Chapter Twenty-Five

––––––––

I WAS A SCIENTIST—not because I’d been born into the lineage, but because I had an obsessive need to chase the impossible. I didn’t accept that a human body was at its full capacity in its current pathetic state.

I believed we were a battery—a machine working at thirty percent—and all we needed was a compound or chemical...something to trigger a new state of being. A stronger state, an invincible state.

Medical advances had gotten me closer to that goal.

Trials and failures had inched me closer to achieving what no one else had before.

But it was fury that shattered the threshold of evolution.

Seeing Drake touch her.

Drug her.

Rub his cock on her.

Yeah, it was the best narcotic, stimulant, and biological enhancement I fucking needed.

Three men were nothing.

Their weapons were nothing.

Life was fucking nothing if he hurt her.

My body moved of its own accord, sweeping from kneeling to standing and choreographing a war that I disassociated with.

My entire mind and whole heart were already across the room with Eleanor. I didn’t feel the crunch of my knuckles as they ploughed into someone’s face. I didn’t hear the crack of their bones as I kicked a man’s ribs and sent him sprawling to the floor.

I didn’t feel their retaliation or the stitches pulling my flesh, nor the hot gush of fresh blood.

My eyes had found their target.

Drake.

Motherfucking Drake.

He fought Eleanor as she turned into a cyclone in his arms. She scratched and clawed, she screamed and went crazed, knowing as well as I did that she had a few short minutes to get away. A few measly minutes to run before she’d spread her legs, welcome the devil, and fuck whichever man would have her.

No.

A simple word. A ruthless voice in my mind.

No!

She’s mine.

A bullet zinged past, missing me by a fraction.

I shoved my bound fists into a guard’s neck, making him gag for air.

I fell to my knees as two men landed on my back, crushing me.

My eyesight still flickered with black clouds and grey paint. Shadows danced over clarity, leaving my other senses working at maximum. My sight had returned in spurts, teasing me with slow recovery.

But even lacking vision, I was still dangerous.

Tritec licked through my blood, granting false power, making me otherworldly in my strength.

Shoving the two guards off me, I round-housed one and sucker-punched the other. I didn’t wait to see if they’d fall. I strode toward Drake holding my woman, snarls tumbling from my throat, sounding exactly like the wolf I was nicknamed for back in society.

Drake’s naked cock branded her back as she struggled in his embrace.

I would kill him slowly.

Painfully.

I crouched and prepared to attack, but Jealousy moved, inserting something into her ears, catching my sniper attention.

Crimson fog descended over my broken vision.

Her!

She betrayed me.

Betrayed Eleanor.

Betrayed Cal.

She deserves to die.

I ran for her instead.

A mercenary grappled me to the floor.

I spun onto my back and fought him, striking his nose and snapping gristle before he could wrap his hands around my throat. He choked on blood, and I kicked him away. I shot to my feet again; no injured leg or half sight would stop me from killing Jessica Long and making her pay.

Her gaze flared wide as I stalked toward her, my trajectory once again foiled as three men tackled me. I fought them, all while my attention stayed on her. While Drake restrained my woman, and Jealousy waited for me to kill her, she gave me the saddest, sweetest smile and tore off her bikini.

Her breasts, her pussy, she stood there stark naked as I howled and punched the men restraining me. Harder, faster, crueller. I drove them all closer to death with sheer brutality.

Another bullet let loose, wedging into the floor and erupting a plume of tile dust.

Eleanor let out a tattered moan.

She’s slipping.

Sinking.

Hurry!

I bellowed and struck with every fury inside me. Men dropped away, nursing their injuries, their commitment to pain not nearly as loyal as mine. If I lost, it would mean sacrificing everything. If they lost, they just voided a paycheque.

They couldn’t win.

It was impossible.

Kicking them away, I had a clear path to murder Jealousy.

She flinched and darted toward Eleanor and Drake, inserting herself into the sexual friction of their war. She rubbed at her eyes as if something burned. My gaze locked on Eleanor, hating the torture on her face, the need in her body, the fidelity in her stare as she saw me. “Sully...I can’t—”

“You can.” Words were thick and foreign in my mouth. “Fight it.”

Her face scrunched up as another gun fired. I ducked as a bullet grazed my shoulder blade, stinging like a wasp. Spinning around, I struck the bastard with both hands, the rope doing nothing to prevent my ferocity.

“Fuck off, Sullivan,” Drake sneered, his hands grabbing Eleanor’s breasts, a scene of fornication as he gyrated his hips into her ass. “She wants me...not you.”

