Chapter Twenty

“HOW?” I shrugged with utmost vulnerability. Vulnerability I’d always kept buried. “How did you know?”

Eleanor swiped at her tears and straightened her spine. “The same way you’d know if I appeared in a different form.”

I frowned.

That didn’t answer my question.

I wasn’t psychic or gifted. I didn’t have whatever voodoo she possessed to be able to see past my hallucinations. Had my program glitched? Had she seen past the coding and seen the lack of humanity in my doppelgangers eyes?

Glancing at my hands, I scowled harder. The fantasy was still intact. I stared at the fingers of a stable boy, complete with blisters and thickened palms. I’d shed my usual tall height and operated the body of a younger man. For all intents and purposes, this blond-haired farmhand was a puppet, dancing to my jerks on his strings. Only difference was, the link between his actions and my own was flawless...she shouldn’t be able to know.

She should be crying out in delirium while the program I’d written—when I’d first dabbled with the parameters of Euphoria—pile-drove her against the wall.

She should be having sex with me...Sully.

Not watching some stable boy with a painful mix of unhappiness, hate, and condemning certainty.

The hand I’d inspected curled into a fist as my temper rose.

She should be happy to be fucked by him; grateful that our fight was seemingly over...not standing here with glowing confidence that the cypher that looked identical to me was the stranger and not this exact opposite standing before her.

“How?” I asked again, my temper bleeding through my voice, laced with a Southern twang and not as deep as my born attributes. “Tell me how you knew.”

Eleanor sighed heavily. For a moment, she looked as if she’d slap me—rage had turned her grey eyes into lashing quicksilver. However, she wrangled her anger back into controllable and pushed off from the wall.

My borrowed body reacted as she moved toward me. My cock thickened. My heart thundered. She would always be it for me. She would always be the one.

Yet she never did anything I expected.

Thanks to this little game, I was supposed to be the one nursing a broken heart. I was supposed to be living through a nightmare of watching the woman I loved with all my fucking soul make love to a man who wasn’t me. I was supposed to be mollified in my suspicions that trusting anyone—even those my mind had deemed safe—were entirely justified. That trust was the true traitor here. That humans were gullible and weak, and it wasn’t our fault that we betrayed each other because, in the end, we trusted what our eyes and ears told us over instinct. We had blinded and deafened ourselves to the animalistic part of our natures in so many ways.

I knew it was a shitty thing to do to her, but I’d done it for me. I’d done it so I could finally admit that, whatever I felt for her, would only break me and ultimately kill her because I wouldn’t be able to control myself if she betrayed me again.

That trigger wasn’t something I could control.

Therefore, I had to shove the truth in my goddamn eyes and accept that Eleanor was just human, and I was asking far too much to expect her to always have my back. To expect her to love me, regardless of shape or form or what her rational mind told her.

The carbon copy of myself—the man she’d tried to knee in the balls—had been an exact replica. In my mind, I’d already said a painful goodbye because how could I expect her to realise it wasn’t me when it was me standing before her?

I’d set her up to fail—digging that poisonous knife deeper into my useless heart.

However, Eleanor had just blown apart my theory with her determined one-finger salute. She’d made all my pain and fears slam to a screeching halt. She’d proven just what a twat I was by shoving the truth into my eyes.

She wasn’t like the others.

She was different. She’d always been different.

And she made me doubt...everything.

She stood up to me like she had that second day when she’d yelled at me in front of the guests. She’d torn into me without any concern for her safety after she’d finished.

She watched me the same way now.

She watched me come apart and splinter into worthless fragments.

How?

How did she know?

How was I so fucking stupid to hurt her this way?

Her teeth clenched as she pointed at my forearm. “Pull up your shirt.”

My thoughts bounced and collided, ratcheting my heart rate into a goddamn mess. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” She straightened her shoulders, as if conversing with me pissed her off. “Pull up your shirt.”

Pursing my lips, I did as she asked, yanking at the cuff until it bunched against my elbow. Blond hair scattered my sun-bronzed skin; the size of the arm smaller than my usual one. It felt strange to stare at a limb I had no connection with. No sense of ownership. My scars from my past were gone. My broken and healed bones no longer a part of me.

