I groaned, giving voice to desperation in the hot pit of my belly.
But I obeyed.
I held perfectly still, barely breathing as Alexander poured something with a gentle earthy scent over my asshole. His fingers sloshed in the olive oil and smoothed it over my opening and up over my cheeks, rubbing it into the flesh until I glistened. He moaned as he plumped them in his hands.
“Such a gorgeous arse and all mine.”
“Yours,” I agreed, my mouth expelled like a shot from my chest as he spread open my cheeks and pressed his cock to my oiled ass and thrust the tip inside.
There was a slight burn that morphed so quickly into an exquisite ache, I couldn’t help but pant into the pain and whimper for more.
He slid into me centimetre by centimetre, feeding his thick cock inside my greased hole as he rubbed his big hands all over my ass and hips. I could tell by the slight hiccough in his breath that the sight of me pulsing and struggling around his girth was getting to him, but he still moved methodically with utmost control into my body to the hilt.
When his balls pressed against my soppy wet pussy, I shuddered, my entire body alive with electricity as if he had plugged me into a socket with too high a voltage.
“That’s it, hush, bella. I’ve got you,” he soothed as his hands curved over my flesh, a jockey comforting his over exercised horse. “You’re taking my dick like such a good slave.”
I quivered again as he ran a finger over the stretched skin of my asshole, tracing where he was plunged deep inside me. My body felt stretched on a rack, ready to split open at every joint and burst open on the floor at his feet.
“I’m going to use you now,” he explained calmly, coldly, as his hands tightened on my slippery hips to the point of pain. I didn’t feel it, not really. I was so deep in subspace that everything done to my body immediately translated into the language of pleasure and aching need. “I’m going to use you until you are a wild, thrashing, wet mess against the table and then I’m going to come all over your beautiful arse. Are you ready, topolina?”
I was, and I wasn’t. There was true fear on the edge of my consciousness that I simply wasn’t able to handle the kind of intense pleasure he was about to give me.
But he didn’t give me time to respond or reconsider.
He pulled out slowly to the tip and then crashed back into me, hammering into me with his hips angled up so that his cock dragged over every inch of my sensitive channel.
I squealed on the first thrust, groaned on the second, yelled, and then finally, blissfully, screamed on the fifth as I was torn apart by the hot piston of his cock. My vision shattered, the familiar kitchen around me dissolving to fractured, distorted images spotted in bright colours like fireworks shot off through a broken window. I could vaguely sense my body shaking so fiercely, my legs gave out and the only thing holding me up were Alexander’s punishing hands, but the only thing I was truly cognizant of was the lightning strike of nearly unbearable euphoria tearing me apart from the inside out.
I collapsed against the island, limp and used as discarded spaghetti, panting loudly but not so loudly I couldn’t hear the slosh and churn of his balls hitting my wet, engorged sex as he drove into me.
“Such a good slave,” he praised, his voice gone to smoke with lust. “Such a good slave for your Master. Do you think you deserve my cum?”
“Only if you think I do, Master,” I replied between my broken pattern of breath.
He groaned so gutturally he sounded like a beast faced with his next meal. I loved the animal side of him, the one that rutted and fucked as if it was his life’s purpose. Finding the last of my strength, I straightened my legs so that I could push back against his punishing thrusts again.
“That’s exactly right. I own your pleasure. I own your pink cunt, and your gold pierced clit, and your lush tits, and this sweet, fucking beautiful arse. And I’m going to sign you like an artist with his painting,” he growled as he thrust one last time, ground into me so deeply it curled my toes and made a second, smaller orgasm pulse through me and then there was emptiness and cold air around me, inside me and he was pumping his cock so that molten ribbon after ribbon of his seed spilled over my glistening skin.
When he finished, he lazily rubbed his thumbs through the cooling cum and kneading it into my flesh, testing the weight of my ass checks in each hand, dipping a sperm-coated finger into the sensitive rim of my opening just to test the resistance, just to feel me shudder and whimper for more even though I was spent.
