Scooting over the cream seat, I reluctantly, eagerly, warily placed my palm in his.

Our skin caught fire. Our souls were undying coals. Our link a glowing rope binding us.

I shivered as his fingers wrapped tight around mine, giving me a brace to lean on while I slipped from the helicopter and back onto his shores.

The moment my feet touched the dock, he removed his touch, subtly shaking out the tendrils of heat. I didn’t shake mine away, allowing them to tingle and scatter up my arm, infecting me like the worst kind of infection. An infection that had no cure, complete with a terminal diagnosis.

The pilots remained in the cockpit while Sully stalked ahead of me down the jetty and onto the sugary perfection of his beach. The jade green kayak I’d commandeered had beaten me home; its lacquer bright and bold with no signs that it’d been used in a jailbreak.

Sully’s shirt licked around my body, shielding me just as his island shielded me from the outside world. If this was my home now, I had to make peace with all of it…not just the tropical beauty around me.

Who knew if Sully would ever let himself be alone with me again.

After what’d happened on his other island, I couldn’t be the only one terrified of the instantaneous reaction to one another. I’d fought against my heart, but I couldn’t win against my body.

It’d learned how to be freer in its sexual hunger from Sully’s elixir…it was a traitor that could be the catalyst to why I had no power against Sully’s advances. Why every time he touched me, it felt different from anyone else. Why each time he looked at me or talked to me, it was as if I’d been studied and conversed with someone who finally talked the language deep, deep inside me. A language I wasn’t fluent in until the whisperings and wantings began for a man I should not want.

Sand buried and cascaded off my feet as I followed Sully. The sun warmed my back, stinging my sunburn but erasing my chills. Chills given from my attempt at accepting and being brave when all I wanted to do was scream.

Scream for help.

For advice.

Scream just for the sake of loosening the tight ball of anxiety and need in my belly.

“Sully…” I licked my lips and tried in a stronger tone. “Sull—I mean, Mr. Sinclair.”

He spun around, his mouth thin and cheeks stark. “You can call me Sully.”

“But you said I’d lost the right to—”

“I prefer it over Sinclair.”

I nodded, allowing hair to tumble over my shoulders. I smelled of sea and sun. I wanted a shower and sleep. To dream of a happier ending to my attempt at fleeing.

Unlike when I’d been brought here before, I had a sense of finality this time. Two weeks ago, I’d believed this was temporary. My courage came from a happy ending I was so sure I deserved. A champion breaking free of her chains. A girl who would run, call home, be rescued. A girl who couldn’t be held or used against her will because that just couldn’t happen.

I was special.

This sort of thing wasn’t allowed.

God.

I’d grown up since then. I wasn’t special—any more so than the other girls in that Mexican prison cell. I was just a forgettable person hidden in a mass of humanity.

That’s what I am…forgettable.

To Scott.

To my parents.

To my life before this.

It hurt deeper than I’d imagined—kissing goodbye to a past that had once been my future, but it didn’t hurt as much as learning that I had no one to trust…not even myself.

I was my enemy.

My body was a traitor.

My heart the worst sinner of all.

And I had to make peace with that too if I stood any chance of surviving.

Closing the distance between Sully and me, I hoarded the final moments of aloneness. Soon, other goddesses would vie for his attention, guests would arrive, and business would summon, but for now, I had him all to myself, and I smiled.

I smiled at my jailor and spoke from the heart. “You’re a good person, Sully.”

He froze. His mouth parted as his eyes widened. His stunning complexion highlighted with shock. “What?” His voice thickened with a bark.

I stood taller, knowing how grandiose and how silly I would seem. A shipwrecked girl in her master’s shirt, totally at his mercy for food, shelter, and care. And I had the audacity to tell him he wasn’t the monster he portrayed—at least not all of him.

“You treat your own kind with a merciless disgust that is frankly terrifying. You have no patience or empathy, which makes you cruel and unforgiving—”

“Eleanor—” His brows set heavy, shadowing eyes that turned dark cerulean.

“No, let me finish.” I sucked in a breath, forcing myself to say, “You might not have tolerance for your own species, but you do for others. You are endlessly kind and achingly emphatic toward animals, and that…that I can respect.” I shrugged. “If you treat me half as good as you do your creatures, then I will trust that you will look after me and let me go in four years.”

Tears clutched my throat, exhausted tears, unhappy tears, tears misguided and misled by my stupid, idiotic heart. “All I ask is…that you stop looking at me as a goddess…but as one of your animals. I have no hidden agenda; I plot no war against you. I am merely a creature existing at your mercy, just like Skittles, just like Pika, just like those poor beasts we saw today. I would rather be an animal to you than human—”

“Stop.” He stepped into me, both his hands capturing my cheeks, sliding into my hair, dragging me to him. His height folded around me, acting as a shield. His forehead pressed against mine, our noses brushed, our eyes locked. “You are not an animal.”

I struggled to breathe, inhaling him, consuming him. “If it means you’ll like me, then I want to be.”

“Why do you think I’ll like you if you’re an animal?” His thumbs traced my cheekbones, dipping to the crease of my lips. He pressed gently, teasing with his touch, dipping into the corners of my mouth.

“Because you like all animals.” I tasted his skin, unable to stop my tongue flicking over the tip of his thumb. “And maybe…you could learn to like me.”

He shuddered. “I could never like you.” With a groan, he pulled away, still trapping my head in his hands.

My insides folded in on themselves, my heart into my stomach, my stomach into my core. Acid and passion and hope all mingling in a painful concoction.

“Why?” My question feathered with breathlessness. I’d hoped I could strike a bargain before we went our separate ways. I’d wished to form some sort of contract that would ensure I wouldn’t have to fight against him anymore.

That we could be…friends.

He dropped his hands from my cheeks to my throat, his thumbs pressing on my windpipe, his fingers clutching my nape, buried under my hair. It was a position of power and threats. He could crush my ability to breathe with one squeeze. He could snap my neck with one twist. But he held me tenderly, all while black desire filled his gaze. “I could never like you, Eleanor Grace, because you could never be an animal.” He pulled me close, running his nose along my neck, nuzzling at my ear. “Animals don’t fill me with rage like you do. They don’t make me lust like you do. Animals are weak. Even the ones with fang and poison are ultimately at our mercy.” He pressed a kiss against my temple, all the while holding me trapped. “I grant creatures my fortune and protection because I owe them a debt. Meanwhile, I owe you nothing.” Pulling away, he looked deep into my eyes. “To call yourself an animal is the biggest lie of all. To try to gain my affection through pity and obligation will never happen.” His thumbs pressed harder against my windpipe.