Enthralled (The Enslaved Duet 1)

A young woman for the other men to hunt.

There were very few rules as far as Alexander had explained it to me this morning before he was called away for the General Assembly.

One, the men were not under any circumstance allowed to use weapons against each other or the girls. Fisticuffs were expected and even encouraged. Sexual assault was literally the name of the game. But no weapons.

As if that made this game civilized.

Two, The Hunt wasn’t over until each and every woman was found and fucked. A man could claim as many women as he pleased, but every time one was captured, they had to be brought back to their captor’s rooms at the hunting lodge before the hunter could go out for more.

Three, a special prize would be awarded to the man who caught the “Golden Fox”, the woman deemed the most desirable by the vote of the men of the Order.

It was this we were waiting for in the brutal clasp of a darkening Scottish evening.

Master Sherwood was on a platform before his great stone hunting manor in the wild Highlands waiting for his manservant to tally the vote and name the girl.

I knew before he accepted the folded piece of paper that it would me because I was just that unlucky.

Whoever said beauty was a gift had clearly never experienced it for themselves because it was nothing but a prettily wrapped curse.

“Slave Davenport,” he announced, and the gathered men let out a collective roar.

They were all sober of drink and drugs but so high on the coming thrill of the chase that the very air around them seemed to shimmer with energy.

A girl beside me with true Scottish colouring, pale freckled skin, and hair the colour of juiced carrots grasped my arm for a moment in empathy before I was ripped away by one of Lord Sherwood’s men.

He tossed me over his shoulder, my dress flipping up to reveal my buttocks to the gathering. There was another cheer, this one tinged with dangerous fervour.

The manservant deposited me on the stage beside Lord Sherwood and stepped back.

I kept my gaze down because Alexander had stressed the importance of my submissiveness until the cows came home on the way to this highland retreat.

I saw the edge of Sherwood’s shiny leather riding boots stop just inside my scope of sight, and then I felt the heaviness of his hand on my head. Instantly, I folded elegantly into a kneel, a human origami shaped just to his liking.

“My brothers, I give you the Golden Fox,” he announced boldly as he placed a cornet on my head I knew was made of golden thorns and ruby flowers.

It was ludicrously expensive, far more valuable to the Order than the woman wearing it. There was deliberate irony in the gesture that set my teeth on edge.

Women were nothing to these men.

They had been practicing The Hunt since they stole the idea from the Spanish Civil War practice during the White Terror, when wealthy landowners would hunt down and murder peasantry.

They wouldn’t spill our blood today, unless it was between our thighs, but it was still unspeakably horrible.

I could only hope Alexander would be the one to find and capture me.

He would hurt me, but only to tame my wild spirit and bring me a calm I’d never before been free to experience.

I didn’t want to think about what the others would do to me.

After the trauma of my previous experience with the Order, I didn’t hold much hope that my mind would emerge unscathed if another Master claimed me.

A shiver rippled through me like a ghost as I thought of Landon and his cruel black snake whip. My back was barely healed from the ordeal, thin pink ribbons of sadism still bifurcated my flesh and twanged with pain when I moved the wrong way.

It had been two weeks since the Order of Dionysus swept into Pearl Hall and fundamentally changed the way of my world there.

Two weeks since Alexander had taken a beating for me.

Two weeks since he’d last touched me.

In fact, after the events of that horrible night, I’d barely since him to speak to him, let alone continue my valet duties of dressing and bathing him, or my sexual duties of taking his cock whenever it suited him.

He gave me nothing but a cruel amount of space and time.

It was Mrs. White who tended to my split and scabbing back, Douglas who delivered my food, and surprise of all surprises, Riddick, who was also trained as a doctor, who sat by my bedside to check me for infection and rewrap my wounds.

Christmas had come and gone, and with it, New Year’s Eve. Douglas invited me to the servant’s dinner, but I didn’t want them to feel strained, so I only had a dinner of turkey on a plate in my room. I’d been given licence to call my family, and I’d cried when I spoke to Sebastian, who had successfully moved to London, and Giselle, who seemed meek as ever but artistically thriving in Paris. Mama had made me laugh as she recounted neighborhood gossip and Elena had listened quietly, attentively as I told her my made-up stories of modelling gigs in Milano and London.