Flashes of his naked skin beneath his blazer ensured I needed another bottle of water for my sudden thirst. He made my body malfunction. My heart stuttered, my breath faltered, and my brain short-circuited in favour of some ancient intelligence.
There was something there.
Between us.
Between captor and captive, aggressor and slave.
But there shouldn’t be.
This bonded connection shouldn’t have evolved in these circumstances. I didn’t know if that made me stupid or Sully a hypocrite. Either way, we could deny what we felt for the rest of our time together, but unless we accepted it—truly accepted it, talked about it, confessed it…then only disaster would follow.
Sully’s brilliant blue gaze glowed brighter, waiting for me to place my palm in his. With the heaviest sigh born from fear of losing myself and heartache over what would come from this, I opened my hands and let Skittles fly free.
For a second, she remained where she was, confused by the weight of my hand disappearing from her dainty wings. She cocked her head and chirped, then spread her green plumage and took off.
She fluttered out the door and into the palm trees, accosted by a second green bullet that I assumed was Pika welcoming her back. They both vanished into the greenery, leaving Sully and me alone in our own challenging, chemistry-charged existence.
Scooting over the cream seat, I reluctantly, eagerly, warily placed my palm in his.
Our skin caught fire. Our souls were undying coals. Our link a glowing rope binding us.
I shivered as his fingers wrapped tight around mine, giving me a brace to lean on while I slipped from the helicopter and back onto his shores.
The moment my feet touched the dock, he removed his touch, subtly shaking out the tendrils of heat. I didn’t shake mine away, allowing them to tingle and scatter up my arm, infecting me like the worst kind of infection. An infection that had no cure, complete with a terminal diagnosis.
The pilots remained in the cockpit while Sully stalked ahead of me down the jetty and onto the sugary perfection of his beach. The jade green kayak I’d commandeered had beaten me home; its lacquer bright and bold with no signs that it’d been used in a jailbreak.
Sully’s shirt licked around my body, shielding me just as his island shielded me from the outside world. If this was my home now, I had to make peace with all of it…not just the tropical beauty around me.
Who knew if Sully would ever let himself be alone with me again.
After what’d happened on his other island, I couldn’t be the only one terrified of the instantaneous reaction to one another. I’d fought against my heart, but I couldn’t win against my body.
It’d learned how to be freer in its sexual hunger from Sully’s elixir…it was a traitor that could be the catalyst to why I had no power against Sully’s advances. Why every time he touched me, it felt different from anyone else. Why each time he looked at me or talked to me, it was as if I’d been studied and conversed with someone who finally talked the language deep, deep inside me. A language I wasn’t fluent in until the whisperings and wantings began for a man I should not want.
Sand buried and cascaded off my feet as I followed Sully. The sun warmed my back, stinging my sunburn but erasing my chills. Chills given from my attempt at accepting and being brave when all I wanted to do was scream.
Scream for help.
For advice.
Scream just for the sake of loosening the tight ball of anxiety and need in my belly.
“Sully…” I licked my lips and tried in a stronger tone. “Sull—I mean, Mr. Sinclair.”
He spun around, his mouth thin and cheeks stark. “You can call me Sully.”
“But you said I’d lost the right to—”
“I prefer it over Sinclair.”
I nodded, allowing hair to tumble over my shoulders. I smelled of sea and sun. I wanted a shower and sleep. To dream of a happier ending to my attempt at fleeing.
Unlike when I’d been brought here before, I had a sense of finality this time. Two weeks ago, I’d believed this was temporary. My courage came from a happy ending I was so sure I deserved. A champion breaking free of her chains. A girl who would run, call home, be rescued. A girl who couldn’t be held or used against her will because that just couldn’t happen.
I was special.
This sort of thing wasn’t allowed.
God.
I’d grown up since then. I wasn’t special—any more so than the other girls in that Mexican prison cell. I was just a forgettable person hidden in a mass of humanity.
That’s what I am…forgettable.
To Scott.
To my parents.
To my life before this.
It hurt deeper than I’d imagined—kissing goodbye to a past that had once been my future, but it didn’t hurt as much as learning that I had no one to trust…not even myself.