“You could talk to me about why that is,” he suggested mildly, still angry. “I know you don’t like to talk about your past, but has something or maybe someone come up again? You know you can tell me anything, right?”
I sighed and turned to my glass of red wine for solace like any Lombardi woman would.
Mason and I were silent as dinner started, and a well-dressed master of ceremonies took the podium to speak about the cancer charity we were supporting. I played with my food instead of eating it even though one of my favourite New York chefs was catering the event. There were too many things on my mind to absorb the magnificent evening. My heart was set to rapid pounding, knowing the risk I was taking to go to England even though I hoped it would pay off by posing for the most famed photographer in the world.
“Hey.” Mason’s soft voice interrupted my thoughts, and I looked up to see his face creased with something edgier than concern, something like anxiety. “Are you still up for this? We can always go home.”
I shook my head adamantly. “No. I know this is important to you, so it’s important to me.”
He nodded curtly, but he was frustrated with me for being so tight lipped. I shrugged off my fretfulness and focused on the night ahead of me. Mason’s first love, his high school best friend and secret boyfriend, had died at twenty-three from brain cancer, and now that Mason had money and influence in the city, he was one of the charity’s biggest patrons. Which was why I had agreed to be “sold” for a date night to the highest bidder to raise money for the illness.
The irony of voluntarily selling my beauty again was not lost on me, but my therapist had assured me it was a viable way to “take back my power” and rewrite a traumatic experience into one that was positive and altruistic.
I thought it was a load of crap, but I wanted to be supportive of Mason, and I was experienced at playing on my beauty like a maestro with her instrument.
“Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests,” the emcee declared dramatically. “I am privileged to announce the items we have for auction tonight. Please remember, the proceeds go to a very worthy cause.” I tried to focus on his explanation of the charity, but pins and needles played against the skin on the back of my neck. Frowning, I turned slightly to brush the itch away when I spotted him. The Earl of Thornton, Alexander Davenport sat at one of the main tables in front of the stage, his legs crossed with one arm slung casually across the chair next to him where a pretty young woman sat chatting to him. The very same blonde goddess I’d seen him with last time in Milan, Lady Agatha Howard. I couldn’t see his eyes from where I sat, but I knew without hesitation that he was staring at me.
Hope and fear churned in my gut. I pressed my fist to my mouth as I fought through my nausea.
“Too much wine?” Mason murmured, his eyes still on the emcee.
I shook my head, my eyes inexorably linked with the man across the room. I could feel the anchor pull painfully in my soul as our connection snapped taut and vibrated with energy. He was wearing an all-black ensemble, but for the gold silk pocket square. Even from so far away, he quite literally took my breath away.
What the hell was Alexander doing at this charity event?
I swallowed convulsively and tried to take my eyes off the gold pocket square. Was it too much to think he wore it as subtle reminder that he owned me and my golden eyes?
“And now the moment we have all been waiting for,” the emcee crowed. “Everyone, please welcome to the stage the lovely ladies and gentlemen who have volunteered themselves for the auction!”
That was my cue, but I remained arrested in my seat, staring at the silver coin eyes I hadn’t seen in so many years.
“Cosima, what are you waiting for?” Mason whispered, nudging me with his thigh.
I watched as a slow smile spread across Alexander’s features, and only when he gave a slight nod of his head did the enchantment snap, and I found myself free of his hold.
Shame coursed through me like volcanic heat, and I tasted the ash of my old dreams on the back of my tongue.
He wasn’t mine to want anymore, and the feelings of unwitting desire he still stoked in me were deplorable reminders of my own lingering need for a sexual satisfaction only he could give me.
I stared daggers into the back of his head as he turned to smile winningly at Agatha fucking Howard.
“Who is that?” Mason asked sharply, more alarmed than he should have been as my friend and fake fiancé as he followed my eyes to the other table.
“No one important,” I said flippantly with a big smile as fake and functional as fabric flowers.