“All fucking mine,” he practically purred as he placed a sweet kiss to the middle of my spine before pulling away.
He began to unwrap me from the posts and then gently free my hands, massaging them to bring back the lost circulation. When he was done, he carefully peeled my sweat-sticky torso off the countertop and lifted me into his arms. I wrapped my limbs around him, tucking my face into his neck with my nose against his pulse so I could smell his cedar forest fragrance as he walked us into the bedroom. He held me reverently, a father with a newborn child, as he pulled back the covers and dipped me beneath them, fluffing the pillows at my back until I was ensconced in cosiness. After gazing at me with exquisite tenderness as he pushed back an errant lock of my hair, he turned, naked and at ease, to walk back to the kitchen to clean up.
I snuggled deeper into the covers and stifled a yawn as my cat, Hades, jumped onto the bed and moved to curl up in the bowl of my lap, already purring. I scratched his ears as I waited for Alexander to return, wondering what was taking him so long, wondering if Mama, Sebastian, and Elena were together celebrating Christmas while Giselle and I were absent.
I had wanted to be with them, but not only was the auction more important, so was spending my first Christmas with Xan. Years ago at Pearl Hall didn’t count because I’d been enslaved at the time and barely able to comprehend why I loved his sexual games, let alone acknowledge that I actually liked my captor.
“Close your eyes,” Alexander demanded from the hall. “And if you open them, Cosima, there will be terrible restitution to be paid.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Do not roll your eyes at me, little mouse,” he countered without even seeing me. “Close your eyes.”
I closed them, my heart tapping out a strange rhythm in my chest because the air in the room was suddenly close and heavy, the way the atmosphere changes dramatically before a storm. My ears strained as Xan walked into the room and to my side of the bed. The mattress depressed under this weight and then his hand was holding mine, tugging it over into his lap where he began to play with my fingers.
“I once told you that if I was ever moved to marry, it would be to give my future wife the protection of my name and the promise of my love no matter what may lay in the future. When I married you four years ago, I did it thinking I was only providing the first; the protection of my name. I thought I was a man without a heart and therefore without the propensity to care for you in any other way than as a possession. Then I was forced to wait in the wings for nearly half a decade in order to keep you safe from the evils of my world, and in doing so, I understood that the reason I married you was much more complex. I married you because I couldn’t imagine a day without you by my side, lighting up my dark world with your golden light and vibrancy. I did it because being close to you is never close enough, because I didn’t feel alive unless you were with me.”
I wanted to open my eyes, but I didn’t dare because he hadn’t given me permission. Besides, the darkness lent a tangibility to his words, as if they had their own heartbeat and breath, both pressed against my skin like a human body. I felt his love as solidly as I felt his hand cradle my own and after so many years of doubt, that was such a beautiful promise it made tears leak out the corners of my pleated lids.
“So, Cosima, my beauty, I have a different promise to give to you now that the Order is gone, Ashcroft is eliminated, and the Cosa Nostra scum who hurt you are dead. It’s a simple promise, but I hope it’s profo
und.” Alexander’s warm breath passed over my face as he pressed a kiss to both of my closed lids. “Open your eyes now, bella.”
I opened them, my sight filled with Alexander’s striking face, his gold tipped lashes heavy fans over his dark, brushed pewter eyes. They were filled then with such awe-inspiring love, I couldn’t stem the weak sob that blossomed in my mouth like a wet rose.
Eyes open and locked to mine like a vow signed in the ink of our blood, he dipped his head to kiss each of my cheeks and then my lips, then my chin, all the way down my neck and along my left arm at the tender pulse points as if he wanted to transplant his love into the blood there until he reached my palm. I trembled as he planted a kiss in the center, then skirted his lips up each finger to brush them over the tip. When he reached my third ring finger, his mouth opened over the top and something glinted between his teeth in the low city light spilling in through the windows.
My heart arrested, my breath like amber trapping my emotions in my chest as he dropped a ring down my finger and then tugged it into place with his teeth. After kissing the top of it where it lay at the base, he pulled back to look in my eyes again.
