Enamoured

by Darling, Giana

  So, I did.

  I bit into that lip, hard, until the tang of her blood panged on my tongue. I ate her gasp out of her mouth and then pulled back to stare into her eyes.

  “A threat against you is a threat against me. And I think you know this already, bella, but no one, absolutely no one, threatens a Davenport and gets away with it.”

  “Even a fellow Davenport?” she asked wearily.

  “Especially then,” I vowed. “I’m going to rid our world of its demons, my beauty, and then I’ll show you exactly what kind of life we can have together. A safe life, one filled not just with your beauty, but the beauty we can create together.”

  “That feels impossible,” she admitted. “Even though I’ve wanted that for years.”

  “The best kind of dreams worth dreaming are terrifying in their enormity,” I agreed, cupping her face in my hands, knowing I held the greatest dream I’d ever had between my palms, feeling it resonate through my chest like a shockwave. “I’m this close to having enough on the Order of Dionysus to take them down. All I need is a way to find out the date of the next auction.”

  “By using Yana and di Carlo?”

  “Yes, though I know two others who might help. I’ll visit them to find out where di Carlo’s poker game might be held tomorrow night. I don’t need you involved in this,” I started to say and then silenced Cosima’s protest before she could voice it by sliding the steel of my Dominance into my tone. “I don’t want you involved in this because it could be dangerous, but I also know you’re strong enough to deal with this, capable enough to help me with this. So, my beauty, for perhaps the first time, it’s up to you.”

  I watched something precious and warm slide over her face as she absorbed my words, as she relished her choice. We both knew what she would chose because she was the same atavistic Italian girl she had been when she’d arrived at Pearl Hall and spat in my face, but there was delight in the pause before the answer, for both of us.

  “To kill our demons, first we must master them,” she said in answer.

  “Don’t tell me you write fortune cookies now,” I teased.

  She blinked at me and then pressed her breasts tighter to my chest as she arched her neck back to laugh loudly at the ceiling. I held her as she laughed, felt her joy vibrate through my very bones, and knew that at the end of all the horrors of our lives, we were each other’s reward.

  Cosima

  “Mason, please, trust me. You can stop worrying. I’m fine,” I said with impatient exasperation as I tossed my mascara back into my make-up bag, fluffed my hair, and then exited the bathroom with my phone in my hand to get dressed for the day.

  The morning had begun as it hadn’t in years, with Alexander’s body tangled up in mine, his heavy weight a soothing pressure on my torso, his breath ruffling the hair over my temple. I watched him unabashedly until the lust building between my legs forced me to trace his sleep soft mouth with my tongue. Working gently, slowly, I made my way down his long, broad torso, kissing the edges of his v-shaped form, running my tongue over the square cut moguls of his abdominals, drawing my nose over the crisp trail of hair leading from his naval to his groin where I inhaled the intoxicating sweet and salt musk of him.

  Only when my tongue smoothed a slick path up his hardening cock did Alexander wake up with a deep, guttural moan. The next second, his hands were fisted in my hair, his hips jerking up to impale my mouth with the hot slide of his dick.

  I moaned around him, loving the taste of his heated flesh, the brine at his tip that I worked for with swirls of my tongue and hard, sucking pulls from my lips. He kept mostly still, so still, at first, that I worried I wasn’t pleasing him. But when I tipped my eyes up through my lashes to look at him, his eyes were blown fully black with dark pleasure.

  “Am I pleasing you, Master?” I asked, needing the validation, vibrating with tension.

  He blinked lazily and pulled his hands from my hair to cross them behind his head. My mouth watered over his cock head as I studied the way his muscles bulged beneath all that golden skin, the tufts of flaxen hair beneath those massive arms, and the way his abs contracted as I tugged at his dick. A trickle of wet leaked down my thigh, and I squirmed, Xan’s eyes tracking the way my ass waved in the air.

  “You’re doing fine, topolina,” he praised mildly, like an unimpressed boss. “But if you don’t make me come in the next two minutes, I’ll have to punish you.”

