“Dante, what the hell is my daughter talking about?” he demanded.
I rolled my eyes because he didn’t even try to hide the fact that Dante was meant to report every detail of my life to him.
“She had some trouble with Ashcroft, the man who—”
“You think I don’t remember the man who orally raped and assaulted my daughter?” he snapped. “Cosima, figlia, you don’t come to me with this? Have I done something to deserve such treatment?”
“Well, nineteen years of neglect is a pretty large black mark,” I retorted, angrily cleaning up the rest of the medical supplies and throwing away the bloody bandages. The cabinets banged loudly as I stormed around the kitchen. “I am capable of handling my own problems.”
“Capable has nothing to do with it.” Dante lurched forward with a wince to snag my wrist and tug me closer. “We are your famiglia, tesoro; it’s our right and duty to protect you. Why do you refuse to let us do what is only natural?”
I refused to look into his burning black eyes. On the surface, they were the same depthless black as every mafia man without morals I had ever met, but sometimes, caught at the right angle or looking at me the way he tended to do, they were beautiful to their core.
It was a deeply confusing juxtaposition that I wasn’t in the mood to endure.
“I don’t need any saviours. I’m strong enough to handle things on my own,” I said, my voice so cold it immediately froze the air between Dante, the phone, and myself.
“I came to you because I needed help. Does that make me weak?” Dante asked softly, curling the arm on his undamaged side around me so that I was pressed to his inferno of warmth.
“No,” I muttered petulantly. “Though getting shot in the first place makes you pretty damn dumb.”
I looked up into his smile because like the sun, it was impossible to ignore.
“Good, now that that’s settled, explain to me what the plan is.”
“Who said there was a plan?” I asked innocently as I moved out of his grasp to pour him a glass of whiskey and grab the bottle of ibuprofen.
Salvatore snorted. “None of us are that stupid, Cosima. If you didn’t want our help, it’s because you have your own agenda. Now, kindly tell us before I die from the suspense.”
I rolled my eyes at his dramatics even though they always warmed my heart because they were so much like my own. “Fine, it’s not much of a plan, but the intent is there.” I sucked in a deep breath because I knew they were going to hate what I had to say. “I want to take down the Order.”
Immediately, the two men burst into raucous discord. I crossed my arms with a beleaguered sigh and waited for them to wind down a bit before I interjected to explain.
“It was my own fault, but I went to London with Sebastian to support his nomination for Best Actor at the BAFTAs and Ashcroft saw me there. He’s blackmailing me into being his new slave.”
“With what?” my dad asked, right down to brass tacks even though I could feel his fury through the phone.
“Apparently, there are photos and video from the night Alexander took my virginity in the ballroom.”
Dante cursed a blue streak of English and Italian words and then thumped his fist loudly on the countertop. “I should have remembered…maybe I could have slipped in to take the tapes when I went to Pearl Hall for your… union.”
“You knew?” Salvatore yelled.
“It’s not your fault,” I placated Dante by placing a hand on his thick forearm. “You couldn’t have known.”
“But I did. It’s the practice of the Order of Dionysus for each lord to record themselves taking their slave’s virginity. They have to submit the tape to the council, and then they are, well, fuck, graded on their performance. Anyone found wanting—maybe the Master is too gentle or the girl too eager—is called before the council to testify.”
“Because if either of those things happen, it might seem like the Master and slave are in love,” I concluded hollowly.
Every predator is prey to something.
Alexander’s warning reverberated through my head as everything locked into place. I’d been so shocked by the way he had hunted me across the ballroom, held me down and rutted into my untouched sex like a ruthless beast when he had been relatively kind to me in the days following my first dinner. It had seemed needlessly violent because, honestly, we both knew he could have had me willingly after a few more days or with some carefully tended touches to my traitorous body.
Why he’d needed to take me like a marauder his spoils had always confounded and hurt me.
But now, of course, it was so clear.
They were watching us.
Not just the Order through the cameras I’d known were pinned throughout the ballroom, but through Noel who was their eyes and ears on the ground.
God, but we’d never stood a chance against their mechanisms.
Dante reached out to give my hip a comforting squeeze. “Does this make things better or worse in your memories?”
I blinked slowly, then again rapidly to cut the string tethering me to that past. “It makes things different.”
“Yet you still want to take the Order down for him,” he stated, cutting through my mask with the exaction of a scalpel.
My chin thrust forward as I stared down my nose at him, emulating Elena’s haughty poise. “Is it so impossible that I might want to take them down for myself? They ruined my life, not to mention the lives of so many people I love.”
“Like Alexander,” Dante needled ruthlessly.
“Like you,” I snapped.
He held his hands up like twin white flags of surrender, but I was on edge with defensive irritation, and nothing could soothe that restlessness. I knew from experience the only way I would be able to relax again was under the clinically cold hands of a seasoned Dominant.
And not just any Dom, but Alexander himself.
