Page 28 of The Enslaved Duet

He continued to speak as he moved through the closet into the enormous marble bathroom beyond that had clearly been recently updated. I watched as he moved to the rain shower encased in glass and turned it on. “You will bathe me and dress me, then see me off every morning. When I return each night, you will be waiting in the great hall in your position, naked and waiting for me.”

“And while you are gone? Will I be made to sit in the ballroom all day contemplating my servitude and shackles?”

I was going to go crazy if I spent too much more time alone in that blackhole of a place.

Alexander studied me with a furrowed brow, and I noticed just how clear his grey eyes were, so dark a grey they were nearly black before arrowing near the pupils into a colour so clear it seemed crystal.

He was truly the most beautiful monster.

“You’ve pleased me relatively well in the past twenty-four hours, so I’ll allow you run of the house while I’m away. The rooms that are unlocked are the only ones you have access to. Do not attempt to take advantage of my generosity by breaking in to forbidden places.”

I pouted before I could stop myself, but to my complete shock, my expression made Alexander chuckle softly and gently pinch my chin between his fingers so he could better look at me.

“What a delight your youth is,” he murmured, seemingly surprised by his enjoyment. “I cannot remember the last time someone stood up to my tyranny or pouted in the face of my rules. It’s oddly endearing,topolina.”

“At least you admit that you’re a tyrant.”

“Oh, a tyrant of the highest order. One who rules with absolute power,” he assured me, his tone oddly playful even though his face was cold, almost vacant in its impassivity.

“And you are utterly confusing,” I told him, slightly breathless because interacting with Lord Thornton was like what I imagined riding a roller coaster would feel like, a constant change of atmosphere.

Whatever softness had lurked in his eyes solidified even though his grasp on my chin remained gentle. “If you trust anything about me, trust this. I am your Master, and I will be hard on you. I will break you and reform you into my ideal slave because there is no other option for either of us. If you believe in anything, let it be my cruelty and have my occasional lapse in judgement where I might be kind, be something to enjoy and then discount.”

“But why does it have to be this way?” I asked, an edge of desperation to my tone as I stepped close, my nipples brushing against his lower chest. “I just don’t understand why you’d do this to me?”

“Sometimes we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes we are born to bad people and live a bad life. There doesn’t always have to be a reason for misfortune, Cosima.”

“No,” I agreed, feeling those words like a punch to the sternum. “But there is for this.”

“There is.”

“You said something when I was out of it about being your enemy. Please, explain it to me,” I begged, my pride drowned in a tidal wave of hope-fueled curiosity.

“What have I told you? This is a give and take relationship, my beauty. You give, and I take. If you please me, I will reward you. You have not even begun to please me enough to earn the answer to the question of your slavery.” His grip on my chin tightened painfully, and he dipped down to bite hard into my lower lip. “You can begin now by bathing me.”

“Bathing you?” I asked incredulously as he stepped away and prowled over to the enormous walk-in shower to turn it on. “Only children need help bathing.”

His face was set in stone when he turned to look at me. “Clearly, that’s untrue as I am a grown man and I require your assistance. I’m surprised you forgot, I also promised you a shower. Two birds one stone,bella.”

I watched as the grown man in question turned to enter the shower, revealing his perfectly sculpted behind topped with deep dimples at the base of his back.

My mouth watered as he stepped under the rain shower. I couldn’t help but watch as the water turned his hair to tarnished gold and every inch of his lightly tanned skin to bronze.

“Slave,” he called out. “Tend to me.”

I shuddered as I fought back my animal desire for him.

I was no animal, and I would not give in to such base instincts even though I knew myself well enough to understand I’d always been too much of a hedonist to resist gorging myself on various delights for any length of time.

And Master Alexander’s body was certainly a delight.

I pushed through the glass door into the quickly steaming shower. Without speaking, Alexander handed me a bar of soap that smelled of pine trees and presented me with the broad, muscle swathed expanse of his back.

I watched my hand lift to rub the soap over his skin, how it trembled as I moved in broad circles over the topography of his spine.

I had never washed a man before.

It was a silly observation. I was a woman and a virgin, so obviously, I’d never been in a similar situation before. But this intimacy seemed to extend beyond sexuality into the realm of real intimacy.