  My nipples furled so tightly I could feel each beat of my pulse heavy in my swollen breasts.

  I went to work.

  Tongue whirling, hand pumping and twisting, throat working to take his long, thick pole deep inside where I could seal my lips around his root and suck so hard my mouth ached.

  “Thirty seconds.” Alexander’s voice cracked across my sensitive skin with the pain of a whip. There was no break in his words, no hoarseness to give away how well I was servicing him.

  His impassivity worked on me like an accelerant, lighting my already burning flesh on fire with lust so severe I shook with it. My hips pumped at the air, seeking any kind of friction as I slammed my mouth back over his throbbing flesh.

  “Be still,” he ordered. “If you’re a good girl, I won’t have to clamp your pussy and paddle you until you cry for me.”

  I whimpered as I traced a thick vein up his shaft and then sealed my lips over the head to suck hard.

  A flood of precum pooled in my mouth. I lapped it up like a cat with cream, so greedy for more I was salaciously moaning and making lurid wet, sucking noises in my quest for more.

  Suddenly, Alexander knifed up to grab me under my pits, haul me up, and flip me onto my back on the bed so he could straddle my chest. I panted as his weight settled, his hot balls pooled between my breasts, and he fisted his cock so violently over my face, it instantly turned a florid purplish red.

  “Do you want your Master’s cum?” he demanded in a voice like gravel under tires.

  I shivered and parted my damp lips, my tongue aching for another taste of his seed.

  “Please, please, please.”

  “Should I come all over these fucking gorgeous breasts?” he asked as he reached one hand down to knead one tit and then moved to brush a thumb over my lower lip. “Or inside the wet, hot mouth?”

  “Mouth, please, Master,” I begged, pumping my hips up, writhing against the need coursing through my body.

  I was desperate, filled with an excess of energy with no outlet. One touch to my cunt and I would detonate.

  Even watching Xan loom over me like a Viking plundering his female spoils made my pussy coil so tightly, I wondered if that would be enough to launch me into climax.

  There was the thap, thap, thap of his fist over his flesh and the hard churn of air through both our open mouths and then he was groaning, head tipped to the sky, Adam’s apple a hard knot in his golden throat as he moaned his imminent release.

  I swept my eyes over his glistening chest and latched them to his cock just in time to see the first long rope of his semen arch out and land half in my waiting mouth, half on my cheek. The hand not on his cock found my throat and collared it as he tipped his head down to watch himself paint cum across my face.

  I waited until he was spent before licking the brine off my lips, and then Xan used his finger to scoop up the rest and feed it to me.

  I wanted to beg for release, but I didn’t because no matter what I said, it wasn’t me with the power. And no matter how sexually frustrated I was, every single part of me loved that.

  Xan looked down at me, tipping my chin up so that we locked eyes, and I read the absolute tenderness in his expression.

  “I rarely dream, but when I do, I dream of two inevitable things. I dream of killing my father, but my beauty, I dream the most of you.” His voice was as soft as a feather floating down against my cheek and just as hauntingly beautiful. “Though, this is the first time that dreaming of you was not a nightmare because I knew when I woke, you would still be here.”

/>   “Xan,” I breathed, pulling an arm from where it was pinned under his leg so I could cup his face. “Don’t make me cry.”

  “You’re beautiful when you cry. In fact, you are the most beautiful creature on this earth,” he expressed solemnly. “I’m certain of it.”

  I tipped my chin down to skirt his hand over my cheek and nuzzled it. “We’re well matched then because I’ve never seen a man more gorgeous than you.”

  His smile was slight and self-deprecating, but he didn’t protest. “Get up now, my beauty. Let me make you breakfast.”

  I tried not to pout, but from the twitch of his lips, I could tell I failed. I was still poised on the knife’s edge of release, my pussy so slick it made a wet noise as I followed Xan out of the bed. He ignored this.

