Page 220 of The Enslaved Duet

I was stirred out of my reverie by the sound of voices downstairs and a heavy tread on the creaking wooden stairs. A moment later, the door opened on my Alexander, his hair wind tousled into rows of flaxen wheat, his silver eyes glittering with victory.

“We found him,” he told me with cold triumph that felt like a trophy tossed between us. He closed the door and went to me, crawling over my prone body on his hands and knees so he loomed over me. “We found the bastard who shot you, and my beauty, we killed him.”

“I told you, I don’t need you to go on a killing spree for me,” I reminded him even though the thrill of knowing the man who had tried to kill me was gone made my heart palpitate.

“I did terrible things to steal your love. Do you think I won’t commit crimes even more atrocious to win you back?” he asked, with such solemnity it felt like a preacher asked me to disavow a lesson from God.

“No,” I said honestly and watched him smile. “And I can’t say I don’t love you for that.”

His joy skittered over me like an electric current, rippling gooseflesh across my skin. I wrapped my arms and legs around him to pull him down on top of me and smiled in his face.

“Thank you,” I breathed against his lips because I sealed my gratitude with a long, lingering kiss.

He took control of the embrace, hauling me even tighter against his body, his tongue plundering my mouth until I whimpered.

“One less evil against us,” I said breathlessly when he pulled away.

My fingers played in the hair over his temple, stroking over the flecks of silver there that made him look deliciously distinguished. He smelled of cold, clean air and just a hint of his forestry scent. I pressed my nose to his throat to get closer to the scent.

He was curiously still against me for a heartbeat before he tipped his head to ask quietly in my ear, “If all the monsters were slayed and all the obstacles were removed and the only thing left was you and me, would you stay?”

“Would you ask me to?” I countered even as my heart began to beat so forcibly I wondered if it would crack a rib.

“Yes,” he said simply as if it was obvious.

“Why?”

“Would you stay?” he reinforced with a gritted kind of determination as if he couldn’t begin to answer for his motivation unless I responded first.

“I’d need a reason.”

I didn’t. The reason was him; it always had been. I’d learned my reason for living wasme. No one could take my life from me again unless I let them. But my reason for happiness? That was answered by the man on top of me, every diamond hard, brilliant cut, multifaceted inch of him.

He spoke slowly, each word had weight and substance like a physical thing polished and placed before me, a jeweled necklace of a phrase. “Would you stay…if I told you I love you?”

Every molecule of my being stopped functioning. My breath evaporated in my lungs, my heart calcified and ceased to beat, my body went numb with shock.

“I thought you didn’t have a heart to love me with?” I asked carefully because this could very well be too good to be true.

Maybe he was just manipulating me, maybe he needed to use me again for some nefarious purpose.

Of maybe, just maybe, this was real.

His goodness since his return to my life was not a ruse, but a promise of only more goodness to come.

I held my breath as the dreams I’d dreamed in vapor began to solidify in front of me.

Alexander’s expression was one I had never seen before, his hard features softened like melting butter under the heat of burning passion in his molten metal eyes. The fingers of one hand whispered across my jaw and then cupped my throat.

“It appears I did all along. It was just locked away from me, and the only person who could access it was you.”

Tears sprang to my eyes and spilled over, a waterfall breaking through a yearlong dam. I wanted to speak, but my emotions were too big, swelling in my throat and robbing me of a voice.

Instead, I mouthed, “I love you.”

He didn’t smile as I thought he would. If anything, his expression grew tighter, filled with a tension I couldn’t understand. “I know I’m not worthy of you. You deserve so much more than I’ve given you, that I ever could give, but I promise to try to earn your love and devotion every day for the rest of our lives if you’ll let me.”

“I’m your slave,” I told him on a wet laugh. “Where else would I rather be than at your side?”