Chapter Twenty-Six

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I NEEDED, NEEDED, NEEDED.

I’d tried to remain sane.

I’d tried to fight the repugnant pull of elixir.

I’d done my best not to be a slut while Sully fought the guards and turned murderer.

But I wasn’t strong enough.

Something was wrong.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

I needed to come; that was undeniable. I was beside myself with pain—that was irrefutable—but my heart...my heart couldn’t figure out a healthy rhythm anymore.

The longer I denied myself—the harder I fought the ratcheting, climbing, tightening mess my body had become, the more my heart coughed and tripped.

I cried out again as Sully’s touch ate into me with acid and delight. Having him so close physically branded me. He felt like fire. Cinder wrapped around me, gunpowder trickling through me.

It hurt. It hurt so, so much.

“Arbi, it’s Sinclair. Call the fucking police.” Sully tripped and limp-jogged down the sandy pathway, my body jostling in his embrace. He wedged his cell phone against his shoulder, barking commands at his third-in-charge. “Don’t care. Do it. Do it now.” Allowing the phone to fall from his hold, he picked up his punishing pace.

My mind flew back to Euphoria where Jealousy was given a cure. The image of her slipping onto a cock made me moan. Envy filled me as my core clenched around nothingness.

I didn’t want Drake, but I wanted what she had.

I needed what she had.

I needed it because I couldn’t survive the compressing, contracting agony of every cell. My stomach, my chest, my core, my clit. They’d filled with toxin that I had no vaccine for, no way of curing on my own.

Come.

You need to come.

It’d gone past salacious hunger and slipped into life-threatening.

I needed to release.

To shatter the bone-cracking pressure.

I need—

“Eleanor. Please...fight it.” Sully carried me farther from Euphoria, bats flitted around us, night insects serenaded us. No tiki torches flickered, leaving us at the mercy of the scattered solar lanterns and the Milky Way above.

My spine bowed in his arms as things turned unbearable inside me. I panted and gasped, my mouth wide for air as my heart slammed violently against my ribs.

I battled lust, but I also scrambled to stay clawing to life.

I’d never felt this way before—never had such a nightmarish blend of death and desire.

“Sully...I don’t feel right.”

I wanted him inside me.

I needed him to fuck me.

It wasn’t about sex anymore.

It was about keeping me alive.

“Sully...” I squirmed in his arms, desperate to kiss him, trying to capture his lips as he clutched me close and continued half-running, half-limping down the laneway. “Please...you have to help me.”

“Give me more time, Eleanor.” He tripped, cursing with a vicious tongue. A tongue I needed in me, on me, tasting me, corrupting me.

I curled into a little ball as an orgasm wrapped itself tight around my core. The blood-red eyes of those nasty little demons were back, slicing my womb with savage teeth—a seething mass of yearning.

We appeared at the fork. The same fork where he’d fucked me against a tree, on my knees, on my back. “Sully!”

I couldn’t be denied much longer.

I’d been a good girl.

I’d fought against Drake as he’d kneaded my breasts. I’d ignored Jealousy as she’d rubbed against me. I’d kept my hands to myself and not self-administered a release.

I’ve been good.

So please, please give me bad!

Struggling to breathe, I wriggled my hand between us as Sully continued his ruthless staggering march. I fisted the iron rod between his legs, the tip slippery with pre-cum, popping out the top of his black boxer-briefs.

The stupid fingerprint sensors tried to scramble how delicious he felt. My eyes were hazy from the lenses. My skin slippery with oil I didn’t need. I’d been prepared for a session to be fucked and taken...and instead, I’d only been given refusals and rejection.

Tears tracked down my cheeks.

I was pitiful.

I was pain.

I was pathetic as I rubbed him with an invitation he didn’t want. “Please, Sully. I can’t survive this much longer.”

He stumbled, his jaw locking as he looked down into my sweat-flushed face. “Eleanor...” His forehead furrowed into thick tracks. “I need to get you safe. Stop touching me.”

My smoking, malfunctioning heart faltered. “You don’t want me?”

That killed me.

Annihilated me.

Thick torrents of desolation spilled over as I lost myself deeper to elixir.

He doesn’t want me.

He can’t help me.

He’s immune.

I sobbed as my other hand went to my breast, squeezing and massaging, my fingernails digging punishingly into my nipple.

Sully groaned and kept running, jostling me in his arms, not caring about my disease or interested in granting me medicine.

