I didn’t know why I gave him a heads-up that it hadn’t done what I suspected. In fact, none of his tricks had. My skin still felt like mine. My sense of smell still operated. My fingertips didn’t like the coverings, but it didn’t truly stop my sense of pressure or heat.
“It will do. When you step into Euphoria.”
I scowled. “You said I’m in Euphoria.”
He tossed the tube into its box, opening the fifth. “You are. But it’s not what you think. You’re standing in the room where Euphoria takes place but…the location isn’t physical.”
“I don’t understand.” I wanted to keep repeating that phrase.
I don’t understand.
I don’t understand.
You.
But Sully lost any magnanimity about answering my questions and held up two small buds. I guessed they were for my ears before his electrifying touch brushed aside my hair and inserted one into my ear canal.
Goosebumps sprang down my arms and spine, pebbling my nipples and ensuring he saw, rather visibly, what his touch did to me.
He chuckled under his breath as he moved behind me, pulling my damp hair over my shoulder and kissing the shell of my ear with exquisite tenderness. “I might have found your weak spot, Eleanor.” His teeth grazed the sensitive skin, clamping down on my lobe.
I shuddered.
A flush of wetness.
A knot of desire.
I shook my head in defiance as he inserted the second earbud. “Don’t fool yourself.”
He laughed again, rolling and velvety, black and unforgiving as he ensured both buds were tight and blocked my hearing.
They blocked my hearing as any earbud would, but I could still hear, still make out everything I needed to.
What was the point in all of this?
He’s masking your senses.
My attention shot to the final box just as Sully picked it up, cracked the lid, and lifted out a small container with two separate screwed dishes.
Contact lenses.
My sense of sight.
The final one.
Touch, taste, sound, hearing, and sight.
“I don’t want anything foreign in my eyes.” I backed up a step, jiggling the apparatus keeping me tethered.
“It won’t hurt you.” He unscrewed the left container, careful not to spill the contents.
“I still don’t want it.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Looking up, he presented the small holder to me. “If you have experience with inserting lenses, be my guest. Or…I can do it for you.”
“I’ve never put anything in my eyes.”
“Well then.” He reached in and plucked out a flimsy lens from the solution it bobbed in. Placing the other one down safely, he eyed Pika to make sure he was still entertained with a piece of cardboard he’d shredded from an empty box and moved closer.
His hand cupped my nape again, bringing me close to him.
I tried to fight it, but my stupid, stupid body tingled from having his so close. I struggled to breathe as he brushed aside some hair on my cheeks with his knuckles, then pulled my head back a little. “Relax.”
“Relax?” I sneered. “How can I relax in this place?”
“You’ll learn to.” His face stayed stern with concentration. I focused on his fingers as they came closer and closer, looming over my eye. “You’ll learn to love it here. You’ll beg to return.”
“That will never happen.” I wanted to close my eyes and refuse.
“Never is a challenge.” He repeated our previous conversation, and sensing my intention to disobey, he let my nape go and slid his control to my eyebrow and delicate skin beneath, holding my vision wide open. “Hold still.”
I flinched as he plopped something wet and awful over my pupil. My eye boycotted the obstruction. Natural instinct made me blink over and over again, trying to get it out.
He let me go, allowing me space to come to terms with it.
My hand raised to rub, to smear it from my sight, but he caught my wrist, clucking his tongue. “Take that out, and I’ll tie your hands.”
Slowly, the sensation faded, my eyeball accepting the intrusion. It stung slightly and felt way too big and gritty, but I endured…because I had to.
Sighing in discomfort, I permitted him to insert the second one, cursing the blurred vision. The nastiness of something I didn’t want blinding me.
“I can’t see.”
“You will.”
A few more blinks and finally my eyes figured out how to see through the film.
Huh, he was right. I was still aware of them, but they no longer obstructed anything.
Again, I wanted to ask what was the point. I could still see and hear, touch and smell. Why go to all this effort to take away my senses when none of them had been stolen?
He stepped back, assessing me, drinking in my nakedness.
With lewdness that ached with masculinity, he readjusted his hard-on, wincing a little in pain. If it’d turned him on so much to be around me…why was he preparing me for another man? Why not have one of his countless minions do the task? Why not enlist one of his many willing goddesses to put him out of his misery?