Once a Myth (Goddess Isles, #1). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Once a Myth by Pepper Winters

My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

“There was a boy once. A boy who wasn’t strong enough to save me when I was taken.”
There was a girl once. A girl called Tess Snow who sat with me in the dark, waiting to be sold.
There was an owner once. An owner who bought me, entrapped me, and made me his unwilling goddess.”
Eleanor Grace is a naïve dreamer. Trusting and young, she believes her travel-loving boyfriend can save her when her freedom is snatched and sold. Squirrelled away to an island at dawn, delivered to a man even darkness won’t touch, she’s bound by a contract.
Four men.
Four fantasies.
Four pieces of her soul.
Sullivan Sinclair is the giver of fantasies. Any wish, any desire—he is the master at quenching even the filthiest appetites. His private paradise and perfectly trained goddesses are there for one purpose: to ensure every guest is extremely well satisfied.
He bought her.
He trapped her.
She belongs to him.
Once a Myth

Compelling Captive Romance – Sex slaves with a twist.

I like captive romance stories for some reason but I always really want the captive heroine to one-up the guy holding her captive. I especially want her to get away, and the heroine does usually get away, but I want her to get away more than once. I want her to keep beating him at his own game, but generally she has to sit back and take it more often than not. The heroine eventually falls for him and he her, but I don’t know, I think I just want her to get him to either regret thinking he can own another person or change his mind about it completely.

So far in this book that hasn’t happened. Though the Hero, Sullivan Sinclair (a.k.a. Sully) does regret buying this particular captive for the island paradise he owns where Men come to get their darkest desires fulfilled by the “Goddesses”. The Goddesses are women that Sully owns and forces to work for him for four years.

The heroine is a young girl named Eleanor who is kidnapped from a youth hostel by sex traffickers while traveling around the world with her boyfriend. Eleanor was sold to Sully per his specifications of the kind of girl he wanted and he comes to regret ordering a girl with the types of assets he is attracted to. Sully never makes use of the girls he purchases for the Island and he is determined not to start with Eleanor, whom he renames as Jinx.

However, Eleanor is a fighter and she fights in different ways than other girls. She sits back and pays attention, she holds her fear and anger inside when other girls would display it outwardly. Eleanor lets it all come out in spurts where she tries to show Sully how wrong it is to do what he is doing. Of course Sully doesn’t care and justifies what he is doing in different ways, such as they would have it much worse if they were sold to someone else.

All Eleanor can think of is the fact that men are going to use her body against her will and no matter how gilded the cage is, it is still a cage and she wants to be free. There is a twist in that Sully owns a pharmaceutical corporation and is a chemist himself. He has created an elixir that turns a person into pure animalistic need. They are in pain if they don’t chase the “O” over and over until the drug wears off with anyone in the vicinity.

I like the fact that Eleanor/Jinx never decides to go with the flow. I like the fact that she keeps fighting for her freedom and Sully is a terrific anti-hero. He can’t stop thinking about her and he wants her. He fights his own responses and goes back and forth deciding he will just take her for himself, then hardening his resolve to sell her to his clients at a high rate. He is jealous of the other men (his clients). I usually hate reading about someone who bounces back and forth on decisions but in this case I am really enjoying his inner musings. I like the fact that he is not as in control as he wants to be.