Enthralled (The Enslaved Duet 1)

“Fix this, boy,” Noel demanded, shoving the thick card stock into Xan’s chest. “Fix it now and stop being such a pussy. Your mother, your grandfather, and the entire Davenport clan are rolling over in their grave right now as they witness your idiocy and pigheadedness. Maybe if you weren’t so tied up in that one’s snatch, you’d remember what you brought her here to do.”

My ears burned at Noel’s crude language, but it was my chest that churned with rolling flames.

I hated Noel more at that moment for speaking to Alexander and relating to him the way he did than I’d ever hated anyone for myself.

Noel stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him so forcibly that the painting rattled on the wall.

Alexander didn’t move.

He stared down at the paper in his hand blindly.

“Xan,” I asked softly, moving to the edge of the bed to place a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“He has a point,” he murmured. “I can’t forget your purpose here.”

A shiver of foreboding rocked through me.

“I can have more than one purpose. I am not just a utilitarian tool,” I told him.

His eyes slid to mine, but they were some place deep inside his mind where the maze of his thoughts was at its darkest.

“Aren’t you?”

I watched as he dropped the letter to the ground and marched from the room, naked yet utterly regal on his athletic, rolling gait.

He didn’t return at all that day, and instead of eating dinner alone, I saddled up Helios with the help of the stable boy and took off.

Maybe I couldn’t actually run away, but I could make it difficult to find me if he went looking.

A field beyond the left pastures at the back of Pearl Hall, snug between the forest at one end and the hedgerow maze at the other, was where the ground was covered in a thick carpet of poppies. The bold colour had drawn my eyes two weeks ago when I’d finally ventured far enough in my journeys with Helios to reach the forgotten corner of the estate, and I’d nearly cried at the beauty of my favourite flowers bowing steeply in the breeze.

I sat in their embrace that evening, splayed out over the broken stems and crushed petals beneath me while I played my fingers gentle in the silky filaments swaying into me with the wind.

The contrast of their bold appearance and secret fragility was all too easy to parallel to my own duality. It seemed I tried so hard to appear strong and resilient, but the moment something powerful slammed into my life, I was powerless to stand up against it.

I wanted to be strong enough to break through the last of Alexander’s titanium shields and win the heart of my complicated Master, but the task seemed nearly insurmountable.

Dark grey clouds the colour of Alexander’s eyes rolled across the sky, but I didn’t move. I wanted the cold English rain to purify my muddied thoughts and leave an easy solution in its wake.

How did I untangle the knotted mess of lies my life had become and smooth out the threads so I could keep the good ones?

How could I keep Xan while still keeping my family and my independence?

The grey veil parted, and the rain rushed forth in a deluge. I propped myself up on an elbow to survey the sweep of water as it fell over the Greythorn estates, but something moving quickly from the stable caught my eyes.

Alexander on Charon, galloping across the rapidly dampening earth like Hades out of the underworld, determined to snatch the goddess Persephone from her field of flowers.

Only, I wanted him to snatch me away and make me queen of his dark domain.

I watched without moving as he cantered up the hill and swung out of Charon’s saddle before he even came to a complete stop.

His face was immovable stone, threatening as the storm breaking through the air all around us.

“I thought you’d left,” he fumed quietly as he fell to the muddy blanket of poppies at my feet and caught my ankle.

He dragged me forward under my hips slid up over his thighs and then he used the pocket knife he produced from him riding jacket to rend a hole in the center of my trousers. He fisted both hands in the fabric and tore it clean in two, so that the rain beat down on my white panties and turned them sheer.

“I thought you’d run away, but you have to know, topolina, I’d never let you go without saying goodbye,” he promised huskily, and then his body was pressing me into the wet grass and blooms as he ravaged my mouth.

There was no finesse in the way he snapped my underwear with his fingers and pulled his breeches down just enough to free the angry length of his cock. There was only animal urgency and primal instinct to mate.