He was abnormally tall, wide through the shoulders and narrow in the waist the way a swimmer was, with big hands that were elegant despite their breadth. I’d wondered what they might feel like on my body.
And now I knew.
No, I might have judged Alexander by the cover, but that didn’t discount the horror of the monster depicted on it.
“I’ll have one of the maids bring some supper for you. Master Alexander went to London, and we don’t expect him back until late this evening so you can dine in your room. I imagine you’ll want to rest early.” Mrs. White clapped her hands and then stared at me as I wandered to the windows to look past the drapes.
The bedroom overlooked an immaculately laid out garden of sculpted hedgerows and brightly coloured flowerbeds. It was perfectly ordered with each wild thing put in its place. I thought wryly that it was a suitable view for a slave.
Beyond that, the land gently crested, then erupted into a thicket of dense trees like something out of a sinister fairy tale.
That, too, made sense.
“There’s one more thing before I leave, Ruthie.”
I jerked away from the window to look at Mrs. White, shocked that she would call me that.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, Lord Greythorn has instructed the staff to call you by the name of Ruthie. He is excessively kind that way.”
“Kind?”
“Yes, well, he knew some of us would find it hard to remember such a strange name, and he knew you would have a difficult enough time as it is assimilating to British culture. It’s a wonderful remedy, really.”
“I would prefer Cosima,” I told her as my spine cooled and hardened with steel.
“Well, what’s done is done.” She ignored my statement with a wave of her hand and then clapped when someone knocked on the door. A moment later, a maid entered bearing a ridiculously ornate golden telephone and cradle. “You’re second surprise is here, my dear. A telephone call home.”
My previous irritation evaporated as I was struck down by her words.
Telephone call home.
Home.
I lunged for the phone and ripped it out of the maid’s hands, feeling like a beggar faced with her first meal in weeks.
My finger was rotating the ancient dial before I had even taken a seat on the soft bed. Distantly, I heard Mrs. White usher the other woman out of the room before closing the door behind the both.
But I was preoccupied by the utterly melodic ringing of the phone in my ear.
My heart was suspended in my throat, blocking the passage of my breath, but I didn’t care.
There was a pause in the ringing and then a brief click before, “Pronto.”
A sob bubbled up through my lips before I could clamp my hand over my mouth to contain.
“Patatino, sono Cosi,” I half hiccoughed into the phone. My heart seemed to break and reform against the familiar Italian the words over the feel of Sebastian’s childhood nickname ‘little potato.’
“Mia bella sorella,” he said after a weighty pause. “My Cosima.”
We breathed through the phone line for a long moment as we both digested the enormity of our feelings. I cradled the phone against my cheek and closed my eyes against the burn of tears that spilled beneath my lashes. It was too easy to picture Seb’s handsome face, the strong bones in his face that hollowed out his cheeks and the square point of his chin contrasting the fullness of his mouth. I knew the exact shade of black in his hair and the thickness of the eyelashes cresting his cheek because I’d grown up staring into his face almost more than I had my own even as a model.
No sight in the world was as dear to me as my brother; not even my sisters, as treasured as they were in my heart.
There was a unity to twins that was impossible to explain to others. I felt a fundamental lack of ease if I was separated from him for too long even though I was all too used to it after the last year I’d spent mostly in Milano.
To simply breathe in tandem through a phone line was an intimacy we craved.
“How is everyone?” I asked finally, suddenly nervous Mrs. White would return to cut my conversation short.
“Missing you, always,” he responded instantly. “Even when Salvatore came calling to wish me a happy birthday, he seemed miserable that you weren’t in town.”
I bit my lip at that because the Camorra capo was the one who signed the dotted line of my terms of sale.
“Did he ask where I was?”
“No, he only stayed to have another rousing fight with Mama and to give me a fine bottle of Tuscan wine as a birthday present.”
“Seb, don’t you think it’s odd that he does that?” I asked.
I’d never put much thought to it before then. Salvatore’s infrequent but influential presence in our lives had seemed ordinary in the smaller context of my life in Italy, but now that I was away and I’d learned the manipulation and games men played, I couldn’t help to wonder what Salvatore’s end game was.
Sebastian snorted. “I don’t think mafia men are exactly known for doing the obvious sorts of things, Cosi. I think he’s a man without children who discovered us through Seamus and took a shining to our family. He dotes on Mama just as much as he does us, when she lets him.”
That was true, though Mama would sooner bite the hand that tried to feed her than accept what he was offering. To say she was not fond of the Made Man was putting it mildly.
Another puzzle I’d never thought to piece together.
“Anyway, his gift was the highlight of my day. So much for celebrating our birthday together.”
I winced even though I’d known he would say as much. “It was too good an opportunity to pass up, but I am sorry I missed it. Sorrier than I can really say.”
“You sound very unhappy,” he noted.
In some ways, as happy as I was to hear my male voice echoed back at me, I wished it was one of my sisters or Mama who had answered.
“It’s been grueling work,” I admitted. “I’m not sleeping enough, and the man I’m working for is a monster.”
