Page 16 of The Enslaved Duet

I never could have known absence—of light, of sound, of food and drink, but most of all, company—could be weaponised so savagely.

But I felt run through by the steel edge of my lonesomeness, and I knew the next time Alexander stood in the doorway, I would be ready, though unwilling, to kneel and greet my Master.

The next time he opened the door, I was standing.

It took energy I didn’t have, and my legs shook, but I faced the door with my hands fisted on my hips and my chin squared.

It was a longer way to fall to my knees, but I had a point to prove.

I wasn’t a mindless, soulless slave.

I was a human, a woman, and an Italian one at that. I had too much spine to crumple without a fight.

“My beauty,” Alexander said, his accented voice quiet but carrying. “Are you ready to kneel and greet your Master?”

“I am. Though I’d like to discuss it first.”

There was cool humour in his tone as he made his way across the long room. “Oh? I’m curious enough to allow it.”

I bit my lip to keep from raging at him for his arrogance.

“I want to say first that I understand the bargain I entered into to keep my family safe. I won’t do anything to jeopardize their safety, so yes, I’m willing to kneel and be the sick slave you need to slack your deviant tendencies.” He was close enough then to see his eyes flash like lightning-filled storm clouds. “But I need you to know that I’m more than just your property or a hole for you to stick your cock into.”

I pulled in a shaky deep breath and steeled my shoulders against the tsunami of sorrow crashing over my head. “Each time I touch you, I will be thinking about my hands braiding my sister’s hair, tending to my brother’s scrapes and bruises, and rolling semolina dough with my mama. Every time you ask me to kneel, I will think about sitting in a field of poppies on a Napoleon hillside and running my fingers over their silken edges. When you force me to take you inside my body, I will remember the tender dreams I had of love and romance as a girl before I knew better, and I will hide in those memories until you are done.

“You may own my body, Lord Thornton, but you will never own my mind, my spirit, or my heart.”

I stood there with tears on my cheeks, my chest heaving as if I had just completed a race, and I stared at him in pure, joyous defiance.

The revolutionary had spoken.

There would be no rebellion, but it felt magnificent to give my anarchist a voice in the face of this tyrant.

Alexander blinked from where he had come to a stop not two feet before me. Slowly, he raised his hands, and for a second, I believed he would strike me down.

Instead, he clapped.

Slow, powerful smacks of sound that took my traumatized mind straight to spankings and red ass cheeks.

He was clapping for me.

“Well done,topolina, very well done.”

I bristled at the Italian nickname. “Little mouse” didn’t exactly denote strength against adversity.

“I commend your show of spirit,” he praised, and I could see that praise in his eyes, heated and dark like banked embers.

A shiver ripped viciously down my spine, and instantaneous regret flooded through to my bones.

He liked my show of spirit because there was more challenge in the squashing of it.

I held my breath as he stepped even closer, the luxe fabric of his designer suit tickling the bare skin of my thighs, rasping across the sensitive peaks of my pierced breasts. His dark eyes were my entire world as he wrapped a big hand around my throat, curling each finger one by one against my pounding pulse point.

“To own this body is enough,” he growled. “For now.”

Then he leaned forward, his thick lashes fluttering closed as he nipped my chin firmly with his teeth and trailed his tongue along the path of a fallen tear over my cheek. His breath fanned over my cheek, his lips against my temple, and his hand even tighter around my neck as he whispered, “But one day, it won’t be, and I’ll come for it all. Your mind, your spirit, and your innocent heart.”

He pulled back just enough to stare into my eyes the way an astrologer might into the star-filled sky. I felt catalogued by him, defined by words I didn’t understand in a language that was dead to everyone but him.