I lost it again.

Red miasma.

Black infection.

I let loose on the mercenary who stupidly tried to stop me. I beat him until his face was unrecognisable, all while my attention fixated on Jealousy as she tipped her head back and shot a vial of elixir down her throat.

My eyes narrowed, second-guessing my flickering sight.

Why?

Why would she—

With a heart-breaking sigh, she uncapped the third and final bottle of elixir. Bringing it to her lips, she braced herself, then upended it. Tossing the empty vial away, she rubbed provocatively against Drake’s side.

“Want to join, huh?” Drake shuddered as her right hand went behind Eleanor and grabbed his cock. “Fuck...” His gaze snapped closed as his body jerked.

“Jess...what are you—Oh, God.” Eleanor curled into herself, stopped by Drake’s hands on her breasts, sweat gleaming all over her as she continued to fight the insidious need for sex.

Jealousy swooped up on her tiptoes and planted her lips on my deplorable brother.

He groaned, his hands still clinging to Eleanor. His hips rocking, feeding his cock into Jealousy’s fist, rubbing himself against both women. He went to pull away, but Jealousy wriggled closer, she pumped his erection, entrapping him within her spell. Eleanor was sandwiched as Drake returned her kiss, his hands kneading my woman’s breasts, the three of them writhing in a threesome of fucked-up eroticism.

Jealousy kissed him harder, her cheeks hollowing as she fed the third vial of elixir onto his tongue.

I waited for him to spit it out.

To strike her down.

But...he swallowed.

He returned Jealousy’s lust, opening his mouth, their tongues lashing with sin and spit. Jealousy moaned as her elixir reached a fever, throwing herself into it while Eleanor still battled hers.

A mercenary punched me in the jaw.

I howled and returned the favour, refusing to look away from the sinful scene before me. My heart thundered as Jealousy held up her left hand.

She still held my phone.

Still poised her thumb over the ‘load’ button.

Oh, fuck—

I stumbled in my haste.

Don’t!

Riding Drake’s leg, giving herself entirely to the unfightable lechery, Jealousy moaned again and tapped her thumb against the screen.

I was too late.

Her spine bowed.

Drake’s body jerked.

Eleanor cried out with carnal hunger.

All three of them fell.

A tumble of nakedness and need, blinded and overloaded by the Euphoria loading system.

Eleanor!

A mercenary pressed a gun to my head. “Quit fucking moving!”

Eleanor remained sandwiched between Jess and Drake.

No one moved.

And I didn’t care anymore.

If Eleanor was loaded in that fantasy, I had seconds to remove her. A few precious seconds before my brother fucked her. No one on earth would stop me. No man. No animal.

No one!

I spun and struck his wrist.

He howled.

The gun smashed and skittered across the tile.

Diving for it, I turned off all my pain, snatched the weapon, found the trigger, and fired.

One, two, three, four.

Four men.

Four bullets.

For once, my aim was true.

Two lodged in their chests, one in the head, and one in the redhead’s hip. He screamed and scrambled away from me as I climbed to my feet and braced over him. With no fucking mercy, I pressed the trigger point-blank into his skull.

A spritz of brain and bone soaked my pristine tile. Men had become corpses, and I was finally alone.

Tripping forward, thanks to the weakness in my harpooned leg, I crossed the distance to the paused orgy and wrapped my fists around Eleanor’s ankles. Yanking her from the prone bodies of Jealousy and Drake, I pulled her until her bareness no longer touched theirs.

Jealousy twitched, her eyes flaring wide as the virtual reality kicked in and delivered her into the fantasy. Drake groaned as he blinked too. Both of them were no longer in this world, but the BDSM club that I’d coded a few years ago. A raunchy, vulgar setting where a labyrinth of playrooms, dungeons, and toys would ensure my brother’s every sick wish was fulfilled.

But he wouldn’t fucking fulfil them with Eleanor.

Eleanor curled around herself, her arms hugging tight, wetness glistening down her inner thigh.

Shit, hurry!

Snatching my cell phone, forgotten beside Jealousy, I brought up the cypher and scrolled through the individual lines of code. Each goddess had their own unique identifier, a sequence already created for ease of VR insertion and activated by the eye lenses.

My eyes darted over the text, searching for Eleanor’s code, ready to delete it from the fantasy and free her.

Only...

There was no code.

Only Jealousy’s existed.

I looked up, my heart skipping a beat.

What the—?

