Page 204 of The Enslaved Duet
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 powerfulbangsas the police stormed into the warehouse, prepared to lay siege to the event.
