Calvin had done well.

It still fucked me off that he’d been the one who’d laid a hand on my brother, but…if I had to choose again, I would still have chosen to run after Eleanor.

And that was the goddamn, disgraceful truth.

After our discussion, I’d snuck another look at my watch.

Three p.m.

I’d agreed for Roy Slater to enter Euphoria at four. I still had to program his fantasy. A fantasy that I frankly found disgusting based on his close relationship with his son and daughter-in-law, but the money had already been deposited into my account.

A deal was a deal.

A bargain non-negotiable.

Opening the software to begin cyphering the virtual reality world that would whisk Eleanor from my control and into Roy Slater’s, I fisted the key from my pocket and tossed it at Calvin. “I appreciate all you’ve done and, you’ll receive a bonus reflecting my thanks, but get back to work. Go and release my goddess. Take her to Euphoria.”

Calvin’s eyebrow rose. “She serving?”

I pinned him with a stare that dared him to speak out of line. “You know she is.”

He stood with the key to her padlock fisted in his palm. “You’ll prepare her…like last time? I don’t suggest you do that. Your cock was inches away from—”

“Stop.” I bared my teeth. I went to say of course I wouldn’t prepare her. That I wasn’t stupid enough to touch her again. That I had more sense than to let my lust control me. I should shake my head and lock myself deeper into this nightmare I’d found myself in.

If I went to her now, who knew what the fuck I was capable of.

But my eyes strayed to the apothecary cabinet holding the vials of elixir, and I found myself standing and burying my fists in my desk. “She is mine to do with as I please. Just as you are employed to obey me.” Sitting back down, I fixed my stare on my laptop, ready to code a fantasy. “So go do what you’ve been told, and inform her she has one hour.”

* * * * *

Three-forty p.m.

Twenty minutes before Roy was due to have the best goddamn sex of his life with the girl I couldn’t stop wanting, and I’d once again made a colossal mistake.

I entered Euphoria with the elixir vial burning a hole in my palm. I strode past Jealousy, who’d no doubt offered moral support for Jinx while she’d prepared herself, and entered the virtual reality room where Eleanor already waited.

She’d been washed, cleansed, and harnessed.

Naked and magnificent, her body glowed perfect alabaster instead of sun-pinked. The minor scratches on her chest had faded, the painful sores on her hands reduced. With her luxurious hair that begged to be fisted and her grey smoky eyes that held countless secrets, I was hard within a fucking millisecond.

A staff member appeared from the bathroom door, wheeling the trolley with all the sensory applications to turn a fantasy into reality. The girl stopped short and waited for a command.

I shouldn’t be here.

I should place the elixir on the trolley and leave.

But my hand rose, and I waved the staff away.

Eleanor’s head tipped up as the girl nodded, left the trolley, and hightailed it back into the bathroom. The same bathroom where I’d yanked Jinx from the bath, stuck my tongue down her throat, and come to the shit-scary idea that I wanted her more than just physically.

My lust hid something deeper.

Something that made me die a thousand deaths a second.

Our eyes caught as I stepped toward her. Her nipples pebbled, her skin puckered with goosebumps, and she shuddered in her binds. Her body welcomed me, but her eyes blazed silver fire, smouldering with ire.

Placing my hands into my pockets, I clutched the vial of elixir as I stopped before her. I demanded my fingers to remain inside the material and not to cup her swollen breasts. “Pleasant night?”

She bared her teeth like a feral cat, showing sharp canines and rage. “I didn’t think you’d show.”

“Disappointed?”

“No…relieved.”

I sucked in a breath. “Relieved?” A scowl pulled my brows low. “How so?”

“It means I can stop repeating all the things I want to say to you. A speech I’ve rehearsed while my feet bruised from the wire and my dignity was shredded thanks to peeing in a bucket.”

“So you didn’t find the cage inviting?” I cocked my head. “What a surprise.”

She sniffed with temper. “I have so many things to say. So many curses I want to deliver. I want to tell you that you’ll never put me back in that place…but I know there’s no point. You can, and you probably will.”

Her head tipped up as I stalked toward her. “You have control in that, you know. Obey, and you live in luxury. Disobey, and the cage becomes your new home.”

She stiffened. Her belly filled and flattened as she inhaled. Her nakedness caused my lust to swarm like a thousand wasps, hissing through my veins, filling me with venom to take. I hated that I’d done that to her. But I’d do it again if it meant I could protect myself from her.

This woman.

Christ.

“That cage…who did it belong to?”

I narrowed my eyes. “You say who, but don’t you mean what?”

She frowned, mulling over my point that all humans spoke of creatures as a thing and not a soul. “Did the animal have a name?”

My stomach clenched. “Of course.”

“Then my question still stands. Who lived in that cage?”

My heart shed off its heavy hive of lust in favour of a deadly pounding potion of interest. She continued to surprise me. And each surprise punctured my defences a little more.

Clearing my throat, I murmured, “Ace. A chimpanzee.”

“How long did he live in there?”

“Before I sent him into whatever afterlife there is for apes? Years. Decades.”

She blanched. All colour slid from her cheeks, faded from her chest, pooled by her feet. “Decades?” She shook her head, sending hair whispering over her perfect skin. “On that wire floor?” Tears coated her grey gaze, turning them into rain clouds. “God.”

I’d come here prepared to battle with her temper. To antagonise her into fury because having her hate me was the only way I could fool myself into thinking I didn’t want her. But I wasn’t prepared for her empathy. Or for the way her mind switched from her own uncomfortable night, translating that to the pain of the cage’s prior resident.

A poor monkey whose days included being injected with drugs, hair shaved, and chemicals applied to delicate skin, being placed into crushes so he couldn’t move while scientists dropped all manner of so-called miracle medicines into his eyes to see if he’d scream. No part of his body was his own. His ears, his mouth, his anus, his flesh. All of it had some role for testing.

I cleared my throat again, chasing away the chill under my suit.

Eleanor blinked back her grief, her shoulders no longer tense with fight but rolled with sadness. She actually laughed once. A single sound of mirthless misery. “You know…I actually thought I was coping pretty well with my new reality. I refused to talk to the traffickers because my silence put me above them. I lived through your sexual initiation. I set aside my embarrassment and faced Euphoria as best I could. I didn’t let a chance of escape pass me by even though I knew it was probably futile.”