Page 245 of The Enslaved Duet

We indulged so much my pussy was still puffy, and my skin was riddled with red marks and bruises like the spring fields of poppies and blossoming bluebells exploding over the British countryside.

I couldn’t really complain that Alexander didn’t have time to fuck me when that was essentially all he’d done for the past three days, but I was still put out.

“Please,” I breathed even as I tilted my hips and began to churn against him. “If you have to be gone all day, I need you inside me one more time.”

Alexander ignored me, leaning over to grab his phone from the nightstand and then grabbing a silk grey pillow to prop behind his back before he resettled. His eyes were on the screen, his face utterly expressionless as he finally said, “Either come like this,topolina, or not at all.”

His disinterest lit a box of matches in my groin and before I could censure myself, I was gyrating, grinding against him. The scrape of his leg hairs against my clit and the hard heat of his muscled thigh pressed flush to my wet and blooming sex coupled with his relentless passivity had me orgasming before I knew it. My soft cry punctured the air as I shuddered against him, arms wrapped tightly around his narrow waist to hold me steady while I spasmed.

While I lay there, my panting breath rippling gooseflesh over his torso, Alexander continued to read his email, fingers moving rapidly over the screen. There was a whoosh as an email was sent off, and then all of the sudden, I was under him, his body so heavy it stole my breath.

His face was in mine, his impassive expression broken open with the inflexible cast of his lust. I gasped into his mouth as he pressed it against mine, as his hand found my swollen, achy sex and pressed deliciously hard against it.

“Does your pussy hurt yet,bella? Does it ache from the stretch and thrust of my cock? I think I fucked you fifty times in the last thirty-six hours, and I want you to feel every single one of those fucks in this pretty cunt.”

I was moaning before he’d finished speaking, panting for more like a shameless wanton. There was something extraordinary that happened to a well-used pussy; the more you fucked it, the better it felt, and the more it wanted.

Or maybe that was just me.

And I was finding, as Alexander wedged the crown of his big cock into my nearly swollen closed folds, that I was okay with my insatiable desires because Alexander was an insatiable man.

I walked the entire house three times. The first time was leisurely, touching everything as I passed, feeling the texture of the 15th century tapestries and the smooth curves of the carved wooden antiques, squishing my bare toes in the Persian rugs, and spending long moments gazing into the collection of priceless artworks lining the walls. None of the remaining servants bothered me as I walked like a wraith in my white silk robe through the haunted and hallowed halls of the house that I vowed to make into a home. They seemed to sense that I needed the freedom to roam after so long confined to one place, specific rooms. On my second pass, I delved deeper, finding the keys in the study that opened some of the locked doors I’d always wondered about. I found what must have been Rodger’s room, decked out in antique weaponry and European football posters, and Noel’s collection of rooms, all dark and musky with his scent, a fragrance I associated acutely with evil.

Those rooms would be stripped to the bare necessities and revamped entirely.

If this was to be my home, as I assumed it would be given that lords usually lived on their estates and Alexander’s business was based in London, it was going to be one exorcised of ghosts.

So, when I found a room decorated in the soft mauves and nearly translucent blues of a dawn in a tropical paradise, I designated it as Giselle and Sinclair’s future escape when they visited. Then again, when I found a bold black and red room with an oriental theme that seemed strong and bold enough for my Elena, and once more with the small, but beautifully cozy room abutting a long-ago used nursery that I knew would perfectly suit Mama.

On my third pass, I barely opened my eyes. I counted the marble steps as I took them, feeling the cold, smooth rock under my feet, the way my hand fit perfectly to the carved curves of the bannister as my palm slid across it. I breathed in the yeasted, damp scent of the kitchen and the wet, close air of the greenhouse perfumed with hundreds of exotic flowers and the slightly acrid tint of the pond water there. I imagined scenes of laughter in the den where I’d once played chess with Noel, transposing an image of Alexander and I playing there instead, shedding our clothes each time we capitulated a piece to the other. I thought of the massive Douglas fir Riddick would cut down for us from the forest in the back that we would decorate for Christmas and place in the corner of the main living room, and of the stockings we would hang from the famous black marble fireplace with its demons and angels intertwined up the columns.

