“Can’t.” I kissed the nodules of her spine, tracing where they disappeared under the thick wave of tangled hair. “Just give in.”

“No.”

“No?”

I reached around and grabbed her between the legs. “Are you sure? Don’t you want to ride my hand? Don’t you want to come so bad your teeth ache, your belly aches, your entire soul aches for me to bend you over right here and fucking drive my cock inside you?”

“Oh, God.” Her free arm lashed around my neck, clinging to me as her hips rocked into my hand. “Let me go.”

“You’re holding me.” I chuckled, but it came out more like a growl.

“Stop this. God, stop it.” Her hips thrust forward. “I don’t want this.”

A spurt of heat and wetness filled my hand.

I dug the heel of my palm against her clit. “Your body says otherwise.”

The long jumper she wore rode up until I cupped her through her underwear. The material was fucking drenched. The slipperiness went past coy and straight into desperation. I rubbed her, dragging my fingers through the sopping saturation of her cunt. “How badly do you want me to stab my fingers inside you?”

She cried out as she thrust wildly into my hand.

A second later, she tried to push me away, shaking her head, almost sobbing. “No. No. Let me go. I don’t want this.”

I smirked and let her go. I backed away, leaving her steaming with a slick of wetness glistening on her thigh. “Sign the contract and I’ll take you to your villa. You can spend the day getting off until you calm down.”

“I can’t.” She buckled over, clutching her stomach as if she could vomit out the effects.

That wouldn’t work. It was in her blood now. It was racing through every vein and artery, swelling her clit, her nipples, her brain with the incessant need to fuck.

Fuck.

And fuck.

“How many men?” the question ripped with torture from her lips. A heady groan followed as her hand pressed against her pussy. Embarrassment flooded her cheeks, fighting the urge to masturbate in front of me, not knowing that in another minute she’d do anything I asked.

She’d insert anything inside herself. She’d have sex with anything in this room if I allowed it. She’d fall to her knees and stick her entire fist inside her if I promised she could have my cock as a reward.

See how I don’t like to play games, girl? Don’t ever cross me. Don’t fight me. You’ll never come out on top.

I wiped my hand on my trousers, smearing the leftover residue of her need. “Four men. Sign and give me four years. Four times you’ll be given this drug and four times you will be fucked within an inch of your life and love every sordid moment of it.”

Her gaze met mine, frenzied and almost demented with lust.

I didn’t move.

I let her make the choice.

Suddenly, as if she couldn’t bear it any longer, she spun around, snatched my pen, and scrawled her name on my contract. She willingly entered my employment.

With a manic moan, she slithered from standing to her knees, rocking with her arms around her middle at my feet.

Stepping around her yearning puddle, I read the name she’d given.

Eleanor Grace.

I smirked down at the wild creature, fighting the urge not to fuck her own fingers.

Not so graceful now, are you?

Her hand wrapped around my ankle. Her fingernails dug into my flesh. She looked up with far too much determination. “Please.”

A beg.

A beg oozing with need.

I froze, crippled beneath a wave of my own consuming hunger.

Seeing her like this, knowing she’d let me do anything to her, fuck…I should get far away from her. I should lock her up so no guests could take her. I should keep her far away from the other goddesses.

But…in her thirsty grey eyes, I drank a different version of elixir.

Mine wasn’t chemically delivered but entirely designed by my own urges.

I wanted her.

I more than wanted her. I wanted to fucking destroy her.

I wanted to fuck her until I killed her. Until we both stop breathing, straining to copulate, brutal and broken until the end.

She’d cursed me.

In a flash, I knew what her goddess name would be.

Jinx.

Eleanor might’ve been her name when she was a tame, sexually repressed girl dating an equally repressed boy, but while she was mine…she was Jinx.

I shouldn’t call her that—what if her arrival wasn’t just poorly planned, but the beginning of bad fortune on my islands? What if she lived up to the promise of a jinx? A voodoo? A plague upon my shores?

But her eyes flashed again, stormy and as dark as slate, and I accepted that she’d already put a spell on me. She’d become my nemesis. A female who I didn’t know. Who I’d paid handsomely for. A woman who didn’t have to say a word to me, and I’d grown insanely hard with the incessant desire to rip her apart, challenge everything about her, and suck her passion dry by any means necessary.

Bending, I removed her claws from my ankle and hoisted her to her feet.

She squeezed her eyes at the sensation of me touching her. She crowded into me, rubbing against my leg like a cat in full season. “Please…help me. I can’t take it.”

I allowed her closeness.

I permitted one moment where I dabbled with the idea of keeping her as my own personal entertainment.

And then I ensured I’d never have to break my ironclad rule not to indulge in my goddesses. Because I had one last weapon to ensure she might want to fuck any man on this planet, but I’d ensure she’d never want me.

I could remain immune and resist the temptation of killing both of us with undiluted pleasure.

She gasped as I tugged her hair, tipping her head back so I could whisper directly into her ear. She quaked in my hold. Quivered for my touch, any touch.

“I left out a little of the fine-print, Eleanor.”

Her head turned; our eyes locked.

“You didn’t think I’d only ask you to sleep with four men in four years, did you?” I kissed the tip of her nose, sending another wash of lust to incapacitate her.

I smiled as I let her slither down my body to the floor where, this time, she didn’t stop her hand from slipping between her legs.

I watched as she curled into herself, no more embarrassment. No more barriers that society placed on us as people. No more expectations that men and women weren’t meant to be animals and enjoy in our baser desires.

We were animals.

As surely as any other creature.

But we were the only ones who hid sex behind closed doors and buried our true natures until no one was truthful about what they wanted.

I’d just freed her from that oppressive cage.

I let her be true.

I gave her the privilege of sexual honesty.

But that privilege came with consequences.

And my consequences hadn’t been delivered yet.

Ducking to my haunches, I captured her chin again. When her glazed grey gaze met mine, I murmured, “Four men a month, Eleanor Grace. One hundred and ninety two men. And then…you’re free.”

Chapter Nine

IT TOOK LONGER THAN normal for his dark voice to slip past the lust-fogged haze of my brain. It took another moment for the trick to fully be understood.