Page 15 of Xel: Broken Bond

“Why weren’t you allowed to watch it?”

“My master believed that I should be working, not pursuing frivolous pastimes.”

I winced. That sounded very much like something my uncle would say. “How many hours each day were you expected to work?” I asked, wording the question carefully. I needed to get a better picture of his life there, without accidentally blaming either him or my uncle for anything.

“Twelve,” Xel said evenly. “Six o’clock in the morning to six o’clock in the evening.”

I felt a weight settle in my chest. Yes, that sounded very much like the type of exploitation I would have expected from Jacob. I braced myself for the answer to the next question. “And how many days each week did you work?”

“Seven,” he said, and my gut churned as he confirmed my fears.Three yearswithout a single day off. It sounded like a nightmare.

I took a slow breath. “Well, things work a little differently here,” I said, as gently as I could. “The most you’ll have to work each day is eight hours. And you’ll have two days off each week. You can…” I was about to say ‘You can do things you enjoy’, but after three years of being treated very much as a slave, would Xel even know what he enjoyed? “You can try out some different hobbies on your days off,” I said instead. “I’ll get you a comm, and then you can download some books to read. You can watch the wall screen. Or you can go into the city if you want to.”

Xel regarded me blankly. “Yes, sir,” he said woodenly.

Okay, there was definitely something going on here. We were misunderstanding each other in a big way. The only real solution to that seemed to be for me to read the entire instruction manual – and likely ask Aiden a long list of questions at the end of it – but given the length of the document, that could takedays. Wasn’t there something I could do about it in the short term?

Or else, I was just going to resign myself to spending the evening reading while Xel moped in his bedroom, alone.

“You know what?” I said, putting more enthusiasm into my voice than I was feeling. “How about we watch something now?” I tapped my comm, using it to switch on the wall screen. I pulled up the latest episode in a series I was watching – a comedy about a pair of ghosts haunting a bakery – then glanced sideways to see how Xel was reacting.

He seemed more surprised than anything. But thankfully, he wasn’t looking scared or upset about it. “I’m halfway through season two,” I said, “but you’ll get the hang of who the characters are pretty quickly.” I hit play on the episode.

“You want me to watch the wall screen with you?” Xel clarified, as the opening credits rolled.

“Yes. Absolutely.” I hoped he was going to like it. If he didn’t, then next time, I’d have to find something different for us to watch.

“You want… my company?” he clarified again. I turned to look at him fully now, a little baffled by his ongoing hesitation.

“Yes, I do,” I said, not sure how I could make it any clearer.

All of a sudden, his entire body relaxed. “Oh,” he said, relief and delight lighting his face. “Okay.” He sat back on the sofa to make himself comfortable, and I smiled, one more minor breakthrough under my belt. We could do this. We could make this work.

But a moment later, I felt an instant wave of regret about having asked him to sit with me. Because, in the process ofletting himself relax, I had a sudden and vivid reminder of the most obvious thing I’d noticed about him when we’d first met. Namely, that he was absolutely fuckinggorgeous. He sat with his hips tilted slightly and his legs apart, subtly but noticeably emphasising his groin. He slung one arm over the back of the sofa, giving me a divine view of his shapely bicep. And his mouth settled into that sultry pout again, as if daring me to kiss him.

Fuck. I turned away, staring resolutely at the screen, though I didn’t have a clue what the characters were doing. How did he make being so damn sexy look so effortless? Especially in those horrible beige clothes. Put him in a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt, and he’d be downright lethal!

I’d had a couple of boyfriends through university, but since the fire, I hadn’t even attempted to date. It had been hard enough getting people to even want to speak to me, never mind anything so complicated as kissing, or removing our clothing. But Xel was like one of those jocks who’d been born with the world at their feet.

I almost snorted at the ridiculous thought, remembering at the last moment to hold it back in front of my guest. Aslavewith the world at his feet? Yeah, right.

But seriously, how the hell was I supposed to sit next to him every evening and not want to jump him? He had an unconscious grace and natural seductiveness that I found completely mesmerising. And the irony was that he probably wasn’t even aware that he was doing it.

I managed to get through two episodes of the show before deciding I’d tortured myself enough. I used my comm to switch the screen off, then pointedly stood up, collecting my cup to take it back to the kitchen. “I’m going to head to bed,” I told Xel. “I usually get up pretty early to start checking on the animals. We’ll start at six-thirty, and I’ll show you around and start teaching you what chores need doing.”

“Yes, sir,” Xel said, standing up as well. He stretched his arms behind his back, his shirt pulling tight against the muscles of his chest. He was standing unexpectedly close to me, and I found myself looking up into ice-blue eyes. My mouth went dry and my heart rate picked up.

But then he spoke again. “I had an alarm at the hotel to wake me up. Is there anything similar I could use here?”

“Oh, damn it,” I muttered, realising how obvious the problem was, though I’d completely failed to think of it. I opened a reminder in my comm, jotting in a note to order a comm for Xel. “I’ll order you a comm in the morning. There’s a pretty good delivery service in the city, which means we should have it here by midday. But just for tomorrow, I’ll come and wake you up at six. I usually do a quick check on everyone just to make sure nothing’s gone wrong overnight, then I have breakfast, then I start with the real work – cleaning, feeding, doing any repairs.” I looked up at him again, forcibly shoving my ridiculous fan-boy reaction to him back down into my chest. “Do you need anything before I head off?”

“No, sir,” he said, his voice a low purr. He tilted his head slightly. “Do you need me to do anything for you before you go?”

I felt my whole body flush with heat. If he’d been anyone but a dimari, I’d have taken that husky lilt to be an invitation of the most decadent variety. It had been a long time since I’d even hugged anyone, never mind getting as far as flirting and seduction…

But hewasa dimari. A slave. And he likely had no idea of the effect he had on me. I was going to have to do some serious research into dimari culture, to try and work around his inadvertent come-ons. “No, thank you,” I said, forcing a smile as I stepped around him. “Sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, sir,” he said, as I headed for the kitchen, and I had the fleeting thought that he sounded… disappointed? Butthat couldn’t be right. What did he have to be disappointed about? “See you tomorrow.”