“I’m no longer crying.” I stiffened, sitting prim even as my hips moved to a silent erotic beat.

He reached forward. I flinched back. He still caught me, running his callused thumb over my cheekbone and revealing a droplet of salt. “You are.”

I swiped under my eyes, my fingertips coming away wet. “I’m not crying…not by choice, anyway.”

“Yet sadness continues to fall.”

“It’s madness…not sadness.” I dropped my hand, expecting it to land as I wanted it to on my lap. But the elixir had other plans, hijacking my control, planting it over my breast instead.

I moaned loudly as I pinched my nipple, and the need to be filled again descended over me like a black thunderstorm. A cloud with no visibility or reason, crackling with electricity, filled with the power to maim.

The shame I felt popped like tiny bubbles. The fight I clung to vanished under the cloak of heavy lust. I was sucked down, down, down…back into the singular obsession of need.

He noticed my downfall and pounced on my weakness. Pushing my hand from my breast, he cupped the weight in his massive palm. He kneaded me, and my tears fell harder.

“I hate this.” My teeth bared with truth, but my body swayed into him, relinquishing to my lies. “I don’t…” I cried out as his other hand traced the wetness between my legs. My hips shot forward, seeking more.

“Are you so sure you hate this?” Pulling me forward by my nipple, he ran his nose along my chin to the dip of my collarbone. “I can make you feel better.” He licked me, worshipped me.

I mumbled something I couldn’t articulate. Words no longer inhabited my brain. Only sex. Only raw, basic coupling.

His arm wrapped around my waist, dragging me from my knees and positioning me over his lap. His cock pulsed upright, ready to claim me again.

“You have the choice,” he whispered, husky and harsh in my ear. I shivered as he licked my lobe, biting it gently. “Sit on me…or don’t. Use me…or use yourself.” His body trembled with barely held restraint. “I have all night to fuck you. So…I’ll be generous and let you fuck me instead.” His eyes flashed with brittle obsidian, looking down at my pussy, spread and bare above his erection.

He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, groaning under his breath, but he didn’t try to force me down. He trembled and waited, staying true to his word.

My thighs spread, wanting him despite my still struggling mind. I dug my fingernails into his shoulders, wrenching a hiss from him.

I became transfixed on his mouth. On the roughness of his jaw. On the softness of his lips. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, making me gasp.

I’d never seen something so enticing, never had a full-body clench just from looking at a man’s mouth before. His large hands walked slowly up my spine, then dived into my hair and threaded strands over strong fingers. He held me captive, but he still didn’t push me onto his cock.

Instead, he pulled me forward, inch by inch, gentle but authoritative. “Is that what you want?” he murmured, bringing me closer and closer. “A kiss?”

I shivered.

Goosebumps speckled my flesh. I almost came just from the word.

How?

Why did a kiss have such power over me?

Why did tears slip down my overheated cheeks at the very thought of being set free by something so normal?

Pulling me the final distance, he brushed my nose with his. Once, twice. Our foreheads pressed together. Our eyes locked.

And I lost myself to him.

I lost because of the depth within his stare. He wasn’t just a man here to fuck a tied-up, confused, scared, and forcibly-horny girl. He was here because he wanted what I did. He wanted to let go and find salvation in connection. To transcend simple sex and share something on an instinctual level.

Sucking in a breath, I sank down of my own volition.

Sliding over his thighs, my mouth opened wide as his hard length slipped inside me.

His fingers pulsed in my hair, holding tight. His chest rose and fell with shallow sips of air. And we both released a soul-deep groan as I sheathed him completely within me.

His flesh within mine.

His vulnerability mirroring mine.

His hunger matching mine.

I hadn’t expected this. To find a moment’s peace in the arms of a total stranger.

“What’s your name?” I moaned, drunk on the size of him, intoxicated by the fierce way he held me.

His hips soared forward, stabbing his erection deeper. “I’m yours.”

I cried out, only to have his mouth capture mine.

“Just like you’re mine.” He fed the words into my mouth, kissing me brutally deep.

The second his tongue pierced my lips, I spindled outward.

My third orgasm caught me completely by surprise, but in a way, I should’ve expected it. To know that I lived on the permanent edge of shattering.

His tongue swept deeper, kissing me ruthlessly. My eyes rolled back, and my internal muscles squeezed his cock in reply, in welcome.

I came.

Over and over, wave after wave, heaven and ecstasy all in one.

He vibrated around me, his rhythm staying fierce and deep, thrusting into me even as I came apart. His kiss never stopped, his tongue tasting all my shadows, his teeth biting my bottom lip, his finesse as archaic as mine.

Wrapping my arms around his head, I deepened the kiss.

With every minute that ticked past, each rock of our bodies and tangle of our tongues, my mind gave up its fight to boycott this illusion.

It accepted that the fire was real, the cave was real, this man was real.

Sully and his Goddess Isles had been the dream. The nightmare.

I accepted that my world was no longer firmly based in truth but had deviated into nonsensical.

And that was okay.

Because I couldn’t keep fighting anymore.

My strength had popped. My disbelief fading beneath the pulsing demand of my body.

And with that freedom, the second part of elixir came into effect.

First, it stole my senses. It made sex my only reason for existing. But the second part, the part that hadn’t occurred when I’d been alone in my villa, sobbing in agony and struggling to relieve myself, cannonballed through my ribcage.

Peace.

The final tethers of society’s requirements, the mess of political correctness, and the strain of living in a world filled with stresses fell away.

I found freedom.

True freedom.

Freedom from my own thoughts and expectations. Freedom from my need to run from this because it was wrong.

It wasn’t wrong.

I chose it.

I chose to unzip the body of a girl who’d been terrified and stolen and, instead, stepped into the goddess Sully wanted me to be.

I didn’t do it for him.

I didn’t even do it for me.

I did it because it offered such tranquillity to the pandemonium in my heart.

Our kiss set fire to every cuff and leash I’d wrapped around myself and incinerated them to dust. Its flames reached deep into my core, to the nest of monsters with their demon blood-red eyes whose only creation was to climax, and burned their cage to the ground, encouraging a fourth release to curl my toes and make me buckle in the man’s arms.

He held me closer, driving into me.

The rhythmic clenches of my orgasm weren’t as severe as the previous three, granting a breather from the overwhelming intensity, but it did grant a strange kind of gift.