Enamoured (The Enslaved Duet 2)

Dante’s heavy sigh rustled my hair, and his big hand flexed tight against me. “Si, tesoro. I know. You can’t blame me for trying to make you safe, though, can you?”

“The Order is going down, di Carlo is dead, and Noel is next.”

His short laugh held no humour. “You have to know, life with your Alexander will never be safe, not in the way I mean.”

He was right. Alexander was a creature of the dark. No matter that he was good to me and my hero in so many ways, he would never be free of his malignant past or of his deviant predilections.

I was okay with that.

I had learned long ago to love the dark.

Twisting my head, I pressed a kiss to Dante’s stubbled jaw. “It’s okay, Dante. Dark things can be beautiful too.”

He peered down at me in the shadows. “Don’t I know it.”

“You’ll find someone better,” I told him even though now wasn’t the time. I could hear Sherwood beginning the festivities in the other room. “You don’t love me the way you could love your soulmate.”

He shrugged because he didn’t want to admit it, and I thought he knew I spoke the truth.

“Let’s get this done then,” he suggested with a white smile that glowed in the dark.

“Va bene,” I agreed, pushing out of his hold to wander back into the main space.

Sherwood was just wrapping up his address.

“Now my brothers, partake of your spoils and enjoy the night as Dionysus meant men to enjoy their wine and their women, without inhibition!” he crowed over the speakers, his last words dissolving in the fervor of the crowd’s cheer.

Immediately, the first women were ushered out to take their places on the platforms, naked as the day they were born but for black plastic collars hung with I.D. cards so the men would know which women to bid on.

I kept my eyes on Sherwood.

He moved through the crowds, giving back slaps and sly grins, his thin form cutting through the bodies like a needle as he arrowed back to the room where the slaves were kept.

I followed him.

My mind was filled with memories of The Hunt as I did so. I remembered the brutal feel of the cold Scottish air against my bared skin, painful as the slide of a frozen blade across my cheeks as I ran desperately through the dark gloom of the forest. I remembered how he had dubbed me the Golden Fox, the most desirable girl to rape and plunder, so that I had men falling out of the black night like demons sent from hell to ravish me.

I remembered him ordering Landon Knox to whip me until I was a cut-up mess of blood and torn flesh.

I let these thoughts fill my sails as I hurtled down the corridor to the backroom and saw Sherwood facing away from me, his hands on the head of a young girl servicing him on her knees with her mouth.

Disgusting.

A pig, a dirty swine I would see dead before I would see him free.

As I thought this, there was a series of powerful bangs as the police stormed into the warehouse, prepared to lay siege to the event.

Sherwood jerked, immediately bending to do up his pants in preparation to flee.

I stepped up behind him, quick and silent as a shadow, my knife in my hand around his torso and up against his jugular.

I could feel the pound of his pulse jar the blade.

“Hello, Sherwood,” I greeted lightly as he froze. “Remember me, the Golden Fox?”

I was surprised that he relaxed slightly, his voice a relieved murmur when he said, “Slave Davenport, how interesting to see you here.”

“I suppose it is for a man like you who believes himself to be invincible. Why would you think any one of your abused slaves would rise up to kick you in the balls like you deserve?”

“Is that what you plan to do, kick me in the balls?” he asked with a thread of amusement in his tone I wanted to cleave in two.

He didn’t take me seriously even then with a blade against his neck. He didn’t respect me or the threat I represented because of the simple fact that I was a woman, and therefore, I was nothing.

Anger coursed through me lava hot and just as corrosive.

“Metaphorically maybe,” I said through my teeth. “I was just going to cuff you and wait to watch the police take you away, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I should show you the same thing you showed me years ago. A complete and utter lack of mercy.”

“Don’t take your training so hard, every slave must be broken. You cannot tell me you weren’t happy as slave to Thornton. It seemed you were very much in love with him,” he taunted.

I hadn’t known hatred had a taste, metallic and chemical like kerosene spilled over my tongue. My words ignited as they left my mouth, breathing fire. “It was the threat of love that made you order Knox to whip my back to shreds and then do the same to Alexander. It was the threat of love that made you reduce women to fucking animals in The Hunt, and it was the threat of love that is holding a knife against your throat now, Sherwood. You never stood a fucking chance.”