, I clutched my thighs, trying to breathe and return to humanity. To shed the filth inside me and forget about the salacious, suggestive seduction to just use her.

Use her and discard her.

Fuck her.

Kill her.

Do whatever I goddamn wanted.

No matter how deep I breathed, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop the obscene scream for sex. I was way too fucking aroused. Way too fucking hard. Way too lost to stop.

“Sully…it’s okay,” Eleanor held up her hand. She stepped toward me, her lithe body swollen and ready for mine.