Chapter Fourteen

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SHE ARRIVED AS IF gracing me with her presence, not the other way around.

I’d been right to be wary of my intense reaction to her yesterday when she’d been dirty and exhausted from her arrival. Watching her stalk toward me with her spine regal and head wearing its invisible crown of dignity and diamonds, I hexed her all over again for the way my cock swelled and sat up in full attention.

Her hair had been washed, and the bitter chocolate glowed like molten cocoa. Fine strands of red burned like fire, glittering in the sun. The length was longer than I’d assumed, now the tangles and knots had been smoothed, allowing the thick curtain to frame her face and hang intoxicatingly down her back.

Her bare feet revealed tiny breakable bones that undulated with every angry step. Her ankles were the perfect size for a man’s hand to snap around and wrench open perfect porcelain thighs.

Her eyes narrowed like a lynx, partly from the sun’s brightness and partly from pure hate, retaining their rare shade of silver and fog, and her skin held a dusting of colour from spending most of her afternoon in the ocean yesterday.

I’d had reports on what she’d indulged in.

I could guess how many times she had to get herself off.

I was pissed that I hadn’t been there to watch...or participate.

I hated that I had any reaction toward her whatsoever.

It didn’t take a guy with a hard-on to admit that this girl was beyond fucking gorgeous. Her ethereal quality alone made her glow with refinement, and the temper that she couldn’t quite hide gave her the aura of untouchable.

Which made her all the more fucking delicious because she was touchable.

Very, very touchable.

She was buyable.

A scrape of a chair leg on the deck below wrenched my attention to the three guests who’d gone silent. One stood, gawking at Eleanor as she marched toward me. Another held his cocktail to his lips but sat transfixed, drinking her in instead of the alcohol. And the third gulped then threw me a very obvious eyebrow, a silent demand that he wanted her.

Form a queue, asshole.

I already knew there’d be a bidding war for this girl. All it’d taken was one appearance and already the guests had decided they’d be the one sticking his cock in her tonight.

I peered at her closely.

The shadows under her eyes had receded—still there but not nearly as dark. The bruises on her legs and arms were less prominent. The bandage on her neck was gone, revealing the small incision where the tracker had been removed. The rope burn around her throat was less angry and the idiotic barcode tattoo on her wrist—that matched a few of my previous goddesses—not as fresh. Overall, with her sun-kissed island look, glossy hair begging for a man’s fist, and impertinence dripping from her pores, she could be ready to work tonight...if the price was right.

My cock pounded harder.

Possession licked through my veins at the thought of anyone spreading her legs and taking what I’d had dripping on my fingers yesterday.

She might sell for the highest profit margin I’d ever commanded.

But it didn’t mean I could control the rage that simmered inside.

“Finally dragged yourself out of bed then?” I smirked, keeping my voice hard and condescending. “Spent quite a few hours ‘entertaining’ yourself?”

Her nostrils flared with indignation.

She didn’t respond even though her body vibrated with every silent shout she swallowed back.

I deliberately sat back down, hiding the rock-hard erection I sported.

She might’ve had countless orgasms yesterday, but I hadn’t had a single one. I’d buried myself in work. I’d conference-called my scientists to give them the good news on the revised elixir. I’d swam around my island four times to resist the urge to masturbate.

I wasn’t a prude. I relieved myself often. I dabbled in fantasies while my hand pumped out pleasures, but I always kept the girls I fucked faceless, nameless, unknown.

If I’d come last night, I knew whose face I would’ve pictured and that would not have been good for me, Eleanor, or business.

“How tired are your fingers from fucking yourself? Or did you use things around your villa to get off?”

Her jaw ticked as she clenched her teeth. She swayed before me, standing like a statue carved from granite but quickly cracking under immense pressure. Her chin rose and her gaze shot past me to focus on the aching expanse of treetops and turquoise ocean. The only landmark on the horizon, blotting out the perfection of endless sea, was another island.

Another island I owned.

And past that one was another and another and so on.

That was why I could be liberal with my boundaries. I didn’t lock the girls in their villa. I didn’t have bars and gates around my shores. They could try to swim. They might even outswim one of their guards, but if they made land, it was most likely my land they sought solace on, only to find themselves kindly escorted back.

Not one had gotten past a third island.

Most of them didn’t even try, knowing how futile such an attempt would be.

I cocked my head. Would this girl try? Would Jinx be the one who got away? After all, I’d named her for the bad luck she’d brought upon me. Perhaps, she had yet more to deliver before our time was through.

“You know...if you’re just going to be silent, I can ensure that’s a permanent situation for you. I’ll command Calvin to remove your tongue for good.” I sipped the final dregs of my coffee, shrugging. “Speaking is a privilege. Speaking to me is the biggest privilege of all. But if you don’t want that ability, then—”

“Fuck. You.” The moment the ugly curse fell from her pretty mouth, she gasped. Her hands opened and folded by her sides as if she tried to scramble her temper back into its cage, but it was too late.

Her eyes sought mine.

They locked and held, and she let loose everything she’d been hiding with a vicious hiss. “How dare you give me that drug yesterday. How dare you make me do such humiliating, disgusting things. How fucking dare you take away power over my own body, laughing at my misery, making me degrade myself in every possible way a woman can.”

She swooped toward me, fury painting her cheeks bright red, her hair whipping in a sudden balmy breeze. She looked like Medusa with a nest of snakes crawling over her shoulders, ready to sink venom into my neck from a thousand tiny fangs. “I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate you. I hate that you saw me like that. I hate that you made me like that. You think you can sit there, smirking at my distress? Laughing to yourself that you made me willingly sit on your vile fingers. Don’t think for a moment that I held any attraction for you. Don’t kid yourself into thinking I wanted any of what happened.”

