Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 100563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
His fingers bit harder into my cheeks. “What did I just say?”
“That you love me and you’ll come with me if you’re so determined to send me away.”
His jaw twitched with temper. “This is my home. I will not leave it undefended.”
“And you are my home. Therefore, I will not leave you alone.”
“Christ, why did it have to be you, huh? Why couldn’t I have fallen for a girl who obeys?”
I flinched, taking it personally because he meant it personally. He said he’d custom ordered me. He’d basically done this to himself by kidnapping me. “If you wanted a girl who obeys, you shouldn’t have chased after a dream.” I attempted to smile, despite the black cloud covering my heart.
“Yet the dream has turned into a nightmare.”
“You’re the one giving up on us.”
He winced. “I’m protecting you.”
“No, you’re taking away my choice.”
“Like I said, there is no fucking choice.”
“There’s always a choice.” My snappish sentence hung in the air between us.
For a moment, I believed I might’ve broken his shields—that he’d tell me what was going on instead of commanding what would happen. But then his gaze slid over me. He studied me as if he’d never see me again, and a heavy shadow fell over him, obscuring the man I’d fallen in love with, leaving behind a god with lightning in his blood, a vicious prince who wore anger as his crown, and a monster who no longer needed a mask.
He’d shut himself down.
He’d said goodbye.
I’d lost.
I sucked in a thin breath. “Sully...don’t.”
He shrugged.
A simple, staggeringly painful move. “I love you, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough because I can no longer live in a world where my brother has the freedom to do whatever the fuck he wants. I cannot think of myself while the smell of my creature’s fur still suffocates my lungs. I cannot put you in harm’s way any more than I already have. It’ll be the hardest thing I’ve ever done saying goodbye, but I will do it because I will not put myself first, do you understand?”
Without giving me time to reply, he winced and grunted with gravel and glass, “It’s over, Eleanor. I won’t repeat myself again. This fantasy of forever? This daydream of us? It’s finished. I’m done.”
Chapter Nine
I’D GOTTEN IT WRONG.
For all my science and theory, for all my successes in a sexual drug that reverted humans into animals and all the praise and profit I’d gathered...I’d somehow fucked up the recipe for happiness.
“Sully!” Eleanor clawed at my hand as I dragged her out of her villa and down the orchid-lined pathways. “Sully, stop!”
Orchids.
The main ingredient in my elixir and the trophy of my triumph. I’d spent years stripping every flora and flower down, seeking hallucinogenic, psychotropic, and experimental methods to tweak the human nervous system into accepting deeper pleasure, prolonged desire, and embrace the complete lack of inhibitions.
I’d achieved that quest.
Yet it’d been the wrong journey to chase.
Happiness was the fantasy, and sex was the consolation prize.
“Let me go, damn you!”
I ignored her.
I’d ignored her violent outburst when I’d told her we were finished. I’d ignored her rage as I’d carted her from her villa. And I would continue ignoring her attempts at fleeing because I had nothing else to give.
If we continued arguing, I would lose.
It was a certainty that stripped away my power as a man.
I could only repeat myself so much before my time ran out and Drake would hurt her.
“I’ll just come back if you put me on the helicopter. You don’t get to choose to keep me or send me away!”
My lips thinned as I swallowed back a retort. I could actually. I’d chosen to buy her. And now, I’d chosen to sacrifice her.
That was noble, right?
That showed some growth in my shadow-shaded heart?
If I didn’t care, I would just leave her with the other goddesses. If I didn’t love her with every fucking piece of me, I wouldn’t spare a second thought of her survival.
I tripped in the sand, my heart circumnavigating my brain and trying to halt my stride.
The thought of her flying away?
The idea of never seeing her again?
It was a level of pain I’d never felt before.
Eleanor had taught me a lesson I wished I could unlearn, but it was too late.
I knew better now.
I knew if she died...I’d die too.
I knew it wasn’t elixir that granted joy.
It wasn’t sex that gave unequalled ecstasy.
It was all the other shit that came from trading hearts with another.
The feeling of home. The sensation of staring into their eyes and knowing you were the most important person in the world to them. The most organic sensation of belonging.
Thanks to Eleanor, I’d tasted the first and only splash of sweet, sweet happiness I’d have. I’d finally learned, almost in my mid-thirties, that instead of bottling lust, I should’ve bottled love. A stronger more potent drug that mimicked everything a human searched, coveted, and died for. An ingested endorphin that eradicated depression and loneliness. A priceless imposter for the real thing.