“Well, if the money you are sending to Mama is any indication, it’s worth your sacrifice. Cosima, we have more than we know what to do with,” he said before gifting me his bold laugh.
“How much is it?” I asked before I could curb myself, hoping he wouldn’t wonder why I didn’t know if I was the one sending it. “I’ve had them set up a direct deposit, you see, and I’m curious it’s everything I thought it would be.”
“Five thousand pounds,” he crowed, and I used the opportunity to let out a gusty sigh. The sum meant that Alexander was sending a monthly allowance that would amount to the three hundred thousand he has promised to send to them each year. “Honestly, Mama fainted when it appeared in her account the first month. When it was there the second time, she almost took out Elena when she fainted again.”
Despite everything, I found myself smiling at the thought. “I’m glad. Now, tell me what you are putting the money toward.”
“Giselle’s tuition is paid through the year, and she has an allowance now that she informed me meant she could by acrylics.” We both laughed as we imagined her excitement about procuring the expensive paints. “Elena bought her own second-hand computer and has enrolled in online classes at Università di Bologna in law. We repaid the last of Seamus’s debts with creditors in town and with the Camorra, but Cosima, you should know something. We haven’t seen Seamus since August.”
I closed my eyes again and silently let out a breath of relief that I hadn’t known I was holding the past few weeks.
“Grazie a Dio,” I said, thanking God. “We’ve been wishing him gone since the beginning of my memories. Please don’t tell me that you’re saddened by this.”
“Don’t be insulting. I spent too much on a bottle of grappa, and believe it or not, I shared it with Elena.”
“You didn’t,” I said with a laugh, sinking back into the copious number of pillows lining the headboard of the bed.
Neither
Seb nor Giselle got along very well with our eldest sister, and I couldn’t exactly blame them. Elena was the type of woman who believed that elegance was more important than feeling, intelligence surpassed passion, and if you wanted to know what was in her heart, you had to earn it.
Sebastian and Giselle were more easily led by the beautiful hearts they wore on their sleeves.
Once, I’d been like them, but I had always understood Elena and her philosophies.
A woman should not be easy to know for mystery was half of her power.
“And Cosima, something else has happened.”
“You published one of your stories?” I asked in the high voice of an excited young girl, but I didn’t care.
My environment had disappeared, and even the imaginary shackles I wore seemed nearly non-existent. My mind was back home in Napoli with my family.
Sebastian laughed. “No, Cosi, but you know the play I’ve been doing in Roma?”
I bit my lip, trying to remember one of the many amateur productions my brother had been participating in before I left.
“You don’t remember, and that’s fine. The moral of the story is, a theatre company director from London was visiting, and he approached me after the play. It seems he runs Finborough Theatre. He wants me to move to London to pursue an acting career as a principle at his company.”
My heart soared into my throat, and before I could stem it, I was squealing and jumping on the bed with joy even as I carefully kept the phone to my ear.
“Sebastian, you gifted man,” I shouted through my happy tears. “You beautiful, talented man! I could not be happier for you.”
We laughed together as we talked about the particulars, and he recounted local gossip before handing me over to Mama and Elena who both nearly chatted my ear off with their own material.
I spoke with my family for well over an hour and only rung off when another maid entered the room with my dinner tray. When she took the phone away, I almost attacked her, but I held myself back on the thought that I might be rewarded the privilege again.
It seemed giving up my virginity granted me new living quarters and the connection to my family I so craved.
Later that evening, after I finished a supper I was sure Douglas had prepared because it was a delicious speciality from Napoli and after I’d showered away the remnants of sex from my body, I lay in the dark curled up beneath the most luxurious covers I had ever known more troubled than I had ever been.
I wasn’t truly religious, but my parents were Catholic and a quote by Job from the Bible rattled around like a loose screw in my head.
“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Only, I had no God in this new home of mine. My religion was servitude, and my lord was my Master. What he took from me, he rewarded me for, and in return for this unhealthy symbiosis, he expected me to worship him.
I didn’t.
But the thing that kept me up late into the night when the brain was murky but thoughts were horrifyingly clear, was that I could imagine a time when I did. When the ritual of my everyday life of a slave wore me down as surely as the generations of feet against the stone steps in this house. When looking to him for orders was route and worshiping his body like a deity felt akin to taking prayers. What was faith if not the engrained instinctual and spiritual belief that there was a higher being out there looking over you?
After five years of serving Master Alexander, was there really any doubt I would revere him even if I feared him still?
“I want to teach you about obedience.”
“I thought you were,” I retorted drily as he led me up the third-floor staircase and turned us into the Hall of Mirrors.
I was a vain woman, so I’d spent some time here on my daily wanderings, staring at the money eyes that had gotten me into such trouble. I knew from my tour with Noel that it had been added after the fourth Earl had visited Versailles and fallen in love with the opulence. I’d never seen the French palace, but the gold gilt, floor-to-ceiling mirrors and the pink marble floor certainly seemed over the top enough for the French.
