Enamoured

by Darling, Giana

  Quickly and effortlessly, Alexander was hefting me out of his saddle and twisting me back onto my own.

  “If you’d like to attempt to beat me back to the stables, you’re more than welcome to,” he continued mildly, the tiny curve of his mouth belying his arrogant amusement. “The loser will be punished, of course. I think a spanking with a riding crop sounds fitting, don’t you?”

  Before he was even finished speaking, I was off, Helios leaping into motion so fluid it seemed that we spilled down the hill and into the valley as easily as water through a stream. My laughter was high and breathless as I pressed my torso into Helios’s warm body, buried my nose in her sweet mane, and galloped across the estate, no demons or monsters giving chase behind me, just the man I always knew would find me if I ran.

  Still, somehow, probably due to nearly four decades of horseback riding, Alexander drew abreast with me, grinning like the innocent boy he had never been, and then quickly overtook me with a loud, freeing whoop of joy.

  He beat me soundly, arriving at the stables two minutes before me, and then, he beat me soundly again with a riding crop while I braced myself against the same fireplace he’d once branded me against. He held my ass when he finally thrust into my wet, clutching heat, his thumb digging into the flesh over my brand as if he could rebrand me through touch alone.

  It was that thought and the belief that he could, that broke the bloated seal on my orgasm.

  I was still panting, my hands linked around Alexander’s neck the only thing keeping my wobbling knees from collapsing, when he started to laugh his gorgeous, rumbling laughter against my neck.

  “What?” I asked, pulling him by the hair so I could see his creased, happy face. “Why are you laughing?”

  An imperious shrug. “I’m allowed to laugh, am I not?”

  “You are,” I agreed slowly. “You just don’t very often.”

  His amusement softened into something far more intimate as he gently nipped my chin with his teeth. “I have the sense that will change now.”

  I beamed into his face, and he clucked his tongue at me. “Infatuated, the both of us. I hope Riddick has a strong stomach because he doesn’t much like public displays of affection. Most Brits don’t.”

  “Good thing you’re half Italian then.”

  “Good thing.” He slapped my ass sharply, reigniting the burn from the riding crop. “Now get inside and go to your room. Some of the gifts I spoke of are waiting for you on your bed.”

  I opened the door of the room that had been my haven the entire first year of my stay at Pearl Hall with more trepidation than I ever had before. A surprise from Alexander could mean anything from a horse to the piked head of a former enemy staked to the floor still dripping blood.

  At first, as the ornate gold and cream painted door swung inwards, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The pink and red carpets still overlapped in pleasing disarray, the gorgeous draperies over the bed tied open with golden ropes to reveal the deep red satin coverlet and mounds of goose down pillows. It was opulent and homey, and even though I would be spending my nights with Alexander in his room in the future, I would always consider this room my own sweet escape.

  Distracted by nostalgia, I almost overlooked the small black blob on the duvet, but the floor creaked slightly under my booted feet and a little head peeked up, gold eyes the same colour as my own popping open amid the inky fur.

  “Hades!” I cried as I dived onto the bed and grabbed my little demon cat into my arms.

  I rolled onto my back, holding his warm, soft body on my chest with my hands under his pits so that he sat between my breasts and we could look each other in the eye. He blinked at me sleepily and yawned, exposing his little pink tongue, before finally greeting me with a croaky meow.

  I hugged him tenderly to my chest and threw my head back against the duvet to smile into the canopy, my cheeks aching with the spread of joy on my face.

  There was a creak in the hall that signaled the arrival of someone at my door, and I laughed without looking over to see Xan standing smugly there.

  “You wonderful, sly man. Thank you so much for getting Hades here. He means everything to me.”

  There was a light scoff and then the smooth, lyrical lilt of my brother Sebastian’s voice. “I’m deeply wounded, mia cara. Here I was, always thinking I was your favourite.”

  I shot into a seated position and blinked at the sight of my brother, Giselle, Sinclair, Mama, and Salvatore in the doorway.