Unbidden, an image of him from last night branded itself in my mind’s eye; the thick wave of golden hair pushed from his forehead like a crown, the cold metallic bite of his eyes as he pronounced me his from across a crowded room. Being in his arms again had felt like magic, like something I’d concocted so long in the cauldron of my heart I still couldn’t believe it had come true.
“You know he doesn’t love you,” Salvatore reminded me, his voice flat and factual, not unkind. “He was raised by monsters to be a monster. There is no love in a heart like that. If there was, he would have come for you at some point over the last half decade.”
It would have been a good time to confess to them both that Alexander had come for me, but I didn’t want to deal with the fallout. If they thought he might reappear again, they’d have Dante installed at my side every minute like a shadow.
I wasn’t sure they were worried about safety so much as worried that if given the chance, the way I hadn’t been given three years ago on my wedding day, I might stay with him forever.
My stomach ached with the force of my conflicting emotions. I could be honest with myself by admitting that seeing Alexander again had brought my staid black and white life once more into vibrant colour, but I was also smart enough to wonder if that was healthy or not.
He was my captor, my abuser.
My father’s sworn enemy and my best friend’s ostracized older brother.
A shrink’s worst nightmare.
I had my own life I’d worked so hard to make full and happy in New York. Alexander showing up out of the blue shouldn’t have undermined that the way it did.
But God, I hoped beyond hopes I would see him again.
I was enamoured with him eternally as if I’d been cursed, and I had no clue how to find the remedy.
“I can help, if you insist on getting information on the Order,” Dante interrupted my thoughts to say. “I still have connections I could call on…Why don’t you let me set up a meeting with a man I know who might be able to help us get some answers?”
“Ren,” Salvatore spat the name like a curse
. “Such a man doesn’t do something for nothing.”
“No,” Dante mused as his eyes washed over me like hot water so that my skin seemed to steam. “But I have a feeling he’ll do this for us.”
“Good. You do that, and I’ll do my thing with Ashcroft.”
“No. It’s too dangerous and unnecessary. What do you hope to find?”
“He likes to dress me up as his maid and have me clean the house, so I’m sure I can find some incriminating evidence.”
Salvatore cursed through the phone, and I heard the smash of a glass.
“Cosima, you need to be careful with Ashcroft.” Dante shifted on the stool to pull me between his legs and take my face in his hands. I closed my eyes because for the first time in years, I couldn’t bear to look at him and see the ways he resembled Alexander. “Don’t put yourself at risk for a man you’ve romanticized in your memories.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve put myself at risk for the ones I’ve loved. Ashcroft isn’t a danger to Alexander right now, Dante; he’s a danger to me and my family. I won’t have my career ended by a scandal, and I won’t have him hurt my loved ones to get to me. If Ashcroft wants me, he can have me. He just doesn’t know yet that he won’t ever be able to handle me.”
Cosima
I was blindfolded.
For the first time in years, my sight was taken from me, and I was half naked before a man.
Only this wasn’t a scene with my Master.
This was professional, a shoot for one of the top clothing brands in the world.
The air in the studio was clinically cold to keep my nipples beaded behind the delicate silks and satins of their expensive lingerie. The man instructing me to bend, curve, and smile was not my Dominant with a whip, but my director with a camera. One of the most famous in the fashion world.
Professional, not personal.
But as I sat on an uncomfortable antique wooden chair that reminded me of something from Pearl Hall with my legs spread to expose the placket of the black lace panties I wore and the leather harness encircling my hips and thighs like a kinky bracket for my sex, I went wet.
My pussy began a slow, steady beat like a kickdrum of dancing feet against the earth.
I tried to focus on the set of my matte painted wine-red lips and the angle of my head as I tipped it back in pretend ecstasy so my hair fell behind me like curls of sooty smoke. This was my job, my livelihood. There was no reason to feel aroused by bondage and my own mild discomfort.
I’d moved on from those desires.
I’d moved on from Alexander fucking Davenport no matter what he said.
The flight to London had been long and sleepless, the drive in the luxury Town Car too reminiscent of Alexander’s Rolls Royce to be relaxing. Even the scenery out the rain striped windows evoked memories I couldn’t defend myself against. By the time we arrived at Kynance Cove, I was a mess of clammy skin and frayed nerves.
Jensen had taken one look at me and sent a masseuse to my change room before I got into hair and make-up.
It hadn’t helped.
The only thing that quelled my unease was the cold crush of the briny winter wind off the Lizard peninsula as I climbed the rocks to the grassy outcrop in one of St. Aubyn’s statement gowns. Xavier Scott was a seasoned professional with a vivid eye for cinematic shots, and we’d wrapped up the first half of the shoot in under six hours.
Then a quick full make-up and hair change had me sitting in the godawful, erotically familiar antique chair in the cold chamber that reminded me too much of Pearl Hall’s ballroom.
Six long hours stood between me and the safety of my hotel room with my emergency vibrator and a pair of particularly vicious nipple clamps, and six minutes into it, I was already unravelling.
It was an empty set because I would be mostly nude for the duration, and it was so silent I could hear the click of the Xavier’s expensive loafers across the polished concrete floor as he circled me with his camera.
