Prologue

EVERYONE HAD A PAST.

Some were secrets we liked to hide, others were triumphs we liked to brag about, and others...others were just journeys—steps we took to find who we were, what we stood for, and what sort of mark we wanted to leave behind. Along the way, there were mistakes and challenges, and sometimes, even catastrophic things like death and betrayal.

A lot of people have said that ‘life is about the journey and not the destination’, and I agreed with that...to a degree.

My life was still on a journey—it would be until I took my last breath—but now, instead of walking my path alone, I’d found the one person who made everything infinitely more bearable.

It wasn’t a monetary achievement or career accolade or any other accomplishment that triggered the end of my journey.

It was her.

A girl I bought and kidnapped.

A goddess who I commanded and manipulated.

A woman who cured me of my sins.

Eleanor Grace, Eleanor Sinclair, was my destination.

With her by my side and her hand in my mine, I didn’t fucking care where the journey took us. We could walk into squalor and famine, and I would smile because she was beside me.

Through thick and thin, Eleanor had my back, my trust, and my entire fucking heart.

And I had her.

Every part of her.

And I didn’t like sharing.

Good thing we were island recluses these days, and when we did have to travel, Euphoria gave us somewhere to be just us.

A dimension where no one else existed.

A fantasy where anything was possible.

Chapter One

TIME WAS RELATIVE.

Make something enjoyable, and time was forgotten. Those tight clusters of minutes vanished because we were present in that singular moment. Entirely consumed by the experience we found enjoyable. However, change enjoyable to painful, and time became far too noticeable. Those tight clusters quadrupled, so a moment lasted four times as long. Human nature caused us to fight against the clock, to be free of that painful situation and run.

I’d experienced both in my life.

When I was younger, there’d been the shortness of school holidays, and the eternity of stressful exams.

And then, of course, there’d been the kidnapping.

The men who’d grabbed me in the kitchen of the backpackers, where my boyfriend and I were staying, had caused time to slow to a terrifying crawl. It abandoned me to the dark cell I was held in and didn’t start ticking again until I was flown to Goddess Isles and met the man who’d purchased me.

But the moment our eyes met?

Time ignited and disintegrated. Every clock smashed. Every minute hand broke into pieces. Why? Because time was no longer needed.

Time was the structure that all humanity and nature marched to, but love...love had the power of cutting you free. It erased all notion of time because it honestly didn’t exist for us anymore.

We’d found each other.

Our countdown was over, and we lived side by side in bliss.

“Jinx...what are you mooning over now?”

Sully’s rough baritone ripped me from my musings, making me blink and squint in the bright Indonesian sun. Raising an arm, well-tanned from living in the tropics and ignoring the constant glitter of sand upon my skin from living on an island, I grinned at my sexy husband. “Not mooning, thinking.”

“Uh-huh.” Sully rolled his stunning blue eyes and scratched at this thick five o’clock shadow. “Well, whatever you were thinking about, snap out of it. I asked you a question, so give me an answer, woman.”

I padded toward him, barefoot with just a wraparound cream dress encasing a silver bikini beneath. This impromptu visit to Serigala had turned from a fleeting inspection into an all-day excursion.

“What was the question?” I stopped beside him, trailing my hand in the manmade pool that housed shallows, caverns, and aquatic dens perfect for the tenants currently healing within.

With my fingers dangling in the warm water, I smiled as a shy shadow moved toward the surface. Sully wrapped his arm around me as the mimic octopus drifted closer, it’s graceful swim and small body melting my heart like it did every time I’d visited.

“And you say I’m the one with power over animals,” Sully murmured as a small octopus reached out with a tentative tentacle and wrapped it around my pinkie. The sensation of its tiny suckers and the silkiness of its sinuous arms never failed to cause wonder.

“He’s just come to trust me, that’s all.”

“Wrong. It’s because he can sense you’re trustworthy.”

“You’re the one who saved him. Saved all of them.”

“We saved them.” He pressed a kiss to my temple as a second octopus floated from its hidey-hole and descended into my palm, wrapping its tiny tentacles around my wrist, and curling out of the water like strange flower fronds.

Both mimics were speckled light brown, muted and content. However, when they hunted or were chased, they could mimic so many things—not just in colour camouflage but movement too.

They could swim like a flatfish, or stalk like a lionfish, or even threaten like a venomous sea snake. I’d done research on the critters ever since Sully had been called to rescue five of them when sea dredging on the main island dumped them from their home, leaving one dead, two seriously injured, and two traumatised.

I’d visited often in that first week of healing and found them utterly fascinating. The fact that they’d only been noticed in the late 90s was a testament to how well they could mimic their underwater world and stay hidden, and the level of intelligence in their quizzical gaze made me think they’d willingly hold a conversation with me if we spoke the same tongue.

The first mimic uncoiled its tentacle from my pinkie in favour of squeezing my thumb. A flash of brown and white over his body warned the other octopus that he’d claimed me.

The other octopus, missing a tentacle and still wounded from the dredgers, puffed up to twice its size and crawled up my arm out of the water.

Sully chuckled. “Guess I have some competition for your affection.”

I grinned and offered my other hand, transferring the suckered tentacles to my free palm and then placing him back underwater. “They’ve certainly made me fall for slippery things.” I laughed as the two octopuses squeezed my fingers, then slipped away, sinking to the bottom where they ruffled up the sand in search of snacks.

“They’ll be released in a month. They’re almost ready.” Sully waited as I rinsed off my hands and wiped them on my dress. He didn’t reprimand about the price tag of my clothing or make me feel as if I should take more care. He just grinned and clamped both hands on my hips to scoot me to face him.

His head ducked, his nose nuzzled mine, and his lips pressed sweetly to my mouth.

I kissed him back.

Soft to start and then harder as he slipped his tongue inside me and quested a deeper kind of connection.

My heart instantly raced. My core liquefied. My entire body set off fireworks. Our conduit of connection hummed with quick-fire need. I moaned, reaching up to run my fingers through his hair.

He pulled away, running his tongue along his bottom lip. “Christ, you turn me on.”

“You can’t keep doing that,” I whispered.

“Keep doing what?” He arched his hips into mine, showing it wasn’t just me affected by our spontaneous kiss.