  “Cazzo,” I cursed through the sudden onslaught of tears. “I’ve cried more today than I have in five years.”

  My family laughed and filtered through the door to surround me on the bed, peppering me with kisses and enfolding me in hugs. We settled with my head on Mama’s soft chest, Giselle’s on my stomach with her legs over Sinclair, and Sebastian’s on my thigh. Salvatore sat at my feet, smiling alternatively at me and then at Mama, his big, thick hands on my ankles.

  “I thought you were all dead,” I tried to explain through my incessant tears. “I thought you were all dead because of things I did, and I imagined the rest of my miserable life without you all, and I wanted to do more than die. I wanted to stop existing.”

  “Ah, piccola,” Mama cooed as she stroked my hair back from my face. “Your husband and Dante got most of us out before the bomb exploded. Alexander, he followed you when you went to the back because he had a sense of danger, and when you could not be found, he pushed everyone out.”

  “It was a sight to behold,” Giselle admitted, giggling softly. “These two huge men grabbing people as they went, pushing and yelling for everyone to get out of the restaurant.”

  “Two killed,” Salvatore muttered darkly. “Your mama’s sous chef and one of Dante’s boys.”

  “I’ll go to the funeral,” I said immediately. “Xan and I will pay for it.”

  “You won’t. It’s done, and I took care of it,” my dad said, his thick brows nearly obscuring his furious eyes. “Just as I will take care of the di Carlo scum who involved themselves with Noel.”

  “Tore,” Mama soothed. “Calmarsi.”

  Settle down.

  I was surprised by the empathy in her soft mouth and her gentle words. Mama hadn’t had a kind word to say to the love of her life in decades, and now, it seemed, she was condoning the violent thoughts and future actions Salvatore planned against a rival mafia syndicate.

  “Whoa,” I breathed, making wide eyes at Sebastian who chuckled.

  “Elena isn’t here because she’s keeping her promise to you,” Sinclair interjected, picking up my hand to clasp it between his own. “She and the rest of the legal team are looking after Dante.”

  I closed my eyes at the sharp sting of relief and deeper pulse of agony in my chest. The vision of my gorgeous, big man Dante in an ugly orange jumpsuit caged in a drab room of concrete all day made me physically ill. He didn’t deserve to be there.

  I did.

  Maybe even Xan did.

  But not Dante, not my beloved best friend.

  “She’s going to get him out,” Sin promised. “Trust me, she’s a shark.”

  I nodded but didn’t give voice to my lingering fears because I didn’t want them out there in the universe manifesting.

  My eye snagged on Riddick lingering just outside of the door, forever my sentry.

  “Rid, come in and meet my family,” I called out.

  He scowled.

  “Come,” I demanded.

  He moved slightly into the door on leaden steps that screamed how reluctant he was to socialize, revealing Douglas behind him, carrying a large silver tray loaded with his gorgeous pastries.

  “Enough of the heavy,” Douglas announced. “Time for treats and a good chinwag. Giselle, love, Cosima tells me you lived in Paris. We must talk about all the places where you ate.”

  “Riddick? I hear you taught Cosima how to fence. Think you have time to teach me a thing or two? You see, I have this film coming up…” Sebastian launched
into discussion with the large, stoic man as if they had been friends for life.

  I laughed as Douglas swept into the room followed by two servants carrying tea and champagne, and I continued to laugh, as I hadn’t for years, while my two families comingled.

  Cosima

  The surprises didn’t end there.

  Riddick unearthed a large white box from my closet tied with a note from Alexander requesting I wear its contents that night. Giselle ripped the wrapping apart with me, both of us giggling as we hadn’t done since we were girls. We stopped at the sight of the white silk dress cushioned by mountains of gold tissue paper. The fabric was cool and slippery as I held it up to my body, and it shone in the light like a saltwater pearl.

  “Stunning,” Giselle murmured as she fingered the fabric. “I have to paint you in this one day.”

  “Here,” Riddick had said, thrusting another, smaller hat box at me.

  Inside lay a golden crown of thorns intermingled with fresh, fragrant flowers.