  In fact, he practically ignored me as he made us eggs and bacon flavoured with Italian herbs and goat cheese. As he worked on his phone while I picked up my forgotten Cleopatra biography and then as he took a phone call from Riddick about the state of Ashcroft, who was still being held prisoner and beaten daily for his crimes against us.

  I was washing the dishes in the sink when Xan finally approached behind me, wrapping his big hands over my hips so my ass canted up against his groin. His nose pushed my hair out of the way so he could trail his warm lips over my throat before he said, “Is my poor little mouse still desperate to come?”

  Instantly, my poorly banked lust flared to life, and I gyrated back against him. “Yes, Master.”

  “Hands to the counter, feet apart. If you move a single inch, I will stop, topolina, so be good for your Master, and I’ll eat you until you come all over my tongue. Then I’m going to fuck you so hard, you’ll be aching for the rest of the day.”

  And he made good on his promise, eating at my pussy and ass from behind me, propped up on his knees on the floor with his rough hands holding me open for his ravenous mouth. I came twice on his tongue and twice more around the punishing invasion of his cock, the last at the same time he flooded me with another load of his hot, sticky seed. He held me still with one hand as he pulled out and played a finger in my messy pussy, watching as our juice leaked slowly down my thigh before he smeared them as he loved to do across my entire sex.

  Now, I was speaking to Mason as Xan took his turn in the shower. I felt badly that I hadn’t spoken to my friend since the charity gala when Alexander had shown up to usurp his bid for my date night, but life had been to chaotic to spend any time on friendships over the past few weeks.

  I couldn’t very well explain why that was to Mason, so I tried to be patient with his annoyance.

  “That man who bought you, Cosi, he’s a fucking British lord, did you know that?” Mason demanded. “I read online that he’s from one of the most notorious families in the United Kingdom. His great-great grandfather was called ‘Black Benedict’ because he would import slaves from Africa to use for his own pleasure!”

  “Mason,” I said, my tone warm with unsuppressed amusement. “I hardly think it’s fair to judge someone based on the actions of their ‘great-great’ relative.”

  He snorted. “Still, I don’t have a good feeling about him. I hope you aren’t seeing him now.”

  “I am,” I told him, happy to do it.

  I wanted people to know I was in love. I didn’t want to hide anymore. Alexander was the greatest man I knew, and I was proud to be with him. That didn’t necessarily mean I was ready to tell my family about him, not with the drama already wracking my family over Sinclair breaking up with Elena, but it was nice to tell at least one of my best friends about him.

  There was a heavy silence as Mason processed this.

  “What does this mean?”

  I sighed. “It means I’m happy. For the first time in a long time. I would love if you could be happy for me.”

  “It just…this changes things.”

  “With your family?”

  “Well, yes. My uncle…he won’t be happy I’m not with you anymore,” he admitted with a tense groan. “I don’t know how I’ll handle this.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I truly meant it. Mason had been such a good friend to me over the years, and I felt badly for leaving him to deal with his oppressive, old-school thinking family. But I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of Alexander and me, not anymore.

  I was just pulling a sheer black blouse over my lace bra when Xan emerged from the bathroom on a cloud of steam looking like a wet gold statue stolen from the Pantheon. Immediately, my mouth went dry at the sight of him.

  He frowned at the phone in my hand. “Who?”

  “Mason,” I mouthed to him before saying into the cell, “I’ve got to go, honey. I hope we can get together when things are less crazy for me. If you need any help with your family, let me know.”

  “It would help us both if you left that guy,” he muttered darkly, but when I only laughed at him, he sighed. “Fine. Take care of yourself, Cosima. I don’t get a good feeling about any of this.”

  Xan stalked toward me, wrapping an arm around my hips to tug me against his damp body so he could place a kiss behind my ear and then a line of them down my jugular. I shivered, hung up the phone, and dropped it to the dresser behind me, Mason totally forgotten as Alexander whispered, “On your knees, topolina, I missed you in the shower, and I feel the need to show you just how much.”

