Page 125 of The Enslaved Duet

Before I could stop myself, I was following.

A few people tried to impede me with polite conversation, but it was like I was underwater, submerged so deeply in my desire to interact with Alexander again that I couldn’t hear anyone else. I rushed up the steps and out the door into the cool Milano winter night, scanning the Piazza del Duomo for a tall man with a crown of golden hair.

I caught the glint of it out of the corner of my eye and watched as Alexander strode purposefully to the massive white cathedral itself even though it was closed and locked for the night. He shook hands with a man who appeared out of the shadows and then pushed through the massive central bronze doors into the holy space.

I wondered how he didn’t catch on fire.

Swiftly, I ran down the steps on my six-inch Gucci heels, thankful that years of modelling had made me sure-footed as I navigated the cobblestones.

I was out of breath when I reached the looming gothic doors, terrified that someone would appear out of the night to stop me from chasing after Alexander.

No one did.

The cathedral was empty and resplendently gothic in the murky moonlight spilling in through the multitudes of windows. I could hear my steps ringing out across the marble, echoing against the vaulted ceilings and depressed altars.

I felt like a sacrificial virgin voluntarily walking toward her own slaughter, but I couldn’t bring myself to give up the chase as I searched the massive structure for him. I stopped before the statue of Saint Bartholomew with his flayed skin wrapped around his exposed flesh like a stole, as if he was proud of his vulnerability, pleased with his sacrifices. I reached out to run a finger over the smooth marble of his skinless muscles and shuddered with empathy.

I half expected to find Alexander behind the altar to the right of the sculpture, a curved knife in his hands and cloak over his head, waiting to kill me and offer me up to the Order’s god of wine and revelry.

He wasn’t.

Instead, the door to the stairs leading up to the roof was slightly parted, a cool wind whistling through the crack like a call for me to enter.

I counted the steps as I ascended in the pitch dark, focusing on the two hundred fifty footfalls instead of the growing anticipation churning through my system like acid, eating away at me from the inside out.

Would he be happy to see me?

Had he lured me away from the party so that he could claim me properly as his own once more after over a year of frantic searching for me? Would he punish me with his hand against my ass and my knees against the unforgiving marble as penance for my sin of running so we could move on from this place together, cleansed and reborn together again after his punishment?

I didn’t know how that would work. There was still Noel and the Order to consider, still my family and the secret of Salvatore’s continued existence after Alexander had supposedly killed him.

Still so many secrets, ones better off left undiscovered.

I’d unearth them all with my bare hands until the skin peeled and cracked and bled if it meant Alexander would pluck me out of the limbo my life had become and take me back home with him.

The door creaked as I pushed it open, then banged against the wall so loudly it sounded like a gunshot.

Alexander wasn’t startled.

He stood in the middle of the roof on the narrow flat platform between the soaring buttresses and complicated carved spires.

I felt like peasant entering a king’s throne room, and my knees nearly buckled before they could carry me across the roof into his space. The cold window broke my flesh into ripples, and my nipples beaded in the sheer fabric of my dress. I could feel my pulse settle deep and heavy in my groin, a slow beat like a kick drum at a pagan ritual thrumming through my body from my center.

Alexander did not move. He didn’t even blink. He just watched me cross the space to him as if he had known all his life we would one day meet on the roof of the most famous cathedral in Italy under the cover of stars and a yellow moon the same shade as my eyes.

I opened my mouth to say his name, but, “Master,” emerged instead.

Old habits—old programming—were slow to die, apparently.

Alexander blinked then, a slow click of his thickly lashed eyes like the mechanical movement of a shuttering lens.

He’d never seemed less human than he was then.

I stared at the cruel god before me and knew how utterly inane my fantasies of his reciprocated love had been.

“Stop searching me,” he said finally, his voice slicing through the air, calculated as a whip strike against my back. After all this time, he still seemed able to read my mind. “Stop the searches, stop the waiting and wishing like a heartsick fool for me to return to you and bring you back to Pearl Hall. It won’t happen, and it’s frankly pathetic that you’re pining after your abuser like some doleful victim. Honestly, I thought you were better than that.”

I recoiled, my heel catching in the stonework oddly as I stepped back so that I went careening to my knee.