Page 179 of The Enslaved Duet

My exposed chest was segmented by lingering rope marks, the striation pink and white like candy cane stripes against my golden skin. They looked just as edible, and for one tantalizing second, I imagined Alexander whispering his mouth across them, tracing the marks with his tongue as if they had a taste and that taste was pure, distilled submission.

And I realized what it was that made me seem so different in my reflection.

For the first time in years, my body had been satiated and my heart held hope. The winning combination set my skin to glowing gold beneath the rope marks and made my eyes as radiant as twin burning stars.

Alexander appeared in the reflection behind me, his black suited frame filling the entire doorway. Languidly, his eyes trailed down my body, taking in the ill-fit of his belted shirt on my frame and the way my hair curled in smooth loops like calligraphy against the white fabric.

“Do you know,” he asked in that muted, deep voice that could move me like none other, “that you are the most exquisite woman I have ever had the privilege of laying eyes on?”

My voice was somewhere in my belly, burning on the hot coals of my banked but growing lust. I shook my head as he walked toward me, stopping just behind my back.

His fingers reached around my shoulder to trail gently down my cheek and then wrap one by one around the long column of my throat. Only then did he step flush against me, pulling me tightly by that hand until I could feel his erection hard and dangerous as a loaded gun against my spine.

“So golden, those money eyes,” he murmured as he dipped his head to press his lips and then his teeth to my neck over my fluttering, stuttering pulse point. “Yet you are something more precious than gold. At least to me.”

I moaned softly, tilting my ass into his hard cock, my tender throat into his teeth. “Xan.”

“Mmm,” he agreed with my unspoken plea, dipping his other hand in the open material gaping at my chest so that he could run one rough fingertip over the rope marks framing my tits. “I love seeing evidence of me on your skin.”

My hips gyrated roughly back at his, my nipples beading obviously through the thin shirt as he continued to meticulously stoke my arousal. I’d just come harder than ever at Club Bacchus, and I was still ravenously greedy for more of him, from him.

His teeth closed almost painfully hard over my neck, and then he was gone; the cold air where his body used to be like knife points against my sensitised skin.

I stared at him with a frown of unsettled confusion as he moved away to test the bathwater as if we hadn’t just been about to fuck again.

“Undress and get in, my beauty. The water is ready.”

I shed the dress shirt, holding still as it floated to the ground around me because I felt more than naked under the hot gaze of Alexander. I felt stripped down the wires, dissected and inspected like a bomb maker faced with his greatest challenge. Xan’s eyes swept over every inch of my flesh, hot and thorough as hot water, pinking my skin and heating my groin.

Only when he finished his visual inspection did he sit on the edge of the tub and offer his hand to me, silently ordering me to take it and step into the bath.

“You aren’t joining me?” I asked as my foot sank into the sting of heated water.

I’d wanted a repeat of the only other time I bathed with him, after the miscarriage when he had held me in his arms and made me feel as if I was the most precious of all his possessions. When Alexander smiled a small, knowing grin, I ducked behind the curtain of my hair to hide my embarrassment and slid into the water, dunking my head under the bubbles so that my stuttering heartbeat was all I could hear.

When I breached the surface, he was waiting for me. His fingers pinched my wet chin so that he could tip my gaze to his stone somber eyes.

“I’m going to tend to you while I explain some necessary things to you. If I were to get into the tub with you, I fear I wouldn’t have the strength to focus on the words instead of our bodies.”

A hot stone of desire wedged itself in my throat. I swallowed thickly before asking, “Is that a bad thing? I’ve missed the way you touch me.”

“I’m touching you now,” he said, emphasizing his point by sliding his fingers from my chin up my sloping jawline and into the hair over my ear. His other hand moved between my breasts, up the sharp jut of my collarbones to lightly collar my throat. “I don’t have to hurt you to show you how much I own you, my beauty. I own you with every touch of my hand and press of my lips. I own you with every word we exchange and every breath we take, even when you aren’t near.” His fingers tightened possessively. “How does it feel when I do this?”

“Like I’m yours.” I gasped lightly through the obstruction around my neck.

Lust pooled between my legs like hot sand.

He hummed in approval as he shifted to twist his torso farther over the lip of the tub and reach for the shampoo on the other side of me. I watched with a dry mouth as his big, capable hands squeezed out the gel and lathered it between his palms. My eyes were already closing as they landed on my scalp, smoothing through the thick pelt of my hair to knead firmly at my head. My sigh curled into the steam licking off the surface of the hot water and floated to the ceiling.

“And how does this feel,bella?” he asked again, ducking down to plant the words warmly in my ear before trailing his lips over my cheek. He placed a kiss on each of my closed lids like coins in offering to Charon.

My throat ached with the sudden desire to cry at his tenderness, but I swallowed it down, and whispered thickly, “Like I’m yours.”

“And isn’t that the truth?”

It was a real question, not his usual statements masquerading poorly as inquiries. I loved that he needed the words from me, that even though he had decided to reclaim me, I actually had some kind of say in it this time.

I tipped my head back into his softly churning hands in my hair so that I could latch gold to silver, so that he could read the truth in my melted butter eyes.