His words should have evoked horror and disillusion. The kind of affection he spoke of was acidic, eating away at the soft linings and inner workings of a body until it was used up and wasted away.
“I love you as the dark loves the stars. I want only to hold you, protect you, and elevate you to the greatest heights of your ambitions. I could care for you, Cosi, love you in a way that was healthy if you’d let me,” he continued.
He didn’t understand.
It wasn’t a matter of choice.
Was it ever?
My body, my spirit, and my heart had decided who I would love long before my mind had a say in the decision.
Alexander Davenport, Lord Thornton, son of the worst man I’d ever known, was it for me.
The one.
The only.
I’d fought against the truth of it for so many years until I was dog tired and weary. I knew better now.
Besides, even if there was a choice, even if I could rewind time so that I never saved Xan’s life in that Milanese alley, so that I was never sold to him, I wouldn’t.
I wanted to be enslaved to him forever.
And now, after all this time, I believed he felt the same way.
“I’m sorry, D,” I said softly, clutching his hands over my belly so he would know just how genuine I was. “You’re a good man, probably one of the very best in this world, and I love you like a brother of my heart. But you and I both know I won’t run away from Xan again.”
Dante’s heavy sigh rustled my hair, and his big hand flexed tight against me. “Si, tesoro. I know. You can’t blame me for trying to make you safe, though, can you?”
“The Order is going down, di Carlo is dead, and Noel is next.”
His short laugh held no humour. “You have to know, life with your Alexander will never be safe, not in the way I mean.”
He was right. Alexander was a creature of the dark. No matter that he was good to me and my hero in so many ways, he would never be free of his malignant past or of his deviant predilections.
I was okay with that.
I had learned long ago to love the dark.
Twisting my head, I pressed a kiss to Dante’s stubbled jaw. “It’s okay, Dante. Dark things can be beautiful too.”
He peered down at me in the shadows. “Don’t I know it.”
“You’ll find someone better,” I told him even though now wasn’t the time. I could hear Sherwood beginning the festivities in the other room. “You don’t love me the way you could love your soulmate.”
He shrugged because he didn’t want to admit it, and I thought he knew I spoke the truth.
“Let’s get this done then,” he suggested with a white smile that glowed in the dark.
“Va bene,” I agreed, pushing out of his hold to wander back into the main space.
Sherwood was just wrapping up his address.
“Now my brothers, partake of your spoils and enjoy the night as Dionysus meant men to enjoy their wine and their women, without inhibition!” he crowed over the speakers, his last words dissolving in the fervor of the crowd’s cheer.
Immediately, the first women were ushered out to take their places on the platforms, naked as the day they were born but for black plastic collars hung with I.D. cards so the men would know which women to bid on.
I kept my eyes on Sherwood.
He moved through the crowds, giving back slaps and sly grins, his thin form cutting through the bodies like a needle as he arrowed back to the room where the slaves were kept.
I followed him.
My mind was filled with memories of The Hunt as I did so. I remembered the brutal feel of the cold Scottish air against my bared skin, painful as the slide of a frozen blade across my cheeks as I ran desperately through the dark gloom of the forest. I remembered how he had dubbed me the Golden Fox, the most desirable girl to rape and plunder, so that I had men falling out of the black night like demons sent from hell to ravish me.
I remembered him ordering Landon Knox to whip me until I was a cut-up mess of blood and torn flesh.
I let these thoughts fill my sails as I hurtled down the corridor to the backroom and saw Sherwood facing away from me, his hands on the head of a young girl servicing him on her knees with her mouth.
Disgusting.
A pig, a dirty swine I would see dead before I would see him free.
As I thought this, there was a series of powerful bangs as the police stormed into the warehouse, prepared to lay siege to the event.
Sherwood jerked, immediately bending to do up his pants in preparation to flee.
I stepped up behind him, quick and silent as a shadow, my knife in my hand around his torso and up against his jugular.
I could feel the pound of his pulse jar the blade.
“Hello, Sherwood,” I greeted lightly as he froze. “Remember me, the Golden Fox?”
I was surprised that he relaxed slightly, his voice a relieved murmur when he said, “Slave Davenport, how interesting to see you here.”
“I suppose it is for a man like you who believes himself to be invincible. Why would you think any one of your abused slaves would rise up to kick you in the balls like you deserve?”
“Is that what you plan to do, kick me in the balls?” he asked with a thread of amusement in his tone I wanted to cleave in two.
He didn’t take me seriously even then with a blade against his neck. He didn’t respect me or the threat I represented because of the simple fact that I was a woman, and therefore, I was nothing.
Anger coursed through me lava hot and just as corrosive.
“Metaphorically maybe,” I said through my teeth. “I was just going to cuff you and wait to watch the police take you away, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I should show you the same thing you showed me years ago. A complete and utter lack of mercy.”
“Don’t take your training so hard, every slave must be broken. You cannot tell me you weren’t happy as slave to Thornton. It seemed you were very much in love with him,” he taunted.