I cried harder as my right hand squeezed him and my left dove between my legs.

I screamed as I thrust two fingers inside, rubbing my clit with my thumb, humping air, horny and hungry, a madwoman in his arms.

If he won’t help me...I have no choice.

“Fuck, Eleanor!” He tripped again.

I didn’t care.

If he dropped me, I could writhe on the sand. I could dig my heels into the ground and spread my legs as I—

“Oh, yes...” My first release, the most painful release, shot like a bullet from my heart. Its trajectory pulverised ribs, ricocheted around my core, suffocating me with wave after wave of indecent demented pleasure.

Nothing else mattered but that.

Nothing else compared.

It’s not enough.

I’d forgotten why we were running.

Why he was broken and bloody.

Just take me.

God, please, please take me.

As the final clench of my release left me hanging in his arms, I sniffed back my tears with determination.

I had a man.

He might be oblivious to the hissing hunger between us, but I wasn’t.

I lived within it.

I was it.

I’ll show him.

Wrapping my fingers around his neck, I smeared my spent pleasure against his nape, and tugged at his thick dark hair. I rose in his arms and captured his earlobe with my mouth. “I need you to fuck me, Sully.”

“Goddammit.” He tripped again, his arms squeezing me tight. “Christ, you’re destroying me. Fight it!”

Fight it?

Impossible.

My tongue licked his ear and down his throat.

My teeth sank into his neck.

His chest heaved with breath. His arms spasmed.

I bit him harder, licking the feverish metallic salt from his skin.

My hand dove between us, finding his cock again.

Hard.

Rock hard and straining against its entrapment.

“Stop it!” he growled, breaking into a staggering run, making me jerk. My teeth sank deeper into his neck for purchase, and my hand wriggled farther into his underwear, finding the throbbing weight of his balls.

He stumbled.

We fell.

He collapsed to his knees, barely holding onto me as my feet hit the sand and every desire and wish and need rose to unbearable levels.

“Fuck me, Sully. I need it.” I scrambled from his embrace, straddling his lap and ripping at his boxers.

He grabbed my biceps as I angled his cock, attempting to spear him inside me.

“Eleanor!” He shook me, holding me upright, preventing me from sinking down. “We can’t do this. We don’t have the time.”

I cried again, beside myself with pain.

I needed him.

Couldn’t he see that?

Couldn’t he hear my crazy, chaotic heart?

Tears came again, possessive tears, jealous tears, rejected tears. “I need you.” I gawked at his cock. I licked my lips at the proud tip and angry veins. Something stabbed the centre of my chest as air turned to cyanide in my lungs.

Please.

Can’t you see...

I’m not well.

I’m dying.

I need you!

I tried to kiss him.

I fixated on his mouth.

Kiss me.

I’ll come from a kiss.

Please!

He shook me harder. “You will die if we stay here. I will die. We will all fucking die. Is that what you want?”

I tumbled into him, rubbing my head against the crook of his shoulder like a cat in heat. “I don’t care. I’ll die if you don’t fuck me.”

“You’re being dramatic. You won’t die.”

“I will!”

“You won’t!”

I tried to sink down again, snapping my teeth at his strength. “You did this to me. You created this.”

“You’re right. And that’s why I’ve decided to destroy every vial of that fucking elixir.” Shoving me away, he stood on shaky legs and bent to grab me. “It’s pure suicide.”

I lay back and spread my legs. I blatantly, indecently rubbed my clit. I gave him a show, revealing everything.

I begged and pleaded and cajoled. “Please, Sully. I...I...” My teeth pinched my bottom lip as a second orgasm got lost and went to my heart instead. It tingled and prickled, feeling like a thousand stinging needles.

Please!

I knew I needed to come, but I...I couldn’t...

Please!

“Goddamn you, Eleanor.” Sully dropped back to his knees. With one arm around my waist, he pulled me into him. A second later, his large hand cupped me, and three fingers thrust inside me.

I screamed.

I couldn’t help it.

His mouth clamped over mine, hiding my cries, silencing me with a vicious kiss. He wasn’t teasing or tame; he didn’t give me time to swell or enjoy the steady sinful build-up. He might not let me have him, but he fucked me with his hand, driving into me, making me bow into his control.

My mouth opened, and my belly spasmed as my second orgasm figured out where it belonged, racing to my core and splitting me in two.

