Fifth a Fury

Subject: New Will and Testament.

To Elliot,

It seems I have need of updating my Will and Testament. Please amend the bulk of my fortune to be gifted between Ms. Eleanor Grace and Mr. Calvin Moor. My islands are to be bequeathed to Ms. Eleanor Grace. Sinclair and Sinclair Group to Mr. Calvin Moor. The animal charities I have already donated to will receive fifteen percent of everything with the remaining stocks, shares, and savings to be split equally between the two individuals mentioned.

Ownership of my two caiques, Skittles and Pika, are hereby transferred to Ms. Eleanor Grace.

Please also include amendments to ensure Mr. Calvin Moor makes a two-million-dollar donation to Jessica Townsend, if she survives.

Please accept these new conditions as they are made while I am of sound body and mind.

Thank you for your services throughout the years.

Yours sincerely,

Sullivan Sinclair.

I pressed send.

Standing, I stripped my clothing, keeping my grunts of agony as quiet as I could.

Only once I was naked did I let down my guards and allow exhaustion to find me.

With the heaviest sigh of a man saying goodbye to everything he’d hoped to be worthy of, I slipped under the blanket and pulled Eleanor close.

I kissed her hair.

I inhaled her orchid and island scent.

I loved her.

I missed her.

I slept.

Chapter Eleven

I OPENED MY EYES.

No villa rafters or Skittles.

No muggy heat or soft waves.

Where am I?

I blinked and looked around the room. A large space with wraparound doors leading to an expansive deck. Light grey walls, whitewash blue drapes, and a pressed steel ceiling glittering silver in the moonlight.

Snow fell.

As it blanketed the world, it reminded me we weren’t in the tropics one icy flake at a time.

I shivered as a breeze slipped over my skin.

So that was what woke me.

A chill.

No, not just a chill...the removal of a large comforting presence who’d held me while I’d slept.

Sully.

My heart stuttered and rejoiced. Energy gathered to throw myself across the mattress and hug him.

But...I stilled.

My heart hiccupped and mourned. I lay in the shadows and drank in the man who’d bought me, broke me, and set me free. A man I would love for eternity...through thick or thin, rich or poor, sickness or health. A man who looked as if he was about to test that last promise and see if was strong enough to hold on to him.

Instincts had been given to all creatures, wild and domestic, to keep them alive. A sixth sense that whispered all wasn’t well, even if your eyes and ears told you otherwise.

Those instincts yelled too loudly now.

Sully was alive. My eyes told me so.

But...something had happened.

Something he couldn’t undo, and I couldn’t stop.

A new enemy neither of us could fight.

He sat on the edge of the bed in the snow-cast moonlight, his nakedness revealing so many mottled and marred bruises. His spine bowed, his torso a patchwork of cuts, scrapes, and punishments at the hands of Drake.

I gasped at what he’d lived through.

I wept for every talisman of pain he wore and the utter defeat of his rolled, sculptured shoulders. This wasn’t the same man who’d stood high on his sandy throne and couldn’t take his eyes off me as I’d arrived on his islands. This wasn’t the same mogul who’d yanked me from a bath and kissed me as if he’d die from not taking me.

This wasn’t Sullivan Sinclair—the perfect puzzle piece to my soul—who’d made love to me in Nirvana and sat beside me while two parrots completed our chosen family.

He’s a hologram.

A living, breathing man quickly fading into a flickering, disappearing mirage.

No.

I won’t let it.

I refuse.

Pushing onto my hands and knees, I went to him. I crawled across the bed with the large blanket still draped over me and kneeled beside him. “Sully...”

He shuddered as his head tilted to face me. His blue eyes rose. Our gazes locked. He gave me a heartbreakingly tender smile. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t.

Words formed a plug in my throat. Apologies and affirmations, violence and vows. I wanted to thank him for saving me, ask how he’d entered Euphoria, how he’d freed me and stopped elixir from killing me, and just how it’d come to pass that he was here, sitting on a bed with me in Switzerland when the last time I’d seen him, he’d been plummeting to the unforgiving sea below.

I wanted to demand to know what he’d done to make him so despairing.

I needed to scream at him.

I needed to love him.

So many things.

Too many things.

So...I ignored it all.

I focused on the only important part...us...and snuggled close to put my head on his shoulder.

He sighed heavily, his chin tilting to kiss the top of my hair. His body shuddered and his voice held a thousand daggers. “Fuck, I love you, Eleanor...the greatest jinx of my life.”

Fresh tears mixed with old. I nuzzled into his throat and kissed him.

His skin was cooler than I was used to, thanks to the missing heat of his Goddess Isles. He tasted salty and stale, as if he hadn’t had a shower since being plucked from the ocean and flying to find me.

I wanted to suggest a warm bath. To soak away the many bruises painting him and wash away his harsh misery, but my attention fell to his leg, and my insides clenched in a vice.

His stitched thigh looked angry and once again infected. His flesh was swollen and so much redder than the rest of him. Bumps and new contusions hinted he’d been hurt in his fall to the sea. Hurt enough to drain him of his final brutal reserves.

He inhaled, spreading his chest, revealing his tanned torso and powerful muscles slipping beneath pained skin. He looked pinched and at max exertion—an athlete who’d kept racing, even if it meant consuming his own body mass to convert fuel into energy.

“You need to eat,” I murmured, lifting my head off his shoulder. “And you need to see a doctor.”

He chuckled quietly, opening his palm that sat between his spread thighs. “I’m my own doctor tonight.”

I sucked in a breath.

A handful of pills had jumbled together. Some with white casings, some with blue. Round and oval, gel capsules and dissoluble. My gaze skittered to the bedside table and the numerous empty bottles of painkillers scattered there.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he whispered as he ran his thumb over the small apothecary he’d formed in his palm. “I’d hoped I could consume these and have them kick in before you did.”

“You can’t take that many, Sully. Your system won’t handle it.”

“My system?” He laughed under his breath. “My system can’t handle much these days.” Wiping his mouth with the back of his other hand, he continued staring at the drugs, a deliberation weighing on him.

I tried to claim them, to scoop them from his palm. “Let’s call a doctor. They’ll give you antibiotics for your wounds; they’ll give you a stronger painkiller than those you can find in a bottle.”

He jerked his hand away, shaking his head slightly. “Don’t have the time for that, my darling Jinx.”