Page 85 of The Enslaved Duet

“Oh, Xan,” I breathed, flattening my hand over his heart as if I could reach inside and soothe the scars there.

“It was a few months after that Noel decided to teach me how to discipline her. I was a tall boy and strong from sport, so he felt I could properly employ a whip. First, he strung Yana up to the ceiling and ‘put her through her paces.’ By the time he was halfway done, her back had opened up and blood dripped like red rain to the floor. I couldn’t stand it, so when my dad wouldn’t stop at my screams, I tried to take the whip from him.”

My hand flew to my mouth and tears gathered in my eyes as I understood where this was going.

“Noel took Yana down and let her weep in the corner while he strung me up and gave me the rest of her punishment. At some point, I passed out from the pain, which only made Noel angrier. Davenport men, especially the heir to the Dukedom of Greythorn, do not succumb to anything, even pain. He flayed me until my back was a bloody mess, and then he left me there on the floor. I was lucky one of the kitchen maid’s sons had heard the screaming, and he came down to investigate. It was quite the ordeal, though it gave me Riddick.”

“He was the maid’s son?” I asked, shocked that the two had been together that long.

Alexander nodded, brushing the hair away from my face and rubbing the strands between his fingers. “There’s more in my storied history with the Order, but that was my first taste of their beliefs, and I didn’t like it.”

“But you’re a Dominant and a sadist now?” I ventured timidly because the terminology still confounded me sometimes, but I was fairly sure that was true.

“I am. I learned in time what my own boundaries were, and they were pretty much the same as any God-fearing man’s. I don’t take my pleasure from making you bleed or eat scraps off the floor like Sherwood’s slave. I don’t enjoy the thought of sharing you or watching you be raped. I’m just a simple man with a hankering for the sound of my sub’s tears and the sight of the flesh after it has been reddened with a crop.”

I laughed. “Yes, simple man indeed.”

We were quiet for a moment thinking our own heavy thoughts before I whispered, “I’m sorry, Xan.”

He squeezed me tightly and turned his mouth into my hair. “The woman I’ve bought and used poorly empathizes with me. What did I tell you about that tender heart?”

“I think I’m already in as much trouble as I can be,” I muttered.

His shocked laugh vibrated through me.

“Xan,” I asked because I’d always wanted to, and the air between us was fragrant with intimacy. “How old are you?”

“I’ll be thirty-five on Friday.”

“Seriously? We have to celebrate,” I told him because it was a mandate in my family that birthdays had to be enjoyed.

I hadn’t enjoyed my eighteenth birthday, and I wanted to make up for it by enjoying Alexander’s with him.

“We have a ball to go to actually. We’ll stay in London the next few nights and return to Pearl Hall after that. I’ve got you a dress already in the closet.”

“Oh, well, I was thinking more like birthday cake and balloons, but I guess Lords do balls for birthdays,” I mused.

He pressed his smile to my forehead and then replaced it with a kiss. “We can do birthday cake after the ball, how about that?”

“Deal.”

We were quiet again for a time, and I almost drifted to sleep before I asked, “What are you going to do about the Order? What if they turn on you?”

He didn’t answer for a long time, and when he did, I wasn’t sure if I was already dreaming.

“It’s what I’ll do to the Order if they come foryouthat I’m worried about.”

I made Xan laugh eighteen times on his thirty-fifth birthday. My plan for the day had gone superbly with the help of Riddick, who actually made the calls and reservations for us, and Mrs. White, who had also travelled with us from Pearl Hall and helped me make the cake. We baked the Sicilian Cassata rum cake the morning before while Alexander was out on business, and I’d presented it to him in bed that morning when I woke him up.

This trip signaled my first time going to bed and waking up with him, and the new intimacy felt right given how my feelings had changed for him.

It felt even better when he’d eaten the icing off my nipples and between my legs until I came in his mouth and then claimed that I tasted better than the cake.

It was a silly plan, and I’d been nervous when I suggested spending the day together in London to celebrate, but Alexander had been surprisingly kind about my overenthusiasm. I think he’d even enjoyed going on the London Eye, although that was probably only because we had occupied our own pod and he’d played under my skirt in full view of the CCTV cameras until I’d come all over his hands.

I’d never seen Alexander as relaxed as he was with me that day. He was still cold and aloof, unflappable, and difficult to impress, but there was a smile in his eyes that made them glow like multifaceted diamonds in the weak London light.

Experiencing him like that made me feel like a girl with a school crush, which was vaguely ridiculous as I’d never before been one. But the giddiness that rushed through me when he held my hand and led me through the crowds or pulled out my chair for me at high tea in Fortnum & Mason was enough to make me light-headed.