Enamoured

by Darling, Giana

  “I’m not yours,” I told him, more breath than sound.

  I hated the way my body defied me in favour of him even in that small way.

  He had his hooks in me so deep that they were embedded in my DNA.

  “You are,” he said simply, an irrefutable fact. I sucked in a breath through my teeth as he banded a hand across my lower back and snapped my torso forward into his. My curves submitted to his hard lines, and I hated how beautifully we fit.

  I bit my lip but didn’t argue because my body betrayed me more readily than my words could ever defend me. I decided a change of topic was a better strategy and pulled out of his hold to give myself needed space to think more clearly. “Did you know Noel was watching me?”

  His eyes burned like arctic ice against my skin. “Of course. He’s not a man who lets his prey run loose and free. Unfortunately, I only recently realized how obvious it was that he had been keeping an eye on you…I only needed to ask who he could have used to accomplish such a thing to think to seek out Yana. After all, she has been one of his most powerful tools of trade for a long, long time.”

  I wanted to tell him that Noel had been the one to send me fleeing four years ago, that he had beaten me within an inch of my sanity and forced me to run.

  But I wouldn’t, not when I didn’t understand why Xan had finally returned to me after all this time.

  “Why are you here, Alexander?” I asked him, suddenly so weary that the words felt misshapen and heavy leaving my lips.

  His golden brow knotted, and his fury slithered through the car like smoke, thick and carcinogenic. “You can honesty doubt my intentions after everything I’d said to you in the last thirty-six hours?”

  “Is there really any doubt that I would?” I countered, my own anger creeping through my exhaustion. “You’ve played me like a yo-yo for years. I have no idea of your real intent. How could I?”

  “You once told me you loved me,” he reminded me ruthlessly, suddenly in my space, both hands twined in my hair so my face was pinned against his, nose to nose, eyes nearly crossed as they connected. “And I once promised I would take that from you; your love, your body, and your devotion. I’m a man of my word, Cosima. I’ve come to take what you’ve always wanted to give me.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you love me?” I demanded because he was still crafting puzzles with his words and my wary heart needed confirmation.

  I would not give in to less than his reciprocity.

  He stared at me still, his eyes working beneath his heavy lids, his jaw so taut I worried it was break under the strain.

  But he said nothing.

  I gripped my hands over his wrists like shackles and forced him tighter to me so he could see the way my eyes glowed, how something inside me wanted to reach out and eat him up entirely. Devour his power and his essence until he was all mine.

  “How can I forgive you for everything you’ve ever done if you won’t give me access to your heart? Or the very least your mind? I cannot begin to fathom your motivation over the past few years, and I’m so fucking tired of trying. Why are you here, Xan?”

  He was quiet for so long, only the heavy drag of our combined breaths punctuating the gummy silence, that I worried he wouldn’t respond. And then what would I do? I’d come too far to give in to him again without his meeting me halfway.

  I needed some tender, vulnerable piece of his soul or else all my fragile, sandcastle dreams of more with this man would crumble irrevocably into dust.

  “Please,” I whispered fiercely. “Give me something.”

  “I want to give you everything,” he bit out almost before I’d finished speaking, his voice thunder and his eyes flashing like lightning. “I’ve wanted to give you everything since nearly the moment I laid eyes on you so beautiful and brave. Do you know what it is like for a man used to power and spoils when he is helpless to keep and worship the one thing he wants most?”

  I didn’t breathe. My heart, for one long, agonizing minute, didn’t beat.

  I existed on the precipice of his words, staring into the dark future hoping a soft landing would meet me after the jump.

  “If I had a heart, Cosima, I know I would love you with every facet of it,” he breathed with almost violent tenderness, his hands so painful in my hair and his eyes so wonderfully tender on my skin my heart didn’t stand a chance against the contrast. “But I was born without one, and I don’t know if something like that can grow in a man like me. If it could, I know it would for you.”

