Third a Kiss (Goddess Isles #3) - Pepper Winters Page 0,58
currently resided in, he yanked open a door and removed a trolley full of black boxes with a purple orchid stencilled on the top.
The sensors.
Swallowing hard, my stomach ached even worse. A tumbling, tightening mess of worry of what would happen after this and an excruciating feeling of loss.
I’ve lost him.
Before I’d even had him.
Tears prickled my gaze, but I sniffed them back and did what he’d asked. Grabbing fistfuls of my dress, I pulled it over my head and threw it to the side. Standing in a turquoise bikini, I undid the bows behind my nape and lower back, tossing the top piece aside and repeating with the bottom half.
Sully’s jaw locked as he stole a glance, bringing the trolley to a stop beside me.
He remained in his expensive suit, looking every bit a pissed-off mogul with no mercy. My nakedness dressed me in goosebumps. Not from the cold—the island was never cold—but from the coldness of the man who I’d given my heart to.
I’d rescued him from drowning.
I’d accepted his body into mine.
We’d shared parts of ourselves that we’d never shared before.
And to be on the precipice of throwing all of that away made me sadder than any other time in my life. Sadder than when I’d been stolen, trapped, and sold. Sadder than when I didn’t think I’d see Scott or my family again.
I was sad when my past had been ripped away, but now…now my future had been taken too and that was far, far worse.
Sully could’ve been a wonderful future. A future I would’ve gladly, gratefully accepted, turning my back on everyone else because he was worth it.
He was the singular reason I’d been put on this earth.
And also the reason I wished I’d never met him.
He’d awoken my heart only to pulverise it into dust.
Tears once again tried to spring. A well inside me, crashing with waves up the sides, doing its best to escape through my eyes. To make me weak. To make me beg all over again.
Damn man.
Damn—
“Put the harness on, Jinx.” His gaze tore itself off my breasts, his hands ruthlessly tearing open boxes.
“Don’t do this, Sully.”
His teeth glistened; his lips thin over sharp canines. “Your right to call me that has once again been revoked.”
“Sullivan, then.” I balled my hands, laughing a little crazily. “Mr. Sinclair.”
“Shut the hell up.”
“Nope. I have something to say to you.”
“I have no interest in—”
“I fucking love you, you son of a bitch.”
He refused to look at me, icing me out all over again.
This wasn’t how declarations were meant to go. Anger should never be the main ingredient in professing the terminal diagnosis of falling in love, but…so what. I embraced my rage, using it as a shield against his. “You know I love you. I know you do. You saw it the moment you looked at me after you laughed on the boat yesterday.”
I tensed every muscle against the painful memory. The way he’d jolted when he’d read the message clear in my eyes. When he understood the unspoken language literally howling the truth in his face.
And he’d looked at me with the same raw connection. He’d tried to stop it. He’d gritted his teeth and looked away and returned to driving the boat as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened.
Something that could transcend this wreckage.
If he was prepared to fight for us…for me.
If he was ready to put his past behind him and choose a new kind of future where trust was the foundation that could sprout such happiness.
“You have nothing to say to me in return?” I hissed. “You’re honestly going to pretend you feel nothing?”
He ignored me, continuing to shred boxes apart and rip out their contents as if it was me he systemically destroyed.
“I love you, but I damn well hate you right now, Sully.”
His jaw clenched. His entire body seethed with the visible restraint of not entering into the war I was so desperate to have.
He wanted to prove he felt nothing?
He wanted to hurt me this much?
He wanted to throw me away without allowing common-sense and the truth to fix us?
Fine.
Fine!
“You’re a coward, Sullivan Sinclair. A goddamn coward.”
He stilled.
A subtle shift of sizzling tyranny settled into blistering self-control. His hands stopped massacring the boxes. His shoulders turned stiff, his very breath slowed from harsh to hardly at all.
Terrifyingly slowly, he turned to me. His eyebrows raised mockingly while his blue gaze remained on lockdown from feeling. “Interesting choice of words, Jinx.”