Her nose wrinkled in absolute disgust. “Seeing you touching yourself, getting off on my pain, proved what a sick and diabolical person you are. There is nothing redeeming about you. At least the traffickers were honest about who they were. You...you think you’re a lenient pimp with girls who actually want to be near him. Newsflash: no one wants to be near you. No one.”

She laughed wildly, totally drunk on her anger. “To say speaking to you is a privilege? Fuck that. Speaking to you is the most revolting thing I could ever do. I wish I’d been sold to anyone else. Literally anyone.”

Sucking in a shallow breath, she snarled, “And in answer to your sickening question if my fingers are tired? Yes, you fucking bastard. Every part of me is tired. Every part of me aches. I’ve never been so sore or disappointed in myself in my entire life. I passed out cold once those god-awful effects wore off. I wished I’d never woken up and died right there in my sleep. Don’t you get that I’d been stolen? I didn’t answer some stupid job advertisement to be here. I didn’t ask to be part of a cult where you initiate your groupies by making them become some sex-starving creature. I was taken, you creep! I’m here against my will! In case you aren’t aware, trafficking a person means everything they held dear is snatched away and leaves them more lost and alone than ever before. I arrived to you running on barely any sleep, very little food, and a hell of a lot of fear, yet you sit there, all puffed up on your pride, wearing that ridiculous suit in this sort of weather, while patting yourself on the back for my humane treatment, when really, you’re the worst of the lot!”

She slapped a hand on the table, making my coffee cup rattle in its saucer. “There. I’ve spoken to you. I’ve once again gone against my will. Now, kill me, for all I care, for raising my voice to you. Beat me within an inch of my life for cursing you. But don’t you ever, ever think you’re better than me just because of what you made me become yesterday. Don’t you ever feel superior just because you stole everything that made me me. I curse the very ground you walk upon, Sully Sinclair, and I promise you, right here, right now, that I will find a way to make you pay for what you did. That I promise with every bone in my bruised and battered body.”

Snapping upright, she held up her middle finger, swearing at me in silent language as well as the sewage she’d just uttered, addressing me with no respect whatsoever in front of guests who viewed me as a god with his harem of goddesses. “Fuck you, Sully. Just, fuck you.”

Fuck.

She really, really shouldn’t have fucking done that.

I was livid.

Beyond livid.

I was wrath itself.

For the longest moment, I let her tirade fade from ringing in my ears, replacing her shrill distress with calming twitters of birds and rustles of palms.

Then, I stood achingly slowly.

I smoothed my suit, I checked my tie knot, I glanced down at the guests blatantly rubbernecking at the carnage above them, and then I pinned her to the spot with every rampage and roar percolating in my chest.

Slowly—so as not to snap my restraint—I moved around the table toward her.

She didn’t move.

Her chest pumped with breath. Her breasts strained against the white fabric of her dress, her lips glistened from her violent speech, and her skin flushed with fear not just fury.

But she didn’t run as I reached out and grabbed her wrist.

She didn’t flinch as I squeezed her breakable bones with every vibrating ounce of rage inside. And she didn’t argue when I pulled her away from the banister and goggling guests.

She’d said her piece.

She’d resigned herself to the consequences.

Wise girl.

Stupid girl.

My fingers hurt from squeezing her so hard. Her pulse pounded in my grip. We kept a sedate and gentile pace, leaving behind sunshine and entering the main villa where a coffee house served all-day beverages and café items, sitting above the Michelin star restaurant below.

The pastry chef looked up from kneading dough, went to smile, saw my thunderous expression, and darted his gaze back to his task. A server appeared with a tray of fresh coffee cups, only to turn on her heel and scurry back into the kitchen.

Everywhere, inconspicuous staff scattered.

Eleanor remained as silent and as damning as her savage outburst but she didn’t once try to run. She allowed me to cut off her blood flow to fingers that had already turned a vague tinge of blue. She followed almost at my side, not behind me or beneath me, jinxing the very air between us.

She might not fight or flee, but she wasn’t meek.

Nothing was fucking meek about this girl.

I’d gotten her wrong.

I thought she was a young, fanciful idiot who’d barely lived and definitely didn’t have such reckless abandon for her survival. But really...beneath that false mask, she had a temperament to rival mine. A spirit that just begged to be goddamn broken. A tendency to bury what she truly wanted to say until...she couldn’t stop it anymore.

My palm smashed against the door leading toward the wooden walkway linking this villa with yet another building, allowing us to travel two stories up. We walked in the treetops, brushed past heavy coconuts, and ignored the inquisitive parrots that fluttered around us.

I never released the pressure around her wrist, and with every step, my mood darkened until all I could see was black. Black as night. Black as endless death.

I didn’t look at her.

I couldn’t.

I’d snap.

Reaching the next villa that housed a conference room for those guests who couldn’t turn off from work completely, a high-end safety-deposit room for any valuables, and an in-house doctor who could perform almost every surgery with his highly trained team right here in paradise, I snatched open the door, jerked Eleanor into the empty conference room with its bare architecture, polished hexagonal table, and entire bank of screens ready to link any bigwig to his underlings, then threw her against the wall, slammed the door, and locked it.

But I didn’t turn around.

Instead, I cricked my neck from the overwhelming tension.

I removed my sunglasses and studied the grain of the redwood door.

Inhaling and exhaling, calm and slow, I did my best to rein in my temper...so I didn’t fucking destroy her.