Dragging his tongue up my cheek, he hissed, “I like the thought of that. That I could fuck you to death. That I’d be the last one you saw, heard, touched. That you’d die belonging to me, not him. And the best part…I’ll make him watch. He’ll be there as I fuck you. He’ll watch it all, knowing that you are mine and not his.”
Wrapping his awful arm around my waist, he kissed me.
I bit him.
Hard.
I bit him for disrespecting me and for disrespecting Sully.
I’d bite his cock too if he ever tried to sleep with me.
I’d bite his balls clean off and spit them into the sea.
He lurched back.
His palm connected with my cheek in a five-finger blaze.
His finger went to his lip, smearing the bead of blood that my teeth had punctured.
His eyes met mine.
My cheek smarted.
I balled my hands and kept my spine rigid.
I couldn’t bite my tongue any longer.
I’d reached the end of my limit.
Don’t do it, Eleanor.
Don’t give him what he wants.
I’d been able to ignore the traffickers.
But I hadn’t been able to ignore Sully.
And I couldn’t stop myself from defending him.
Looking straight into the eyes of Sully’s cad of a brother, I snarled, “Is that meant to scare me? Am I supposed to tremble and obey?” My nose stabbed the sky with regality. “How can I be afraid of a stupid boy who thinks tearing the wings off butterflies makes him strong? A boy who never grew up; an idiot who thinks Botox will hide his ugliness.”
He froze, dropping his hand and rubbing his blood into his skin. “She speaks.”
“She bites, too.”
“She behaves if she wants to stay alive.” Grinning as if our threats were flirts, he wrapped his fingers around my throat. He squeezed my larynx, activating bruises from Calico’s attempt at murdering me, and the strangest, scariest thing happened.
A few times on Sully’s islands, I’d had moments of premonition: bathwater puddles revealing that Sully would forever change me. A parrot chirp hinting at a man behind the monster. A kiss without sensors or masks delivering my destiny.
And now, a brother who gave up the secrets of their joint childhood.
Sully was a control freak because he’d had all control taken away when he was a boy—by this man. He had no faith and broken trust because his brother had physically punished him every time he’d tried.
My heart spasmed as things fell into place—Sully’s many long-ago scars. His torment at falling for me. His denial of our closeness.
The last person he’d been close to had been his family, and they’d done unspeakable things.
“You hurt him,” I hissed. “You scarred him.”
His eyebrows tugged down—or as much as they could with chemicals preventing facial movement. “I’ve hurt him all my life.” He jerked me closer, his fingers twitching around my neck. “But I haven’t been able to hurt him nearly as much as you have.”
He laughed softly, sounding like a psychotic boy with a box of kittens, lighter fluid, and matches. “You’ve been able to create a pain deeper than I ever managed. You’ll be the one to kill him, Eleanor Grace…not me, and I can’t wait to watch you do it.”
* * * * *
Blood.
Bright vicious crimson.
It was all I could see.
All I could smell.
Blood.
Sully…God, Sully.
I tripped as Drake dragged me over the threshold of the villa and dry-heaved as he carted me to stand beside Sully’s cage.
The same cage I’d spent a night in.
A cage that’d been flipped on its side to give enough horizontal room for the tall man within it.
“Eleanor?” Sully spasmed the moment he heard my footsteps. His gorgeous, powerful body jerked to get free. The metal ring of handcuffs clanged as he struggled, slowly at first as if he had no strength left, then faster, crazier. “Eleanor?”
His eyes.
God…what’s wrong with his eyes?!
Drake snickered beside me, staying silent while his brother danced on the border of life and death by his feet.
I’d never seen anything so spiteful, so tyrannical, so inhumane.
A sob caught in my throat as I fell to my knees.
Sully’s beautiful blue gaze was a morbid black, staring at nothingness.
Drake let me go, his snicker morphing into a self-congratulatory chuckle as I crawled over the floor, shoved my hand through the bars, and linked my fingers with Sully’s.
The second I touched him, he broke.
His face twisted, his head tipped back, and his lips parted in the most heart-stopping, belly-stabbing howl. “FUUUCK!”
The chemistry between us. The connection. The bond.
It hurt.
It hissed from his skin to mine. It electrified, it condemned, it hummed along its conduit with a lick of lust and love—a link that shared our pain, our promises, and every other pitiful thing we’d become.
“Eleanor…Jesus Christ.”
I clung to his hand, bowing to kiss the dried blood flaking from each finger, frantically pulling out the nails that’d been driven into his pads.