Page 65 of The Enslaved Duet

On the tenth whiplash, I felt my skin part like butter under the knife of the leather whip. Blood trickled down my spine and pooled in the twin dimples over my ass, tempting Knox to thrash me harder, the colour inciting his bull-like wrath.

By the fifteenth score, I couldn’t breathe through the mess of snot and tears clogging my nose and the air through my mouth was metallic with blood. At some point, I had bitten clean into my cheek and pink-tinged saliva slid out over my chin.

My mind wanted to break through its physical tethers to my body and float away into space, a balloon lost to the atmosphere. It would have been so easy to sever the ties, to evacuate my pain-riddled limbs and lose myself entirely, but I wouldn’t do it.

There was something like losing in the thought of it.

I was tired of the loss I’d suffered.

My family was gone to me, my name taken and replaced by moniker’s men had given me to mark me as their own. I had no skills, no job, no money of my own. My very future was shackled to the whims of others.

I’d lost so much already; I couldn’t stand to lose myself.

So I tried to sink into the pain. Each lash brought a different type of agony, a different way to feel it.

The seventeenth strike was lightning striking the bloody swamplands between my shoulders.

The eighteenth, a thin wire cutting through warm clay, dissecting my flesh so painfully, so swiftly, it took away my breath.

I held it through the brutal bite of the next strike and the one after that, expelling a tiny swell of air punctuated by a, “Thank you, Mr. Knox,” after each one.

By the twentieth, it was obvious that my tormentor’s arm was growing weary. The whip hit my back strangely, the angle wrong so that the thin tip wrapped around the cross I was bound to and flicked over the tender underside of my breast. I felt the skin split open into red beads of moisture.

The next five had Landon’s entire body weight behind them and lacked his original finesse. They were heavy, brutish blows that pounded me against the wooden beams like hammer strikes and blunt fists.

He finished, and my last thank you was only a wet breath of relief as my body sagged boneless in the cuffs. My wrists and ankles were wet where the cruel metal had abraded through layers of my skin, and I could feel the sticky blood from my back dripping down my bum and thighs.

Just as I became when I was with Master Alexander, I was only sensation.

It was my coping method and my salvation.

I was every ache, pain, and horrible cramp in the body of Cosima Lombardi. I had thoughts, however fractured, and a tall spine, however abused.

There was heavy silence as the men absorbed my resilience. Even in my painful oblivion, I could feel their surprise that I had preserved.

“You should have hit her harder, Knox,” someone sneered.

“I’d like to have seen you do better, Wentworth,” he snapped back.

“She passed,” another voice said wearily. “Let the poor thing down. She looks less appetizing than a skinned rabbit, and she’s spoiling my dinner.”

The sound of shoes drew close, and I shuddered as a finger traced over a raw, opened wound. It felt as if someone had stuck a fork into my socket.

“I think,” Sherwood mused from behind me. “It’s time for Lord Edward to take his turn at her. What will it be, Edward? The quirt or the bull whip for another twenty-five.”

I knew I wouldn’t survive anotherfivelashes, let alone twenty-five.

There was a moment of absolute silence and then an explosion of shouting and movement.

There was a quick, heavy tread of shoes bursting toward me and then a growl as someone fell to the ground close to me.

“Don’t be a bloody fool,” someone whispered harshly over grunts of effort.

“Get the fuck off me before I rip your head off your body,” Alexander growled. “I’ll deal you with later after I take care of these twats.”

“You take this punishment for her, you’re dead, and you fucking know it.” I gasped softly as I recognized the other voice. The voice of Alexander’s brother and rival, Edward. “They’ve been looking for reasons to end you since you beat out Stockbridge for the Olympic bid in 2012. You’re unruly, selfish, and too fucking hard headed for these fucks to rule. Don’t you see what’s going on? Don’t you ever fucking see?”

There was the sound of a tussle and then more men clustering around the two on the ground.