would buy into the illusion with every idiotic bone in my body and be so damn grateful that he’d finally trusted me. That he’d given me his affection in acknowledgment of his faith and forgiveness.
It’s all bullshit.
He’d just given me a taste of his world.
He’d taken my trust and shat all over it.
Tears spilled from my eyes as I went wild. I scratched his face. I kicked his legs. I wriggled and squirmed.
I screamed.
I screamed and screamed.
I screamed for this illusion to stop. For this guest to disappear. For this whole screwed up punishment to be over.
“Get your fucking fingers out of me, you damn bastard!” I tore at his hair, ripping at the strands I’d always found so sexy on Sully Sinclair. I snarled as he tried to kiss me. I choked as his free hand latched tight around my throat.
“Stop fucking moving.” His fingers withdrew from me, fumbling for his belt. “You want to scream? You can scream while I drive my cock deep inside you.”
No!
This isn’t happening.
No!
At no point in my captivity had I ever felt so petrified. Never had I been this close to feeling like what a true slave would feel.
I had no choice.
I had no power to stop him.
I was a goddess, bought and paid for, a vessel for this guest’s feral fantasy.
I moaned in absolute horror as the zipper of his jeans sounded, followed by his grunt as he inched the denim off his hips.
No.
Please, no.
Stop.
Stop.
“Stop!”
He pressed against me. He bent his knees. He angled to thrust—
“She said stop.”
The man wearing Sully’s body froze. Together, our heads whipped to the left where a stable hand appeared from the tack room. Lean and lanky, he could be a jockey instead of a groom holding a pitchfork for mucking out soiled hay.
“How about you stay out of this.” Sully-not-Sully growled.
I shivered at how real his voice sounded, and, once again, a tiny piece of me wondered if I’d gotten it wrong.
How could I base my convictions on just a feeling? A profoundly powerful feeling…but still just a feeling.
But then Sully-not-Sully pressed himself against me again and I knew. No amount of sensors or oils or gimmicks could prevent me from knowing.
I knew without any remaining doubt.
This man was not him.
This man did not have the right to touch me, fuck me, love me.
This man was nothing.
“Let me go,” I snarled.
Sully-not-Sully flat-out ignored me, arching his hips to slide his cock between my legs.
The glint of a dirty pitchfork wedged against his jugular. “She said stop.”
A repeat of what he’d already muttered in a voice that held the barest of gruff and laced with a Southern accent. I’d never heard that voice before. I’d never met this brown-eyed, blond-haired boy in my life.
And yet…sparks.
Awareness…knowing.
Goosebumps sprang all over, reducing my horror to hope.
Could it be?
Was it him?
And if it was…why?
What was the purpose of this hellish trick?
How could I trust anything, anyone ever again?
Was that the game?
To understand how Sully struggled to see past masks and promises and fakery? To reveal how trust could never be given if your heart said one thing but your mind another?
Even suffering this riddle for a few short minutes, I was exhausted.
Exhausted fighting my psyche’s natural craving to trust. The undeniable need to believe in what you thought was real because that was where safety lay. If the one person you thought you could trust turned out to be your worst enemy…then nothing was safe.
The world was a cesspit of liars and thieves and murderers, all hiding behind sweetness and smiles and the utmost simplicity of trust.
Trust.
That damn inconvenient emotion that ultimately destroyed the gullible and allowed the deceitful to run free.
My shoulders slumped.
My revelation had come fierce and fast, leaving me fumbling for air.
The stable hand shot me a worried glance. His brown eyes glossed with concern, his eyebrows tugged low in hatred for the man forcing himself upon me. Without a word, he jabbed the pitchfork deeper against Sully-not-Sully’s throat. “Get off her.”
Three new words in a stranger’s voice.
But I closed my eyes and listened to the magic behind it. The crackle of lightning. The hint of thunder. The tropical breeze and salt-dusted home of the man who’d done his best to break me.
I sighed as the pitchfork drew a droplet of blood from Sully’s imposter, forcing him to back up and tuck his erection back into his jeans.
Seeing such a gorgeous man like Sully be borrowed by a guest with no conscience made me exquisitely sad. Could I