With a languid smile, I rose to my feet just as the last few volunteers mounted the stage, and I pressed a long, lingering kiss on Mason’s surprised lips. I could feel the eyes of the room watching me as I pulled away and walked unhurriedly up to the stage where the other women eyed me with varying looks of annoyance. Surprisingly and horrifyingly, it was Agatha Howard who seemed the most amused by my tactics. Her blue eyes sparkled as she grinned at me sashaying through the tables.
“Excuse us for a moment folks,” the emcee asked as he watched me climb the stairs. “This one is worth waiting for, and I do think she knows it.”
I beamed at him as I passed, and when he offered his powdered cheek for a kiss, I complied. The swell of catcalls and whistles buoyed me. Let Alexander see just exactly what he had been missing the past four years.
The auction began with a petite brunette at the other end of the line, and I realized that I would be the last woman called.
“You did a remarkable job,” Agatha whispered in her incredibly posh British accent. “The anticipation is just going to build now that you’re last.”
I shot her an uneasy look, trying to gauge her intentions. Unfortunately, she was British to her core, and she’d been raised to be perfectly poised and opaque. “Thank you. Though, I’m sure the men will spend all their money on you, and I’ll be stuck with the leftovers.”
She snickered like a schoolgirl at my testing compliment. “I have a feeling the man I came with will be leaving with someone else.”
Sweat broke out on the back of my neck, and my hands itched to be wrung together, but I maintained my composure through sheer willpower.
What the hell was this bitch’s game?
“Agatha,” she told me with a small smile. “It’s a pleasure.”
“Cosima,” I murmured reluctantly and watched as her lips twitched with mirth.
“Do I have twelve thousand dollars for the toned and tanned Wesley Longhorn?” the emcee prodded. A woman in the audience jumped in the air as she raised her paddle, and everyone cheered when he was sold to her.
“She overpaid,” I muttered.
Agatha sniggered again. “Don’t make me laugh,” she said sternly. “I’m up.”
Four men bid on her instantly, and she preened visibly as each struggled to outbid the other.
My gaze sought out Alexander in the crowd, idly swinging his paddle between his index finger and thumb even though his companion was currently being bid on by other men. He wasn’t looking at me, but I felt the same fission of alarmed excitement race through my core.
“Sold! For thirty-eight thousand dollars,” the emcee yelled over the applause as Agatha’s suitor fist-pumped in triumph.
“Wish me luck?” I asked as she walked past me off the stage. I was still weary of her friendliness, but I found myself drawn to her; my curiosity always seemed to outweigh my sense of self-preservation.
She hesitated and shook her head, the locks of her pale hair like moonshine under the spotlights. “You won’t need it.”
I swallowed nervously when the crowd quieted down, reminded of the way the Order had leered at me as I was presented as slave Davenport in Pearl Hall’s lavish dining room. It was harder than it should have been to remind myself this was an entirely different scenario. Sucking in a bracing breath, I placed one hand on my hip and smoothed the other down my side from the small of my waist to
the long line of my upper thigh. My palm was sweaty against the sheer fabric and my heart thundered loudly in my ears, but I could tell that I had everyone just as enthralled as they had me.
“Now, the pièce de résistance,” the emcee laughed and abandoned his podium to approach me with his microphone. “I know this isn’t protocol, but I just had to ask you…” His black-lined brown eyes were wide with sincerity. “Do you wake up looking like this?”
I laughed with the audience and looked down at the man before me coquettishly. “Very few people know the answer to that, bello.”
“Well!” He turned to the audience, the ultimate showman, and swept his arm toward me. “Maybe this Italian goddess will give up her secrets for a price? Let’s start the bidding at two thousand dollars.”
Immediately, Mason’s paddle was up, but so too were seven others. I watched in delight and horror as the price continued to rise and rise. My eyes sought out my admirers, but the harsh stage lights made it difficult, and finally, I stopped straining to see. The bidding reached thirty-four thousand dollars before Mason’s last competitor gave in.
