Enamoured (The Enslaved Duet 2)

“Close your eyes,” Alexander demanded from the hall. “And if you open them, Cosima, there will be terrible restitution to be paid.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Do not roll your eyes at me, little mouse,” he countered without even seeing me. “Close your eyes.”

I closed them, my heart tapping out a strange rhythm in my chest because the air in the room was suddenly close and heavy, the way the atmosphere changes dramatically before a storm. My ears strained as Xan walked into the room and to my side of the bed. The mattress depressed under this weight and then his hand was holding mine, tugging it over into his lap where he began to play with my fingers.

“I once told you that if I was ever moved to marry, it would be to give my future wife the protection of my name and the promise of my love no matter what may lay in the future. When I married you four years ago, I did it thinking I was only providing the first; the protection of my name. I thought I was a man without a heart and therefore without the propensity to care for you in any other way than as a possession. Then I was forced to wait in the wings for nearly half a decade in order to keep you safe from the evils of my world, and in doing so, I understood that the reason I married you was much more complex. I married you because I couldn’t imagine a day without you by my side, lighting up my dark world with your golden light and vibrancy. I did it because being close to you is never close enough, because I didn’t feel alive unless you were with me.”

I wanted to open my eyes, but I didn’t dare because he hadn’t given me permission. Besides, the darkness lent a tangibility to his words, as if they had their own heartbeat and breath, both pressed against my skin like a human body. I felt his love as solidly as I felt his hand cradle my own and after so many years of doubt, that was such a beautiful promise it made tears leak out the corners of my pleated lids.

“So, Cosima, my beauty, I have a different promise to give to you now that the Order is gone, Ashcroft is eliminated, and the Cosa Nostra scum who hurt you are dead. It’s a simple promise, but I hope it’s profound.” Alexander’s warm breath passed over my face as he pressed a kiss to both of my closed lids. “Open your eyes now, bella.”

I opened them, my sight filled with Alexander’s striking face, his gold tipped lashes heavy fans over his dark, brushed pewter eyes. They were filled then with such awe-inspiring love, I couldn’t stem the weak sob that blossomed in my mouth like a wet rose.

Eyes open and locked to mine like a vow signed in the ink of our blood, he dipped his head to kiss each of my cheeks and then my lips, then my chin, all the way down my neck and along my left arm at the tender pulse points as if he wanted to transplant his love into the blood there until he reached my palm. I trembled as he planted a kiss in the center, then skirted his lips up each finger to brush them over the tip. When he reached my third ring finger, his mouth opened over the top and something glinted between his teeth in the low city light spilling in through the windows.

My heart arrested, my breath like amber trapping my emotions in my chest as he dropped a ring down my finger and then tugged it into place with his teeth. After kissing the top of it where it lay at the base, he pulled back to look in my eyes again.

“Before, I gave you the protection of my name,” he whispered, the words so sacred they felt hushed and as reverent as a prayer spoken in a holy place. “But now, I give you my whole heart and hope that you will let me prove to you every day from here on out, that I am worthy of yours in return.”

I was crying steadily, my breath nearly robbed clean by the strength of those cleansing, awed tears, but I needed to speak. I needed the beautiful, misunderstood man offering me his bleeding heart to know a simple truth that hadn’t changed for even one moment over the years.

The air I dragged into my lungs was threadbare but enough to sustain me to say, “I will spend the rest of my life proving to you that you are the greatest man I know, and that I will always love you irrevocably, even on the days you feel more like a villain than my hero.”