Third a Kiss (Goddess Isles #3) - Pepper Winters Page 0,42

are total shit because how can I put you first…over them?”

She trembled again as I let her nape go, permitting her to turn to face me. Thoughts shadowed her features like dismembered ghosts, half-formed and discarded before she finally whispered, “You don’t have to see such things in black and white, Sully.”

I raised an eyebrow. “No? How would you see it?”

She shrugged. “Biology. Simple biology.” When I didn’t respond, she added, “Just like I get wet and you get hard from a physical or mental stimulation, the heart suffers the same downfalls.”

“You’re saying what I feel for you…is purely reactionary?”

Her eyelashes fluttered. “What do you feel for me? I asked you on Serigala, and I’m asking you now.”

I snorted and leaned into her, mixing our body heat and suffering the hiss and spark of awareness. “An epidemic over everything that I am. That is what I feel for you. A sickness I can’t find a cure for.”

“Maybe the cure is easier than you think.”

“You think we can reverse this…disease, now that we’ve accepted the diagnosis?”

“I think lying about it won’t stop the truth.”

I stiffened. “You’re calling me a liar?”

She nodded. “Utterly pathological when it comes to avoiding things you don’t want to confess.”

A groan slipped from my lips, fertilising the ground with all the bullshit I’d been trying to shove into my heart and believe. “Stop. Just stop—”

“Stop forcing you to admit that common-sense says we’re absolutely stupid but we’re past listening to that nonsense?”

“Stop being everything I fucking want…without even knowing it.” I raked a hand through my hair, my temper spiking. “Stop making this impossible for me.”

I thought this infatuation would cease as abruptly as it’d begun. I figured, the more I got to know her, the more I would be turned off. I’d convinced myself that whatever bond we shared would diminish, because there was no other way forward for me.

I wasn’t planning on discovering that with each conversation, with each new touch, kiss, and whisper that I’d struggle all the more.

My infatuation had swiftly become fascination and could quickly mutate into obsession if I wasn’t careful.

I meant what I said in Dr Campbell’s surgery.

“Why are you so perfect…for me?”

How could a girl who’d been born to different parents, raised in a different household, and experienced different things, somehow end up the perfect shape and size to fit into my jagged, haggard edges?

My dream fantasy couldn’t even compare to her anymore. That hallucination had been based purely on looks I found madly attractive. Now, Eleanor was the very utopia I’d tried to create on my cursed islands. She was bottled elixir and the magic of Euphoria…a fantasy manifested into reality.

She was inherently, dangerously risky because unlike Euphoria, this had no end. There was no waking up from this…only death could stop it.

Hers or mine…or both.

“I’m not trying to make this impossible, Sully.” She sighed softly. “I’m trying to…ugh, I don’t know. Prove that you don’t have to push me away? Prove to myself that I’m not crazy for wanting the very man who bought me. Prove that we’re both…not at fault.”

“You’re saying there’s something else to blame for this mess?”

“I’m saying it’s nature’s way of ensuring survival of each species.” She paced a little, needing to move while solving her strange interpretation. “Why can’t we look at it that way?” Her eyes lit up. “You’ve segmented animals from mankind because you see us as the problem. And you’re right. We are. Humans are a plague upon resources, environments, and everything else we come into contact with. You’re right to despise us as a collective…but you’re forgetting one thing.”

“And what’s that?” I crossed my arms, not liking where she was going, afraid that this would make way too much sense to me and I’d have no more arguments to brick up my walls.

“We are still just animals at the end of the day. Nature ensures most creatures pair up for life. They enter into a covenant the moment they meet. They raise a family. They protect each other. They survive because of each other. It’s not us…it’s nature. Our need for each other is just that…biology. Our affection is biology. This whole damn confusing connection is—”

I snatched her.

I kissed her.

I shoved her against the raised garden boxes where seedlings had never seen anything so explicit in their existence and stuck my tongue down her throat.

She moaned and kissed me back.

Violence with violence, lust for lust.

I kissed her because I couldn’t allow her to spill another word. She made