Page 208 of The Enslaved Duet

“Only if you think I do, Master,” I replied between my broken pattern of breath.

He groaned so gutturally he sounded like a beast faced with his next meal. I loved the animal side of him, the one that rutted and fucked as if it was his life’s purpose. Finding the last of my strength, I straightened my legs so that I could push back against his punishing thrusts again.

“That’s exactly right. I own your pleasure. I own your pink cunt, and your gold pierced clit, and your lush tits, and this sweet, fucking beautiful arse. And I’m going to sign you like an artist with his painting,” he growled as he thrust one last time, ground into me so deeply it curled my toes and made a second, smaller orgasm pulse through me and then there was emptiness and cold air around me, inside me and he was pumping his cock so that molten ribbon after ribbon of his seed spilled over my glistening skin.

When he finished, he lazily rubbed his thumbs through the cooling cum and kneading it into my flesh, testing the weight of my ass checks in each hand, dipping a sperm-coated finger into the sensitive rim of my opening just to test the resistance, just to feel me shudder and whimper for more even though I was spent.

“All fucking mine,” he practically purred as he placed a sweet kiss to the middle of my spine before pulling away.

He began to unwrap me from the posts and then gently free my hands, massaging them to bring back the lost circulation. When he was done, he carefully peeled my sweat-sticky torso off the countertop and lifted me into his arms. I wrapped my limbs around him, tucking my face into his neck with my nose against his pulse so I could smell his cedar forest fragrance as he walked us into the bedroom. He held me reverently, a father with a newborn child, as he pulled back the covers and dipped me beneath them, fluffing the pillows at my back until I was ensconced in cosiness. After gazing at me with exquisite tenderness as he pushed back an errant lock of my hair, he turned, naked and at ease, to walk back to the kitchen to clean up.

I snuggled deeper into the covers and stifled a yawn as my cat, Hades, jumped onto the bed and moved to curl up in the bowl of my lap, already purring. I scratched his ears as I waited for Alexander to return, wondering what was taking him so long, wondering if Mama, Sebastian, and Elena were together celebrating Christmas while Giselle and I were absent.

I had wanted to be with them, but not only was the auction more important, so was spending my first Christmas with Xan. Years ago at Pearl Hall didn’t count because I’d been enslaved at the time and barely able to comprehend why I loved his sexual games, let alone acknowledge that I actuallylikedmy captor.

“Close your eyes,” Alexander demanded from the hall. “And if you open them, Cosima, there will be terrible restitution to be paid.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Do not roll your eyes at me, little mouse,” he countered without even seeing me. “Close your eyes.”

I closed them, my heart tapping out a strange rhythm in my chest because the air in the room was suddenly close and heavy, the way the atmosphere changes dramatically before a storm. My ears strained as Xan walked into the room and to my side of the bed. The mattress depressed under his weight and then his hand was holding mine, tugging it over into his lap where he began to play with my fingers.

“I once told you that if I was ever moved to marry, it would be to give my future wife the protection of my name and the promise of my love no matter what may lay in the future. When I married you four years ago, I did it thinking I was only providing the first; the protection of my name. I thought I was a man without a heart and therefore without the propensity to care for you in any other way than as a possession. Then I was forced to wait in the wings for nearly half a decade in order to keep you safe from the evils of my world, and in doing so, I understood that the reason I married you was much more complex. I married you because I couldn’t imagine a day without you by my side, lighting up my dark world with your golden light and vibrancy. I did it because being close to you is never close enough, because I didn’t feel alive unless you were with me.”

I wanted to open my eyes, but I didn’t dare because he hadn’t given me permission. Besides, the darkness lent a tangibility to his words, as if they had their own heartbeat and breath, both pressed against my skin like a human body. I felt his love as solidly as I felt his hand cradle my own and after so many years of doubt, that was such a beautiful promise it made tears leak out the corners of my pleated lids.

“So, Cosima, my beauty, I have a different promise to give to you now that the Order is gone, Ashcroft is eliminated, and the Cosa Nostra scum who hurt you are dead. It’s a simple promise, but I hope it’s profound.” Alexander’s warm breath passed over my face as he pressed a kiss to both of my closed lids. “Open your eyes now,bella.”

I opened them, my sight filled with Alexander’s striking face, his gold-tipped lashes heavy fans over his dark, brushed pewter eyes. They were filled then with such awe-inspiring love, I couldn’t stem the weak sob that blossomed in my mouth like a wet rose.

Eyes open and locked to mine like a vow signed in the ink of our blood, he dipped his head to kiss each of my cheeks and then my lips, then my chin, all the way down my neck and along my left arm at the tender pulse points as if he wanted to transplant his love into the blood there until he reached my palm. I trembled as he planted a kiss in the center, then skirted his lips up each finger to brush them over the tip. When he reached my third ring finger, his mouth opened over the top and something glinted between his teeth in the low city light spilling in through the windows.

My heart arrested, my breath like amber trapping my emotions in my chest as he dropped a ring down my finger and then tugged it into place with his teeth. After kissing the top of it where it lay at the base, he pulled back to look in my eyes again.

“Before, I gave you the protection of my name,” he whispered, the words so sacred they felt hushed and as reverent as a prayer spoken in a holy place. “But now, I give you my whole heart and hope that you will let me prove to you every day from here on out, that I am worthy of yours in return.”

I was crying steadily, my breath nearly robbed clean by the strength of those cleansing, awed tears, but I needed to speak. I needed the beautiful, misunderstood man offering me his bleeding heart to know a simple truth that hadn’t changed for even one moment over the years.

The air I dragged into my lungs was threadbare but enough to sustain me to say, “I will spend the rest of my life proving to you that you are the greatest man I know, and that I will always love you irrevocably, even on the days you feel more like a villain than my hero.”

I threw myself at him them, hurtling across the covers so that I was entwined over his torso and lap like some choking vine. My fingers sank into his hair and twisted so that we were pressed as close as two human bodies could be. Only then did I move back enough to tip my forehead to his and look at the emotion glazed over his beautiful eyes.

“Il mio cuore è tuo,” I murmured in my mother tongue, because there was no other language better able to express the wealth of feeling I had for this man.

My heart is yours.

Xan wrapped his arms around me tight as a promise, and whispered against my mouth, “I’ll never want it back.”

“Good, it’s not returnable,” I said, my giddy joy making me giggle.

His eyes smiled in return, then sobered slightly. “I know before, Pearl Hall was your prison, but do you suppose one day, when Noel is long gone, that you could ever make it your home? It was only ever that, a home, when you were there with me.”

That dream I’d only ever dreamed of returning to Pearl Hall from The Hunt resurfaced in my mind, that girlhood dream of a prince and a castle being her very own.

I’d never had the luxury to dream that as a girl and never had permission to dream it as a slave, but now, as the true wife of my earl, he was giving me licence toliveit.

I nodded as I looked down between our faces at my left hand curled over his heart and caught my breath at the stunningly huge and clear yellow diamond on my finger.