Page 173 of The Enslaved Duet

“By who?” I whispered, so afraid of the answer I barely dared to ask the question.

Yana shuddered violently, then finally, her fear of the name she spoke more than the fear of Alexander, she lifted her eyes to his and said, “Master Noel.”

Alexander

“She didn’t know anything more,” I told Alexander, trying to calm the barely leashed fury that threatened to overtake him as he sat beside me in the Town Car, furiously texting someone.

Yana had disappeared almost immediately after her confession when the council had finally concluded The Trials and announced Alexander and me as the winners. She hadn’t wanted to be punished for being outside her Master’s orders, and I couldn’t blame her for it. In fact, I was sure if it wasn’t for Alexander taking that whipping for her as a boy, she wouldn’t have ever dreamt of slipping out of di Carlo’s house in the first place.

The last thing she had said of any consequence was that di Carlo would be sitting a card game in Little Italy at an underground casino the next night, and only then, after Alexander used his Dominant voice on her.

It wasn’t much to go off, but it was enough to leave me reeling.

Noel had been keeping an eye on me through a spy for years through the Cosa Nostra family, and it made me sick to my stomach to think of all the information he might have gleaned.

“She knows more,” Alexander bit out, the harsh lines of his face made steeper by the bright light of his phone screen as he glared down at a message. “If not, she could if only she wanted to.”

“She risked her safety by meeting you there. You should have asked her to meet you more discreetly,” I chastised him.

His eyes swept from the phone to where I sat beside him, pinning me in place so forcibly I couldn’t even draw breath. “There isn’t much more discretion for a slave wearing an unlockable collar and shackles around her wrists and ankles than Club Bacchus. No one notices slaves there, no one will have noticed one more, especially one as meek and well trained as Yana. It was safe as I could make it and necessary too.”

“It was risky, probably for both of you,” I countered, turning to find solace in the streets passing like blurred, dark watercolours passing out the window.

His scoff was haughty, so condescending I didn’t have to see his face to know how his brows would be raised, his mouth puckered like an exclamation mark punctuating my stupidity. “I shuddered to think how you may react if you knew just how many ‘risks’ I’ve taken over the past four years to see you safe.”

I swallowed the thick swell of longing in my throat and nearly choked on the impossible obstruction. Alexander’s hand collected the spill of hair down my back and wrapped it unerringly around his palm until my head was forced to turn his way to lessen the tension and my mouth parted on a slightly gasp of pain. He was waiting for me, his eyes glittering like the sheen of a knife’s edge as they cut into the heart of me.

“There is no one I wouldn’t kill for you. No crime I wouldn’t commit or atrocity I wouldn’t instigate if it meant keeping you safe and keeping you mine.”

“I’m not yours,” I told him, more breath than sound.

I hated the way my body defied me in favour of him even in that small way.

He had his hooks in me so deep that they were embedded in my DNA.

“You are,” he said simply, an irrefutable fact. I sucked in a breath through my teeth as he banded a hand across my lower back and snapped my torso forward into his. My curves submitted to his hard lines, and I hated how beautifully we fit.

I bit my lip but didn’t argue because my body betrayed me more readily than my words could ever defend me. I decided a change of topic was a better strategy and pulled out of his hold to give myself needed space to think more clearly. “Did you know Noel was watching me?”

His eyes burned like arctic ice against my skin. “Of course. He’s not a man who lets his prey run loose and free. Unfortunately, I only recently realized how obvious it was that he had been keeping an eye on you…I only needed to ask who he could have used to accomplish such a thing to think to seek out Yana. After all, she has been one of his most powerful tools of trade for a long, long time.”

I wanted to tell him that Noel had been the one to send me fleeing four years ago, that he had beaten me within an inch of my sanity and forced me to run.

But I wouldn’t, not when I didn’t understand why Xan had finally returned to me after all this time.

“Why are you here, Alexander?” I asked him, suddenly so weary that the words felt misshapen and heavy leaving my lips.

His golden brow knotted, and his fury slithered through the car like smoke, thick and carcinogenic. “You can honestly doubt my intentions after everything I’d said to you in the last thirty-six hours?”

“Is there really any doubt that I would?” I countered, my own anger creeping through my exhaustion. “You’ve played me like a yo-yo for years. I have no idea of your real intent. How could I?”

“You once told me you loved me,” he reminded me ruthlessly, suddenly in my space, both hands twined in my hair so my face was pinned against his, nose to nose, eyes nearly crossed as they connected. “And I once promised I would take that from you; your love, your body, and your devotion. I’m a man of my word, Cosima. I’ve come to take what you’ve always wanted to give me.”

“Are you trying to tell me you love me?” I demanded because he was still crafting puzzles with his words and my wary heart needed confirmation.

I would not give in to less than his reciprocity.

He stared at me still, his eyes working beneath his heavy lids, his jaw so taut I worried it would break under the strain.