I tripped backward, the room spinning faster, my lungs forgetting how to breathe.
“You fight against what exists between us because, for some reason, you’ve given up hope on your own happiness.” She strode toward me. “And I have to accept that, because who am I to be the one to make you happy?” Her lips sneered condescendingly. “I’m just a goddess to serve your guests. A whore to make you money.” Her hand landed on my chest, five fingers of pure venom.
I fought the urge to cough, the dregs of drowning yesterday finally hurting my ability to breathe. Lust sprang through my blood, deformed and delusional.
“But here’s the thing, Sully.” She stood on her tiptoes, bringing her lips to my ear. “I think we’re both to blame because I might have used elixir for us to sleep together yesterday…but—” Her voice cracked with worry, as if not entirely sure of the repercussions of what she was about to say. “But…that wasn’t our first time. Was it?”
In a single heartbeat, I captured her wrists in my hands, squeezing tight. “What did you say?”
She shivered with panic but forced herself to go on. “You were familiar. My body recognised yours.” Her eyelashes fluttered as she rushed, “You told me Euphoria hides who we truly sleep with. It could be our greatest enemy or our biggest love. Our minds are deceived but our bodies know the truth.”
I stopped breathing altogether.
“You were the caveman…that first time I was in Euphoria, weren’t you?”
I shoved her away from me, shaking out my hands and the constant chemistry from touching her.
Fuck.
Goddammit!
“Leave, Goddess Jinx. You’ve had all you’ll ever have from me.”
“You traded places with the guest…didn’t you? You fucked me in that cave. You were the one who—”
“Enough.” I forced a callous sneer on my face. “You’re accusing me of having such shitty self-control that I ignored a fully paid contract between my guest and my business just because I had a hard-on for a new, untrained goddess?”
“I’m saying you felt something…even then.”
“Felt what? Love?”
She gasped. “Was it?”
I laughed as low and as cruel as I could. “I’m sorry to pop your incorrect conclusions of me, but I don’t believe in love at first sight.”
“Well…it was something at first sight.”
“Something?” I rolled my eyes, cursing when the room leapt and faded. “You’re basing this whole theory that you felt something?”
“We felt something.”
I stalked into her, cupping the bruises I’d already decorated her neck with. I squeezed maliciously, making her swallow hard against my thumbs. “You want me to admit I felt something for you?”
“I want you to admit that I’m something to you. Anything. Admit that you’re as lost as I am.”
Violence tried to escalate into arousal. I wanted to fuck this girl. I wanted to punish her for ever having the courage to force me to admit things I would never admit.
Even to myself.
But my body was past useful.
My cock held marks from too many orgasms yesterday. My lips cracked from too many kisses. And her? She held so many contusions from my so-called love.
This was over.
“The only thing I felt was pain. Pain because you are noticeable. Pain because you are something. Pain because you can never be more than whatever fucked-up mess this has become.”
Her pulse throbbed beneath my thumbs as I did my best to systematically destroy the stars in her eyes and the wishing in her heart. “You, Eleanor Grace, are something. You have the power to be everything. And that is why you’ll forever remain nothing.”
Tears cascaded from her gorgeous grey eyes, trickling down her cheeks and over my fingers. “How can you turn your back on this? You felt it too. I know you did. That moment we first met. That punch to the guts. That squeeze around the heart.”
“Don’t project how you felt onto me.”
She stomped her foot, frustration bleeding into her voice. “Don’t deny me the truth, Sully. Please. Tell me. Was it you? Was it you in Euphoria?”
“You need to go.” Releasing her throat, I backed away, struggling to stay lucid, cursing how my body shook. My system had depleted itself to zero from yesterday’s carnage. Now, it ran headfirst toward a grave.
I needed to rest. I needed to collapse.
I needed her to leave me the hell alone so I could pretend I hadn’t royally fucked up my life.
I’d been caught. She knew. But I’d be damned if I confessed.
Because her questions were the same ones I’d asked myself. Why had I entered Euphoria for the first time that night? Why had I gone to her in the skin of a caveman and enjoyed the best sex of my life…until yesterday? Why had the very idea of giving her to Markus Grammer made me become a psychotic murderer?
I’d done him a favour by not giving him Jinx.
If I had…he’d be bones on the ocean floor and his flesh in the bellies of reef sharks by now.