Third a Kiss

“I’m saying you felt something…even then.”

“Felt what? Love?”

She gasped. “Was it?”

I laughed as low and as cruel as I could. “I’m sorry to pop your incorrect conclusions of me, but I don’t believe in love at first sight.”

“Well...it was something at first sight.”

“Something?” I rolled my eyes, cursing when the room leapt and faded. “You’re basing this whole theory that you felt something?”

“We felt something.”

I stalked into her, cupping the bruises I’d already decorated her neck with. I squeezed maliciously, making her swallow hard against my thumbs. “You want me to admit I felt something for you?”

“I want you to admit that I’m something to you. Anything. Admit that you’re as lost as I am.”

Violence tried to escalate into arousal. I wanted to fuck this girl. I wanted to punish her for ever having the courage to force me to admit things I would never admit.

Even to myself.

But my body was past useful.

My cock held marks from too many orgasms yesterday. My lips cracked from too many kisses. And her? She held so many contusions from my so-called love.

This was over.

“The only thing I felt was pain. Pain because you are noticeable. Pain because you are something. Pain because you can never be more than whatever fucked-up mess this has become.”

Her pulse throbbed beneath my thumbs as I did my best to systematically destroy the stars in her eyes and the wishing in her heart. “You, Eleanor Grace, are something. You have the power to be everything. And that is why you’ll forever remain nothing.”

Tears cascaded from her gorgeous grey eyes, trickling down her cheeks and over my fingers. “How can you turn your back on this? You felt it too. I know you did. That moment we first met. That punch to the guts. That squeeze around the heart.”

“Don’t project how you felt onto me.”

She stomped her foot, frustration bleeding into her voice. “Don’t deny me the truth, Sully. Please. Tell me. Was it you? Was it you in Euphoria?”

“You need to go.” Releasing her throat, I backed away, struggling to stay lucid, cursing how my body shook. My system had depleted itself to zero from yesterday’s carnage. Now, it ran headfirst toward a grave.

I needed to rest. I needed to collapse.

I needed her to leave me the hell alone so I could pretend I hadn’t royally fucked up my life.

I’d been caught. She knew. But I’d be damned if I confessed.

Because her questions were the same ones I’d asked myself. Why had I entered Euphoria for the first time that night? Why had I gone to her in the skin of a caveman and enjoyed the best sex of my life…until yesterday? Why had the very idea of giving her to Markus Grammer made me become a psychotic murderer?

I’d done him a favour by not giving him Jinx.

If I had…he’d be bones on the ocean floor and his flesh in the bellies of reef sharks by now.

Turned out, instead of ruining his life, I’d ruined mine.

And I honestly didn’t know how to fucking fix it.

Chapter Seven

IT WAS HIM.

It has to be...

I sat dazed on the beach, looking out to sea, clutching a diamond that had been gifted for the use of my body. A diamond that Sully had bought me…or a guest? Was this a secret admittance to how he felt, or a stone weeping in lust from another?

Unlike blindfolds and other methods to hide true identity, Sully’s Euphoria successfully hid everything: eye colour, voice, height, scent, and features.

All I had were instincts and guesses.

And those faltered in the face of Sully’s protestation.

Why did I think I knew better than a well-rehearsed, perfectly delivered hallucination? How did I think I would recognise Sully behind the smoke and mirrors and scientific tricks he used?

I wanted to remain confident in my accusation. To cling to the hope that he hadn’t been able to rent me because that meant his lies would eventually lose.

But I honestly didn’t know anymore.

The diamond rested heavily in my hand as I stared at a perfect vista, watching as the sun set on another painful day, glowing with so many things I never thought I would do.

I now paid the price of those decisions.

Everything I’d done, every action I’d taken, every mistake I’d chased, and hope I’d embraced, I did because of one thing.

Him.

I’d cheated on Scott.

I’d turned my back on my old existence for the mere whisper of a new one.

I’d stolen a drug and used it against the very man who created it.

I willingly, happily gave my body to be used by him.

I screwed up everything, but I would do it all over again because Sully had admitted something. Something that confused the hell out of me as well as corrupted me.

“I asked for them to find you. I sent an intimate description of someone who isn’t real. But then they found you. You. Were. Real. You were real enough for them to deliver you to me, and I fucking bought you, even knowing it was the biggest mistake of my fucking life.”

What did he mean by that? That any girl who looked like me would’ve made him feel this way? That what we felt wasn’t special…just misplaced by him lusting after a figment of his imagination?

I didn’t know if I found that stupidly romantic or hopelessly sad. Why was he so determined to lie to himself?

I wasn’t crazy.

When I’d dragged him from the bottom of the waterfall and he’d slipped inside me in the shallows, there had been love in his eyes.

I know there was.

Love and awe and the total disbelief that we’d found each other.

But if he could feel that—if he could admit in that moment that this, us, was unique…then why did he shout and kick me from his room? Why did he throw a shirt in my direction, march me out his door, and leave me to find my way back through the meandering pathways to my villa.

Why hadn’t he visited?

I sighed, pulling my knees up and resting my chin on them. It’d been twelve hours since I’d woken to Sully’s fury. In the beginning, I thought he raged at himself. The way he looked at the wounds he’d given me spoke of crippling self-loathing. But then that temper had switched. He’d swallowed back the softness that’d bloomed between us and denied everything, every look, every touch, every connection…including the fact that it was him in Euphoria that first time.

Is he a liar?

Or am I the most stupid, starry-eyed girl in history?

The quick quiver of wings announced Skittle’s arrival just before she came to a graceful perch on my toes. Instantly, my stomach stopped churning in worry. Her presence acted as a sedative to the calamity in my head and heart. “Hey, little bird. Where have you been?” I reached out to tickle under her chin. “Did you see us yesterday? See our unhinged display on the path?”

She squeaked and fluffed her wings.

“I take that as a no.” I smiled. “Hopefully.”

Had anyone seen?

Was it luck that we’d been alone, or had Cal managed to do what Sully asked and shepherded everyone to their villas? I was glad we hadn’t been watched, not that it would’ve mattered with the state Sully was in.