I had no kinship with this body, yet...Eleanor had known almost instantly that I hid inside it.

How?

Fucking how?

With another deep breath, she stepped into me. Hesitatingly, she raised both her hands, ready to touch me.

I stiffened with anticipation.

Her gaze caught mine with molten steel. “Close your eyes.”

I scowled. “What? No. I—”

“Close your eyes, Sully.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to know what this experiment would prove. She hadn’t answered my question. This was wasting time.

She stepped back, dropping her arms. “You know what? Let me out of this hallucination. Right now. I want to get as far away from you as possible.”

My heart twisted into an agonising knot. “You’re mad at me because you think I gave you to a guest. A guest wearing my body.”

She flinched and bared her teeth. “I’m mad at you for not trusting my word. For putting me in this situation—even if it is just virtual reality. You made me believe I was about to be taken by force. I’m mad at you for the stress, the helplessness, the sheer panic of not being able to stop it.” Her skin lost its colour. “But I’m fuming mad that you’re watching me as if you don’t understand why I’m cursing the very ground you walk upon.”

I shrugged helplessly. “It’s true. I don’t understand.”

She sniffed with fury, ready to rip into me again.

My hand shot up, and I rushed. “I get what you’ve said. And I get that I fucked up making you live through something out of your control...but it was never supposed to be about force. You were supposed to want it.”

She laughed icily. “Want it? That I’d enjoy fucking a complete stranger who wore your face? The face that made my heart trip with connection the second I met you? The body I fantasised over even when I was supposed to despise you?”

My nostrils flared. “You’ve just proven my point. You say you love me, but you don’t know me. You know my body. You know what you can see and hear and touch. You don’t know what I’m capable of. What I’m made of...inside.”

She rolled her eyes with a mix of condescending disbelief and livid condemnation. “That’s where you’re wrong, Sully Sinclair. I do know you. I know more than you think. That’s why your stupid sensors didn’t work—why seeing and hearing and touching didn’t convince me of your lies.” She pointed a finger in my face. “That’s why I didn’t want to have sex with whomever that was borrowing your body. I knew it wasn’t you.”

“How?” I demanded, my patience wearing thin. “How the fuck did you know? The illusion is faultless.”

“If you have to ask me that, then maybe you don’t feel the same way I do.” She smiled sadly. “Maybe this whole thing was a huge mistake.”

I didn’t like the defeat in her tone. I despised the morbid acceptance in her eyes, rather than the fierce temptress of before. She acted as if I’d well and truly ended us...when really, I’d only been trying to end myself.

“This wasn’t about you, you know,” I whispered. “It had everything to do with me.”

She froze. “What do you mean?”

“I mean...watching you fuck another man—even if it was a shitty thing to do making you fuck someone who looked like me—would’ve proven that I’m not special. That it wasn’t who I am inside who you fell in love with. That it was just the pretty packaging hiding the despicable creature I really am.”

She scrubbed her face as if my logic drove her up the wall. “Argh!” Digging her fingers into her eyes, she abruptly dropped her touch and looked at me with such a piercing, painful stare, I sucked in a breath. “Whoever broke your trust so badly to make you this way, Sully, ought to be severely punished.”

My lips pulled back in a threatening smile. “Oh, they’ve been punished. Don’t worry.”

She didn’t shudder or act repulsed that I’d sought retribution. She just nodded and braced her shoulders.

Stepping into me again, her posture remained stiff and jerky as she commanded, “Close your eyes and hold out your arm. Last chance. I won’t ask again. You want to know how I knew? You want to know how I can stare into the brown eyes of a farm boy I’ve never met but know that I am hopelessly his? I’ll show you.”

My guts tangled with something sharp, making me bleed sheer pain.

I stared at her.

I loved her.

I was afraid of her in that moment.

Afraid of what she’d do to me.

Afraid of what she’d make me become.

Afraid that there was no turning back from this...regardless if I was ready or not.

Adrenaline rushed through my bloodstream as I locked my knees and closed my eyes.

I didn’t know why I was afraid. Why standing before Eleanor with my arm outstretched made me feel defenceless, exposed, and utterly at her mercy.