When I reached the kitchen, I stopped in the doorway to watch as Douglas gave a sound little speech to some of the new staff Alexander and Riddick had already hired.

“I run a tight ship, lads and lasses.” Douglas gestured grandly to his kitchen wearing the bandage over his cut head like a crown. “This is a serious place of business because food and pastry are serious undertakings. I won’t have any of you cocking up my schedule, so adapt quickly or you’ll be sent packing, you hear? The duke and duchess have been through…a lot in the last fortnight, or really, in the last two decades. They don’t need willful or imbecilic servants making shambles of their happily ever after.”

A young boy, no more than sixteen, tentatively raised his hand. “’S true that the lord killed his own father in the back garden, then?”

Douglas’s boyish face contorted with a glare as he rapped his wooden spoon over the boy’s knuckles where they lay on the table. “Ask another impertinent question again and you’ll be gone from here. There will be no idle gossip about the master and mistress of Pearl Hall, not where I can hear you if you know what’s good for your knuckles and your bellies, and not where his Grace can find out, if you know what’s good for your safety and your pocketbooks.”

I was tempted to laugh at Douglas’s threats, but instead, I arranged my face into a polite mask and stepped up to say, “Chef O’Shea is correct about one thing.” I waited as the staff all whipped toward me with varying awed and terrified expressions. It was clear they had all heard about Noel’s and Rodger’s deaths, about the pall over Pearl Hall, but I wouldn’t have them being scared of Alexander and me. “He is a fearsome beast when he’s angry.”

I winked at them, and they all shifted awkwardly in their seats, sharing looks that questioned whether they were meant to laugh or not.

Douglas stepped in with a shake of his wooden spoon at me. “You’re one to talk. I’ve not met a woman so grumpy as you when you’ve not eaten.”

I shrugged. “Happily, you keep me well fed.”

Douglas preened for me, and I laughed, moving over to press a kiss to his rosy cheek. I’d always been affectionate, but in the wake of the latest events, I found myself unable to see Riddick and Douglas, two of the knights who had risked their lives to help me, without touching them. It was only one of the myriad of ways I sought to show my gratitude and love for the next few decades.

Some of the staff looked horrified by my closeness with Douglas, so I decided to nip that in the bud before I continued my tour of the house. I sat on the edge of the table even though Douglas swatted at me and smoothed my robe so that it covered my legs as if it was a priceless gown.

“Listen, I’ve no doubt you heard the stories about what has happened at Pearl Hall recently…and maybe not so recently. As with any place of history, there are many stories here, both good and bad. What I want to promise you is this: there will be no more bad stories here. At least, not while Xan and I live. The past is done and, quite literally, buried. If you wish to stay on at Pearl Hall, know that you do it not just as a servant but as part of a family. We will expect you to do your duties, but we also expect you to contribute to the positive atmosphere of the home. You see, we have loads of new memories that need planting in these gardens and hanging on these walls. If you don’t feel you can keep mum on the past and any strange goings-on, you may find happen here, then no hard feelings, but please leave. If you think you’d be happy in a home, however grand Pearl Hall may seem, please stay and I’ll be so happy to know you as the opportunities arise.”

Collectively, the group of twelve or so servants blinked at me, but none of them rose to leave the table so I took it as a good sign. With a sigh, I stood and pressed another kiss to Douglas’s cheek in farewell.

He stilled me for a moment with a hand on my arm. “Not mistress more than a day and you’re already the best duchess Pearl Hall has ever seen, ducky.”

I blinked away the sharp sting of tears and squeezed his hand before I dropped it in a mute but poignant thanks. Then I swept from the room and continued my third walk of the house.