“Going once, going twice,” the emcee sang into his microphone.
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
A gasp went up amid the attendees, and chatter broke out as everyone searched for the calm voice offering to buy me for such an exorbitant price. They didn’t have to look far. Alexander Davenport, Earl of Thornton, leaned against the bar to the left of the stage, lazily presenting his paddle.
Our gazes snagged and locked together again. I found myself in his gaze, lurking in his metallic grey eyes like a vision of the person I truly was; strong, beautiful, and graceful as I knelt at his feet with my head tipped down, eyes blazing with inner fire from between the dark curtains of my hair. My legs wobbled as I battled the urge to go to him. I didn’t know what I would do if I gave into the impulse, if I would sink to my knees like a sandcastle collapsing into waves or if I would punch him in the throat for thinking he could usurp my life again. It was a dichotomous sensation I hadn’t experienced since I’d last seen my husband three years ago.
“Fifty-one thousand dollars,” Mason returned, his voice coarse with shocked anger.
There was almost no way he would let someone else win me in the auction even though he was oddly reticent about paying for me. He had been approached about auctioning me off for a date night fundraiser before, but always adamantly refused despite my consent. It was only because of the charity’s connection to his first love that we were participating tonight. Mason was also deeply protective, and the idea of a stranger paying such an exorbitant price to take me on a date would raise all his red flags.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know that the man in question was technically and legally bound to me in holy matrimony.
“Give up, Mr. Matlock.” Alexander’s crisp British voice carried perfectly over the large ballroom, though he didn’t seem to shout. “She’s mine. Fifty-five thousand dollars.”
Alexander, on the other hand, had proven before that he had no problem paying for me. It seemed the husband I hadn’t seen in years had come back to claim me.
My heart wedged itself in my throat and throbbed like something cancerous.
“Going once, going twice…” Everyone was wondering about us; the supermodel on the stage and the gorgeous Brit they didn’t know but desperately wished to meet. I didn’t care. For better or for worse, I was thrilled when the master of ceremonies announced, “Sold to the suave British man for fifty-five thousand dollars.”
Everyone erupted in applause, but I remained rooted to the spot as he slowly began his way toward me, his gait coiled and powerful as he stalked to the edge of the stage and offered his hand.
“Topolina,” he said quietly, just for me. “Come to me.”
A whimper worked at the back of my throat, and inexplicably, I wanted to cry. I never thought I would hear his cold voice cut the simple word topolina into something like a diamond for me ever again.
There was no room in my head for logic and questions. I was filled to the brim with static shock, and my brain was misfiring.
The only thing I could focus on was the stern form of his beautiful face, and the look in his eyes that clearly stated mine.
On wobbly legs, I carefully made my way to the stairs and took his offered palm. A current of chemistry electrified my fingers as he clutched them, but I beamed at the photographer who raced up to catch our expressions.
“And now the lucky ladies and gentlemen who successfully bid on one of our volunteers will take the floor for their hard-earned dance,” the emcee crooned as the podium was moved and a piano accompanied by a string quartet began the soft strains of “Primavera.”
As we were already on the dance floor, Alexander wasted no time in pressing me into his arms. Even though we had only danced together once, years ago at Grammar House in London’s Mayfair square, we moved like ballerinas tangled together in a music box, inevitably in sync. The strong scent of him engulfed me, transporting me to the cool misted cedar forest behind Pearl Hall. I breathed it in deeply, surprised by how much I still loved the smell despite the painful memories it evoked.
When I looked up into his eyes, he was watching me with that steady, possessive regard he’d mastered.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I breathed.
I was thrilled he was there to ask the question and terrified of the answer.
“You know, polyandry is illegal both here in the United States and in Britain,” he said almost conversationally, but each word bit into me with vicious teeth. “Does this Mr. Matlock you plan on marrying know that he is about to commit a felony?”
