“Fuck, you have no self-preservation.” His one finger became two in one deep, dangerous thrust.
I winced and cried out.
“Believe me, Eleanor Grace, if I ever fucked you, I’d be highly fucking memorable. I’d erase all other lovers. You’d never want anyone else. You couldn’t have anyone else.” His teeth snapped by my ear. “You’d be mine the moment I took you.”
He arched his wrist, diving deep.
I cried out again as my hipbones smashed against the table.
His hand drove between my legs, proving what I’d just said. He could stretch me, claim me, use me…but he couldn’t hurt me—not in ways past the pain of overuse yesterday. However, he could try. He could bruise and break and ultimately kill, but if he thought he could make me want him?
He was fucking delusional.
Natural biology ensured my body would be his plaything, but it allowed my mind to turn off. After all, this was good training. If I didn’t find a way off this island soon, I would no doubt be forced to sleep with one of his horrid guests.
Sex is just sex, Ellie.
Think of it as walking and running. It’s just an activity.
A start and a finish and then you’re done.
Sully yanked his touch away, ripped me from the table, then spun me around to face him. “Who are you?” He shook me, his fingers digging into my shoulders. “Who the fuck are you?”
The sudden motion of horizontal to vertical and spinning in a circle was the final straw on my already incapacitated nervous system.
No reserves.
No strength.
I wobbled as he grabbed my chin with the same fingers that’d been inside me, leaving a musky slippery brand upon my skin. “I should kill you right now…put us both out of our misery.”
I repelled away from him.
The room swam.
And I did something I’d never done before.
No…
No…
Too late.
I fainted.
Right there at his feet.
Chapter Sixteen
“HER LEVELS ARE DANGEROUSLY low. Her iron, glucose, sodium…they’re all way below what is required for a woman of her height and weight.” Dr Campbell snapped off his gloves and turned to swivel his chair to face me.
The vial holding Eleanor’s blood lay abandoned in the centrifuge machine. The droplets he’d tested all glowed in different stages of experiment in test tubes and on microscope slides.
“What has she had to eat since her arrival?” Without waiting for me to reply, he added, “I don’t think she’s sick or suffering a long-term illness. However, I’ll have questions when she wakes. It is worrying that she fainted, though. Her blood pressure is extremely low—that will be the cause of her blacking out, and the wounds left over from her relocation could also have drained her of energy.”
He paused, looking at me expectantly over his half-moon reading glasses. Pushing sixty, Dr Campbell came highly recommended and exceedingly expensive. But he was the best consultant and surgeon for my populated islands.
Leaning against the shelving on the other side of the small medical room, I kept my arms crossed. I didn’t glower at Eleanor as she lay prone and lifeless on the gurney. I didn’t relive the moment of triumph when I’d found her wet, then the frustrating annoyance of her crumpling at my feet.
At first, I thought it was a trick. A way out of our fierce debate.
But when I’d nudged her with my shoe and she hadn’t moved, I’d hauled her into my arms, stormed to the doctor, and demanded he figure out what the hell was wrong.
I didn’t like weak things.
I didn’t like feeling as if I’d caused her to collapse, all because I’d pushed her too far. I’d been pushing her since she fucking arrived. I’d hounded her and tortured her, and this was my penance.
“Sinclair…are you listening? What has she eaten since arriving? Maybe she’s intolerant to something? Perhaps she requires medicine that she hasn’t received? The sooner I know—”
“I don’t know her medical history, but I don’t think it’s anything to do with what she’s eaten…more like what she hasn’t.”
He stood, glancing at Eleanor. Her long hair cascaded off the gurney, a waterfall of gleaming chocolate. Her lips were slightly parted, her forehead smooth in slumber, her eyelashes feathering shadows on colourless cheeks.
She no longer looked like an avenging immortal but a hapless human who’d gone to war with a god and failed.
“You don’t think she’s eaten a thing since landing yesterday morning?” His white eyebrow rose in shock. “She arrived early. That was over”— he checked his wristwatch —“twenty-nine hours ago.”
I shrugged, cursing him for making me responsible for her passing out, all while I wished I could blame someone else. But really, the problem was entirely my fault. She’d arrived, I’d force-fed the elixir so her only concern for the rest of the day had been sexual hunger rather than bodily starvation, and then exhaustion sucked her deep with no reprieve.