“Before, I gave you the protection of my name,” he whispered, the words so sacred they felt hushed and as reverent as a prayer spoken in a holy place. “But now, I give you my whole heart and hope that you will let me prove to you every day from here on out, that I am worthy of yours in return.”
I was crying steadily, my breath nearly robbed clean by the strength of those cleansing, awed tears, but I needed to speak. I needed the beautiful, misunderstood man offering me his bleeding heart to know a simple truth that hadn’t changed for even one moment over the years.
The air I dragged into my lungs was threadbare but enough to sustain me to say, “I will spend the rest of my life proving to you that you are the greatest man I know, and that I will always love you irrevocably, even on the days you feel more like a villain than my hero.”
I threw myself at him them, hurtling across the covers so that I was entwined over his torso and lap like some choking vine. My fingers sank into his hair and twisted so that we were pressed as close as two human bodies could be. Only then did I move back enough to tip my forehead to his and look at the emotion glazed over his beautiful eyes.
“Il mio cuore è tuo,” I murmured in my mother tongue, because there was no other language better able to express the wealth of feeling I had for this man.
My heart is yours.
Xan wrapped his arms around me tight as a promise, and whispered against my mouth, “I’ll never want it back.”
“Good, it’s not returnable,” I said, my giddy joy making me giggle.
His eyes smiled in return, then sobered slightly. “I know before, Pearl Hall was your prison, but do you suppose one day, when Noel is long gone, that you could ever make it your home? It was only ever that, a home, when you were there with me.”
That dream I’d only ever dreamed of returning to Pearl Hall from The Hunt resurfaced in my mind, that girlhood dream of a prince and a castle being her very own.
I’d never had the luxury to dream that as a girl and never had permission to dream it as a slave, but now, as the true wife of my earl, he was giving me licence to live it.
I nodded as I looked down between our faces at my left hand curled over his heart and caught my breath at the stunningly huge and clear yellow diamond on my finger.
“Your eyes,” he explained. “Though I couldn’t find a diamond as warm as your golden eyes.”
“Stop it,” I ordered as more tears sluiced down my face. “You’re making me cry.”
Alexander grinned wickedly as his hands tightened and he sent me careening onto my back on the bed. Before his mouth sealed over my own, he growled, “Don’t you know, I love to see you cry.”
Cosima
There was a little deli on the edge of The Bronx that Mason and I had discovered one day while walking aimlessly around the city. Ottavio’s was smaller than the bathroom in my mid-sized apartment, lined in cracked linoleum tinged yellow from cigarette smoke and stained pink in places from spilled marinara. The hum of the refrigerator filled with Italian imported sodas underscored the loud, tinny music from a portable radio Ottavio kept perched on one of the two glass display cases. Umberto Tozzi crackled through the air as I pushed through the glass door, and it reminded me of so many years ago when Seamus had driven me in our old Fiat up the Aventine hills of Roma into Alexander’s arms.
If pressed, I couldn’t exactly express why I enjoyed the dingy Italian deli so much. The air was stale, the prosciutto tough as shoe leather, and the ambiance entirely sad, but I loved the community of it, the way Ottavio knew everyone by name and that people came from all over town to get the one delicious thing produced in his kitchen, homemade tiramisu. It reminded me in good ways of Napoli, the run-down, nasty stretch of it filled with enough good people to make the urine shine and the stench of it a pleasant enough place to call home.
I didn’t know why Mason liked it as much as I did, probably because he was Italian on his mother’s side and he liked to play at being more than white, rich, and American.
I called out a loud, happy greeting to Ottavio as I swung through the door and headed straight for the fridge to grab my San Pellegrino and Mason’s favourite Chinotto Neri. After ordering a huge slab of tiramisu, I claimed one of the two tiny round tables to the left of the door and settled in to wait for Mason. It annoyed me that he was late, but only because I wanted to get back to the apartment to Skype with Alexander before he left for a day of meetings in London. He had been gone for less than forty-eight hours, and I missed him so acutely it felt like a knife wound in my chest.
