Enthralled (The Enslaved Duet 1)

“Sit over here and watch quietly.”

“Why should I? Are my days not mine to do with as I please?” I retorted.

“They are unless I have need of you.”

“And you need me to sit here and validate your prowess with a child’s sword?”

My tyrant’s eyes were dark, thrashing like storm clouds as he glared at me, but just as there was in a storm, electricity crackled in the air between us. My skin buzzed and raised into goose flesh.

“I need you to sit here and watch your Master. I need you to watch me move, witness the strength of my body and the discipline of my gait. I need you to watch as I attack and parry with calculation as easy as my next breath.”

“Why?” I asked even though every time I’d asked such a question before, he’d mocked me with silence and enigmatic looks.

He quirked a brow and snapped forward to grab my hand, tugging me into his body so hard I fell against him. His torso was stiff with Kevlar, but I could still feel the heat of him against me and the way his erection pressed like its own weapon against my hip. “I fight the same way I fuck. Think of it as foreplay.”

He let me go so abruptly, I stumbled a step forward before I could right myself. His soft chuckle burned like too close a flame against my cheeks, and I kept my hair curtained across my face as I moved over to the small set of stands opposite the mats to sit down.

By the time I was settled, both men were in crouched stances with their thin swords raised and one hand behind their backs.

“En garde,” Riddick called out.

And the flurry began.

Their movements were quick as dragonfly wings, landed and parried with total calm and precision. I noticed a servant sat at a table off to the side and kept score on a digital screen. There was never more than a moment when Riddick was the one in the lead.

Alexander was right.

He was a Dominant in the bedroom just as much as he was on the court and in life. It awed me to watch the sheer breadth of his large body move with such speed and grace. Unbidden, thoughts of how he’d used his quilted arms to rain the flogger down on my heated skin roused to my mind, of how easy it had been for him to chase me across the ballroom on his thick thighs and quick feet then to hold me down with every carved inch of his frame when he fucked me into the floor.

They fenced three games, and Alexander won all three.

It didn’t surprise me.

In fact, I felt an odd fluttering of pleasure in my chest that Alexander had so soundly beaten Riddick.

Maybe it was that the man who had conquered me in so many ways had just proved himself capable of conquering another, someone even more capable of thwarting him than I could be, and still he’d lost.

Alexander was the king of this animal jungle, and it gave me a sense of relief to know I wasn’t the only one forced to bend to his rule.

But there was the fear that it was something else entirely. That it wasn’t mere schadenfreude. That I’d derived some primitive pleasure from the very masculine display of his power, two males fighting over their desire to fuck me, but the man who was rightfully mine declaring the victory.

That it was pride making my chest tight and my heart light. That if he was king of this animal kingdom, then maybe I could be the queen.

By the time they were finished, I was flushed, sweated beaded on my forehead like a crown of shame for Alexander to note as soon as he ripped off his mask and approached. There was that boyish, smug smile on his handsome face again.

I hated how it made my heart soften to him.

“I won’t ask how you enjoyed the display,” he said languidly, his usually clipped words elongated with mockery as he teased me. “If I was to put my hand between your thighs right now, you’d be wet.”

Unconsciously, I squeezed my legs together.

“Unlike you, I am not constantly thinking of sex,” I replied with a haughty tilt of my chin. “In fact, I was just thinking I’d like to ask Riddick if he might teach me fencing or some self defence while you’re out working some days.”

Alexander pushed back an errant lock of his sweat dampened hair and scowled at me. “There is no man of this planet who is allowed to touch you without my permission. And, it should be noted, there are none who would receive it.”

“So permit him,” I suggested, trying to ignore his delicious sweat-soaked scent of cedar and man wafting from him as he stood too close to me.