Chapter Eight

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PAIN.

There were different levels of it. Different methods of it. Different versions of different reasons full of different deliveries.

But this pain?

The pain Sully had just punctured me with?

I couldn’t breathe around it. I couldn’t see beyond it. I’d honestly never felt such catastrophic, claustrophobic...

Pain.

Not because I believed he didn’t love me. Not because he’d dishonoured me by trying to make me swallow a lie. But because he was resolute, resigned...deadened to his decision and already suffering the accompanying agony.

He can’t do this.

He can’t end us.

It was unthinkable.

Stumbling forward, I clutched the doorframe as Sully marched naked with Pika on his head to answer the door. For anyone else, the image would be comical. For Sully, it made him all the more royal. All the more regal and untouchable.

Keeping his hand between his legs, he swung open the door, his back straight, his muscles locked.

A guard I’d seen lurking around the gardens during my weeks here bowed his head in respect. “Your clothes, courtesy of Mr. Moor.”

Sully took the bundle. “Tell him thanks. His inability to keep his nose out of other people’s business has proven to be convenient.”

The guard nodded. “He also advised that the men are at their posts. We’re ready.” Pulling something from his waistband, he placed it on top of Sully’s clothing. His eyes didn’t stray from his boss’s face; the fact that he was nude didn’t seem to faze him. “Your weapon, sir.”

Weapon?

My heart skipped, adding worry to my pain.

Why had the entire island suddenly turned black with foreboding?

I stumbled from the walk-in wardrobe as Sully closed the door and strode toward my bed. I followed him, dazed and soul sore, hating the dread covering my heart in sticky tar.

My eyes locked on the weapon.

A gun.

Black and lethal, despicable and menacing.

The sight of the morbid gun on my pristine white sheets petrified me.

The truth of the matter swarmed into comprehension.

His brother was coming here. His brother was going to try to kill him. His brother was the reason for all of this awful pain.

“Sully...” I moved toward him, my eyes drinking him in as he tugged on a black pair of boxer-briefs, black slacks, and a black shirt. A uniform intended to camouflage him in the dark. A solider ready for bloodshed.

I ignored his lies about us being over. I pretended what he’d said in the wardrobe never happened, and I tried a different tactic. “If you want me to leave...come with me.”

He sighed heavily as if my attempt at compromise was too hard for him to handle. “Enough, Jinx.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes shut, and groaned low in his chest. “Enough.”

“You don’t get to shut me out just because you’ve made a decision. That’s not how a relationship works.”

“A relationship...?” His eyebrows tugged low over his tortured gaze. “We don’t have a relationship. I told you...we’re over.”

“I’m doing my best to be respectful of what you’ve been through in the past few hours, but your decision to cut me from your life without talking to me is by far the cruellest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Cruellest?” He chuckled darkly. “Has your love for me blinded you so completely?”

“It’s because of my love for you that I’m willing to stand up and refuse your decision to send me—”

“I’m doing it so I won’t do anything worse to you.” His temper flared. “I’m doing it because I don’t have a goddamn choice. Enough, Jinx.”

Pika swooped from Sully’s hair, dislodged by his shout. He landed on the sheets, glowering at the gun. He squawked in his stilted English. “Bye-bye! Pika!”

Skittles trilled loudly, landing beside her feathered brother, also glaring at the gun as if they both knew it caused mayhem and murder.

Sully huffed, nudging Pika away from attacking the trigger and grabbing the weapon from both parrots. Keeping his jaw locked against Pika’s antics as he pecked at the sheets in frustration, he tucked the gun between his spine and waistband.

He sighed again, gathering final courage to finish this.

I won’t let him.

He can’t.

“Help me understand what you saw over there. Tell me, purge to me...maybe if you share—”

His lips thinned as he shook his head sharply. “I never want to discuss what happened there.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “I can’t get the images out of my head; I won’t cement them any further with conversation.”

“It might help.”

His chin tilted up, his turbulent gaze meeting mine. “The only thing that will help is knowing you’ll be far away from me. Far from my brother and his threats. Far from me with my tendencies. This was a mistake. You were a mistake. It’s time I rectified that.” With muscles braced, he stormed over to me, clamped his strong hands on my cheeks, and kissed me.

He kissed me as if he wanted to destroy me.

A crackle of chemistry.

A sizzle of sensuality.

A bone-deep longing that would never end.

A mistake?

This wasn’t a mistake...we were the only thing that made sense.

I kissed him back, moaning as our tongues swept together.

Pika and Skittles took wing.

A gust of humid air whipped into the villa.

Energy prickled over our skin.

There was magic between us.

A rare, mystical connection. A bond that ought to be invincible and priceless...but Sully was determined to kill it.

He made a noise in his chest that dropped my stomach into my toes. A growl, a grunt, a groan of despair and damnation. His hands skated from my cheeks to my throat. His entire frame quaked with tightly reined rage, but his touch remained achingly soft. So, so soft as his thumb tickled my jawline.

My eyes snapped closed as he deepened our kiss.

Wet heat, endless belonging.

A goodbye neither of us wanted.

Ending the kiss, he wedged his forehead against mine.

His height meant he had to curl into me—a man who I could shelter beneath for the rest of my life if he’d have me. A man who could snatch that shelter away whenever he wanted.

Inhaling hard, he cupped my cheeks. “I only have the power to say this once. Don’t interrupt. Don’t argue. Nothing you say will sway my decision, so don’t waste your breath.”

I huffed with anger. “I’m not going to stay passive while you decide something I don’t agree with, Sully.”

His fingers bit harder into my cheeks. “What did I just say?”

“That you love me and you’ll come with me if you’re so determined to send me away.”

His jaw twitched with temper. “This is my home. I will not leave it undefended.”

“And you are my home. Therefore, I will not leave you alone.”

“Christ, why did it have to be you, huh? Why couldn’t I have fallen for a girl who obeys?”

I flinched, taking it personally because he meant it personally. He said he’d custom ordered me. He’d basically done this to himself by kidnapping me. “If you wanted a girl who obeys, you shouldn’t have chased after a dream.” I attempted to smile, despite the black cloud covering my heart.

“Yet the dream has turned into a nightmare.”

“You’re the one giving up on us.”

He winced. “I’m protecting you.”

“No, you’re taking away my choice.”

“Like I said, there is no fucking choice.”

“There’s always a choice.” My snappish sentence hung in the air between us.

For a moment, I believed I might’ve broken his shields—that he’d tell me what was going on instead of commanding what would happen. But then his gaze slid over me. He studied me as if he’d never see me again, and a heavy shadow fell over him, obscuring the man I’d fallen in love with, leaving behind a god with lightning in his blood, a vicious prince who wore anger as his crown, and a monster who no longer needed a mask.

He’d shut himself down.

He’d said goodbye.

I’d lost.

I sucked in a thin breath. “Sully...don’t.”

He shrugged.

A simple, staggeringly painful move. “I love you, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough because I can no longer live in a world where my brother has the freedom to do whatever the fuck he wants. I cannot think of myself while the smell of my creature’s fur still suffocates my lungs. I cannot put you in harm’s way any more than I already have. It’ll be the hardest thing I’ve ever done saying goodbye, but I will do it because I will not put myself first, do you understand?”

Without giving me time to reply, he winced and grunted with gravel and glass, “It’s over, Eleanor. I won’t repeat myself again. This fantasy of forever? This daydream of us? It’s finished. I’m done.”