  A sob bubbled up my throat and burst between us. Xan ground his forehead hard against mine, somehow knowing the pain and the savage passion in his gaze would keep me from dissolving.

  “You are mine, topolina,” he vowed with the same solemnity he had spoken his vows at our wedding. “I know this because everyone is a slave to something, and I am enslaved by you.”

  My mouth was over his before I’d made the conscious decision to kiss him. He tasted of heat, slightly metallic and rich like the warmth after swallowing certain spices. I wanted to luxuriate in that hot cavern, moan into it as he fucked his tongue over mine, but he pulled away with one last searing suck, and my mouth went suddenly cold, tinging from the loss.

  He rubbed his thumb over my swollen bottom lip and then nipped it before smiling his rare smile that broke open every hard plane of his face and made it almost boyish.

  “I’m back because I couldn’t stay away, even if it was the safer, saner thing to do.”

  “Safer?” I asked, shivering slightly as I thought of Noel watching me all these years, every memory tainted by the possibility of his eyes on them.

  Metal shutters slammed shut behind his eyes, and suddenly, the lord and master was back. He pulled away slightly, a muscle in his jaw jumping.

  “We’ve arrived, Lord Thornton,” the driver said over the intercom.

  Alexander was out of the car before I could demand more answers. Even when he opened my door for me, his face countenanced no conversation, and he ushered me quickly into my building as if a threat lingered around every corner.

  I wondered now if they actually did.

  “Xan, what’s going on?” I asked, pushing back against the hand driving me at the base of my spine as we made our way to the elevator bank. “What did you do with Ashcroft? What do you know about Noel watching me? I swear I’m going to scream if you don’t stop being an enigmatic piece of shit.”

  His eyes darkened as he tugged me into the elevator and hard into his body so that he could band both hands around my hips in a crushing embrace. “Speak to me like that again, topolina, and I will remind you right here in this elevator where any of your neighbors might see exactly what happens when you disrespect me.”

  I shivered with lust even as my anger still coursed through me. “Then respect me enough to tell me the truth of everything that’s happened. I feel as if I don’t understand the events of my own life even as I’ve been living it.”

  His stern expression didn’t soften, but his expressive eyes went burnished with pride and tenderness. “Always so brave, little mouse, standing up to creatures greater than you in the jungle. So brave and beautiful.” He dipped to press a soft, almost fluttering kiss to my lips and then pulled back so I could see his eyes as he said, “I wanted to tell you everything on the Jurassic Coast, but you ran away from me as you seem liable to do. If you show me your home and promise not to run again, I promise to tell you the truth.”

  “The whole truth?” I pressed suspiciously.

  His lips twitched microscopically to the side, a small tell giving away his amusement. “The whole and nothing but, my beauty.”

  “Deal.” I took a determined step back out of his embrace and offered my hand to shake on it.

  Another lip twitch, this one nearly a full grin. He clasped his big, worn hand in mine and stroked his thumb over the delicate skin of my wrist. When I stepped to his side, a careful distance between us so that I could center my thoughts, he didn’t try to breach it, and I a
ppreciated his restraint more than I could say.

  I felt strange knowing Alexander would see my home. It was my happy place, a collection of rooms that vividly catalogued all the multifaceted aspects of my soul. I’d bought into the building because it was a pre-war historic New York City landmark, and the palatial caramel marble lobby and scrolling woodwork reminded me of Pearl Hall. The apartment itself was rich with vibrant colours, the living room the colour of my favourite Italian wine, the bookcases delineating that primary space from the office behind it were thick black structures filled with books, relics from my childhood home in Naples and photos of my family since moving to New York. A handful of Giselle’s paintings were on the walls, and some of my favourite framed portraits from fashion spreads I’d done lined the hallway leading back to the kitchen. I had a clay pitcher of wine forever filled to the brim on my island, a tradition started years ago at Mama’s house, and an easel set up by the small French doors that Giselle used to craft her masterpieces. A half-finished painting was propped there of a woman bound Shibari-style by locks of her own hair.