I hadn’t known hatred had a taste, metallic and chemical like kerosene spilled over my tongue. My words ignited as they left my mouth, breathing fire. “It was the threat of love that made you order Knox to whip my back to shreds and then do the same to Alexander. It was the threat of love that made you reduce women to fucking animals in The Hunt, and it was the threat of love that is holding a knife against your throat now, Sherwood. You never stood a fucking chance.”
He moved them, bucking his head back against me to dislodge my hold. But he was too tall, the base of his head only crashed into my forehead, and though it hurt, it wasn’t enough to disable me. Instead, I used his off-balance momentum to curl one of my legs around one of his and press until he squawked in pain and folded to the ground. I pressed my knee hard into the middle of his back, my hand still around his throat so that he buckled farther, falling on his belly to the ground.
I wrenched his hands behind his back and took the cuffs out from where I’d hidden them between my thighs so that I could lock him up.
There was a scuffling in the hall, and strong voices crackled over the radios.
I ignored them to lean forward on Sherwood’s back and whisper in his ear. “How does it feel to be bested by a woman?”
He cursed at me, but I only laughed as I got up, leaving him on the floor as I stepped away and police swarmed the room.
“Hey, Sherwood? You never know, maybe someone will make you their slave in jail,” I taunted.
And fuck, did it feel good.
Much later, after the calamity had cleared and police interviews were conducted, after we’d shared a celebratory drink with Dante and Salvatore in a little bar in Brooklyn, Alexander and I had gone back to my apartment. It was vacant because Giselle had gone on a last-minute Christmas trip to Paris, and Alexander took full advantage. His mouth was on mine the moment we opened the door, my dress was unzipped down the front and my breasts were in his hand by the time we made it to the kitchen. He di
dn’t even take me to the bedroom.
Instead, he pushed me chest down over the cold marble island with my hands behind my back and my legs spread luridly so that the cool air of the apartment brushed over my sex.
“Stay,” he ordered, swatting my ass so hard I hissed.
The sharp sting melted into a pleasant ache as he moved away, walking around me to do something out of my sight. I kept my cheek pressed to the marble, unwilling to disobey him even to sneak a peek at what he could be collecting.
I knew whatever it was, even if it first brought pain, it would ultimately lead to a mind-bending orgasm.
My body was already primed with heady adrenaline from successfully taking down the Order in three separate international locations. The war wasn’t over by any means—there were still criminal trials to be had and evidence to be sorted through—but the greater threat was eliminated, and I was fucking ecstatic over it.
From the way Alexander had practically mauled me in the car and on our way into the apartment, I sensed he felt the same.
He returned to his place behind me and crouched down, his breath wafting over my wet pussy, his hands finding my ass and kneading hard into the flesh there.
“So fucking beautiful,” he said in his low, heavy Dominant voice. “So fucking mine.”
I gasped as he rasped his tongue from the top of my cunt all the way up over my ass. It felt as though he’d pulled a zipper and wetness went pooling out over my cunt in its wake.
He played a thumb roughly in the new dampness and then moved away.
“Do you remember what I told you when I found you at The Hunt? I told you that you were mine to protect and comfort just as you were mine to play with and use. Tonight, after bloody years of trying, I finally succeeded in ridding the world of the Order so you could be safe. And now, topolina, I am going to use you. Are you ready to be fucked hard by your Master?”
I groaned as lust bubbled in my belly like lava waiting to explode from a volcano. “Yes, Master.”
“Good, little mouse,” he praised over the sound of something ripping. “Now hold still while I pin you down.”
I trembled as something slightly sticky wound around my ankle, adhering it to the wooden leg of the kitchen island. He wrapped it over and over until I couldn’t move an inch before moving to the next ankle. I didn’t realize what the substance was until he used it to bind my hands at the wrists behind my back. He was using kitchen plastic wrap.
Once bound, he hummed his pleasure and ran a big hand from the top of my head along the bumps in my spine over my ass and between my legs where he cupped my pussy, and it wept against his palm.
“Look at this pussy so wet for me, and I’ve barely touched you,” he murmured, giving me a short, light slap that made me moan. “You’ve always been so greedy for my cock. Don’t worry, bella, I’ll give it to you every single way you can have it by the end of the night.”
The island was low enough that my body was at a ninety-degree angle, giving him complete access to my pussy and ass. Access he took advantage of by sweeping my wetness back and forth over my groin until I was smeared in my own desire, the heady scent of arousal heavy in the air.
I panted, trying to hump my hips harder into his passing palm but unable to because of the plastic wrap gluing me into place.
“Be still,” he demanded with a hard slap to each ass cheek. “I won’t tell you again. Keep this beautiful arse still, or I won’t do as I planned and feast on it until you come over and over again on my tongue.”
I pressed my cheek even tighter to the marble as I groaned at the thought, needing the anchor of the cold stone to keep me from floating too quickly into subspace.
I wanted to be present when Alexander fucked me. I wanted to feel the victory of our union like two gladiators celebrating over their spoils.
Then he was kneeling behind me, and something viscous and sweet smelling was being poured down the crease of my ass, sliding sensuously over my folds. Before it could drop off my swollen clit, Xan caught the stream with his tongue, licking, lapping and sucking at every fold and swell of my cunt like a starving man slurping at fruit.
