Page 63 of The Enslaved Duet

They could have been two sides of the same coin, contrary though they were, they had the same colossal bodies packed with muscle, Edward’s perhaps even more quilted, and broad faces so beautiful they made my eyes ache in their sockets.

Yet that was where the similarities ended. Edward was coloured not in precious metals like his brother, but inshadows, his hair as ink stained as my own, his eyes so deep a brown they seemed to swallow the light, and his skin tanned and polished to a glossy bronze. The bearing of his broad shoulders was not regal but forceful; his hands large and blunt tipped like some medieval weapons of torture.

He seemed more weapon than man.

His eyes slid to mine swiftly, and our gazes collided like two cars on an icy road. I felt the crash in my gut and shuddered as it passed through me.

I blinked, and his eyes were still there, watching me as though he knew me and even more, held some bizarre degree of familiarity and affection for me.

I gasped quietly when he had the audacity to throw me an almost imperceptible wink.

“How dare you show your face in this house after what you have done?” Alexander asked in his quiet voice filled with fury that boiled so hot and deep within his chest he seemed like a living volcano.

“He is a member of the Order of Dionysus, Thornton. He has arightto be here,” Sherwood stated implacably.

“Whatever right he had was stripped along with his surname and inheritance the moment he joined sides with the villain who killed my mother.” I had never seen Alexander so wholly still. He was on security lockdown, every vault spun shut, every door coated over in titanium so that not one of his vulnerabilities could escape or be plundered by the ruthless men in the room. “I hope you brought him to take responsibility for his actions.”

“We brought him here to test you, if you must know,” Landon drawled, his eyes wicked as they darted between Alexander and myself. “You will watch from the gallery as we put slave Davenport through her testing, and you will not intervene in anyway. Will you, Thornton?”

Alexander stood mutely for a moment, but despite his quiet stillness, it was evident he was struggling internally with a cyclone of emotion.

My Master might have been a cruel one, but he had never hurt me, not irreparably, not more than my body could stand or my mind couldn’t translate into pleasure.

The other men of the Order, I knew, would have no such boundaries.

My skin went suddenly very cold.

“If we find you’ve developed feelings for the girl,” Sherwood said coldly, peering at Alexander as if he was a turncoat of the highest order. “Not only will the girl be taken from you, but we will have to consider your punishment. You remember what happened to Baron Horst, do you not?”

“Crippled,” a man sitting to Alexander’s right leaned over to sneer quietly at me. “Couldn’t take the whipping like a real man.”

“Of course, you’re familiar with the Order’s punishments. You were only twenty-two when you stood up for the Russian slave, weren’t you?” Sherwood continued.

My mind immediately conjured up the thin white scars dissecting Alexander’s otherwise flawless back. I kept my eyes focused on the ground as they burned with tears.

I didn’t know who I was more sorrowful for. Myself for my upcoming ordeal, or Alexander for being raised and ruled by such a barbarian group of men.

The room hung in animated silence as they waited for Alexander’s verdict, and even though I knew the impossibility of his decision, my heart still turned to ash in my chest when he spoke the words I knew he would say.

“Take her, beat her, flay her, and bring forth her tears. She’s just a slave to me. It’s only her body that brings me pleasure.”

They set up in the gymnasium. It was clear orders had been given before dinner to arrange the space for their intended show because a strange apparatus shaped like a massive X was settled beside a wheeled table filled with sex toys and equipment. They had known Alexander would capitulate to their demands.

Alexander’s cryptic threats about predators more powerful than himself suddenly made blood-curdling sense.

Two men carried me in.

Alexander was not one of them.

They had parted us immediately after he acquiesced to the demonstration, but I caught sight of him on the small set of bleachers, sandwiched between two stocky men who looked ready to rip his head off if he made one wrong move.

I swallowed thickly as the men dragged me over to the huge cross and bound my limbs to each branch of the X, facing away from the gathering crowd and the Master who would test me. The cuffs weren’t leather as they usually were, but cold, sharp metal that bit into my skin too tightly. The man on my left laughed under his breath as I gave my wrists a little jerk and winced.

He liked me in pain.

They all did.

I was the lone masochist in a room full of cruel sadists with no one to temper their lust.