  It was a space as intimate as the inside of my heart, and it frankly alarmed me that Alexander and his scalpel sharp eyes would have access to it all.

  This was the person I had become in every carefully cultivated vase and colour-coordinated fabric choice. I wasn’t sure how he would react to seeing an autonomous me because it was never something he’d had to face.

  Alexander read my hesitation at the door and stilled my fumbling hands as I searched for the right key with a large, heavy one of his own. I watched as he took the key ring from me and easily found the correct one to slot into the gold lock. His smile was slight, but smug as he opened the door and placed a hand on my back to usher me inside.

  “I knew where you lived before you finished signing the papers,” he told me, his lips against the shell of my ear, tickling the thin skin so that I shivered. “I might not have been beside you for the past four years, my beauty, but I still made sure you had everything you’d need.”

  “I needed you,” I told him in a moment of intense honesty.

  My skin went hot and tight with embarrassment, but Alexander only pulled me inside and then pressed me to the door as it closed so that he could pin me against it in a hot, punishing kiss. I groaned into his mouth, slipping my hands into the short, silky strands at the back of his head to hold him to me.

  I wanted answers almost as badly as I wanted his kisses, but the latter still trumped everything. It felt as though I existed only under his touch, an apparition made whole by his will and his alone.

  Alexander froze against me so suddenly, I kissed his unmoving mouth for a moment, making out with a statue. When I clued into his paralysis, I moved my head back the inch it took to meet the wall at my spine and noticed the gun trained to Xan’s golden temple.

  Before I could tilt my head to see who yielded the weapon, Dante’s tangled British-Italian accent slithered low through the room. “Step back from Cosima and keep your hands at your fucking sides.”

  “Dante—” I started exasperatedly, moving forward to block him from Alexander.

  His black eyes cut to me, sparkling and hard as chips of obsidian in his glowering face. “Move another inch, Cosi, and I’ll put a bullet straight through his soft temples.”

  “Dante, don’t be a stronzo,” I snapped even though I obeyed his order and held myself still.

  Alexander merely stood, strong and immovable as a tree being threatened by a slight breeze as if the gun at his head was nothing but a mild nuisance. He stared at me with a flat face and eyes gone black with predatory instinct.

  “What the fuck are you doing in New York City, Alexander?” Dante demanded, his stance just as firm, his face just as implacable.

  They had never looked more alike.

  The air was distorted like blown glass with the waxy waves of their anger and animosity.

  A secret, animal thrill worked its way down my back and sparked in my sex.

  “I’m here for Cosima. What the fuck are you doing lurking in her apartment like a bloody thief?”

  “I have a key,” he retorted smugly, grinding the gun into Xan’s temple as if to physically rub it in.

  “She’s my wife,” Alexander reminded him in a tone like a gavel strike before moving so sharply, I couldn’t discern the series of movements that had Dante’s gun knocked to the ground, skittering over the wood floors, and both men in a fierce grapple on the ground.

  Alexander emerged on top and pounded one large fist brutally into Dante’s side, somehow knowing exactly where his brother had been shot a couple weeks ago. Dante’s breath punched out of his lungs, but he twisted his massive body even as he struggled to drag air into his lungs and leveraged his torso to sock a blow directly to Alexander’s chin that had him reeling back. He took advantage, pushing him back with a push to both shoulders so Xan fell to his ass and Dante scrambled over him, pinning him to the ground to growl in his face.

  “You motherfucking, selfish prick,” he bellowed into my husband’s face, spittle flying, face vermillion. “You couldn’t stay away, leave her to her peace?”

  “You think what she had was peace?” Alexander said, the ice to his brother’s fire, laying calmly beneath his hulking adversary as if he had chosen to lie down and wasn’t pinned there. “You think she could ever have peace without me?”

  “Egotistical maniacal bastardo,” Dante spat. “You really think she needs you? You fucking abused her! You chased her and raped her and ruined her.”