“I can’t be sure which tastes better,” he said into my slick sex. “The honey or your sweet juices on my tongue.”
He went back to feasting, eating away at my pussy and then making his way up to the crinkled apex of my ass, swirling it with his tongue until I was melted butter spilled across the countertop.
“I have it,” he declared after a long pull at my clit with his closed lips, a pull that made my entire body shudder. “It’s the taste of your beautiful, drenched cunt.”
A stream of useless words spilled from my mouth, yes, and oh God, and grazie e Dio. Alexander seemed fueled by them, working hard for every whimper and groan, humming against my flesh when I spoke in Italian because he knew just what it meant.
I was losing myself to him, to this. Just us together like a closed loop of energy.
He built me up particle by particle as if constructing a castle out of sand. I was all peaks and sharp corners, echoes in cavernous, empty rooms. He built me masterfully, an architect of lust, an engineer of desire so well versed in the physics of sexuality each movement of my body felt like a natural extension, a necessary expansion.
He slicked me with my leaking sex, moved red lines over my skin with his rough fingers, and dug into me with his hard, square teeth until my entire body, the structure he had so beautifully comprised, trembled on the verge of collapse.
But that was the point of the entire exercise, not to create, but to detonate.
He didn’t let me come.
Not even when I begged into the marble, the stone slab as unyielding as my Master.
Instead, he ate his fill and then pulled back to rub the hot tip of his cock over my clit and drag it back over my pussy up to my ass where he tap, tap, tapped.
“I’m going to fuck each one of your pretty holes tonight, my beauty. I’m going to gorge myself on your flesh, drench my cock in your cum, and then wedge myself into this tight little ass with just your cum to ease the way. Would you like that, little mouse, for me to use you up until you are nothing but wet, quivering flesh for me to fuck into?”
I gasped like a fish out of water, my muscles unified as I strained to welcome the looming orgasm. I knew when it came, I would thrash from tip to tail just like that fish returned to the stream.
I thought I would die if he didn’t drown me in the pleasure of climax that very second.
“Yes, Master. I need your cock; I’m dying for it.”
“Oh,” he cooed, the one drawn-out syllable mocking and cruel. “We can’t have that now, can we?”
And then he was thrusting; his cock a blunt weapon forcing open the swollen channel of my sex without mercy. He ground into me hard, then pulled out so that just the head kissed my entrance and then tunneled back inside, his hands clamped like iron braces over my hips. I tried to brace against the counter, but I had no recourse tied down as I was.
I just had to lay there and take it.
The submission he had built in me with his big hands and dirty words coalesced into a castle made of sand, of every single particle of my being, harnessed and corralled into a thing of utter beauty.
His hips canted up harshly into the front wall of my sex on his next punishing thrust, his fingers twisted my clit like the handle on a door, and everything I was dissolved back into sand.
He fucked me ruthlessly as I spasmed around his driving cock, his hand fisting in my hair to use it as leverage so that each thrust hammered at my cervix like a hammer to a gong. The pain of it reverberated through me, set my teeth on edge, and my climax, momentarily waning, somehow began all over again.
“Master, Master, Master,” I chanted as he held me still and drilled and drilled at me.
I loved his animal grunts, the way his civilized aristocratic bearing fell away like sheep’s skin to reveal the wolf at his center, the raving beast with the need to rut and breed the on
ly thing motivating him.
His thumb found my clenching asshole and began to rub, polishing it with my leaking juices.
“Such a sweet arse,” he praised. “Do you want me to fuck you there, topolina? Take my big cock and drive inside that tight hole until you’re so filled you can barely breathe for feeling me inside you to the hilt?”
I couldn’t speak. There were no thoughts in my head, no words on my tongue. I was just sex, the pulse of my pussy, the wild beat of my heart churning lust-drugged blood through my body, pooling between my legs so that I was a swollen, aching mess of desire.
I wanted to tell him I needed his cock the way I needed breath. I wanted to tell him I was an addict, an honest to God addict with such a fierce passion for his body, I could barely stand to be in the same room with him without some part of my skin against his. I’d been in a four-year-long drought I would never fully recover from, and when his cock was inside me, it felt like the headiest drug in the world.
“I need to hear your words. Tell me what you want, and I just might condescend to give it to you,” he practically purred as his hands kneaded my plump ass cheeks and his thumb brushed over the raised mark of his brand on my skin.
“I need you to fuck me,” I panted, not really cognizant of what I said, as if the words were disassociated from my body. Need flashed through my body like a flickering neon sign, and I was only able to give voice to that. “I need you to fill me up and show me how much you own my every hole.”
Alexander’s chest rumbled with a deep growl as his thumb popped through my tight ring of muscle and sank into my ass. When I groaned and whimpered, thrashing my head this way and that over the marble so that my hair went spilling over the white top like spilled ink, he stopped me with a fierce smack on my bottom.
“Don’t move. I want you to hold still while I work myself into this tight hole.”
Enamoured Page 28
