Page 67 of The Enslaved Duet

I could feel his great warrior’s body jerk and tremble against my own with each whipping, the jumpstart of his breath after each strike and the sweetness of his lips against my hair, and all I wanted to do was hug him.

I wanted to wrap my aching limbs around the aching limbs of my Master and hold him close enough to feel my heart beat from my chest to his. I wanted to pepper his beautiful face in kisses and cry for the tragedies of our lives.

Instead, I pushed my cheek back slightly against his, and I breathed, “I forgive you.”

The twenty-fifth blow landed and then Alexander’s gusty sigh cooled the sweat to my skin.

“Get them down,” Sherwood ordered, his voice rife with dissatisfaction. “Ready the cars.”

There was sharp strike of expensive shoes on wood, and then the muffled sound of them crossing the mats we stood on.

Then Sherwood was there, his face over both of ours as he hissed, “Prove you are repentant, Thornton. Bring the girl to The Hunt.”

It was deep winter in Scotland, the air so crisp it seemed to shatter against my skin as I jumped up and down on my toes to keep warm. I should have been wearing a thick overcoat, scarf, and gloves, or at the very least pants and shoes, but I was not. Instead, I was dressed as the other twenty-six women surrounding me in the corral were in a simple, old fashioned white shift dress. I wasn’t even wearing underwear. One of the girls had questioned a lord in the hall when we first congregated about how we were to keep warm. After he’d slapped her across the face for her impudence, he’d informed her running for her life should keep her warm enough.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot and cupped my hands together in a feeble attempt to warm them with my breath while I looked over the assembly of men, all finely dressed on horseback. It was easy to spot Alexander in the mix with his crown of golden hair glinting even in the twilight fog. He was also the only one wearing thick, elbow length gloves. I looked at the sky and saw his falcon, Astor, circling overhead. As if summoned by my thoughts, Alexander raised his forearm over his head and the bird went plummeting from the sky, pulling up to slow his flight just before he landed gracefully on his Master’s limb.

It seemed Alexander was good at training all kinds of creatures.

All the men wore tweed coats and tight riding breeches in fawn and earthen colours but for the Master, the Earl of Sherwood, his huntsman servant, and the whippers-in who would do reconnaissance and control the hounds for the group. They wore traditional red coats and black hats to distinguish themselves from the lot.

They were the leaders of the annual hunt, but it wouldn’t be the traditional fox they raced to capture.

No, it would be the women corralled together in a wooden pen.

This was the Order of Dionysus’s greatest event, the highlight of their year.

Every man participating must have paid the cost of admission.

A young woman for the other men to hunt.

There were very few rules as far as Alexander had explained it to me this morning before he was called away for the General Assembly.

One, the men were not under any circumstance allowed to use weapons against each other or the girls. Fisticuffs were expected and even encouraged. Sexual assault was literally the name of the game. But no weapons.

As if that made this game civilized.

Two, The Hunt wasn’t over until each and every woman was found and fucked. A man could claim as many women as he pleased, but every time one was captured, they had to be brought back to their captor’s rooms at the hunting lodge before the hunter could go out for more.

Three, a special prize would be awarded to the man who caught the “Golden Fox”, the woman deemed the most desirable by the vote of the men of the Order.

It was this we were waiting for in the brutal clasp of a darkening Scottish evening.

Master Sherwood was on a platform before his great stone hunting manor in the wild Highlands waiting for his manservant to tally the vote and name the girl.

I knew before he accepted the folded piece of paper that it would me because I was just that unlucky.

Whoever said beauty was a gift had clearly never experienced it for themselves because it was nothing but a prettily wrapped curse.

“Slave Davenport,” he announced, and the gathered men let out a collective roar.

They were all sober of drink and drugs but so high on the coming thrill of the chase that the very air around them seemed to shimmer with energy.

A girl beside me with true Scottish colouring, pale freckled skin, and hair the colour of juiced carrots grasped my arm for a moment in empathy before I was ripped away by one of Lord Sherwood’s men.

He tossed me over his shoulder, my dress flipping up to reveal my buttocks to the gathering. There was another cheer, this one tinged with dangerous fervour.

The manservant deposited me on the stage beside Lord Sherwood and stepped back.