  “You’re right,” Alexander punctuated his words with a hard grunt as he reared up to smash his forehead to Dante’s nose and switch places with the reeling man, kneeling over him with a placid face that was somehow more threatening than Dante’s twisted sneer. “I ruined her just as surely as she ruined me. It’s done. There’s no going back. I think it’s you who has to learn to live with that, Edward, because Cosima already has. This problem you have? It’s yours.”

  They glared at each other, nose to Roman nose, gold and black pressed together in a way that no woman could ever think was anything other than pure masculine beauty. I was arrested by the sight of them, by the fact that they both loved me enough to fight for me.

  I was also completely done with their dramatic alpha antics, though.

  “Get off your brother, Xan,” I ordered, pulling at his shoulder until he reluctantly acquiesced. “Dante, get up and step back.”

  As soon as they gained their feet, I stepped between them and pressed a hand to both their lightly heaving, massive chests to ground the electric power charging through their veins. They both watched me narrowly, angry with each other, but also with me for interfering, for even interacting with the other man.

  The headiness of stepping between them sluiced through me until I was almost light-headed. I was an organism entirely dependent on the male mind to survive. I needed them to want me, crave me, become enamoured with me.

  The hole at the center of my being that had been ripped out of me when I left England fed on the meat of their attention, and as I stood between the two men who had become the center spokes of my world, I embraced my gluttony with verve.

  “You both need to knock it off. I’m a grown woman who can make her own decisions and speak for herself. Dante…” I turned to the man who had been my saviour the past four years, the man who had taken the tattered pieces of my body and soul and given them a home to recover in. He looked at me with soft, velvet black eyes, his mouth twisted up in one corner because he already knew he wouldn’t like what I had to say. “D, amico mio, Alexander came to save me from Ashcroft at Club Bacchus tonight. He didn’t hurt me, and honestly, I don’t think he means to hurt me ever again. I think…” I darted a glance back at the man in question and let his burning eyes fill me with conviction. “I think he wants to be with me.”

  “I do,” Alexander confirmed in his Dominant voice, in that tone that brooked no argument. “Not that Edward deserves to know that.”
>
  “Hush,” I scolded him before turning to Dante, hating the way his eyes went cold and his posture changed, his muscles tightening as if repelled by my hand on his chest. “Dante, you have to trust me to know what’s best for me.”

  “My trust in you has nothing to do with it, tesoro, and everything to do with the fact that I haven’t been able to trust Alexander since he sided with Noel over our mother’s murder.”

  I winced slightly because that was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it?

  Dante couldn’t trust Alexander, and I wasn’t sure if I should.

  We both turned to him, questions in our eyes like lassos ready to capture him so we could demand answers.

  “I don’t need you to trust me.” Alexander tugged down his shirtsleeves and adjusted his cuff links, insulting Dante with his every blasé move. “I don’t need you to trust me, Edward, because you never trusted me enough to come back home and tell me what you actually thought happened with Noel. You think I betrayed you? Well, brother, you abandoned me and left me with a man you knew to be a monster.”

  The air in the room went flat like stale soda, sticky with tension, but void of the angrily bumping molecules. Dante seemed suspended in it, floating on shock and uncertainty.

  Clearly, he’d never thought of the past in such terms.

  Honestly, neither had I.

  I watched as the blood caught on Dante’s upper lip from his slightly bleeding nose and warred with whether to comfort him or shame him for doing exactly what he’d always accused Xan of doing.

  Abandoning his family.

  “You think Noel is a monster?” Dante asked suspiciously.

  I held my breath as I waited for the answer. There was no way Alexander knew about Noel and Rodger beating me, because only those two, Dante, and Salvatore knew the truth, but there were so many other ways Noel had proved his heinousness.

  Alexander stepped forward, his mask slipping to reveal an expression I’d never seen hung on his features before, one of pure and lasting agony.