I had no kinship with this body, yet…Eleanor had known almost instantly that I hid inside it.
How?
Fucking how?
With another deep breath, she stepped into me. Hesitatingly, she raised both her hands, ready to touch me.
I stiffened with anticipation.
Her gaze caught mine with molten steel. “Close your eyes.”
I scowled. “What? No. I—”
“Close your eyes, Sully.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to know what this experiment would prove. She hadn’t answered my question. This was wasting time.
She stepped back, dropping her arms. “You know what? Let me out of this hallucination. Right now. I want to get as far away from you as possible.”
My heart twisted into an agonising knot. “You’re mad at me because you think I gave you to a guest. A guest wearing my body.”
She flinched and bared her teeth. “I’m mad at you for not trusting my word. For putting me in this situation—even if it is just virtual reality. You made me believe I was about to be taken by force. I’m mad at you for the stress, the helplessness, the sheer panic of not being able to stop it.” Her skin lost its colour. “But I’m fuming mad that you’re watching me as if you don’t understand why I’m cursing the very ground you walk upon.”
I shrugged helplessly. “It’s true. I don’t understand.”
She sniffed with fury, ready to rip into me again.
My hand shot up, and I rushed. “I get what you’ve said. And I get that I fucked up making you live through something out of your control…but it was never supposed to be about force. You were supposed to want it.”
She laughed icily. “Want it? That I’d enjoy fucking a complete stranger who wore your face? The face that made my heart trip with connection the second I met you? The body I fantasised over even when I was supposed to despise you?”
My nostrils flared. “You’ve just proven my point. You say you love me, but you don’t know me. You know my body. You know what you can see and hear and touch. You don’t know what I’m capable of. What I’m made of…inside.”
She rolled her eyes with a mix of condescending disbelief and livid condemnation. “That’s where you’re wrong, Sully Sinclair. I do know you. I know more than you think. That’s why your stupid sensors didn’t work—why seeing and hearing and touching didn’t convince me of your lies.” She pointed a finger in my face. “That’s why I didn’t want to have sex with whomever that was borrowing your body. I knew it wasn’t you.”
“How?” I demanded, my patience wearing thin. “How the fuck did you know? The illusion is faultless.”
“If you have to ask me that, then maybe you don’t feel the same way I do.” She smiled sadly. “Maybe this whole thing was a huge mistake.”
I didn’t like the defeat in her tone. I despised the morbid acceptance in her eyes, rather than the fierce temptress of before. She acted as if I’d well and truly ended us…when really, I’d only been trying to end myself.
“This wasn’t about you, you know,” I whispered. “It had everything to do with me.”
She froze. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…watching you fuck another man—even if it was a shitty thing to do making you fuck someone who looked like me—would’ve proven that I’m not special. That it wasn’t who I am inside who you fell in love with. That it was just the pretty packaging hiding the despicable creature I really am.”
She scrubbed her face as if my logic drove her up the wall. “Argh!” Digging her fingers into her eyes, she abruptly dropped her touch and looked at me with such a piercing, painful stare, I sucked in a breath. “Whoever broke your trust so badly to make you this way, Sully, ought to be severely punished.”
My lips pulled back in a threatening smile. “Oh, they’ve been punished. Don’t worry.”
She didn’t shudder or act repulsed that I’d sought retribution. She just nodded and braced her shoulders.
Stepping into me again, her posture remained stiff and jerky as she commanded, “Close your eyes and hold out your arm. Last chance. I won’t ask again. You want to know how I knew? You want to know how I can stare into the brown eyes of a farm boy I’ve never met but know that I am hopelessly his? I’ll show you.”
My guts tangled with something sharp, making me bleed sheer pain.
I stared at her.
I loved her.
I was afraid of her in that moment.
Afraid of what she’d do to me.
Afraid of what she’d make me become.
Afraid that there was no turning back from this…regardless if I was ready or not.
Adrenaline rushed through my bloodstream as I locked my knees and closed my eyes.
I didn’t know why I was afraid. Why standing before Eleanor with my arm outstretched made me feel defenceless, exposed, and utterly at her mercy.