Page 14 of The Enslaved Duet

“How did you know that about the bells?” I asked, my brain stuck like a broken record on the idea. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Knowledge is power. Can you ask me that, knowing who I am?”

“I don’t know who you are,” I told him honestly. “Only that you seem to be all four horsemen of my apocalypse.”

One golden brow rose, cutting lines into his forehead that had me wondering how old he was. Much older than my eighteen years, it was obvious.

“At least you are well educated, as a professor’s daughter should be. It’ll make this easier for you.”

“Rebelling against you?” I retorted, hyper aware of my vulnerability as I sat before him, chained and stark naked.

Something dark passed over his placid features, the clouds mere shadows on the ground, alerting me to an impending storm.

“I am Alexander Davenport, Earl of Thornton, and you are playing my game now, Cosima. Be happy that I’m taking the time to teach you the rules instead of making you learn by taking punishments when you unwittingly break them.”

I spat on the glossy marble floors at his feet, but I was too dehydrated to make much of a statement. “Go to hell, you beast!”

“This is how things will proceed from here on out, my beauty,” Alexander informed me coolly. “Everything you need to survive is mine to give you. Water, food, the very air you breathe. I own it all. So I suggest you shelf the rebellious spirit and discover a more servile side.”

I glared at him. No matter that I was tethered to a bolt in the floor by heavy, medieval chains in a gorgeous room made of marble and gold leaf without clothes or possessions, I was not his to own, to set aside when it pleased him or to train like a dog.

I was Cosima Lombardi and that had tomeansomething to someone, even if it was only to myself.

“I won’t be kept shackled to a bolt in the floor in the middle of your ballroom like some wild exotic beast caged for your entertainment.”

He stood slowly, unravelling the breadth of his torso and the long length of his muscular legs. There was thread and calculation in the exactment of his movements, in the way he kept his eyes locked on me as he loomed above my chained self.

I watched warily as his hand reached out and stroked softly over my hair.

“Exotic, yes,” he agreed softly, fingering a lock of my inky hair. “Wild, I’ve yet to see, but I am very much looking forward to it.”

“I suppose I should be thanking you for not raping me immediately?” I scoffed.

He dropped my lock of hair, his lips twisted into a disgusted sneer. “You may feel like an animal, but I don’t fuck them. My cock will be inside you when you earn the right to a bath and no longer stink like livestock.”

“Let me out of these chains, and I’m happy to take one,” I returned because now that I’d been made aware of it, I could smell myself.

I must have been kept unconscious for more than a day for them to cart me all the way from Italy to wherever we were in England.

His smile was thin, creasing his stubble-shadowed cheeks into disgustingly attractive lines. “You will learn, my beauty, that this is a relationship of give and take.”

He leaned forward, his hands lashing out to snag my nipples in a tight hold and then he tugged, straining my body forward to reduce the burning tension in my recently pierced breasts.

“You give,” he whispered sinisterly, twisting my nipples until I whimpered. “And I take of your exquisite body. Then, and only then, will I reward you, and even then, I expect you to accept those gifts with overwhelming gratitude.” He paused, his eyes so hot on my lips they felt scalded as if by hot tea. “I can only imagine the lovely sound of the words ‘please, Master,’ and ‘thank you, Master,’ coming from that lush mouth.”

“Good because it will only happen in your imagination,” I gritted out between my clenched teeth as I squirmed against his hold.

Alexander’s smile deepened those creases in his face, making him appear both older and younger at once. “That’s it, Cosima,” he practically cooed. “Hand yourself over to me. Let me take you to the precipice of pain and over the edge into the kind of desire your virginal mind cannot even dream of.”

“Never,” I bit out, wrenching myself out of his hold and crying out at the pain as I fell backward to the floor in an ungainly sprawl.

When I looked up, Alexander was standing, his huge form clad in an entirely black suit that magnified his sinister charms.

He stared at me passively in my disgrace, naked and bound, rebelling with no hope of revolution.

“Have it your way, slave. We shall see how long you last.”

I’d been in the dark for over two weeks. My sense of time was warped without light or regular meals, without company or clocks. All I had were my own thoughts to pass the time and the savage cannibal sitting in the pit of my stomach eating away at the lining with pointed, poisonous teeth.