  And I knew without needing confirmation that Alexander wanted me to look like Persephone in her maiden white, plucking flowers from a meadow when the Dead God broke through the earth to abduct her.

  “Look at her,” Mama whispered, her voice thick with tears. “She looks so much in love.”

  “Si,” Salvatore murmured back. “Just as her mother once looked at me.”

  I bit my lip, refusing to look over at them in an attempt to give them some privacy. I’d never harboured delusions about my parents getting together again, but I knew they still longed for each other.

  I also knew longing wasn’t love.

  “Let me do your hair,” Giselle ordered, pushing me into the chair before my vanity.

  I liked seeing her in the reflection where I used to see Mrs. White. It made the memory of sitting there all the less painful. It made me realize this was exactly what Alexander had predicted when he invited my family to visit. They were the only ones who could perform an exorcism on the many poltergeists in the Hall without even whipping out the Bible and sage sticks.

  God, but I loved that man.

  “I’ll miss you so much,” Giselle said as she dragged the gold brush through my hair. “New York won’t be the same for me without you there.”

  “I’ll visit,” I promised.

  She bit her lip, her eyes finding Sinclair in the reflection. “Cosi, I have my own alpha male, so I speak with authority when I say, I don’t think that man is going to willingly let you out of his sight for a very, very long time.”

  She was undoubtedly right, but I still said, “He’ll let me visit my family, bambina. He knows how much you mean to me.”

  “Um, would it be cowardly of me to request you don’t use me as an excuse. Honestly, the man kind of scares me.”

  I’d laughed so hard, my stomach cramped.

  Even now, walking down the hall by myself in search of my mysteriously disappeared family two hours later, I chuckled at the wide-eyed look on my sister’s face.

  I couldn’t blame her. Alexander was an extremely terrifying man.

  It was just one of the many reasons the dark side of my heart adored him.

  The familiar strains of a Verdi symphony tickled the inside of my ears as I swept through the Hall of Mirrors and down the corridor to the ballroom. I frowned as I drew closer, the clatter of feet on the tiles and the low hum of chatter underscoring the swell of music.

  Riddick appeared beside me so silently, I startled.

  “Allow me, your grace,” he said formally, dressed to the nines in a perfectly tailored suit that made the somewhat crudely constructed man look entirely dashing.

  I nodded, so many questions on my tongue, it felt cemented to the bottom of my mouth.

  He stepped in front of me and pushed open the wide double doors to reveal the secret of the cacophony inside.

  The ballroom was transformed.

  For once, the drapes were tied open, the windows glimmering black mirrors in the night, reflecting the fragments of light from the many chandeliers like constellations of stars. The warm light made the gold leaf glow like luminous vines covering most of the room’s tall walls and my beloved mural of Hades and Persephone seemed to spring forth from the ceiling in a three-dimensional rendering.

  It was gorgeous and so completely contrary to my history in the space, I felt momentarily bedazed and bamboozled. Had this loveliness been lurking in the dark of my cage the entire time? Had I been kept captive in a place of beauty, like a ballerina trapped in a closed music box, unaware of the gorgeousness around her, too haunted by the dark?

  I blinked, wondering if I was imagining the warmth, hallucinating the many loved ones punctuating the space as I had in my loneliest hours being broken by Xan and Noel on the cold, hard black marble floor.

  I wasn’t. Giselle and Sinclair stood in gorgeous refinery, his hand on the back of her neck in a claiming hold, Sebastian beside them with his head tipped to me but his suit-clad body angled toward my old friend Erika Van Bellegham’s stunning figure. Salvatore and Mama stood close but not touching, their hands both loose and twitching slightly at their sides as if drawn to each other by some invisible magnetic force. I caught sight of Agatha Howard holding Simon Wentworth’s hand, Jensen Brask standing beside Willa Percy, both peering at me with slight, smug grins as if they knew this would be my life all along. The staff were there too, in their humble finery, their smiles wide as they watched their lord and master carve a path through the crowd to collect his duchess.

  To collect me.

