Page 124 of The Enslaved Duet
Alexander owned St. Aubyn.
Dread pooled in my stomach as everything clicked together.
He’d been outside my auditions for the brand when I’d first met him, when I’d unwittingly saved his life and basically thrust myself into his clutches.
The scent. The one I’d been made to wear the entire time I was at Pearl Hall, the one that seemed to smell like me but amplified, the one I’d discovered was a recent, highly popular debut of the company’s first signature fragrance.
It was modelled after me. Alexander had created a perfume based on my scent and named itD’oro, orGold. For my eyes, my money eyes.
My breath wasn’t moving properly through my lungs. I could feel it waffle and whimper through my parted lips, wavering as it went down so that somehow, I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I felt precariously light-headed.
What did any of that mean?
Jensen mistook my shock. “His lack of involvement has nothing to do with you being the face of our brand, Cosi. He’s a busy man, and he doesn’t have time to play with all his toys.”
I almost gave myself away at his apt comparison. I almost protested that I wasn’t justoneof Alexander’s toys. I was his favourite.
Or I had been.
I thought of prissy, perfect Agatha Howard and wondered if she knew how to take a spanking, if she could make him come with just her mouth and throat as I could.
Possessive rage lit me up like I was dry kindling.
Why the fuck hadn’t Alexander come over to claim me now that he saw me? What other reason could have dragged him from his dreary homeland to mine, to some insipid fashion event when he hadn’t shown up at any before, even for his own House of St. Aubyn?
He must be here to claim me, I thought wildly, my heart beating at the door of my chest, waiting for Alexander to somehow answer the knock from all the way across the room.
“He’s a right arsehole, if you must know,” Franklin said as he sipped his champagne, and I decided that I instantly liked him. “My flatmate went to uni with him and told me he’d never met a man so full of his own bullshit.”
That startled a laugh from me, a loud burst of hilarity that I didn’t bother covering politely with my hand. The moment I did, the air around me went static with electricity, and I knew Alexander had heard me.
I remembered how he’d loved to hear me laugh; how much I’d fought to make him express his humour that way too. I remembered that I’d made him laugh eighteen times on the one birthday I’d spent with him.
My chest felt lighter with hope.
I was one of the most successful up-and-coming models in the fashion industry. I had already saved up enough money for a down payment on an apartment in New York City close enough to Elena and Mama in Little Italy that I could walk to their brownstone, but far enough away to grant me some peace. I had friends. I had autonomy. I’d worked so hard for all of it, sweat and sobbed and made myself sick to secure a better life for myself.
And at that moment, I wanted to give it all up again for the most enigmatic man I’d ever known just on the off chance he’d want me back.
Before I could help myself, I turned around, my gaze unerringly finding his through the mass of beautiful people. He stood at the opposite end of the room, as far from me as he could be in the shared space. It wasn’t an accident. One look at his cold face, his distant eyes as if he was gazing at a stranger and not his runaway wife, solidified my awareness of his contempt for me.
My breath left my body as if I’d been run into by a sixteen-wheeler.
“Cosima?” I was vaguely aware of Jensen touching my arm. “Are you all right, love?”
No.
No, fuck me, but I wasn’t all right. I wanted to close my eyes and curl into myself in a dark place so that I could cry into my knees in peace.
One year of shoring up my defences, one year of speculating how Alexander would have reacted when he’d found out I was gone.
One year of waiting for him to find me and drag me back to his underworld dominion.
And now this.
Indifference so acute it seemed to cut me off at the knees.
Alexander shifted his gaze from mine as if looking through a ghost and then gently leaned down to press a kiss to Agatha fucking Howard’s perfect golden head before he turned on his heel and swiftly made his way out of the room.
