Chapter One

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TIME WAS RELATIVE.

Make something enjoyable, and time was forgotten. Those tight clusters of minutes vanished because we were present in that singular moment. Entirely consumed by the experience we found enjoyable. However, change enjoyable to painful, and time became far too noticeable. Those tight clusters quadrupled, so a moment lasted four times as long. Human nature caused us to fight against the clock, to be free of that painful situation and run.

I’d experienced both in my life.

When I was younger, there’d been the shortness of school holidays, and the eternity of stressful exams.

And then, of course, there’d been the kidnapping.

The men who’d grabbed me in the kitchen of the backpackers, where my boyfriend and I were staying, had caused time to slow to a terrifying crawl. It abandoned me to the dark cell I was held in and didn’t start ticking again until I was flown to Goddess Isles and met the man who’d purchased me.

But the moment our eyes met?

Time ignited and disintegrated. Every clock smashed. Every minute hand broke into pieces. Why? Because time was no longer needed.

Time was the structure that all humanity and nature marched to, but love...love had the power of cutting you free. It erased all notion of time because it honestly didn’t exist for us anymore.

We’d found each other.

Our countdown was over, and we lived side by side in bliss.

“Jinx...what are you mooning over now?”

Sully’s rough baritone ripped me from my musings, making me blink and squint in the bright Indonesian sun. Raising an arm, well-tanned from living in the tropics and ignoring the constant glitter of sand upon my skin from living on an island, I grinned at my sexy husband. “Not mooning, thinking.”

“Uh-huh.” Sully rolled his stunning blue eyes and scratched at this thick five o’clock shadow. “Well, whatever you were thinking about, snap out of it. I asked you a question, so give me an answer, woman.”

I padded toward him, barefoot with just a wraparound cream dress encasing a silver bikini beneath. This impromptu visit to Serigala had turned from a fleeting inspection into an all-day excursion.

“What was the question?” I stopped beside him, trailing my hand in the manmade pool that housed shallows, caverns, and aquatic dens perfect for the tenants currently healing within.

With my fingers dangling in the warm water, I smiled as a shy shadow moved toward the surface. Sully wrapped his arm around me as the mimic octopus drifted closer, it’s graceful swim and small body melting my heart like it did every time I’d visited.

“And you say I’m the one with power over animals,” Sully murmured as a small octopus reached out with a tentative tentacle and wrapped it around my pinkie. The sensation of its tiny suckers and the silkiness of its sinuous arms never failed to cause wonder.

“He’s just come to trust me, that’s all.”

“Wrong. It’s because he can sense you’re trustworthy.”

“You’re the one who saved him. Saved all of them.”

“We saved them.” He pressed a kiss to my temple as a second octopus floated from its hidey-hole and descended into my palm, wrapping its tiny tentacles around my wrist, and curling out of the water like strange flower fronds.

Both mimics were speckled light brown, muted and content. However, when they hunted or were chased, they could mimic so many things—not just in colour camouflage but movement too.

They could swim like a flatfish, or stalk like a lionfish, or even threaten like a venomous sea snake. I’d done research on the critters ever since Sully had been called to rescue five of them when sea dredging on the main island dumped them from their home, leaving one dead, two seriously injured, and two traumatised.

I’d visited often in that first week of healing and found them utterly fascinating. The fact that they’d only been noticed in the late 90s was a testament to how well they could mimic their underwater world and stay hidden, and the level of intelligence in their quizzical gaze made me think they’d willingly hold a conversation with me if we spoke the same tongue.

The first mimic uncoiled its tentacle from my pinkie in favour of squeezing my thumb. A flash of brown and white over his body warned the other octopus that he’d claimed me.

The other octopus, missing a tentacle and still wounded from the dredgers, puffed up to twice its size and crawled up my arm out of the water.

Sully chuckled. “Guess I have some competition for your affection.”

I grinned and offered my other hand, transferring the suckered tentacles to my free palm and then placing him back underwater. “They’ve certainly made me fall for slippery things.” I laughed as the two octopuses squeezed my fingers, then slipped away, sinking to the bottom where they ruffled up the sand in search of snacks.

“They’ll be released in a month. They’re almost ready.” Sully waited as I rinsed off my hands and wiped them on my dress. He didn’t reprimand about the price tag of my clothing or make me feel as if I should take more care. He just grinned and clamped both hands on my hips to scoot me to face him.

His head ducked, his nose nuzzled mine, and his lips pressed sweetly to my mouth.

I kissed him back.

Soft to start and then harder as he slipped his tongue inside me and quested a deeper kind of connection.

My heart instantly raced. My core liquefied. My entire body set off fireworks. Our conduit of connection hummed with quick-fire need. I moaned, reaching up to run my fingers through his hair.

He pulled away, running his tongue along his bottom lip. “Christ, you turn me on.”

“You can’t keep doing that,” I whispered.

“Keep doing what?” He arched his hips into mine, showing it wasn’t just me affected by our spontaneous kiss.

“Keep making me lose my mind every time you kiss me. You’d think I’d be bored of kissing you after all this time.”

“Bored?” He scowled with mock offensive. “After five years of marriage, you’re saying you want to replace me?”

I laughed. “I’m saying, after five years of marriage, I keep expecting this chemistry to fade a little...after all, I do know everything about you now. I know your deepest, darkest secrets.”

“My only secret these days is that I want you all the goddamn time.” He pressed his hips harder into mine. “And that chemistry you’re complaining about is one of the things I love most about us.”

“The fact that we can’t keep our hands off each other?” I grinned. “That we have a reputation of improper obsession? That the staff whisper behind our backs that we’re high on whatever drugs you’ve been cooking, and it’s made us incapable of surviving without being in each other’s pocket?”

