Enthralled (The Enslaved Duet 1)

He was quiet for a while, contentedly rinsing my hair and then soothingly rubbing a sponge along my skin, mindful of my many bruises.

“When you lose your mother to mindless violence and lack of reason, it changes you,” he explained quietly. “Any kind of loss works to harden a person, but she was my ally in that house even more than Edward was. We were too different as children, and I was five years older, so I considered myself too old to play many games with him. He was still in nappies when I was being trained in the dungeon. My mum championed me with Noel and made sure my life of top marks, athletic endeavours, and social climbing had some free time for fun. She died, and that sliver of me that cared for levity and light died with her.”

He pressed his nose to the hair over my ear and inhaled deeply of my scent. “I know you feel you are only worth the price of your beauty, Cosima, but you underestimate the multifaceted nature of your loveliness. It’s not just the geometry of your body and the wet between your thighs; it’s not even the colour of your money eyes or the heavy weight of your hair. It’s the way you make everyone around you feel beautiful about themselves. I am beginning to understand that I am addicted to the way I feel about myself when I’m with you. Like I’m the hero and not the villain.”

My throat felt swollen under the weight of his collar, but I didn’t cry because I knew once I did, I wouldn’t stop. There was a hollow place in my soul that I’d carried around with me like an empty pocketbook for years, waiting for some currency to fill it with. Alexander’s words slotted into place with the clink of coins and the crinkle of bank notes, giving monetary value to an asset I hadn’t known I possessed.

Even if that was the only gift he ever gave me, it was enough to last a lifetime.

“I don’t want the loss of this baby to turn you hard,” he continued after letting me digest for a moment. “He or she could only have been a few weeks old and simply wasn’t meant to be. You did nothing wrong to warrant what happen to you or the baby. If anyone is at fault, it is me and my host of enemies.”

“I’m not without enemies,” I reminded him, my words nasal with unshed tears. “You once called me your enemy.”

“And how wrong I was,” he muttered as he finished washing me. “Now, it’s to understand who the real enemy is knocking on our gates so that I can kill him for hurting you.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” I asked because even though he’d murdered Landon, that death had a surreal cast to it.

It felt more like a terrible nightmare than reality; a death that had broken the terror and brought us back to reality.

Plus, it was difficult for me to feel remorse for a man who had run roughshod over my mental health since I was a girl and then beat me bloody as a woman all just because he could.

“Yes,” Alexander agreed easily, scooping me into his arms as he stood and the water sluiced off us.

He settled me on the bathmat and then retrieved a fluffy towel to gingerly dry my body. It felt surreal for him to take care of me so diligently when I was the one meant to cater to his every need, but there was also a strange rightness about his manner. If submission had taught me anything, it was that it was the submissive who was the most revered and the most vulnerable, and that it was that exact vulnerability that held the Dominants so much in their thrall.

To have a man or woman expose themselves to you so completely must be an intoxicating high, I thought, as Alexander bent his head to concentrate on drying my feed. Maybe nearly as enthralling as seeing a strong man bend the knee in order to do something as simple as dry me after a bath.

I placed a hand on his strong shoulder as he produced a plain pair of black lace full bottom underwear from the drawer under the sink and helped me into them. He barely dried himself before he moved us into the bedroom and plucked one of his undershirts from the open closet so that I could pull it over my head. Only when I was attired did he settle me in bed. I leaned back against the pillows with a sigh that drudged up all the wreckage in my soul and expunged it through my open mouth.

I was weary to my very bones, and I just wanted to sleep without nightmares.