Page 60 of The Enslaved Duet
“I am going to give you everything because you are worth everything,” he said in a way that made it a vow, and to seal it, he closed his mouth over mine in a firm, hard kiss that felt like a wax seal stamped with his crest.
“I don’t understand you,” I told him shakily. “You want to destroy me one minute and worship me in the next.”
He closed his eyes, looking so very tired for the first time since I’d met him. I didn’t curb my impulse to reach up and smooth the lines in his puckered forehead with my fingers.
“You aren’t English, and you aren’t a peer, so how can you understand? I was born into something that I cannot change, and I must carry the burdens of my ancestors.”
“Nothing is irrevocable,” I told him, but the words felt like a lie as I sat in the cradle of his arms because I knew there was nothing changeable about the way he had altered the composition of my mind.
“Some things are. There are secrets with roots that stem back into the 1500s in a family as old as mine, and there are some that are as recent as my lifetime that are too egregious to ever lay down.”
“And these secrets explain why you bought me?”
He pulled back to consider me, idly wrapping one of his fingers in a lock of my inky hair. “I think perhaps I would have acquired you even if I hadn’t needed you. The moment you saved my life was the moment you unwittingly became mine.”
“A strange way to repay a debt,” I noted because even though I was soft from my orgasm, there were still thorns at the edges of my thoughts from the trauma of it all, each memory a prick of pain against my psyche.
He’d done that damage to me, directly and indirectly.
“It is. I hope one day to explain it all to you, but that day is not today, and it is not soon. Now, get up and go directly to your room. I want you to stay there while I deal with the bastard currently occupying my dungeon. Unless you want to watch?”
I thought it about it as I bit into my lower lip. There was no denying something would be satisfying about watching a man hurt for his transgressions against me. But I didn’t think I wanted to be the kind of glutton who indulged in such a thing.
“I’ll go upstairs.”
“Good girl,” he said with a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
He pulled my chin forward to press a kiss on my mouth, then stood us both up easily.
“Oh good, you’re organizing yourselves,” a voice said from the entryway to the left wing of the house.
Noel stood there in something more formal than a tuxedo, his silver threaded golden hair pushed away from his face with pomade.
I made a noise in my throat and ducked slightly behind Alexander because I was tired of being undressed in front of fully clothed men.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Alexander demanded, crossing his arms over his chest and bracing his feet like a military man.
“The Order is coming.”
Something dark permeated the room, and the light from the small windows at the top of the two-story space suddenly went out. Logically, I knew that the ever-present English clouds had covered the weak late autumn sun, but the omen felt too powerful to rationalize.
“And who the fuck invited them?” Alexander asked even though the answer was obvious.
Noel smiled sedately. “They inquired after the girl, as is their right. You hadn’t done so; therefore, I gave them an update.”
“An update that clearly required them to check up on us.”
His father shrugged. “I am not the man in power. Take it up with Sherwood.”
“Oh,” Alexander said darkly. “I will. You and I will also be having words. Ashcroft arrived early and assaulted Cosima.”
“Cosima?” He frowned, looking so much like a confused older man that I felt the urge to go to him. “Oh, you mean Ruthie? What a terrible misunderstanding.”
“There was no misunderstanding,” Alexander ground out, his fist clenched at his sides. “You are the orchestrator of this madness, and it isyouwho should have to the bear the mark of it. Not Cosima.”
Finally, an expression that was not calm or solicitous crossed Noel’s face. It slithered beneath his skin, not quite there, a snake in the grass hoping to move by undetected. Reflexively, I recoiled. The man I’d spent my afternoons with had been wise, kind, and old enough to bring comfort to me because such a man didn’t view young women like me as anything but delicate young ladies.
That look did not say all that had been conveyed that day.
