But what choice did I have?
It was too late.
I’d committed.
The deal was done.
Without realising, I stepped toward her, drawn against my will, unable to differentiate if my feral attitude toward her came from the traces of elixir or whatever curse she’d put on me.
“Sully.” Her eyes flashed silver, drunk on desire. “Don’t give me to someone else.” Her hips moved. Her arms wrapped around herself, squeezing tight. “Give me to you.”
“You’ve had as much of me as you ever will.”
Otherwise, I’ll end up killing you.
She suffered a full-body quake. “But I want you. I’m…I’m losing myself. I need…I need you inside me. Please.” Frustrated tears fell down her cheeks. Already her skin had lost the golden hue from swimming in my sea and gone a concerning white. “I hate this. I hate feeling like this. I hate having no control. If I have to sleep with someone…let it be you. You made me this miserable. It’s your responsibility to help me.”
Help her?
I’d ruin her.
Just like she’d fucking ruined me.
“You’ll forget about me the moment I press this button.”
Her forehead bunched as her hands crept to her breasts, clutching both with tight fingers. “I won’t. I don’t want to be given to a guest. Please…” She moaned, her knees trembling and body swaying in the harness. “I don’t want to be like this. Make it stop. Please make it stop.”
My stomach pierced with mirroring pain.
I didn’t want to be like this either.
I didn’t want to feel things outside of my control. I didn’t want my mind transfixed on her or my body obsessed with hers.
I’d given her a drug to make her come undone.
All she’d done to make me unravel was fucking exist.
More tears splashed down her cheeks as she forcibly removed her hands from her breasts. She shook until her teeth chattered. She looked sick. Positively feverish and broken.
Shit.
Would her system handle another round with elixir? Would she cope being used, over and over, begging for something that could ultimately kill her?
Worry sprang sharp and nasty.
An emotion I wasn’t familiar with these days after I’d efficiently learned how to stop that heinous fear.
Empathy.
That was my weakness.
Too much empathy could kill a person. Not enough could kill someone else.
I’d learned to kill others, rather than myself.
And if Eleanor couldn’t cope. If her system shut down in Euphoria…well, that would release me from this curse, and I could hopefully forget about her.
It didn’t matter my heart lashed with pain.
It didn’t matter my stomach coiled against my wishes with worry.
This was business.
She was my possession.
I had a contract to fulfil.
With my thumb over the button, ready to send her far, far away, I walked into her embrace. I let her snake around me. I permitted her wet pussy to grind against my thigh. I cupped her cheek and kissed her sweetly on the forehead.
She moaned. “Please, keep me for yourself.”
“I can’t,” I breathed.
“Why not?” She tried to dig her way into my suit, her body blazing like wildfire, her skin damp with sweat and sensitivity-switching oil.
“Because I don’t trust myself around you.” I nuzzled her ear. “I don’t trust you.”
“Trust me. Take me.” She kissed my cheek feverishly.
Pika shot off the trolley, finally bored with his game of shredding cardboard and flipping lids, fluttering around our heads as if searching for a way to join.
I looked from the free bird, flying whichever way he wanted and back to the woman tethered in hell. And I whispered the truth that I’d tried to keep even from myself, “You’re dangerous, Eleanor Grace. You have the power to ruin me.”
“I don’t. I won’t. I’m yours. You made me yours.”
“Yes, I did. I made you mine.” I pulled away. “And that’s perhaps my biggest mistake of all.”
Stepping back, I pressed the upload button. My phone paused for a second, then the success screen showed.
For a moment, nothing changed.
Eleanor still stood in front of me. Beside herself with lust. Miserable and wet.
The next, her body jolted in the harness.
She went lax.
Her legs buckled.
She hung from the ceiling as if dead.
I knew it was just the initiating process. That in a couple of heartbeats, she’d be standing upright and breathing, but…I wouldn’t be there to see.
Markus would.
Markus would be the one she begged.
While I went fucking wild with regret.
“Goodbye, Eleanor.”
Turning, I forced dead legs and reluctant heart to leave her for my guest.
Chapter Thirty-Three
EVERYTHING WENT BLINDINGLY WHITE.
It all disappeared.
The need.
The heat.
The hunger.
Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch.
I was sucked into a vacuum of nothingness.
I died.
Is this what death is?
Just…emptiness?
Everything deleted, including you? Including all your thoughts and feelings, your triumphs and tragedies?
I tried to breathe, I couldn’t.
I tried to move, nothing obeyed.
Panic grew.
Terror overflowed.
And then…the white exploded in colour. A palette of bleeding pigments as if splashed on a virgin canvas, smearing and dripping, painting a masterpiece in its wake.
I blinked.