  Alexander

  The man we needed to see lived in a large home in a small town in Upstate New York, and he had done since he immigrated to this country after being tossed out of the upper crust of British Society. I knew this because I had helped to relocate him and his money to the new country in order to keep him safe from further harm.

  I had told Cosima the story about what happened after she disappeared at our wedding, how I’d decided to head the Order’s demands and punish Simon Wentworth for the exact crimes I myself had committed. She had listened with pursed lips and sad eyes, keeping her condemnations to herself. Ours was not a world of black and white, and she knew better than to guilt me about Simon when I’d been forced in to an impossible position. We’d both made tough choices, and we both knew what it meant to live with them.

  Still, I was watching her face when we pulled up the drive of the old stone house and knocked on the door. I wanted to see how she would react to the reveal.

  She didn’t disappoint.

  The moment Simon Wentworth opened the door, she gasped.

  I was right. She recognized him from the night of The Hunt.

  She recoiled a step just as Simon’s pale, pleasant face broke into a wide grin, and he stepped forward to embrace me a back-thumping embrace.

  “Thornton, old chap, what the hell are you doing on my doorstep?” He laughed as he pulled back. “It’s been an age since you telephoned.”

  “I’ve been busy,” I said, inclining my head to Cosima at my left to indicate just how busy I had been.

  Simon’s face collapsed like a sandcastle into the sea. He stared at Cosima for a long moment, emotions playing out behind his eyes as he absorbed the shock of seeing her standing there.

  “You remember me,” he breathed finally, his expression creased and stained with old memories and stale shame.

  Cosima hesitated, then nodded, moving slightly toward me in an unconscious appeal for comfort. I heeded it, taking her far hip in my grip to move her into my side.

  “I, well, I don’t really know what to say,” Simon confessed, blowing out a gust of air as he ran a hand through his thicket of hair. “I was abominable, really. Just the worst of the worst. All I can offer is that I was terrified and in love. At the time, going after you seemed the best course of action.”

  “Because you were worried they would find out about you and your slave?” she asked quietly.

  “Daisy,” he said as his face spasmed with pain, and his voice dropped to a breathless whisper. “Her name was Daisy.”

  “They killed her?” she confirmed; her eyes so wide and gold they rivaled the sun glaring coldly from the win
ter sky.

  Simon took comfort in those eyes, straightening his spine as he nodded. “They did. Before they got to me, they found her, and…well, no need to rehash the details. Needless to say, I am terribly sorry for my behavior. I have an excuse, though, there really isn’t any good reason I should have scared you like that.”

  “I think it’s a good reason,” she said softly, stepping forward to place a hand on Simon’s arm. “I think it’s the best reason.”

  Simon’s lip trembled slightly before he rolled it between his teeth to stymie the show of weakness. “It’s no wonder a man like Thornton would be enamoured with a woman like you.”

  Cosima tilted her head to the side in question.

  “So much light and softness,” he explained with a small, private smile. “It’s an Achilles’ heel for men such as us.”

  “Dark men.”

  “Broken ones,” he corrected her, patting her hand on his arm before stepping back up into the house and pushing the door wide for us. “Come in, come in.”

  Simon’s home was large, but the rooms were small, the hallways narrow, and both were filled with comfortable furniture. It was a home; vastly different from Wentworth’s previous residence—a small castle—back in England. Still, I recognized his joy in it as he touched his hand to the walls while he moved passed and through the photos lining the mantle place of the living room he led us into.

  I was happy he had found happiness.

  It was a strange revelation because I’d been a self-centered man, a callous one, most of my life. When you are taught that empathy is a weakness from a young age, what recourse do you have but to believe it?

  Loving Cosima had made me considerably more empathetic, and I had to agree that it was, in a way, a great weakness. I didn’t want the innocent to suffer and the guilty to flourish, so I found I had to take a stand when these things happened.

  The first time I’d really done so had been with Simon, whisking him out of the country so that the Order couldn’t finish him off. I’d tried to do the same for Daisy, but they got to her before the wedding, and there was nothing to be done.