Anger crashed into me so brutally, so completely that I felt suffocated by it. I was consumed by a wall of fire, the flames eating every ounce of oxygen from the air before I could drag any into my lungs. Black spots popped through my vision, and I swayed in Alexander’s firm hold as I tried to get a grip on the utter devastation of my own humiliation and fury.
“Are you,” I said slowly, focusing on the formation of each word so that I wouldn’t scream. “Are you seriously here in New York, seeking me out after you made it painfully clear you never wanted to see me again…after years of radio silence…to threaten me?”
His hands flexed against me, my body tugged forward until it was plastered thigh to thigh and chest to chest against his own. I could feel the magnetic thump of his heart against my cheek before I wrenched myself as far out of his hold as he would allow.
“You are not the master of your fate,” he reminded me with glacial eyes. “I am.”
“Not for over three bloody years,” I countered, whisper-yelling so that the glistening couples spinning like metallic tops around us wouldn’t be privy to my personal hell.
“Since you saved my life on that godforsaken day in Milan, and I felt you just like this pressed to me as I pressed you to a wall, you’ve been mine. Whether or not you knew it. Whether or not you like it.”
“Fuck you, Lord Thornton,” I spat at him. “I’ve lived my own life, and I’ve made a success of it without you.”
“You have not,” he said, his words a sexual, sinister hiss. “I sent Willa Percy to you that wet day in Milan. I forced Jensen Brask to take you on as the new face of St. Aubyn when the beautiful Jenna Whitley was already signed to the task. I made sure the Order had no reason to stalk you longer than was necessary to prove you were nothing to me. I kept you safe every single one of the one thousand two hundred and eighty days we were apart.”
He hauled me closer still, his hand sliding down my spine to press intimately into my lower back, his face coming within an inch of my own so I could feel his hot breath on my lips.
“There has not been one single minute since you ran away from me at our wedding that I have not sought you out and cared for you from afar. Everything you have done is because I bloody well willed it. And now I discover you mean to marry another man?” His mouth pressed hard to mine, stamping them in
a way that would leave the bruise of his possession on my lips for everyone to see. I fought the urge to lick open the seam of his lips and taste the ambrosia I knew I would find on his tongue. “I will not allow that.”
“You have no right,” I said too loudly, my voice crackling with the fire I felt eating at my heart. “You have no fucking right to come here and say these things. You were the one who told me there was no place for me in your life!”
“I told you once before, my beauty,” he sneered. “Even a predator is prey to something. I had things to take care of before I could reclaim you, but now you’ve forced my hand. I will not have you with another man. Not even if my body was cold and dead in the ground would you belong to someone other than me.”
Rage built in my chest, the smoke of it robbing my voice of any power as I said, “I hate you, Xan. I fucking hate you.”
“Since when have I cared about your feelings, topolina? I’ll have you either way.”
The crack of my hand across his face cut through the smooth, emotive music and quiet conversation in the hall. Pain exploded in my palm, igniting the bonfire of hurt and horror that lay like dry kindling where my heart should have been.
He turned his head slowly from where the force of my blow had bowed it, his silver eyes blade cold. Then his hand snapped out and wrapped tightly around my throat, his thumb digging into the brutal beat of my pulse.
“Love me or hate me,” he echoed the words he had spoken the first day I’d consented to kneel for him. “Either way, I’ve been on your mind since the day you met me, and I’ll be there until the day we die.”
“You don’t own me anymore, Alexander. If you want me to kneel for you, you have to earn it.”
The hand around my throat pulsed in time with my heartbeat as if to prove to me he was so attuned to my needs, he could read what was in my heart.
“I will,” he vowed.
“You could never make up for everything that’s happened, and I have no faith that you’d even know how to try,” I said, the truth and lies so wrapped up in each other, I couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. “So I can tell you confidently to go straight back to hell,” I snapped even though the feel of his hand collaring my throat made my pulse drop straight and heavy between my thighs.
Enamoured Page 11
