Her fingers wrapped around my wrist.
I tried to pull her close, to pin her beneath me, to mount her, but my body no longer operated. I jerked in the throes of a death dance as the tailless mermaid pulled me closer and closer to the surface.
Pinpricks of pain from her nails punctured my rapidly fading consciousness. My eyesight traded clarity for ghostly mirages.
Down and down, deeper and deeper.
Quietness.
Peace.
No more need for sex.
No more need for oxygen.
Thankfully.
Heavenly.
Sanity.
I let go, grateful to finally be free.
Something sharp shredded my hard-won serenity. A lash of pain across my cheek. And another. Followed by lips on mine, air forced down my throat, and painful compressions on my chest.
Pressure repeated over my heart, determined and ruthless, reversing my slip into silence, dragging me back into mania and pain.
The explosion from dying to alive sent daggers of misery through my entire nervous system. My eyes flared wide. My mouth opened to breathe. A gush of water spewed out.
“There you go. That’s it. Come on. Breathe, Sully. For God’s sake, breathe.”
I choked and wheezed as the lightness of air replaced the heaviness of liquid, my lungs faltering over the new concoction. The mermaid helped me roll to my side, slapping my back with agonising strength.
“Stop,” I croaked.
She didn’t.
“Stop!” I tried to crawl away, only to find water keeping me buoyant and rocks behind me. I blinked, waiting for the mirages in my eyes to fade back into precision. As Nirvana came into view above and the paradisiac garden appeared around me, my brain kicked back into gear.
Along with thoughts came the nasty, insidious hunger licking around my mind, sending blood back into my cock.
You’re not done.
Not yet.
My heart pounded the message, electrifying my heavily depleted system.
Fuck, please not again.
“Sully…are you okay?” Soft hands cupped my cheek, guiding my face to hers.
Eleanor.
Jinx.
The worst goddamn curse of my life.
A dream turned nightmare.
A goddess who should never have existed.
A purchase I should never have made.
Her.
Take her.
Fill her.
Fuck her.
My hand had a different master, obeying the elixir’s fierce control rather than my weak pleas to stop. It shot upward, grabbed her around the nape, and dragged her down to my mouth.
I kissed her.
I traded drowning in water for drowning in her.
I rolled us over until she lay on the rocks beneath me.
Water had rinsed us clean. No more sand. No more dirt. No more blood. I chose the illusion that I hadn’t hurt this incredible creature. That I’d only ever been gentle and worshiping and so fucking grateful for her creation.
She. Was. Mine.
Not because I traded cash for her life, but because she’d been born for me. The universe birthed me first, then listened to what my heart ordered—the complex desires I had, the unique wishes I held—and created her just for me to find.
That was why I’d dreamed about her.
Why I’d asked traffickers to steal her.
Why I couldn’t stop myself as I kicked to propel us higher onto the shallows and swam on top of her. Why I groaned as my cock found her entrance. Why motherfucking tears came to my eyes as her heat and slippery wetness welcomed me to slip home.
Home.
Fuck, she was my home.
Not this island.
Not this planet.
Her.
This curse.
This gift.
This priceless, irreplaceable goddess.
She squirmed beneath me, her grey gaze flaring with equal passion and terrible concern. “Sully, stop. You need to rest. You almost drowned.” She pushed at my chest, trying to pry us apart. “Stop.”
She could never pry us apart as we were two pieces of the same whole. I belonged to her as much as she belonged to me. I’d told her that. When she’d asked me my name on our first time together, I’d told her, “I’m yours.”
It didn’t matter I wore a different face to my own. That I went to her as a guest and hid behind a lie—
My thoughts scattered as I claimed her mouth again. She tasted like a crisp waterfall and warm sunshine. She tasted like redemption.
Her tongue fought me back. She tried shifting her head to dislodge our kiss, but I didn’t let her go. I threaded both hands through the hair that I found such a fucking turn-on and held her still.
The water kept us weightless while I thrust into her. Our bodies floated but locked together, straining hard and needy.
Leaving my left hand tangled in her hair, I slipped my right one down her chest, squeezed her perfect breast, then kept going, stroking her curves, finding her centre, rubbing against her clit so she felt a fraction of pleasure that I did.
Her body bowed in mine, her lips parting, allowing me to kiss her deep.
Her fingernails dug into my lower back, pulling me into her so my cock filled her until there was no space between us. No way to pull us apart.
I’d fucked this girl.
I’d mauled this girl.