Page 246 of The Enslaved Duet

I ended my third pass in the gymnasium and found Riddick waiting for me there, his eyes closed as he meditated seated on the ground in the middle of the mats.

Smiling, I crept toward him, not so much as a bone creaking or a joint popping as I made my way toward him and prepared to startle him out of his wits.

He cracked open an eye just as I reared back to scare him, and drily stated, “Heard you before you crossed the threshold, duchess. Even silk has a sound.”

I scowled down at my robe and then back at him. “One of these days, I’m going to scare the pants off of you, Riddick.”

He raised his brows as he unfolded his long, wide body and stood. “I doubt very much that my employer would be pleased his wife had seen me starkers.”

I blinked and then burst out laughing, holding my stomach to contain my glee. “Riddick,” I gasped. “Did you just make a joke?”

His face was expressionless as he said, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

I giggled again and had the immense satisfaction of seeing his lips twitch at the corners. I followed him as he led the way to the fencing equipment and didn’t say a word when I noticed he had laid out some of my old fitness clothes for me to change into. I knew thanking him for his thoughtfulness would only embarrass the quintessentially British stoic man.

But when he said softly, in his coarsely accented voice, so different than Xan’s posh English, “You were right brave, you were, Cosima. Never been prouder of a body in my entire life, and I was in the army,” I caved.

My arms were around his square torso in a second, my cheek pressed just under his rock-hard pectoral muscle. I felt as if I was hugging a boulder, and for a long moment, he was as still as one.

Then one arm wrapped gently, tenderly around my back, and the other found my head where it rested for a moment before patting me awkwardly.

“There, there,” he grunted. “No need to get all wound up. Everything’s sorted now, and you can finally have some peace, hmm?”

I looked up, up, up at him with my arms still locked, barely, around his middle, and I gifted him with one of my megawatt smiles. “You know, Riddick, that I love you very much, don’t you?”

A blush lay waste to his pallid skin like a forest fire, and his eyes shifted uneasily through the room as if he worried Alexander was in wait to accuse him of putting the moves on his wife. I bit back my laughter at his discomfort but decided to put him out of his misery by breaking free of my hold. I turned my back to give him a moment to compose himself and selected my rapier from the wall of weapons.

“I’m a bit out of practice,” I said over my shoulder as I took my things to get changed. “But if you lose, you have to go riding with me. I miss Helios.”

I left the room laughing as Riddick grunted his disapproval. He hated horses, and he was too much fun to discomfort not to make the most of the bet and win our little wager.

A few hours later, I was laughing again as I flew over the acreage of Pearl Hall on Helios, her sleek, powerful body churning up the earth in our wake. I peered over my shoulder to see Riddick as a speck on the hill behind me, his mount moving at a jerky, slow pace under his large form. There was no doubt in my mind Riddick had let me win purposefully. My left arm still burned slightly from the bullet graze and my feet were tender as I executed my footwork, slowed slightly by the pain. But Riddick had given me the victory as his own way of telling me he loved me too, and I appreciated it even as I giggled at his uneasiness on a horse.

I buried my laughter in Helios’s soft, hay smelling golden mane and kicked her into a soaring gallop. We transected the field of poppies Alexander’s mother had planted to remind her of her girlhood home in Italy, and dodged through the tight weave of trees in the forest before bursting through the clearing and up over the tallest peak so that I could survey every inch of the Davenport estate from atop my steed.

Helios and I were both panting, my monotone cream riding set saturated with sweat like my mare’s pale gold coat. My body would ache even more tomorrow after the unfamiliarity of the long, hard ride, but I knew I would relish it.

It was worth the ache and more, every single thing I’d been through to know every inch of the land I could see—the purpling heather over the far moors, the last of the morning fog swirling in the bowl of the valley near the little village of Thornton, the dark shadowed forest stretching horizontally over the estate like a belt cinching it all together—was all ours.

His and mine.

Mine, because I was his.

And by his own repeated declaration, he was mine.

Riddick plodded up the hill on his dappled grey mare, his forehead beaded in sweat, his short hair plastered to his head, and his expression deadly.

“All right, Rid?” I asked jauntily with a tip of my riding hat.

He scowled, his heavy brow compressed over his glittering eyes, but he didn’t say anything until he drew abreast of my mount. Then, he reached out to tug one of my thick plaited pigtails hard enough to make me wince but not enough to hurt, and he vowed, “I will never, ever go riding with you again. Alexander will have to buy a utility vehicle if he wants me charging off after you across the grounds.”

I tipped my head back to laugh at the great blue bowl of the sky, and when I recovered enough to tilt my chin down again, Riddick was riding off down the hill. I frowned as I made to call after him, but a voice beside me startled me into paralysis.

“I’ve seen you in some magnificent postures,” Alexander said mildly as if we were in the middle of a conversation already. He sat atop his great black stallion with his gloved hands crossed over the tooled leather pommel of the saddle. With his long, muscular thighs encased in stone-coloured riding pants and tall glossy black boots, and his wide shoulders and narrowed waist cinched in a velvet black blazer, Alexander looked every inch the lord of the manor. I took in the stubble lining his jaw like flecks of pure gold and noticed the strain in his cheeks from biting back a smile. “But it has to be said, Cosima, you are a sight to behold right now.”

Warmth suffused my chest and split my lips into a smile so wide, they ached. “It may be because I don’t think I have ever been so happy. I feel as if I could float away.”

“The threats that have weighed you down for so long are gone, so I’m not surprised you feel that way. Though”—he urged Charon closer to me so that he could snag my chin between his cool gloved fingers and force my eyes intently to his—“you will always have me to tether you.”