I’d been working with him for hours outdoors, but as he moved closer behind my closed eyes, I was surprised by the scent of him.
Cedar and pine, a wildfire dampened by cool, wet British air.
I’d never smelled that fragrance on anyone but my Master.
I sucked in a deep breath through my shock parted lips and tried to rationalize the odour.
The photoshoot was dredging up old memories.
Suddenly, his hands were on me, lifting and spinning me to face the chair before pressing into the base of my spine so I was bent over it. His palm slapped on my inner thigh, prompting me to spread my legs wider, my weight precariously balanced on the razor thin edge of my six-inch stilettos.
I bit my lip as he moved me like a doll into position. It was so hard to ignore the wet moor, cold forest air scent of him. Coupled with the way he moved me so perfunctorily, my lusty thoughts were impossible to suppress. My skin broke out in gooseflesh, and I shuddered delicately as the hand on my lower spine slid up my back to rearrange my hair in curtain to the left of my cheek.
It wasn’t unusual for photographers to pin me into positions with their hands or their cold orders, but this was the first time it gave me such an animal thrill.
I told myself it was his smell. It was a conditioned response my body had to the fragrance of Alexander, how it warped so fluidly into the scent of Dominance.
Finally, he stepped back, and the rustle of fabric let me know he’d crouched almost level with my raised bottom. The shutter click, click, clacked rapidly as he took shot after shot, moving around to the front when he was finished to capture the catch of my red lip in my teeth and the obscene swell of my breasts as they threatened to spill out of the half-cups.
Then he was moving me again, turning me, pushing me into the chair and hooking my legs over the arms so my entire scantily clad sex was exposed to the harsh bite of cold air. He arranged me so I sprawled like a broken toy in the hard angles of the chair; head back, mouth parted wetly, arms akimbo.
Maybe not a broken toy…
A used one.
Fucked hard and left to wallow in the aftershocks and exhaustion of her satiation.
I could smell my arousal and hovered on the tense wire of lusty hope and shame, if Xavier could see it dampening the placket of my thong.
The click of the camera and his shoes against the floor were the only sounds for long minutes as he continued to silently photograph me. The silence and the punctuated noise were driving me crazy.
I wanted him to say something. Anything.
Just to prove what my crazy mind was more and more convinced of.
That it was Alexander at my side and not Xavier Scott.
Only, the press of a thumb to the slight indentation in my plump lower lip paralyzed my thoughts.
I dragged in another lungful of that heady scent through my open mouth and unconsciously swept my tongue across the pad of that thumb.
His taste exploded in my mouth like ambrosia.
“Master?” I breathed, too entranced to worry I was wrong and face the embarrassment of asking such a question.
I wanted it to be him with every fiber of my being. My body vibrated with coiled energy just waiting for release. Specifically, for him to release it from me with his wicked words and cruel, calculating hands.
“Master?” I asked again, stronger this time.
Desperate.
Needy.
High on the idea of him in my space.
“Topolina,” he breathed against my lips. “Are you ready to kneel once more for your Master?”
Momentarily, I thought I was dreaming.
One of those inescapable nightmares when you know it isn’t real, but the knowledge does nothing to shield you from the terror.
I often dreamt of Xan returning to claim me over the years, and it always started with those haunting words.
Are you ready to kneel for your Master?
Psychologically, I was more than ready. I felt as though I had never got up off t
he floor of the white, black, and gold ballroom after the first time I’d knelt there.
Rationally, the idea of kneeling ever again made my brain seize and short circuit like an overworked hard drive.
Then another touch filtered through the chaos in my mind, cutting cleanly through it like a hot knife.
Rough fingers ran up between my lace-covered breasts where they wrapped one by one around my neck and gently squeezed.
A collar.
My throat ached but not from the pressure. I wanted to lean into the hand, feel it band stronger, tighter, and intractably against my skin. I wanted a physical one without an escape latch. A permanent one tattooed into my skin.
One that showed everyone I was owned by Alexander Davenport.
The collar was there already under my skin, burning at all hours of the day so even when Alexander had seemed convinced I didn’t belong to him, my body had said differently.
“What are you doing here?” I mouthed more than said.
His lips skimmed and bumped my own, firing off electrons under my skin that made my mouth feel static with current. It took everything in me not to jerk forward and feel the electricity erupt in a real kiss.
God, I wanted a kiss.
He’d stamped me with his brand of ownership at the charity event, bitten me when he’d cut me out of his life in Milan, but I hadn’t been the recipient of Alexander’s masterful kisses for far too long, and my body felt starved of them.
“I told you, you can run, but I’ll always find you,” he murmured against the skin of my cheek as he skimmed his nose into my hair and breathed deeply. “I could find you with my eyes closed, my ears plugged, and my nose stopped up. I can feel you before I know for sure you are even in a room. If predators have natural prey they are born to chase, you are mine.”
“Xan,” I breathed because that was the word that seemed to echo through my mind with every beat of my rapidly increasing pulse. “Please, don’t play with me like this.”
Enamoured Page 13
