My ears pricked.
My heart kicking.
My hands curled and ready to fight.
Chapter Twenty
SWIMMING WASN’T MY ONLY form of exercise.
I had weights in my villa. I ran in the soft sand ringing my shores. I regularly used the landscape of rugged hillside and rock face, splashing up the waterfall and scaling slippery crevices to sculpt and hone muscles that might get lax without use.
But none of those activities could wash away the mess inside my mind like the ocean could.
Yesterday, I swam until I could barely drag my carcass from the tide.
Tonight, I swam without getting winded or waterlogged.
My energy was through the fucking roof.
My sexual hunger past the realm of controllable.
I’d avoided harassing Ele—Jinx all day. I’d woken to find the bottle of pills the doctor gave her mocking me on my nightstand. I’d snatched them with the full intention of marching to her door, using them as an excuse of why I meddled in her life, and demanding her to get on all fours.
My morning wood was more than just blood trapped after sleeping, my entire belly coiled and roiled to fuck. My balls were tight and trapped against my body, begging for a release.
I’d suffocated the bottle of pills in one hand and throttled my cock with the other, fully aware I stood on the edge of a full-on goddamn meltdown. If I went to her, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I’d be on her, in her, all over her the second she opened the door.
But then the phone rang, and Cal announced that the winning bidder to initiate Jinx into Euphoria was Markus Grammer. He’d already paid the full one-hundred-and-fifty k. He’d extended his stay thanks to Jinx needing three days to recover from her weak spell, and he’d willingly given me whatever budget he’d had for expensive toys and indulgences…all for the pleasure of touching what was mine.
And that’s good.
That’s what she’s here to do.
I liked money.
But I didn’t need it.
His cash wasn’t wanted because I wanted to be the one to fuck her.
Ah, for fuck’s sake, Sully.
Digging my arms into the sea, I increased my speed, trying to outswim such persistent urges. All I wanted to do was rewind a couple of days to the email when the traffickers announced they’d found the perfect girl and reply that they could keep her. Kill her. Sell her to someone else far, far away, so I never had to lay eyes on the one person to make me feel anything less than in complete control.
Perhaps, I’d caused this predicament, not her. Maybe I’d bottled up my lust for too long while living on a tropical paradise with extremely willing women. After all, a man could only go so long without sex.
When I’d opened this playground, I’d promised myself not to shit where I ate, so to speak. The girls were commodities, and as long as I treated them as assets destined to benefit someone else, they couldn’t turn into liabilities.
When each one arrived, I’d been cordial to them, kind even. I’d welcomed their shyness and stark fear, knowing that eventually, they’d be all too happy to trade four years of their life for an existence that took away every stress ever invented. They didn’t have to cook, clean, pay bills, raise spawn, or fawn over useless lovers.
All they had to do was relax on the beach, ring for cocktails, and, once a week, take a liquid that ensured every touch was a pure aphrodisiac.
Their plight could be a hell of a lot worse.
I dived under, welcoming the oppressive blackness found beneath the surface. As the sun had set hours ago, the flickering torches around the island had been lit, and the lanterns decorating the sandy shores were beacons to any wayward traveller or nymph washed up from Trident’s city.
Tiny pinpricks of light from the exquisite galaxy above glittered through the surface, painting the reef beneath me with silver spires. Lazy fish meandered past. An eel undulated in the current. A manta ray blotted out the tiny pinpricks of silver, dappling its oily body with starlight.
It truly was a magical world down here.
Simple.
Accepted.
The meek bowed to the powerful.
The prey avoided the predator.
Everyone had their place, and nature ensured everything behaved within the boundaries of their species.
But not her.
Not that fucking woman who spoke to me as though a queen, glowered as if I was her underling, and even in her fear refused to acknowledge my rule over her.
My lungs burned for oxygen.
Kicking to the surface, I broke the sea without a ripple, sucking in air and tasting salt on my lips. A feminine chuckle skipped over the wetness and licked down my back.
Three goddesses stood silhouetted by moonlight on the beach. Two held cocktails, adorned in scraps of bikinis, and one pranced around like she governed my empire, wearing a see-through gauzy dressing gown with nothing on underneath, open and fluttering in the slight balmy breeze.