His tongue plunged deep into my mouth, keeping time with his fingers, consuming me, wounding me, wringing every clench of my climax to the end.

The second I went from stiff with pleasure to lax with relief, he withdrew his fingers, pushed me away, and shoved painfully to his feet.

Bending down, he held out his hand. The same hand that’d just been inside me. Threads of desire glistened over his three fingers, thick and condemning, making me shiver with shame, then melt in carnal craving.

“Come. We need to go. Now. Before you suffer again.”

My hands ran over my breasts on their own accord, gasping as I squeezed hard. “I’m already suffering.”

“Fight it.” He grabbed my wrist and hauled me to my feet.

Rearranging his boxer-briefs, half of his massive cock straining out the top, he broke into a limping run. I tripped and ran beside him, my breasts bouncing, my hair wild, my lust trickling thickly down my inner thigh.

The friction of the sand on my feet.

The lick of air on my skin.

The raw violence emitting off Sully.

It was a complex cocktail full of desire and demented danger.

My heart once again couldn’t cope.

It skipped and pitter-pattered.

I folded in half as my core crippled me with need.

Sully never let me go, dragging me behind him like his captive. A captive who he had no intention of sleeping with even though she’d begged.

I tried to touch myself.

I tried to give in to the rapidly clawing new release, but his pace wouldn’t allow me. He kept going, ignoring my whimpers and cries, his erection staying trapped and unsatisfied against his stomach.

“Sully. I can’t!” I moaned as we broke onto the beach, leaving the pathway and its tunnel of jungle behind. “I can’t. I’m breaking—”

“You’re breaking me, Jinx.” He scooped me into his arms again, sending me into wanton drunkenness. “Fight it harder. Give me a little more time.” He struck off into a limping lurch, running for the sea.

Each jiggle.

Each smash of our skin.

It drove me insane.

My system was primed, my thoughts drowning in sex. I hadn’t reached the second stage of elixir yet, and shame did its best to stop me from being this rabid feral beast.

I didn’t want to be this unhinged creature.

I didn’t want my heart constantly threatening to cease.

Stop it!

Do what he says and fight!

But his skin was too hot. His smell too rich. His cock so close with temptation.

My lips found his throat again, making him stumble. I tried to get my hand between us, to fist his erection and break him into fucking me right here beneath the black velvet of a sky that would keep our sordid secrets.

I wanted to be spread-eagled as he feasted on me. I wanted to arch my back as he thrust into me. I wanted to be used, abused, taken, devoured.

I bit him hard enough to break his skin, tasting fresh blood mixed with old. I hurt him. I hurt him even though he’d been hurt so much before. And I would continue to hurt him until he gave in, until he filled me, took me—

“I can’t do this anymore!”

“You have no choice!” he snarled, leaving dry land behind with me clutched in his embrace.

Water splashed my back and ass as Sully left the shores of his invaded paradise and waded into the sea. He hissed with pain as saltwater lapped at his raw ankles, wounded leg, and every other cut and graze he’d earned in his battle with his brother.

I tried to put his welfare first.

I truly, truly did.

I attempted to be my usual rational self.

Fight it!

But the second I thought I had control over myself, I slipped. I fell. I didn’t care that his chest still stung with soreness. I didn’t care his fingertips had scabs from being pierced with nails. I didn’t care that his leg had been speared with an agonising harpoon.

All I cared about was his body in mine.

He’d survived all that.

He could survive giving me what I needed.

Sully groaned as water lapped over his waist, his pain vibrating over the sea.

A flash of worry came and went.

He was bleeding.

He was heading to open waters.

Sharks.

Sharp teeth.

Death.

Who cares?

You’ll die if you don’t come.

I gave up trying to beg and turned vicious instead.

Thrashing out of his arms, I squirmed until he let me go as deep water cradled me.

He grabbed my wrist. “Swim with me. The sooner we’re on Lebah, the sooner you’re safe.” Pushing off from the bottom, he struck into a powerful swim, keeping hold of me and dragging me beside him.

Water cascaded over my head as I sank, then broke the surface again. My hair streamed behind me, the ocean teased me, and the blistering need to orgasm made me so unbelievably selfish.

I climbed onto his back, twining my arms around his waist and finding his cock.

He choked and sank.

His hands shoved mine away, his feet kicking for the surface.

He tried to push me off him.

And I did the most unforgivable thing.

I wrapped both legs around his, ruining any chance of buoyancy, sinking us like a stone.