Enamoured (The Enslaved Duet 2)

I felt like raw, tenderized meat hanging from a hook in my spine as he held me half suspended over the edge of the Duomo, but I didn’t move.

I didn’t even breathe.

Instead, I watched a flurry of emotions turn Alexander’s eyes from angry smoke to the storm clouds and rainwater of despair and finally, achingly, to wet concrete. I knew any second they would set into stone, and I would be done, locked out of his head and his heart forever.

“I love you,” I told him, and it was the truest thing I’d ever known. “I love you, Alexander.”

Back to rainwater for one deeply profound moment, where those wet grey eyes fell from mine to my lips in cool trails like drops against my cheek. I saw the agony in his eyes, felt the emotion mirrored in my own, and thought he would crush me to his chest, wrap his strong arms around me, and never again let me go.

And then…

Stone.

Cold, grey intractable granite like the cliffs in the Peak District that rose around Pearl Hall like a sea of rocky waves.

He was gone.

Gone to me forever.

He pulled me back to my feet and dropped his hands from me as if I was toxic.

“Not a word, not one sight of you. Is that understood, slave?” he asked me.

I blinked at him, trying to keep a tenuous hold of the calamity of emotions in my throat that threatened to drown me like a tidal wave.

He took the blink for what it was, shocked acceptance. Then, just when I thought he would stalk away and disappear from my life, he lunged forward, drove his hands into either side of my hair above my ears, yanked my head back and kissed me so hard I knew it would tattoo my lips blue with bruises. I gasped as he bit my bottom lip so hard it broke the skin and the tang of blood erupted between us. He collected it with one searing swipe of his tongue and then thrust it deep inside my mouth as if feeling the cataclysmic amount of pain in my body wasn’t enough, he wanted me to taste my own heartbreak too.

My hand flew to my busted lip as he stepped back and then away, turning on his heel and striding off with brisk intent as if he hadn’t just shattered me open on the roof of Milan’s Duomo, as if he hadn’t left me bloody and irrevocably broken.

He didn’t look back.

And after another hour spent weeping into my knees in the dark of the rooftop’s spires and stone creatures, after I collected myself enough to see through my blurry eyes and walk down to the Piazza to catch a cab… after all that, for the next three years, I didn’t look back either.

Cosima

Three Years Later.

The flash of cameras nearly blinded me, but after over three years in the spotlight, I knew how to dodge the light and duck into the darkness. I tipped my chin down, the silky hair tucked behind my ear slipping out to curtain half of my face from the roped-off crowd of photogs and reporters lining the red carpet.

It was my first time back in England in almost four years. I’d always claimed that wild horses couldn’t drag me back to the godforsaken country, but my brother being nominated for his first BAFTA was reason enough to make me a liar. I flew in the day before the awards show, and I had a return ticket for the crack of dawn the morning after. Less than thirty-six hours in the country. Definitely not enough time for Alexander Davenport to sniff me out and punish me for stepping foot in his country against his explicit orders.

Alexander Davenport could go fuck himself.

“Miss Lombardi,” a reporter called as I emerged from the limo and accepted my brother’s hand. “Is it true you and Mr. Matlock are engaged?”

Sebastian wound my arm tightly under his, pulling me so close I could feel the warmth of his hip against my side.

I didn’t like personal questions.

I didn’t take interviews, and I didn’t engage in idle gossip.

Ironically, that made the rumor mill churn faster, harder. Gossip about the mysterious, beautiful Lombardi twins ran rampant across tabloids and celebrity news.

Where had we come from, who did we love, what did we live for?

The only thing that was clear was our futures.

We were rising stars on the meteoric ascension to a permanent position in the sky of fame and success.

“Sebastian, do you want to address the rumors that you and your sister have a more than platonic relationship?”

My twin turned to iron, freezing in our slow progress down the red carpet. I could feel him weaponize with rage, the appalling accusation honing the edge of his ever present but latent anger.

I didn’t attempt to wield or shield him.