I thought she’d betrayed us. I thought she’d finally shown her true colours, just as so many people I’d trusted in my past. Instead, she’d sacrificed herself so I wouldn’t have to watch Eleanor be raped by my sibling and earn a bullet in my brain when I snapped. She willingly slept with my brother, all while I knew about her feelings toward Cal.

She took elixir...even knowing how it affects her heart.

Shit.

Not only had Eleanor given me a gift of absolute devotion but Jess had too. She’d put her very life and happiness on the line.

How could I ever repay her? I owed her an insurmountable debt.

“Sully...” Eleanor’s gorgeous grey eyes snapped open, smoky with lust. “I can’t...I need...God!”

Her moan snapped me from my shock.

I owed Jealousy the biggest fucking apology.

But in that...I was also too late.

The fantasy had fully loaded. They were no longer here but there, and that was where they had to stay until the end.

I’d broken the farm boy hallucination with Eleanor when we’d removed our sensors, but only because I was the creator. I could manipulate from inside the falsity, sneak in and out through a back door.

My guests and goddesses weren’t so lucky.

It wasn’t safe to pull the plug now. Just like my elixir, Euphoria was far too potent. After previous attempts of cutting a session short had ended in brain damage, I’d learned that the only way out of the illusion was to fall asleep by natural means or to physically have an escape hatch programmed into the illusion.

Only two ways to break it, and this particular mirage didn’t have an escape.

My brother’s hips pumped air, seeking relief. Jealousy’s hand went between her legs as she sought the same thing. They writhed in lewdness, clinging to each other and knotting body parts. Their mouths slammed together, their hands touching everywhere at once.

“God...” Eleanor’s hand cupped her pussy, her gaze locked on Jealousy as she climbed over my brother and straddled him. Eleanor shuddered as Jealousy’s gaze flared wide, seeing something Eleanor and I couldn’t see while her body was stuck in a room that’d become a grave for four mercenaries. Her arousal thickened the air as she grabbed Drake’s cock, angled him up, and sank down.

They groaned in unison.

They clawed and thrust.

Eleanor cried out, her skin flushed and eyes turning hazy with intoxication as her fingers dipped inside herself. She quaked and bit her lip as Jealousy screamed and shattered through her first orgasm. Drake followed a second later, his roar making Eleanor whimper and bow her head.

With utmost desolation and dirty desire, she crawled to the two having graphic sex. “I’m sorry. I can’t...I—”

She couldn’t fight her need anymore. I’d done this to her. I’d done this to Jealousy and every fucking goddess on my island.

Shit!

“Eleanor...stop.”

Clutching my phone, I stood over her, my entire worthless soul hurting for what I’d made her become. Jealousy’s groan throbbed in my ears. I turned hard from the sounds of wet sex and wanton abandonment. The urge to take Eleanor there and then made my balls tighten.

She was primed.

So fucking primed for me.

I needed to tend to her, to be the antidote to her suffering, but I also couldn’t stay here. I needed her off this island.

I need her safe.

Once she was safe and I had a legion of men ready to slaughter my brother and his mercenaries, then I’d fuck her. I’d give her as many goddamn orgasms as she needed.

Tearing at the rope around my wrists, I made short work of the knot and tossed it away just as Eleanor touched Jealousy’s ankle.

“Come on.” Ducking, I gathered her feminine weight in my arms. She screamed as if my touch on her body was too much. Her nipples turned to diamonds. Her lust trickled quicker down her leg.

She nuzzled into me, wriggly and wanting as I tried to hold her against my chest.

Bruises and aches, stitches and sore vision—I ignored it all as I marched away from my brother and Jealousy as he flipped her onto all fours and plunged back inside her.

“No. Wait. I want—” Eleanor scratched me, tears rolling agonisingly down her cheeks. “Sully, I need to come. I need—”

“I know. Just...wait a little longer. Fight it a little longer.”

“I can’t!” She wailed as I paused by the exit and looked at the gun abandoned on the floor. It would be so fucking easy to shoot my brother while he no longer existed in the same universe as me.

I could blow his brains out while he played in some BDSM dungeon.

But...if I shot him, I’d kill Jealousy.

Two bodies linked through a program warping their neurons.

After what she’d done for me?

After the way Cal looked at her?

After the sacrifice she’d made for Eleanor?

I couldn’t.

I would never hurt Jess again.

Hoisting Eleanor higher into my arms, I strode over the threshold of Euphoria and prepared to rescue my woman.

Only once she was safe would I come back.

I’d come back and save Jessica.

I’d give her, her freedom.

I’d place my debt at her feet.

I’d try to repair everything that I’d done wrong.