He chuckled under his breath as he moved behind me, pulling my damp hair over my shoulder and kissing the shell of my ear with exquisite tenderness. “I might have found your weak spot, Eleanor.” His teeth grazed the sensitive skin, clamping down on my lobe.

I shuddered.

A flush of wetness.

A knot of desire.

I shook my head in defiance as he inserted the second earbud. “Don’t fool yourself.”

He laughed again, rolling and velvety, black and unforgiving as he ensured both buds were tight and blocked my hearing.

They blocked my hearing as any earbud would, but I could still hear, still make out everything I needed to.

What was the point in all of this?

He’s masking your senses.

My attention shot to the final box just as Sully picked it up, cracked the lid, and lifted out a small container with two separate screwed dishes.

Contact lenses.

My sense of sight.

The final one.

Touch, taste, sound, hearing, and sight.

“I don’t want anything foreign in my eyes.” I backed up a step, jiggling the apparatus keeping me tethered.

“It won’t hurt you.” He unscrewed the left container, careful not to spill the contents.

“I still don’t want it.”

“You don’t have a choice.” Looking up, he presented the small holder to me. “If you have experience with inserting lenses, be my guest. Or…I can do it for you.”

“I’ve never put anything in my eyes.”

“Well then.” He reached in and plucked out a flimsy lens from the solution it bobbed in. Placing the other one down safely, he eyed Pika to make sure he was still entertained with a piece of cardboard he’d shredded from an empty box and moved closer.

His hand cupped my nape again, bringing me close to him.

I tried to fight it, but my stupid, stupid body tingled from having his so close. I struggled to breathe as he brushed aside some hair on my cheeks with his knuckles, then pulled my head back a little. “Relax.”

“Relax?” I sneered. “How can I relax in this place?”

“You’ll learn to.” His face stayed stern with concentration. I focused on his fingers as they came closer and closer, looming over my eye. “You’ll learn to love it here. You’ll beg to return.”

“That will never happen.” I wanted to close my eyes and refuse.

“Never is a challenge.” He repeated our previous conversation, and sensing my intention to disobey, he let my nape go and slid his control to my eyebrow and delicate skin beneath, holding my vision wide open. “Hold still.”

I flinched as he plopped something wet and awful over my pupil. My eye boycotted the obstruction. Natural instinct made me blink over and over again, trying to get it out.

He let me go, allowing me space to come to terms with it.

My hand raised to rub, to smear it from my sight, but he caught my wrist, clucking his tongue. “Take that out, and I’ll tie your hands.”

Slowly, the sensation faded, my eyeball accepting the intrusion. It stung slightly and felt way too big and gritty, but I endured…because I had to.

Sighing in discomfort, I permitted him to insert the second one, cursing the blurred vision. The nastiness of something I didn’t want blinding me.

“I can’t see.”

“You will.”

A few more blinks and finally my eyes figured out how to see through the film.

Huh, he was right. I was still aware of them, but they no longer obstructed anything.

Again, I wanted to ask what was the point. I could still see and hear, touch and smell. Why go to all this effort to take away my senses when none of them had been stolen?

He stepped back, assessing me, drinking in my nakedness.

With lewdness that ached with masculinity, he readjusted his hard-on, wincing a little in pain. If it’d turned him on so much to be around me…why was he preparing me for another man? Why not have one of his countless minions do the task? Why not enlist one of his many willing goddesses to put him out of his misery?

He caught me watching him touching himself. His throat worked as he swallowed hard. “Want something, Jinx?”

I tilted my head, finding it hard to breathe. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Call me by two names?” I licked my lips as he throttled his cock, his suit rustling with damp material. “You said I wasn’t Eleanor anymore…I was Jinx as long as I belonged to you. Yet…” I bit my lip as he let himself go and stormed into me.

His big hands cupped my cheek, smearing oil deeper into my skin. “I keep asking myself that same question.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “You aren’t a girl anymore; therefore, you don’t deserve your name. You are a goddess; therefore, you should respond to the title I give you.” He sighed with a growl. “Seems even I break my rules.”

My lips sparked for his. I didn’t want to kiss him. I wanted him to back away and take all his sinning need with him. But I also wanted to see if what’d happened in the bathroom was real. If it was a one-time crazy insane moment, or if such a connection continued smouldering between two people who should never have met.

We stood there, locked against each other, both waiting for something.

Waiting for what?

He was a demon, a monster, a god of sin, emperor of lust, and undisputed king of danger. And I wanted him to prove to me that whatever I’d felt in that bathroom was wrong. That I’d been intoxicated by a violent, vibrant kiss that confused my nervous system into thinking it meant something unbelievable rather than something I should be inherently petrified of.

With a gruff groan, Sully pulled away and reached into his back pocket. His hand came up with a familiar bottle.

A bottle holding the worst witchcraft I’d ever had to endure.

“No.” Immediately, I tripped backward, clanging against the wire that held me captive. “I’m not taking that.”

He moved slowly, methodically, planting himself directly in front of me while I strained against the harness. Never looking away, he unscrewed the tiny vial and held it up. “This is going down your throat, one way or another.”

“I’ll spit it out.”

“I’ll suffocate you until you swallow.” His eyes flashed dark denim. “Or are you forgetting our first meeting and my previous methods?”

“I don’t want it.”

He ran a hand through his hair as if my fight for control bored him. “That’s not a valid argument.”

“Please.” I settled for sweetness—for a different tactic other than war. But unlike the last time, when I’d begged him to stop in the bathroom, driven to the pinnacle of fear, knowing without a doubt that he was seconds away from taking me, he didn’t react.

My voice didn’t hold the vulnerability of before. My please wasn’t from the heart but calculated.

Tapping the bottle with his finger, he cocked his head, his gaze dark and turbulent. “This will make it all bearable. I promise.”

Prickles broke out over my skin. Frustration and claustrophobia. Fear and captivity. “Please…” This time it wasn’t so calculated, it echoed with my rising levels of panic.

“Shush.” He reached out, digging his fingers into my drying hair, a slight shake showing he wasn’t as calm as he portrayed.