The door jingled open as the soft croon of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang” spilled like fuzzy yarn through the radio. His wide forehead was dotted with beads of sweat so thick they looked white as pearls, and his mouth was an open, wet puncture in his creased face. There were large sweat marks bracketing his underarms through his blazer that he didn’t try to hide as he powered through the door like a lost man seeking salvation in the warm shop.
“Mason?” I asked more than called out because I was confused by his uncharacteristic disheveled appearance. “I ordered the cake already, come sit.”
He hesitated, looking out the door, up at Ottavio, and then back at me as if we presented a terrible conundrum. I patted the uncomfortable metal chair beside me and offered a small smile of encouragement.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for ages,” he told me as he took the seat.
I winced. “I know. I’ve been a bad friend to you the past two months, but believe me, I had good reason. Now, grab a fork before I eat all this goodness and fill me in on whatever has been going on. Did you meet someone?”
It was Mason’s turn to wince, and he didn’t reach for a fork, instead grasping for one of my hands to clamp between two of his clammy ones.
“Listen, Cosi, I don’t know how it got to this point, I really don’t. At first, it was so simple, you know? They just wanted me to be involved in your life, this innocuous spy. It was easy because, well, you know, you’re you, and you are beautiful.” He licked a pearl of sweat off his upper lip and then wiped his damp cheek against his suited shoulder. “I mean, I started to love you, and I got why they asked me to watch you. You are dangerous because you’re a flame to the moth of men. Really, you have to believe me, it didn’t seem like I was betraying you in doing what I was. It was just reporting to them, making sure you stayed away from the Order and from the Earl of Thornton in particular…”
There was a strange ringing in my ears, as if I’d been hit upside the head and my brain clanged between my ears. I wondered if words could concuss someone because those sentences spilling out of Mason’s familiar mouth felt brutishly weaponized.
“Your mother’s family?” I asked even though I already knew the answer.
The uncle he always spoke of, the one who hated homosexuality so Mason had to
hide who he was, the one who ran the family with an iron fist.
Mason’s chin dropped to his chest; a dead weight filled with shame. “Yes. Uncle G.”
Uncle G.
Uncle Giuseppe di Carlo.
There was a series of clicks as everything slotted into place. Noel had clearly sponsored di Carlo for entry into the Order, gifting his old slave Yana to the new Master in exchange for a simple favour. Keep an eye on his eldest son’s runaway bride and make sure she stays away.
But I hadn’t stayed away and now…
My head snapped up, the back of my neck tingling as the door’s chimes sounded again. I looked to the right, but I already knew instinctively with the well-honed sensed of much hunted prey who would stand in the doorway.
“Di Carlo,” I greeted mildly because perception was power, and I didn’t want him to know how utterly disconcerted I was by this reveal, by my friend’s years-long betrayal. “What brings you out into the light?”
His flesh face parted with a slick lipped grin as he rounded the table and took the seat perpendicular to me. He wore what I guessed to be his customary suit, a pinstriped dark grey with broad shoulders that harkened make to what I was sure he thought were the “good ole days” of the late 19th century when the mafia was in its heyday. There was a gold chain at his throat, nestled in the hairy hollow between his collarbones and three thick gold rings on his fingers that gleamed in the artificial yellow lights. He seemed like a caricature of a mobster, virile but past his prime, expensive but with cheap taste.
I knew better than to take the front for granted. He was danger wrapped up in a tawdry package, but dangerous all the same.
“My nephew speaks so highly of you, Miss Lombardi,” he spoke through his smile, but his eyes were black, wet and mean. “Or should I call you, slave Davenport.”
“You can call me whatever you wish,” I told him graciously even as I frantically tried to find a way out of the situation. “Just don’t expect me to answer to it.”
Giuseppe laughed, a throaty, phlegm-filled sound that made me want to gag. “The duke told me you were a spitfire, but fuck, no fear in the face of the most powerful man in New York City is pretty fuckin’ admirable or pretty fuckin’ stupid.”
Enamoured Page 29