“Precisely.” He chuckled, letting me go and taking my hand to lead me back through the rebuilt sanctuary of Serigala. After Drake’s bomb five years ago, we’d taken our time to landscape, design, and hire the right people. The island was once again a fully equipped, highly successful rehab facility for broken and abused animals. “In fact, I need access to your pockets right now.”

“I’m wearing a dress. It doesn’t have pockets.”

“It’s a metaphor, Jinx. I need inside your pocket. Your hot, wet—”

“Behave.” I swatted his arm. “You had me last night.”

He threw me a rakish smirk. “Exactly. That was hours ago. I need you. Otherwise, the whispers that I can’t survive without you will prove true, and I’ll die right here.”

“I swear you weren’t always this dramatic or mischievous.”

Guiding me forward, he threw me a besotted, heart-stopping look. “You improved me.”

“I broke you more like.”

“You married me.”

“Same thing.”

He let out a massive laugh, making my insides flutter and my body tingle.

I laughed too. “By the way, what was your question that was ever so important five minutes ago?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. I want you.”

“Anything to do with Serigala? An animal? A vet?”

Sully frowned before recalling. “There’s a Chinese cosmetic company that’s finally shutting down its animal testing—after our campaign and immense social media pressure. They have hundreds of rabbits, rats, and a few chinchillas that need rehabbing.”

“And you wanted to know if we have space for that many new arrivals?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay taking on several more hundred lives.”

I stroked his cheek. “You should by now that you don’t need to ask, Sully. After all, you have a few more vacant islands. We have room to spread. Of course, I’m fine with them coming here. The more the merrier.”

“And now I want you all the more, woman.” He ducked and kissed me, his tongue aggressive with want and affection.

I pushed him away, my heart dancing. “If you’re that determined, let’s go home and find somewhere private.”

“Finally, you agree.” He smirked, capturing my hand and kissing my knuckles. “Let’s go.”

We smiled and strode toward the hustle and bustle of Indonesian helpers, vet assistants, and habitats.

So far, Serigala was an island where any animal—fanged, farmed, or forgotten—could come to receive vet care, heal, and be placed in a safe forever after home or released back into its natural environment. We’d expanded from the vet care I’d opened on Batari while Sully was in a coma and were almost at full capacity on Serigala. Last year, excavation work had begun on yet another one of Sully’s islands. Kapu-Kapu, Indo for butterfly, would officially start housing all manner of creatures in a few months.

It didn’t matter how many animals needed our help, we would offer them all sanctuary.

Local staff nodded and smiled as Sully and I made our way through the compound with its spacious pens and shelters where even a Sumatran Tiger was housed away from the herbivores like orangutans that’d been a part of a black market pet ring. The tiger had been seized by law enforcement when a large drug cartel was dismantled in Bali. It’d been so badly mistreated that two paws had to be amputated and an eye removed.

Luckily, he was healing and learning to trust he was safe now. I was grateful we’d been able to take away his pain and give him peace, and hopefully, we’d be able to grant him a wild existence, even with his disabilities.

If not, he would always be safe with us, reminding me all over again how disgusting some humans were. I’d lost my temper a few times on assholes who believed their life was worth more than others. I’d morphed into Sully and effectively hated the human race for their selfishness and entitlement.

Every day, I listed the things I was grateful for, and living in the middle of the Java Sea away from society—where even Google Earth didn’t have our coordinates—was high on the list.

Sully being at the top of that very long list, of course.

A couple of years ago, I’d travelled with Sully to America to attend a few days of board meetings that he couldn’t do via online conferences. I’d stood by his side as he’d addressed his head scientists, guided new trials, and approved that year’s business plan. Just those few days, tucked in a skyscraper and breathing in city carcinogens, were enough to make me claustrophobic.

His pharmaceutical company, Sinclair and Sinclair Group, had been impressive. The tour of floors after floors of high-tech labs had shown me another side to the man I’d fallen in love with and married.

But it also made me appreciate how similar Sully and I had become.

We appreciated where we came from. We understood that we were human and had to play the role we’d been given. However, we were so far from large corporation-controlled masses now that we would never fit in. We were no longer fit for acceptable society.

And that was fine by us.

On the third day in America, we’d attempted to go for a romantic dinner and then a movie. To do what so many other couples did. However, we’d lasted as long as the appetisers before we wordlessly agreed to run.

To run back to the airport and leave a day early. To run away from crippling civilisation that we no longer understood. The second we took off, we’d attacked each other. Ravenous to reconnect, using every inch of his private plane to join the mile-high club, drugged on lust and drunk on the knowledge we were going back to our paradise alone.

Waving at Kaly—a local vet nurse who’d done wonders with the latest shipment of chimpanzees and beagles we’d received—I padded beside Sully to the other side of the island where the helicopter waited to take us home.

Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, my stomach twisted a little as Sully hoisted me into the plush interior and kissed my wrist before climbing in himself. The image of him framed in the doorway brought back heart-hiccupping memories.

Of him falling toward the sea.

Of him splashing into the ocean and left for dead.

Of Drake taking me to Geneva to—

“Hey, stop it.” His hand landed on my knee, squeezing. “I’m not a fan of helicopters myself these days, but nothing is going to happen to either of us.”

I smiled and nodded, wriggling my way into the harness as the pilots turned on the engine and activated the ear-splintering whirring. “I know.”

Buckling himself in, Sully once again took my hand as we swooped into the sky. We looked down upon the rows of enclosures and lives we’d saved. No longer able to see the flame scorched earth or the bomb ravaged buildings but celebrating that good had triumphed over evil, and Sully was right.

Drake was dead.

That part of our lives was over.

We were safe. Our animals were safe.

Life was perfect.