No meat.
Anywhere.
No roast duck or barbecued pig.
No fish or crustacean or condemned creature with a heartbeat.
I looked up and caught his blazing stare. And instead of responding to his own internal debate. Instead of giving reasons why he should continue to hold my value higher for another to use rather than himself, I asked an insanely important question. “All these dishes are vegetarian.” I gulped. “How…how did you know?”
I hadn’t told the traffickers my dietary preferences.
I hadn’t told him.
Had he researched my name and tracked me down? Had he stalked my profiles and social media? But if he had…how did he know? I wasn’t vocal about my lifestyle. Even Scott remained quiet on his vegetarianism because most of his friends were jocks and mocked him for choosing plants over beasts.
This man who put such little worth on a human life had served me a lunch where nothing had to die.
Why?
Sully continued to sit silently. His body seethed with temper all while thoughts and secrets battled in his eyes. Finally, slowly, he stood.
He moved toward me until he towered over my chair. He didn’t speak a word as he bent and cupped my chin, holding me firm. “You’re a vegetarian?” he asked in a clipped, cold voice, but beneath that was the brittleness of agitation.
I nodded, or as much as I could in his control.
His eyes snapped shut. His nostrils flared. He visibly shook before he shoved away whatever anger surged in his veins and dug his fingers painfully into my cheeks. “Nothing alive will end up on your plate while you serve me. Everything you eat on this island is grown by my own cultivators. My gardens and greenhouses are located one island over. My eggs are laid by free-range hens. My cheese is made from hand-milked cows and goats. Every morsel I feed you has come from the land that I rule.”
My eyes bugged.
That was…that was enlightened. That was the habit and choice of someone who either cared about his footprint on this earth or had too much empathy to slaughter or cause suffering.
That didn’t fit with the bastard who took great pleasure from my suffering. It didn’t compute with what I knew about him.
What do you know about him?
Nothing.
I flinched as he bowed closer and pulled me nearer at the same time. Our noses brushed, our eyes locked, and for a terrifying second, I thought he’d kiss me.
But then the moment passed, and he tossed me away as if he couldn’t tolerate touching me any longer. Rebuttoning his blazer and smoothing down his dishevelled edges, he backed away, ready to leave.
And once again, I did something I’d never in a million years thought I’d do. I held up a hand, asking him to stay, needing to ask a question.
A question he’d asked me.
A question I wasn’t entirely sure I’d like the answer to.
“Who are you?” I squinted in the bright afternoon sun. “What man can be so empathic toward animals yet be so callous toward humans?”
He mulled over my query as if it were an astringent wine. His lips thinned, his eyebrows tugged to shadow vibrant blue eyes, and he finally murmured, “I’m empathetic to those creatures born into horror and mutilation. I am not empathetic to the creatures who caused it. I’m using the rules to my own advantage. We slaughter and maim others. Therefore, we are not above slaughter and torture ourselves.”
“So…I’m a chicken to you. A cow destined to—”
“You’re human. But humans are disposable. Men, women…we’re all the same. We think cages are beneath us. We think forced rape is beyond us. We think death is unthinkable because we’re special.” He swiped a hand through his dark, bronze-tipped hair. “We’re not special.” His lips curved into an icy, heartless smile. “We’re just monsters with the ability to speak. Monsters who pay any price to be free.”
Turning around, he stalked toward the villa. I sank deep into depressed realisation as he left me on the deck, surrounded by delicious, untouched food that had grown in his soils and blossomed under his care.
Sully operated within his own laws. The laws that humans had devised for livestock.
That was all I was.
Livestock.
With no voice.
No choice.
His dark, seductive timbre sliced over his shoulder. “Enjoy your evening alone, Eleanor. Because tomorrow…you’ll have company to entertain.”
Chapter Eighteen
“SINCLAIR, A WORD?”
I didn’t stop, prowling down the main pathway linking the restaurant villa to the beach housing water sports and loungers.
I’d stalked away from Eleanor’s accommodation with only one thing in mind: getting the farthest distance away from her.
She dare be a fucking vegetarian? She dare look at me like I’d looked at her? She dare ask me who I was?
Who the fuck was she?
What possessed me to purchase her?
I wanted a refund.
I wanted her gone.
No matter the wealth she would bring me, her disruption to my carefully structured world wasn’t worth it.