Page 189 of The Enslaved Duet

“Well, yes. My uncle…he won’t be happy I’m not with you anymore,” he admitted with a tense groan. “I don’t know how I’ll handle this.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I truly meant it. Mason had been such a good friend to me over the years, and I felt badly for leaving him to deal with his oppressive, old-school thinking family. But I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of Alexander and me, not anymore.

I was just pulling a sheer black blouse over my lace bra when Xan emerged from the bathroom on a cloud of steam looking like a wet gold statue stolen from the Pantheon. Immediately, my mouth went dry at the sight of him.

He frowned at the phone in my hand. “Who?”

“Mason,” I mouthed to him before saying into the cell, “I’ve got to go, honey. I hope we can get together when things are less crazy for me. If you need any help with your family, let me know.”

“It would help us both if you left that guy,” he muttered darkly, but when I only laughed at him, he sighed. “Fine. Take care of yourself, Cosima. I don’t get a good feeling about any of this.”

Xan stalked toward me, wrapping an arm around my hips to tug me against his damp body so he could place a kiss behind my ear and then a line of them down my jugular. I shivered, hung up the phone, and dropped it to the dresser behind me, Mason totally forgotten as Alexander whispered, “On your knees,topolina, I missed you in the shower, and I feel the need to show you just how much.”

Alexander

The man we needed to see lived in a large home in a small town in upstate New York, and he had done since he immigrated to this country after being tossed out of the upper crust of British Society. I knew this because I had helped to relocate him and his money to the new country in order to keep him safe from further harm.

I had told Cosima the story about what happened after she disappeared at our wedding, how I’d decided to head the Order’s demands and punish Simon Wentworth for the exact crimes I myself had committed. She had listened with pursed lips and sad eyes, keeping her condemnations to herself. Ours was not a world of black and white, and she knew better than to guilt me about Simon when I’d been forced in to an impossible position. We’d both made tough choices, and we both knew what it meant to live with them.

Still, I was watching her face when we pulled up the drive of the old stone house and knocked on the door. I wanted to see how she would react to the reveal.

She didn’t disappoint.

The moment Simon Wentworth opened the door, she gasped.

I was right. She recognized him from the night of The Hunt.

She recoiled a step just as Simon’s pale, pleasant face broke into a wide grin, and he stepped forward to embrace me in a back-thumping embrace.

“Thornton, old chap, what the hell are you doing on my doorstep?” He laughed as he pulled back. “It’s been an age since you telephoned.”

“I’ve been busy,” I said, inclining my head to Cosima at my left to indicate just how busy I had been.

Simon’s face collapsed like a sandcastle into the sea. He stared at Cosima for a long moment, emotions playing out behind his eyes as he absorbed the shock of seeing her standing there.

“You remember me,” he breathed finally, his expression creased and stained with old memories and stale shame.

Cosima hesitated, then nodded, moving slightly toward me in an unconscious appeal for comfort. I heeded it, taking her far hip in my grip to move her into my side.

“I, well, I don’t really know what to say,” Simon confessed, blowing out a gust of air as he ran a hand through his thicket of hair. “I was abominable, really. Just the worst of the worst. All I can offer is that I was terrified and in love. At the time, going after you seemed the best course of action.”

“Because you were worried they would find out about you and your slave?” she asked quietly.

“Daisy,” he said as his face spasmed with pain, and his voice dropped to a breathless whisper. “Her name was Daisy.”

“They killed her?” she confirmed; her eyes so wide and gold they rivaled the sun glaring coldly from the winter sky.

Simon took comfort in those eyes, straightening his spine as he nodded. “They did. Before they got to me, they found her, and…well, no need to rehash the details. Needless to say, I am terribly sorry for my behavior. I have an excuse, though, there really isn’t any good reason I should have scared you like that.”

“I think it’s a good reason,” she said softly, stepping forward to place a hand on Simon’s arm. “I think it’s thebestreason.”

Simon’s lip trembled slightly before he rolled it between his teeth to stymie the show of weakness. “It’s no wonder a man like Thornton would be enamoured with a woman like you.”

Cosima tilted her head to the side in question.

“So much light and softness,” he explained with a small, private smile. “It’s an Achilles heel for men such as us.”

“Dark men.”