Once a Myth

I squeezed her hard, fingering her nipple until a deep-seated, feral moan escaped her kiss-bitten mouth.

I’d never been so fucking hard.

Our eyes locked as I continued slaughtering her mouth.

She not only battled against me but also herself. One second she lost herself, kissing me back, violently, explosively. The next she retreated, snapping and wriggling, trying to dislodge my control.

But no matter her disgust or her desire, I continued to take everything I could.

Dragging her from the bathtub, I plastered her to my body and thrust into her naked, wet body. My cock throbbed in agony, trapped behind drenched material and an unforgiving belt.

She snarled as I kissed her, then spun her around. Pushing her, she stumbled and automatically clutched the bath lip. She looked over her shoulder where I frantically scrambled at my zipper.

Every tattered heartbeat told me to claim her, fuck her…own her before another could.

Take her. Take her. Take her.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

Kicking her feet apart, I managed to pop my button and winced in torture as my cock pierced the top of my pants.

She shuddered.

Tears spilled down her cheeks, mingling with her bath.

And for the first time since I was nineteen, I let someone tell me what to do.

“Please…don’t,” she whispered. Not crying. Not begging. Just…asking me quietly not to rape her.

I stumbled back.

Life came crashing in.

How quickly I’d changed the vibe in this bathroom from sensual and humid to tense and treacherous.

Pika squawked and landed on her head, brandishing his little wings at me, his eyes bright and accusing. The flash of his green, yellow, and white feathers looked like a centrepiece of her invisible crown.

Condemning me.

Revealing just how far I’d been prepared to go.

Swiping both hands through my hair, I tripped to the door.

I couldn’t even twist my tongue into dialogue. I couldn’t remember how to talk.

She demoted me to nothing more than a beast.

Pika flapped again as I unlocked the door and tripped through it, slamming it shut behind me.

Jealousy jumped up from her reading nook, her eyes wide and face white. “Sullivan—”

“Get out! Get. Out!”

She dropped her e-reader and scampered.

And I slammed to my knees, digging a fist into my belly, trying to control the madness inside me.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

WHAT THE HELL JUST happened?

My knees gave out.

I crumpled to the floor, holding onto the bath as I did. The little parrot called Pika perched on my bare shoulder, his tiny talons digging into my skin. He twittered and squeaked, grooming my hair with his beak.

All I could do was sit.

Stupefied. Stunned. Shocked to my very core.

He’d kissed me.

He’d used violence to take what he wanted but…violence inside me had responded. Something I’d never known that lurked within me had ignited in an explosive gust of power—black power, erotic power—a power laced with cyanide and dynamite, poisoning me…or perhaps, poisoning him?

Poisoning both of us.

I’d gone from holding my breath under the water, giving myself the biggest pep talk in history, preparing myself to just get the sex over and done with, to being snatched by some demon and given a kiss to end all other kisses.

I brushed a shaky hand over my mouth.

Swollen and sore from his teeth and five o’clock shadow—extremely aware that I’d never been kissed like that before. That I’d been kissed by a man who wasn’t Sullivan Sinclair: island mogul and trader of women. The man who’d kissed me had been an unhinged, highly sexual being who’d escaped his leash of self-control.

His fist banged on the glass door. “Hurry up. I’ve been patient long enough.”

I jumped.

He didn’t come in, but his shadow moved behind the frosted glass, pacing like a caged tiger.

What the hell was that?

That kiss.

That…awakening.

I shivered, doing my best to corral my legs into obedience.

Why had he kissed me?

And why did I feel completely lost? As if he’d shoved aside the old Eleanor—the girl loyal to Scott and fixated on escape—and called forth a coquettish goddess who’d just woken up.

Just been born.

Just felt the touch of someone who surpassed all other’s touches. A touch belonging to someone who fit. Someone who, deep, deep beneath circumstance and control, was the very creation of magic and mystery I’d been searching for.

Stop it.

I crawled to my feet, wincing a little as the parrot dug his claws into my shoulder for purchase.

Don’t be stupid.

I swayed and touched my bruised mouth again.

My stomach had chiselled itself into a chipped piece of stone. My heart hadn’t remembered how to beat properly. And my body—under no manipulation from elixir or chemicals working against me—was heavy and wet and achy.

The damn man had drugged me just with a kiss.

Pika flapped around my head, landing on the floor and fluttering his feathers in the spilled water. He preened and nibbled at his belly, coating himself in the deliciously scented liquid.

Sully’s fist came again.

Knock.

Knock!

“Get your ass out here, Jinx. Don’t worry about clothing. Naked is your new uniform.”

Searching for a towel, I grabbed one and huddled into it.

He might’ve have stolen me with a kiss and tossed me into a universe I could no longer understand, but it didn’t mean I was okay with any of this.

How could I be okay when my enemy had the power to cinder me to ash but also incinerate me into flame? How could I survive, knowing that something was between us? Something he felt, I felt. Something that was mortally alarming and oh, so deadly.

“What do I do, Pika?” I whispered, towelling myself off and picking up the brush to run through my wet hair. The little bird chirped and flew to sit on the vanity tap, slipping on the chrome. “Pet. Pet, Pika!”

I tried to smile, yet another catastrophe hit me.

Sully was heartless and haughty and held the view that all humans were as disposable as any other living, breathing creature. That man I found terrifying. A man with such black and white ideals that there wasn’t a single shade of grey in his entire soul.

But the man who’d stood before me when I’d come up for air in my bath, the man nuzzling into a tiny parrot and smiling such a soft, sincere smile…he made my heart pound for entirely new reasons.

Unsafe and unhealthy reasons because it made me thaw toward him just a tiny bit. To know he had a heart, after all.

“Jinx!” His snarl shot through the glass.

I dropped the brush, letting it clatter to the vanity. The noise made Pika squawk and launch into the sky, circling my head indignantly.

For a second, I allowed a glance at my reflection in the mirror. I’d avoided looking at myself much since I’d arrived. I didn’t want to see the girl I knew, trapped and alone, homesick and afraid. I didn’t want to see the pain in my eyes or the helplessness.

Balling my hands, I caught my gaze.

And once again, my heart scrambled to find a lifesaving beat.

Who was that girl?

Who is this total stranger?