Enamoured (The Enslaved Duet 2)

Collectively, the group of twelve or so servants blinked at me, but none of them rose to leave the table so I took it as a good sign. With a sigh, I stood and pressed another kiss to Douglas’s cheek in farewell.

He stilled me for a moment with a hand on my arm. “Not mistress more than a day and you’re already the best duchess Pearl Hall has ever seen, ducky.”

I blinked away the sharp sting of tears and squeezed his hand before I dropped it in a mute but poignant thanks. Then I swept from the room and continued my third walk of the house.

I ended my third pass in the gymnasium and found Riddick waiting for me there, his eyes closed as he meditated seated on the ground in the middle of the mats.

Smiling, I crept toward him, not so much as a bone creaking or a joint popping as I made my way toward him and prepared to startle him out of his wits.

He cracked open an eye just as I reared back to scare him, and drily stated, “Heard you before you crossed the threshold, duchess. Even silk has a sound.”

I scowled down at my robe and then back at him. “One of these days, I’m going to scare the pants off of you, Riddick.”

He raised his brows as he unfolded his long, wide body and stood. “I doubt very much that my employer would be pleased his wife had seen me starkers.”

I blinked and then burst out laughing, holding my stomach to contain my glee. “Riddick,” I gasped. “Did you just make a joke?”

His face was expressionless as he said, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

I giggled again and had the immense satisfaction of seeing his lips twitch at the corners. I followed him as he led the way to the fencing equipment and didn’t say I word when I noticed he had laid out some of my old fitness clothes for me to change into. I knew thanking him for his thoughtfulness would only embarrass the quintessentially British stoic man.

But when he said softly, in his coarsely accented voice, so different than Xan’s posh English, “You were right brave, you were, Cosima. Never been prouder of a body in my entire life, and I was in the army,” I caved.

My arms were around his square torso in a second, my cheek pressed just under his rock-hard pectoral muscle. I felt as if I was hugging a boulder, and for a long moment, he was as still as one.

Then one arm wrapped gently, tenderly around my back, and the other found my head where it rested for a moment before patting me awkwardly.

“There, there,” he grunted. “No need to get all wound up. Everything’s sorted now, and you can finally have some peace, hmm?”

I looked up, up, up at him with my arms still locked, barely, around his middle, and I gifted him with one of my megawatt smiles. “You know, Riddick, that I love you very much, don’t you?”

A blush lay waste to his pallid skin like a forest fire, and his eyes shifted uneasily through the room as if he worried Alexander was in wait to accuse him of putting the moves on his wife. I bit back my laughter at his discomfort, but decided to put him out of his misery by breaking free of my hold. I turned my back to give him a moment to compose himself and selected my rapier from the wall of weapons.

“I’m a bit out of practice,” I said over my shoulder as I took my things to get changed. “But if you lose, you have to go riding with me. I miss Helios.”

I left the room laughing as Riddick grunted his disapproval. He hated horses, and he was too much fun to discomfort not to make the most of the bet and win our little wager.

A few hours later, I was laughing again as I flew over the acreage of Peal Hall on Helios, her sleek, powerful body churning up the earth in our wake. I peered over my shoulder to see Riddick as a speck on the hill behind me, his mount moving at a jerky, slow pace under his large form. There was no doubt in my mind Riddick had let me win purposefully. My left arm still burned slightly from the bullet graze and my feet were tender as I executed my footwork, slowed slightly by the pain. But Riddick had given me the victory as his own way of telling me he loved me too, and I appreciated it even as I giggled at his uneasiness on a horse.

I buried my laughter in Helios’s soft, hay smelling golden mane and kicked her into a soaring gallop. We transected the field of poppies Alexander’s mother had planted to remind her of her girlhood home in Italy, and dodged through the tight weave of trees in the forest before bursting through the clearing and up over the tallest peak so that I could survey every inch of the Davenport estate from atop my steed.