Page 201 of The Enslaved Duet

“He may not be my biological father, but he’s still the father of my two sisters and the man who had some part in raising me for eighteen years. I don’t want him hurt.” I didn’t think I could face Mama or my sisters after that.

The thought flared a memory, and I groaned loudly, thunking my head back against Xan’s hard chest. “I forgot, I have Thanksgiving dinner with my family tomorrow.”

My man went stiff as a chair beneath me.

“You don’t want me to go,” I accused, cluing into his unspoken uneasiness.

“I don’t want you to go anywhere ever again without me. At the very least, not while the Order and Noel are still active, even if the latter is slightly incapacitated.”

I understood. I didn’t want to be away from him for any length of time either. But my family was important to me and over the past few months since my reintroduction into Xan’s world, I’d been remiss at taking care of them the way I normally would.

I couldn’t miss Thanksgiving.

“Drop me off and then pick me up when we’re done?” I suggested, tipping my head back to look up at him.

He was so unbelievably handsome, I hiccoughed over my own breath looking at him like that. Even tired and worried, he was beautiful. I traced my fingers over the smattering of silver at the edge of his golden temples and knew that if he asked it of me, I would leave my family behind for him until it was safe for us to see them again.

He stared down at me, his intensity a palpable current in the air, but I knew the moment he decided against that course of action because his muscles softened slightly beneath me. His sigh breezed over my face as he shook his head. “What am I going to do with you?”

I smiled drowsily, exhausted from the day. “Nothing at the moment. I know there is more to talk about, but I need to sleep. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” he said in a voice like a lullaby as his fingers threaded gently through my hair. “Sleep, my beauty.”

And I did.

I slept through the car ride home and through Xan carrying me into the building up to my apartment. I slept when he took off my slinky dress and replaced it with his button-up, and I only woke when I heard a raised voice in the living room.

I froze immediately, then slunk out of bed and crept to the door to peek out, seeing Dante pacing powerfully back and forth in the kitchen, an agitated panther to Xan’s lounging, regal lion.

“You aren’t good for her, and you fucking know it,” Dante was saying. “You say you’ve changed, but if you were suddenly the better man you claim, you wouldn’t be here endangering her like this.”

“I didn’t say I was agoodman,” Alexander retorted drily, swirling his whiskey in his glass. “I said I had changed for the better.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“For who?” Xan challenged idly. “For Cosima or for you?”

There was a percussion beat of silence.

“For her.”

“No, not for Cosima. You understand this even if you don’t want to, but Cosima is drawn to the dark. Those things which make me less like a hero and more like a villain, she is entranced by like a moth to a flame. As long as I don’t let her burn up, there is not harm for her in mybadness, only lust and passion and connection.”

“Armchair psychologist now?”

“I believe that isyou, Edward. It’s hard to believe you are the same man with a master’s degree in behavioral psychology from Oxford, isn’t it? Tell me, does that degree help you manipulate your Made Men?”

Ice and fire.

Alexander and Dante.

One wasn’t exactly better than the other, but they were both formidable, both with egregious flaws and defining strengths.

I was trapped in Alexander’s icy embrace, and I was happy there, but I could understand the allure of the other’s heat, especially as he fought for me.

Going up against Alexander was not for the weak-hearted.

Dante sighed loudly, raking his hands through his thick hair so that it clumped into wavy ropes over his skull. “Tore and I could give that to her in small measures. She was happy enough without you.”