After that…they weren’t valuable to me anymore, and why should I pay for the best upkeep, care, and nutrition if they were no longer a worthwhile investment?

How was I any different to any other consumer?

I used a product from prime to retirement and then sent it to pasture. At least I didn’t kill them when they stopped being of use. I paid them the four hundred thousand dollars that I hid in the fine-print of their contract—paying them for their time, and ensuring their servitude had been mutually beneficial.

It also provided an alibi that they’d been well compensated for their ‘employment’ if they ever went to the police. A signed and sealed contract, blatantly advertising what they willingly did. All they had to do was take the money and stay quiet, or give it back and fight to survive in a world that wasn’t paradise.

Too bad Eleanor Grace, the stubborn twenty-something with silver embers in her eyes, couldn’t be as grateful as her predecessors. If she knew how desired I was, she might understand how honoured she was to enjoy my company. How goddamn privileged she’d been that I’d dared let her ride my fingers.

She’d had more of me than any of these willing girls, yet she acted as if I was the devil.

Well, luckily, I’d reined myself in, and from now on, I wouldn’t be touching any of them.

Especially that spirited hellcat who I couldn’t leave the hell alone.

The soft current pushed me forward and back as the waves lapped noiselessly against the icing sugar sand. I debated swimming to the other side of the island to avoid the women, but in truth, I wanted to write that email. I wanted to get it over with so I could stick with my plan and not do something psychotic when it came time for Jinx to be handed over in two days.

But…I also knew what I’d face the second I stepped onto shore and the goddesses noticed me.

Fuck it.

Yanking my black swimming shorts down with one hand, I fisted the aching heat of my long-suffering erection. This was purely medicinal. Nothing more.

Keeping my eyes on the gossiping girls, lulled into the fantasy that they were untamed creatures there to ravish, I stroked harder, faster, creating ripples around my body.

I didn’t need long.

I’d been on the razor edge of coming since I’d poured elixir down Jinx’s throat. The halted orgasm I’d almost had in her presence lurked in every cell. The pain it promised hinted this wouldn’t be a typical release. This would fucking rip me in two with pleasure.

Biting my bottom lip, staying as silent as I could, I gave in to the brutalising pace to make myself come. The girls didn’t see me, surrounded by dark ocean. No one knew I masturbated in full view.

My head tipped back as a lacerating lightning bolt shot from my heart to my belly, dragging claws around my balls.

Ah, shit.

Shit.

A guttural groan couldn’t be contained as liquid fire built to a furnace, scorching blood and bone, crippling me in ways I hadn’t felt in a very long fucking time.

On the cusp of letting go—on the blinding, blistering precipice of spurting seed into the sea, I opened my eyes.

I didn’t know what made me look.

Why my attention searched, found, and snarled as I found the one person I shouldn’t associate with pleasure.

Eleanor stood in the shadows of ferns and palms, hiding in the pockets of blackness, eavesdropping on my goddesses.

She didn’t see me.

But fuck, I saw her.

I saw everything about her.

I drank in the floaty purple dress she wore, scooped low to show pert cleavage and tied at the waist to reveal her willowy frame. Her hair draped over one shoulder, hanging with weight that begged for my fist, gleaming long and rich with starlight, casting it more quicksilver than chocolate.

Her gaze flashed like a cat’s as the girls laughed as a trio.

She scowled and shook her head as if she pitied them, then rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t understand them.

They laughed again.

She sighed and looked out to sea.

She looked through me to the horizon cast in midnight velvet.

She cupped her throat and dropped her touch to her heart as if the life-giving organ inside her was failing.

She looked fragile.

She looked lost.

She was the most intoxicating, provocative thing I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t stop myself.

I came.

I jerked and shuddered as cords of agony exploded from my balls and out my tip, spilling into the sea in thick white spurts.

Wave after wave of savage pleasure tortured me.

And still, she kept staring out to sea, wishing for a way free, totally unaware that she’d just sealed her fate.

She. Was. Mine.

The still pulsing cock I held in my hand would one day plunge inside her.

It was an inevitability.

A promise.

A decree written in the stars.

Chapter Twenty-One

I’D FOUND THE HAREM.

After no one came to claim me, and I grew bored of bobbing in the ocean, I returned to my villa, showered, dressed from the copious choices of summery things in the wardrobe, and then went for a stroll.

The island was a different dimension once the sun had set.

The sandy pathways were arteries leading to some slumbering black beast. The palm trees were sinister umbrellas blotting out the stars, and the roosting of birds was replaced with the steady buzz of cicadas and courting ribbits of frogs.

Without the flickering tiki torches, finding my way would’ve been impossible. Each puddle of light beckoned me forward, leading me in a direction I hadn’t been before. At each bend in the path, I braced myself to meet someone. To bump into a guest, to argue with Sully’s minion, or even battle with Sully himself.

However, I hadn’t come across anyone, and I’d continued my paint by numbers, padding in bare feet, travelling from torch to torch, lantern to lantern until the dense jungle of the gardens thinned out to the humid breeze of the shore.

I’d slammed to a stop.

Stunned and stupefied by awe.

This place…it was dazzling.

Every adjective to describe something that far exceeded extraordinary paled in the view before me. Of the way the sea sparkled with mirroring stars. Of the way far-off lights from other islands winked. Of the way my gaze soared skyward, making me sway at the endless infinity of it all. The sky wasn’t just black with night; it was alive with so many wondrous delights.

Stars and planets, milky ways and flickering clusters.

I’d never been a stargazer, but in one second, I went from confident in my worth as a human, aware that I existed and breathed air and ate food to survive, to not having a clue what I was.

How could I matter when faced with such vastness?

What inconsequential little thing was I when witnessing the untold magnitude of worlds outside our world? The solar system where we bounced around like a Ping-Pong ball, thinking we were absolutely important and special and real, when really…we were utterly insignificant.

I stood transfixed.

My neck ached from looking up. My feet sank deeper into still-warm sand. And tears came unbidden and trickled down my cheeks. Was Scott looking at this vista? Were my mum or dad? Had that guy in Mexico given them my note? Did they hate me for abandoning them or were they happy I’d left them for true love?

My heart hurt.

True love?