Page 12 of The Enslaved Duet

“He turns feral and will attack anyone in the vicinity, even an innocent.” He leaned closer as his scent swelled in the warm air between us, fresh and cool like damp forest air. I could see the pulse throb strongly in the tanned column of his throat and felt the odd animal compulsion to press my tongue there. “Be careful where your good heart may take you, for it may be straight into the arms of a predatory beast.”

“Ragazzi,” a police officer called, shattering the strange energy between myself and the stranger as he jumped over the hood of the car to reach the criminal and the bodyguard who held him.

The strange blond man pressed tightly into me as if imprinting himself into my skin, then stepped back abruptly and dropped my hands. The darkness in his features retreated like night creatures into the shadows, only the glow of his silver eyes giving away his wicked intentions.

“This is the last time I try to save a life,” I muttered, smoothing my slightly trembling hands over my bodice.

“Oh, I should hope so,” he parried even though he was already turning, his eyes on the policeman, his mask affixed. “Though I very much doubt it will be the last time you become involved in a situation you shouldn’t. You have no preservation instincts, and such a failing will be the end of you.”

I watched him greet the policeman, how the officer winced at the firmness of his handshake and the unconquerable power he wore like a mantle over his broad shoulders. In under thirty seconds, the Brit had established his dominance over the lawman. I remained preoccupied with him even when a man came to interview me about the crime. Even when I was released from questioning after giving up my contact information and an officer was leading me toward the metro.

He lingered like the thought of a monster under a bed, like a creature lurking in the dark of my dreams ready to corrupt them into nightmares, and when I looked over my shoulder before descending into the underground, he was watching me with hawkish intent that blistered my skin.

I knew in the same way I’d always known my father would be the end of my life as I knew that this wouldn’t be the last time I would see the predator I’d so foolishly saved from slaughter.

Present day

My brain was too heavy and hot in the confines of my skull. It throbbed like a pendulum between my ears, setting off a series of raw nerves throughout my body so that I pulsed with pain all over. I couldn’t open my eyes or drag enough air through my lungs. I was paralyzed, stuck in what felt like the fetal position on ground so hard it had to be stone. I wanted my sight back because without it, consumed by hurt and wretched with loneliness, it was all too easy for my imagination to conjure up my setting as the pit of Tartarus, the last circle of Hell.

I thought about karma and fate, kismet and destiny. The mythical constructs we created to explain away the unexplainable things that happened to us. The absurd notion that if something bad occurred, we were somehow deserving of it.

I was a good person, but not the best maybe. I was too busy focusing on my own family to be altruistic and too devoted to my career to eschew the necessary level of vanity it demanded. There was nothing I could have done in my short eighteen years in the pockmarked pit of Naples to deserve being sold into sexual slavery by my own father.

I didn’t deserve this, but it was happening to me.

The lack of poeticism, of justice or even hope, weighed on my sore bones like dense gravity.

At one point, I felt cool fingers thread through my hair brushing it off my damp forehead and aching shoulders. A while later, a straw was placed between my lips and I sucked without thought, pulling the delicious, cold stream of water down my parched throat to my empty belly where it sloshed like a churning sea.

“My beauty,” I heard dimly from deep within my submerged mind. “My sleeping beauty, it’s time to wake up. It’s time to play.”

I wanted to obey that clinical, sharp-edged voice, but my eyes were hot stones in my skull, and my brain was waterlogged earth.

As if sensing my struggle, my willingness to concede to his demands, the voice hushed me softly, and the fingers retuned one last time to pass through my hair. Cold pressure parted my lips, an unwanted kiss from an unwanted prince.

“Why?” I asked, barely awake, but desperate to understand.

“The blood of my enemy, however innocent, is still my enemy,” he whispered against my ear so that the words rooted deep into my wakefulness and my dreams. “You cannot hide in unconsciousness forever. I will be here when you wake.”

And then he was gone, and I floated again for endless hours until a nightmare about Hades breaking through the crust of the earth’s surface to grab me by the ankles and drag me down to hell woke me up with a gasp.

And my eyes opened.

The light spilling in through dozens of massive windows lining either side of the long room nearly blinded me; the reflection of the sun off the gleaming, waxed marble floors stabbed my corneas violently before I could look away.

I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on my breath and not the horrifying pain in my head, my breasts, and between my legs, then opened them again.

I was in a ballroom.

Or, at least, I guessed it was a ballroom thanks to its grand size and unabashed opulence.

Crystal chandeliers dripped from the domed, beautifully painted ceilings and gold foil accents curled and unfurled in elaborate detail atop marble pillars and across sconces like expensive moss over ancient tress.

I was naked, twisted in the fetal position on a floor of white and black checked marble, threads and knotted cords of gold running throughout. My eyes caught on a length of heavy metal chain wrapped around a steel spike nailed in the middle of the ballroom just beside where I sat. As I shifted slightly to look at it more clearly, the hissing slide of metal over marble hit my ears, and the weight of something around my left ankle made me pause.

Slowly, I righted my left leg and stared at the thick leather cuff shackled to my ankle and the short length of chain anchoring me to the floor.

Tears sprang to my eyes, molten and painful as they fell down my cheeks.