Angrier than all my animals being blown to smithereens.
It made me rage worse than ever before because love was supposed to be the miracle of life. The one thing everyone chased relentlessly. The hardwired, unavoidable quest for a mate.
I’d found mine.
I knew the value of what I held.
I craved her kiss like a worthless addict.
I want to keep her.
But…
Her love made me weak.
My love made me powerless.
She was the catalyst of my ruin.
And that could never happen.
“Sully…please, hug me back.” Her face pressed into my t-shirt that’d soaked up the lives of so many carnivores, herbivores, and innocence. She willingly shared the pyre my body had become, trying to offer me solace.
Her love threatened to create another form of weakness. The urge to buckle in the sand and allow her to soothe away the decay in my nose and the carnage in my mind.
I wanted to strip her, fill her, love her until I’d driven out the memories.
But that was selfish.
Once again proving me unworthy because when the time came for me to stand up for my creatures, I turned greedy just like any man.
“Let go of me, Jinx.” My voice betrayed me. Curt and full of glass, my heartbreak crystal shards by my feet.
She shook her head, her gorgeous chocolate hair sticking to dried sinew and slaughter. “Don’t do this, Sully. Please, don’t.”
How did she know?
How had she figured me out so quickly, accepted me so unconditionally, prepared to battle with me so fiercely?
I stiffened.
My mask threatened to slip. A mask that’d been firmly positioned to hide my trauma of Serigala, my hate of mankind, and my love for a goddess who’d broken me.
My arms twitched to claim her.
My tongue teased with the vow that whatever happened, I wouldn’t end what we’d found.
I would keep her.
Forever.
Because I was desperate for the peace she could offer me.
But my peace would come at a price.
And I’d just spent my day shovelling up the remains of those who believed my affection came without strings.
I clenched my teeth; my gruesome, filthy hands rose and latched around her shoulders.
I pushed her away from me.
I stared into her graceful grey gaze, and I prepared to destroy the final thing that kept me human.
“This is goodbye, Eleanor—”
Chapter Four
I KISSED HIM.
I fought against his hold, tripped into his body, and smashed my lips to his.
If he couldn’t say it…it wouldn’t come true.
If I prevented him from saying goodbye…he couldn’t end it.
My heart had punctured with a million tiny holes for every second I’d run to him, found him, and threw myself into his un-returned embrace. It was no longer whole but bleeding and weeping, filling the divots in the sand by our feet with bright scarlet grief.
Time was my enemy.
Fate was my prosecutor.
And Sully…he wielded the axe to kill all my dreams, desires, and dreadful premonitions.
I’d known he’d do this.
I’d sat on his island, alone with my knowledge, and wished, begged it wasn’t true.
But the second I’d seen him…God.
His condemnation tainted him like a nasty aura. A fog thick with questions he didn’t have answers for. How could he be happy when so many lives had been taken? Who was he to take what I offered him when everything he cared for had been slain?
The terrible thing was…I didn’t have the answers either.
I just knew he couldn’t stop what we felt for each other because if he destroyed us now…we’d live a lifetime of aching regret.
Shoving back my fear at losing him, I crawled up his powerful, unyielding body and kissed him harder.
Pika and Skittles flew around us, their little wings buffeting us, neither of them attempting to land as if Sully’s horror and my terror created a force field around us that no arrow or parrot could break.
I dove my tongue between his clamped together lips.
I ripped off the lid of his anger.
He snatched me.
Ensnared me.
His arms swooped around me, crushing me, sharing his filth and fury, plunging his tongue into my mouth, stealing my dominance and shoving me relentlessly back into submission.
He kissed me as if he’d forgotten how to be a man.
He kissed like an animal, taking all of me, attacking me, hurting me.
He tasted of smoke and blood and death, death, death.
He pawed me as if I was his enemy and not his ever after.
Violence replaced the blood I’d lost in my heart, blistering and bright as the stars above, giving me a dagger of nastiness to match his diabolical, uncontrollable rage.
I bit his bottom lip, making him snarl.
He kissed me so hard, I gagged on his tongue. He poured a rumbling roar down my throat, complete with teeth and spit and carnage.
And I lost it.
If he wanted to hurt me, so be it.
But I would hurt him back, bite for bite.
I let loose.
I kissed him with bottomless grief and endless stubbornness.
I kissed him…but he devoured me.