Enthralled (The Enslaved Duet 1)

It was unlocked.

The sound of the mechanism moving into place heralded in my ears like a trumpet call. There were so few freedoms in this new life, each felt pathetically magnificent.

The waving hills outside the windows were silver with heavy rain, and the pane was cold when I pressed my hand to it to peer at the elusive outside world. I wanted to run down the stairs, burst through the heavy front doors, and slip over the wet grass in my bare feet until they were brown with muck and I’d fallen to ground in a graceless heap. I wanted to spread my limbs in the cool blanket of green and watch the rain fall into my face.

“Am I ever to be outside again?” I asked myself, watching as my hot breath fogged the glass.

“You are.” Alexander’s voice startled me more than a gun held to my temple.

A moment later, the broad expanse of his body was pressed to mine so that I had the sunlight of his heat at my back and the cold eclipse of glass against my breasts. It was the very same duality I was coming to realize I’d always experience around my Master.

The hot kiss of unassailable desire and the cold slap of shame.

“You will be let out of this house and out of this life in due course, my beauty, especially if you behave as beautifully as you did last night.” I shivered at the texture of his silken breath trailing down my throat, followed by the touch of his lips to my tripping pulse. “You fell apart for me just as you should for your Master. Tell me, do you feel reformed this morning?”

I did, and it broke my heart to bear the weight of that. It seemed each time he touched me that he tore me apart only to weave me back together with a sharp needle and the dark threads of his ownership. I was becoming accustomed to the pain, and that worried me.

Because that resignation was tinged with yearning.

I hissed as Alexander sank his teeth into the strong tendon on the side of my neck. He drew away with a soft hum of pleasure, and whispered, “I would fuck you against the window and use your cum to write my name on the glass if I didn’t have a previous engagement.”

My stomach cramped in an alarming show of disappointment, but I didn’t let it show on my face when I turned around to scowl at him with my hands on my hips. Only, my indignation cooled into curiosity when I saw what he was wearing.

“What in heaven’s name are you dressed in?”

Alexander smirked and dragged a hand through the thick wave of his golden hair. He looked so like a young, arrogant boy for a moment that I wanted to smile with him.

“I’m dressed in my fencing jacket and trousers.”

I blinked. “I don’t think I know what that is.”

His grin widened, softer than I’d ever seen it, so gleeful that it even reached his eyes. “If you come, I’ll show you.”

Before I could protest, my hand was in his, and he was pulling me in the current of his wide stride down the hall.

“Fencing is an ancient sport first developed by your Italian kinsfolk, though it was popularized by the French. It’s been a popular pastime of the Davenport men since the 19th century. I played varsity for a spell at Cambridge.”

“Ah, scherma,” I said, translating the word into Italian as I made the connection. “It doesn’t surprise me that you play with weapons.”

A short, startled laugh burst from his lips, and I noticed how full the bottom one was compared to the bowed top, and how pearlescent a pale pink they were.

“I am very skilled with tools and weapons, as you’ve begun to discover.”

We descended the grand marble staircase into the great hall and the left wing of the house where we entered a large hall that had been turned into a kind of gymnasium. There was a long pool at the very end that seemed at odds with the elaborate décor and Grecian pillars, and modern exercise equipment arranged beside a wide length of mats.

A man stood in the center of those mats wearing a similar outfit to Alexander’s only his was black. It took me a moment to recognize Riddick because his colourful tattoos were covered up, but when I did, I blanched.

Alexander, observant bastard that he was, noticed my surprise and smiled slightly.

“Riddick is trained in eight martial arts.” I blinked at him, and he slid me a pleased look as he moved past me to shake Riddick’s hand. “And I am trained in nine.”

I stood mutely as I watched the two huge men shake hands and quietly discuss their workout. Alexander moved back to me as Riddick went to a sideboard and retrieved too large masks with perforated fronts.