Alexander moved over to a red velvet ottoman and a small table set up in the middle of the space and beckoned me forward with a crook of his finger.
Each step felt like one inch closer to a tragic death by guillotine, only I knew it was my pride on the line and not my life.
Because even as I hated him for ripping my virginity out at the seams the day before, it seemed that he had emptied out my lining only to stuff me full of something else. Something velvety and dark, something with a scent like musk and honey, something that lived for sex.
I could feel my pulse settle between my thighs and beat like a gong.
“Your lessons will never cease, topolina. You are a submissive slave but not a weak one; therefore, my work will never be done. Come and stand before me.”
I didn’t stop until our toes were touching, a small act of defiance that made Alexander hum darkly. He moved back an inch, then clasped my chin firmly to lift my eyes to his.
“This is lesson two, bella. I am your Master, yes, but the game of Domination and submission is not the only one we play. We also play the one of life and death. If you cannot learn to obey me when you must, forces beyond my control will certainly kill you and probably me too.”
“What kind of game is that?” I asked breathlessly.
He tightened his hold so that I had to strain on my tiptoes to keep my neck from snapping back. His mouth moved next to mine, his lips so close to my own I could feel the distance like a tangible thing, like a kiss itself.
“A game neither of us chose to play, but one both of us must win. So you’ll learn.” He pushed me gently away and picked up a frightening looking apparatus from the table. “Do you know what this is?”
I shook my head erratically.
“These are electric stimulation paddles. They are connected to this,” he said, holding up his iPhone. “I am going to attach them to your body and give you a series of commands. If you do not react as you must, you will receive a small shock.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, genuinely frightened. “What kind of monster shocks someone? I’m not some stray dog you are trying to break of bad habits.”
“No,” he said in that voice I was beginning to understand was the one of a Dominant. It was hushed but heavy, pressing in on me like a metal compressor, crunching my will into dust. “I am not kidding. I think we’ve established that I am not the kind of man who kids. And you are most certainly a stray, one I picked up on the streets of Napoli and dusted off, but one who needs to be trained. If you think the imagery is unflattering, I suggest you learn quickly to adapt.”
“Bestia,” I growled into his face as he lifted the mess of wires and attachments into the air.
“I am a beast, my beauty,” he agreed with a feral grin. “But I am your beast.”
He taped the small paddles to my breasts, the sensitive junction where my torso, pubis, and inner thighs met, and the upper and lower portions of my ass. I looked like some horribly deviant robot, delineated with black wires and tape. Alexander turned to grab something from the table and held it up for me to see before tossing it at me. I glared at him as I caught the soft piece of fabric, and he stared back, only raising one thick brow as if to ask whether I wanted to be disobedient before we’d even begun. With a gusty sight, I dutifully stepped into the black satin corset that covered the paddles and kept them snug against my skin.
I could see myself in the many mirrors lining the four walls; countless reflections of my body and the way Alexander seemed to devour it with his eyes.
They burned when I turned from the reflection to look into their real-life iteration. They burned so bright he seemed almost manic with lust. It was such a contrast to the cold, hard set of his body, but it made me realize how much restraint he had to leash himself with around me.
He wanted to chase, capture, and fuck me like an animal, holding me
down by the neck with his teeth as he rutted into me.
But he wouldn’t because he was a gentleman, and he’d been raised on a steady diet of control and conservatism.
Instead, he would transform his animal aggression into deviant calculation, using whips, electro-shock paddles, his teeth, his hands, and his cock to dominate not just my body, spirit and temptations, but his own.
There was something thrilling in understanding that duality, and I felt a little piece of the Lord Thornton puzzle slide into place.
“Go to the door and stand there facing me,” he commanded.
I could feel the dampness on the inside of my thighs with each step I took toward the door. By the time I turned to face him from across the room, I was panting slightly.
He had seated himself on the red ottoman, thick thighs spread, hands dangling between his knees with a short, black whip in one of them. His full lower lip was caught at the edge by one of his teeth as he stared at me with hooded eyes.
He didn’t look like a lord or a businessman radiating power, but so at ease with it, he seemed casual. No, he looked like a god.
“Crawl to me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Was there anything more demeaning than that? I didn’t think my knees would bend me to the floor or that my arms would carry me if I dared to try.
“I went to work today in London,” he told me conversationally, completely throwing me off balance.
I’d been sure he was going to shock me.
“Meetings after meetings, my beauty, and do you know what I thought of through each and every one?” Quick as a flash, he snapped the whip in his hand through the air with a vicious crack. “You, crawling to me across this floor with mirrors all around us so that you could not escape how right you look doing that for me.”
My pussy swelled, my clit like a diamond at its peak. I wanted him to get on his knees and mine me with his tongue.
But this wasn’t about me or my desires.
It was about him.
“Crawl,” he ordered again in a voice just like the lightning crack of the whip.
My body felt filled with lead as I tried to make it move against the objections of my heart. I stared at my trembling knees, but they would not bend.
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