Only two ways to break it, and this particular mirage didn’t have an escape.

My brother’s hips pumped air, seeking relief. Jealousy’s hand went between her legs as she sought the same thing. They writhed in lewdness, clinging to each other and knotting body parts. Their mouths slammed together, their hands touching everywhere at once.

“God...” Eleanor’s hand cupped her pussy, her gaze locked on Jealousy as she climbed over my brother and straddled him. Eleanor shuddered as Jealousy’s gaze flared wide, seeing something Eleanor and I couldn’t see while her body was stuck in a room that’d become a grave for four mercenaries. Her arousal thickened the air as she grabbed Drake’s cock, angled him up, and sank down.

They groaned in unison.

They clawed and thrust.

Eleanor cried out, her skin flushed and eyes turning hazy with intoxication as her fingers dipped inside herself. She quaked and bit her lip as Jealousy screamed and shattered through her first orgasm. Drake followed a second later, his roar making Eleanor whimper and bow her head.

With utmost desolation and dirty desire, she crawled to the two having graphic sex. “I’m sorry. I can’t...I—”

She couldn’t fight her need anymore. I’d done this to her. I’d done this to Jealousy and every fucking goddess on my island.

Shit!

“Eleanor...stop.”

Clutching my phone, I stood over her, my entire worthless soul hurting for what I’d made her become. Jealousy’s groan throbbed in my ears. I turned hard from the sounds of wet sex and wanton abandonment. The urge to take Eleanor there and then made my balls tighten.

She was primed.

So fucking primed for me.

I needed to tend to her, to be the antidote to her suffering, but I also couldn’t stay here. I needed her off this island.

I need her safe.

Once she was safe and I had a legion of men ready to slaughter my brother and his mercenaries, then I’d fuck her. I’d give her as many goddamn orgasms as she needed.

Tearing at the rope around my wrists, I made short work of the knot and tossed it away just as Eleanor touched Jealousy’s ankle.

“Come on.” Ducking, I gathered her feminine weight in my arms. She screamed as if my touch on her body was too much. Her nipples turned to diamonds. Her lust trickled quicker down her leg.

She nuzzled into me, wriggly and wanting as I tried to hold her against my chest.

Bruises and aches, stitches and sore vision—I ignored it all as I marched away from my brother and Jealousy as he flipped her onto all fours and plunged back inside her.

“No. Wait. I want—” Eleanor scratched me, tears rolling agonisingly down her cheeks. “Sully, I need to come. I need—”

“I know. Just...wait a little longer. Fight it a little longer.”

“I can’t!” She wailed as I paused by the exit and looked at the gun abandoned on the floor. It would be so fucking easy to shoot my brother while he no longer existed in the same universe as me.

I could blow his brains out while he played in some BDSM dungeon.

But...if I shot him, I’d kill Jealousy.

Two bodies linked through a program warping their neurons.

After what she’d done for me?

After the way Cal looked at her?

After the sacrifice she’d made for Eleanor?

I couldn’t.

I would never hurt Jess again.

Hoisting Eleanor higher into my arms, I strode over the threshold of Euphoria and prepared to rescue my woman.

Only once she was safe would I come back.

I’d come back and save Jessica.

I’d give her, her freedom.

I’d place my debt at her feet.

I’d try to repair everything that I’d done wrong.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I NEEDED, NEEDED, NEEDED.

I’d tried to remain sane.

I’d tried to fight the repugnant pull of elixir.

I’d done my best not to be a slut while Sully fought the guards and turned murderer.

But I wasn’t strong enough.

Something was wrong.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

I needed to come; that was undeniable. I was beside myself with pain—that was irrefutable—but my heart...my heart couldn’t figure out a healthy rhythm anymore.

The longer I denied myself—the harder I fought the ratcheting, climbing, tightening mess my body had become, the more my heart coughed and tripped.

I cried out again as Sully’s touch ate into me with acid and delight. Having him so close physically branded me. He felt like fire. Cinder wrapped around me, gunpowder trickling through me.

It hurt. It hurt so, so much.

“Arbi, it’s Sinclair. Call the fucking police.” Sully tripped and limp-jogged down the sandy pathway, my body jostling in his embrace. He wedged his cell phone against his shoulder, barking commands at his third-in-charge. “Don’t care. Do it. Do it now.” Allowing the phone to fall from his hold, he picked up his punishing pace.

My mind flew back to Euphoria where Jealousy was given a cure. The image of her slipping onto a cock made me moan. Envy filled me as my core clenched around nothingness.

I didn’t want Drake, but I wanted what she had.

I needed what she had.

I needed it because I couldn’t survive the compressing, contracting agony of every cell. My stomach, my chest, my core, my clit. They’d filled with toxin that I had no vaccine for, no way of curing on my own.

Come.

You need to come.

It’d gone past salacious hunger and slipped into life-threatening.

I needed to release.

To shatter the bone-cracking pressure.

I need—

“Eleanor. Please...fight it.” Sully carried me farther from Euphoria, bats flitted around us, night insects serenaded us. No tiki torches flickered, leaving us at the mercy of the scattered solar lanterns and the Milky Way above.

My spine bowed in his arms as things turned unbearable inside me. I panted and gasped, my mouth wide for air as my heart slammed violently against my ribs.

I battled lust, but I also scrambled to stay clawing to life.

I’d never felt this way before—never had such a nightmarish blend of death and desire.

“Sully...I don’t feel right.”

I wanted him inside me.

I needed him to fuck me.

It wasn’t about sex anymore.

It was about keeping me alive.

“Sully...” I squirmed in his arms, desperate to kiss him, trying to capture his lips as he clutched me close and continued half-running, half-limping down the laneway. “Please...you have to help me.”

“Give me more time, Eleanor.” He tripped, cursing with a vicious tongue. A tongue I needed in me, on me, tasting me, corrupting me.

I curled into a little ball as an orgasm wrapped itself tight around my core. The blood-red eyes of those nasty little demons were back, slicing my womb with savage teeth—a seething mass of yearning.

We appeared at the fork. The same fork where he’d fucked me against a tree, on my knees, on my back. “Sully!”

I couldn’t be denied much longer.

I’d been a good girl.

I’d fought against Drake as he’d kneaded my breasts. I’d ignored Jealousy as she’d rubbed against me. I’d kept my hands to myself and not self-administered a release.