Seconds ticked past, making me bristle and my stupid heart double-beat.

I needed to see. To look at her. To know what the hell she was doing.

But the softest feather touched my hand, followed by another on my forearm.

I jerked.

Shit.

Heat.

Sizzling.

Crackling.

Potent and powerful and perfect.

“Even your damn Euphoria can’t stop the link between us,” she murmured as one of her hands traced the sinew of my forearm, so soft it almost tickled but firm enough to prove it wasn’t my body’s sensory reaction to her delicate touch but the central nervous system of primal desires. “No matter your technology and masks, Sully, our chemistry will override everything.” Her other hand linked with mine, threading our fingers together, joining us in a bind that was so innocent yet dripping with carnal yearning.

I went insanely hard.

I turned breathless as she traced the underside of my wrist.

I swayed as my heart drummed; skipping to a new rhythm thanks to the electrical charge she fed me. Her electrical pulses collided with mine, conductive and disruptive, syncing with my own power, ensuring the positive ions within her soothed out the negative ones within me.

Fuck

Me.

Such a sinless touch, yet I’d never been more aware, more in tune, more hungry.

This was how she knew.

This was how she knew instantly that it wasn’t me kissing her.

Not from her outward senses...but her inner ones.

Those could not be faked.

Those could not be lied to.

Those could not be tricked or cheated or scammed.

“Christ.” I shuddered as her hand added pressure, linking her fingers around my wrist and pulling me into her. My eyes stayed closed, basking in the raw power between us. Loving the unhindered connection. The blissful awareness that what I felt for this woman and what she felt for me was real.

It wasn’t about trusting what someone said or did.

It wasn’t about trusting our own external senses.

It was about trusting how they felt within. How our force fields blended. How our souls spoke in that unknown language that we both understood.

I didn’t need sight anymore.

I only needed touch.

I needed to touch and kiss and slip inside this amazing, wondrous goddess who had just set me free.

Wrapping my arm around her waist, I pressed her into me. Our hand remained linked, glued at the palms and entwined by fingers. And when our lips met, I groaned in agony.

Agony over what I’d done.

Agony over what I was.

Agony that she might never forgive me and this magic, this mayhem, this magnetism between us wouldn’t be enough to keep her.

My tongue speared past her lips. Her taste exploded in my mouth.

I groaned again, clutching her closer, trying to climb inside her.

The kiss switched from a simple connection to an attack of lust and lunacy. Our heads danced, our tongues duelled, our lips heated from friction.

I could come just from kissing this girl.

I could come just from holding hands with this girl.

She was everything.

My legs buckled as her tongue swept over my teeth. My brain misfired, forgetting to hold up my weight when all it cared about, all it needed, was to be inside her.

I slammed to my knees, dragging her down with me.

Her mouth opened wide in discomfort. Hay pricked us. Brick bruised us. But I couldn’t stop kissing her.

Unlooping our fingers, she pressed both hands against my chest, pushing gently. “Stop...please.”

Stop?

I couldn’t.

I didn’t want to.

I never wanted to stop.

“Sully.” She avoided my seeking kiss.

I needed to taste her again.

“Please, stop.”

My eyes opened, blinded at first as if I’d lived in a different realm and forgotten how to see in this one.

Eleanor stared back. Her lips swollen and pink. Her cheeks flushed. Her gaze cool and resolute.

More pain.

A goddamn axe to the chest.

It took every bit of strength I had left, but I pulled away. My lungs pumped air to a suffocating heart. My blood pressure ensured I would never walk again unless Eleanor helped relieve my excruciating erection.

But with the way she watched me...it hinted of punishment instead of pleasure.

Punishment I deserved, and punishment I would gladly take if it made me worthy of her.

Worthy?

Shit, I’d done so much to be the opposite of worthy.

My ribs cracked with overwhelming force—an emotion that I’d done my best to murder each time it appeared. A truth I could no longer deny.

I ran my tongue over my lips.

I raked both hands through blond hair.

I prepared to give myself to another.

To her.

Forever.

Our eyes caught.

I shrugged almost in apology.

I stared at my queen with her invisible crown and confessed.

“I love you, Eleanor Grace.”