Page 144 of The Enslaved Duet

She shrugged bashfully, pink highlighting her lightly freckled, tanned cheeks. “I’m just trying to be open-minded to show you that I don’t care if that’s what you do or even what you like. I think I proved today when I told everyone I wanted to do a show based on human sexuality that I’m not a puritan like Elena, but I just wanted to be sure.”

No, my boho sister wasn’t like my prudish Elena, but she’d also had one lover in her life, and he was a sweet Canadian boy who wouldn’t know bondage and sexual mastery if it kicked him in the balls.

I walked over to take her sweet face in my hands and smooth my thumbs across her high cheekbones. Her gentle, sensual beauty hit me in the chest with pride. She had so much to offer the world, her boundless heart and optimism, her artistry and talent. I felt the echo of my sacrifices in my chest as I looked at her as I was reminded once more of her endless potential, and I knew I’d done right by her.

That didn’t mean I wasevergoing to tell her what I’d done to help her find possibilities in this life.

I pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “Ti amo, bambina.”

“I’m not so innocent as a baby anymore, Cosima,” she protested, pushing me back so that she could look into my eyes. “You don’t need to coddle me. What did you mean earlier when you said you’ve been sad, used, dumb, and very nearly dead?”

It was my fault for being so dramatic. Giselle had announced she was doing a sexual study for her next art gallery showing, and my family had exhibited mixed reactions. To show her I was on her side, I’d immediately volunteered to be her first model, and when we had returned home from lunch, I shed my clothes and revealed a few of the secrets punched into my flesh.

I was lucky she hadn’t been able to discern the brand on my buttock, the twin lions roaring beside a shield of gold depicting pearls, thorns, and poppies.

Normal people didn’t voluntarily mar their skin with a red-hot branding iron, and even my considerable imagination was not enough to come up with an excuse for that.

Explaining the evolution of my relationship with my body was simple compared to that quandary.

“I only meant this; I was born with inherent value because people enjoy beautiful things and my body grew into a pretty vessel others could admire and lust at. Over the past few years, I’ve learned that people think a pretty girl is hollow, and they will try to fill me up with their desire and their greed, with their power and control like a puppeteer with a doll. I’m not so strong I’ve never succumbed to the headiness of their longing for me, not so sure I didn’t allow myself to be bent and reformed in a shape that suited them because it benefited me, but also, sometimes, it turned me on.”

I peered up at her through my lashes and saw her intensity, as if she was a lightning rod readily absorbing every single one of my electric words.

“There is power and sensuality in submitting to a formidable man,” I said with a brief shrug, turning back to the mirror to unravel my long black hair from the big red curlers they were held in. The curls spilled like wet ink over my bare shoulders. “There is also sadness, stupidity, and at the darkest spectrum of it, danger. This is what I meant.”

I watched Giselle swallow thickly in the mirror behind me. “You’re speaking of BDSM, right?”

A one-shouldered shrug that sent my hair sliding sensuously over the bare skin above my corset. Even talking about the act of dominance and submission set my womb to aching, my core fisting in a yearning, mournful clench.

“In all its forms and many expressions,” I agreed before sliding her a coy glance. “Is this something you are interested in, Gigi?”

Her blush flared across her face like a neon warning sign. She prevaricated, stepping closer to filter her charcoal-stained fingers through my hair to break up the curls.

“You know the man I told you about from Mexico?” she started quietly. “He made me feel as if the door to my pleasure could be unlocked as easily as saying ‘yes, sir.’”

She shivered slightly behind me, either in remembrance of a fantasy or with anxiety at divulging such a sinful secret.

I reached back to grab her arms and wrap them around my torso in a backward hug. I could see the uncertainty in her eyes, the same questions and longings I had struggled with for so many years.

Was there weakness in submission?

Shame in pain?

I knew the answer was no because I had been broken and reformed around that simple concept. It was a natural expression of desire that went beyond the sexual. In submission, I found self-assurance, generosity, and peace for the first time in my life.

As much as I wanted to reassure her, it wasn’t a question I could answer for my sister.

Sexuality was too individualistic to blanket with bromides.

So, I hugged her arms tight to my tummy and stared into her beautiful face in the mirror.

“I’m happy to hear you have found a man who excites you, especially after that dullard Mark from Paris.” She giggled at my words, and tenderness suffused my chest like fumes from a chemical high. “Just remember the power ofno. The Dominant is not the only one who makes the rules,si?”

She bit her lip and nodded, her gaze caught on something tucked in the farthest reaches of her mind. I took advantage of her distraction to entertain the real possibility that had been lingering at the corner of my preoccupied thoughts that Sinclair could very well be the man Giselle had found in Mexico.

I knew he’d once dabbled in the scene because he was the one who had urged me to try to find another Dominant when I confessed I’d been involved in a relationship of the kind in England.

I knew Elena detested kink with a bitter kind of verve that would take years of therapy and/or a very strong, resilient kind of man to temper and reform.