  My mouth went dry and my sex wet as I took in Alexander’s long, powerful gait eating up the floor, his stride purposeful, but somewhat unhurried as if he couldn’t wait to get to me, but he knew he had all the time in the world to reach me. His silver eyes caught in the warm light and reflected like diamonds from his golden face, one of Hephaestus’s perfect automatons come to life.

  As he stopped before me, his face stony with tender solemnity, and took my hand, I felt for the first time ever as if my life was a fairy tale. Not one of the Grimm brother’s gruesome stories without optimism and filled with monsters, but something pure. A Bildungsroman meant to inspire hope, with the lesson that if you persevere through your times of trouble, you can come out the other side with a spine of steel, the heart of a worthy man held in your palm, and wisdom around your shoulders like a royal mantel.

  “Topolina,” he said with a small kick of his upper lip that belied his amusement at my stunned silence. “Take your husband’s hand.”

  Mutely, I did, my hand sliding into his like a key in a lock.

  He tugged gently, leading me through the crowd to the middle of the room. He stopped me with my feet on the black marble tile scarred and punctured from the impression of the spike that had held me down in chains.

  I looked up from my stilettoed feet on that wounded tile, and Alexander’s face was suddenly up against mine, his eyes everything I could see, his mouth moving against mine.

  “You will always be my slave, my beauty,” he whispered just for me. “But you will also always be my duchess.” A kiss pressed like a notary stamp to my lips, legalizing his words, and then he pulled back to face the crowd. “Everyone, may I present to you, Cosima Ruth Lombardi Davenport, Duchess of Greythorn, and my gorgeous bride.”

  Everyone clapped, Sebastian throwing in a whistle and Giselle a soft whoop.

  My skin was too dark to show a blush, but my flesh caught fire with gentle embarrassment and pride.

  “You are the greatest treasure I will ever know,” Xan continued as Riddick stepped up with a large, flat velvet box and handed it to him. “But I wanted to belatedly commemorate our marriage with a gift worthy of you.”

  There was a collective gasp as Alexander popped open the jewelry case and countless diamonds erupted under the multifaceted light. My hand flew to my mouth to contain the immensity of my emotions as I stared at the necklace of diamonds constructed to look like thorny leaves and the absolutely sumptuous yellow gol
d diamond at its base.

  To everyone else, it looked like an extravagant present from a lord of the realm to his new(ish) bride.

  To me, it looked exactly like what it was—a replacement collar for the one Alexander had told me Noel had cast into the fire.

  “Something incomparable for my incomparable bride,” he said as he lifted it in one hand, smoothed my cloak of hair off my shoulders, and settled the heavy, cold weight around my neck.

  The weight of the diamonds was so acute, I knew it was deliberate. So that I would always feel the force of his possession around my throat.

  Alexander turned me to face him after clasping it closed, his face impassive as he stared at his collar around my neck. He lifted a finger to run the back of it over the smooth rectangular yellow diamond in the hollow of my throat, and then he looked up at me with softly pursed lips to say, “Even L’Incomparable pales next to your money eyes.”

  “Only because you love me,” I told him, trying to tease and failing because the words were hoarse with unshed tears.

  He shrugged his insolent schoolboy shrug. “Undoubtedly. Now, slave, dance with me.”

  Collecting one hand in his, wrapping the other around my waist, Alexander spun me into movement, music flaring to life like the kick of my skirt the second he whirled us into motion.

  “Wagner wrote this symphony for his wife, Cosima, for her birthday,” Alexander told me as we danced, and everyone else began to dance with us.

  I pressed my cheek to the fabric over his heart. “Why are you doing all of this?”

  His chin rested over my head, his hands drawing me closer so that we were flush together, barely dancing. “Because I wanted to show you how serious I was about replacing all the nightmarish memories in this house with new ones, brilliant ones. I wanted to somehow illustrate how sorry I am for all the things I’ve put you through. I want you to understand even when I cannot measure the fathomless depth of love I have for you at the heart of me, how very much I desire you to be happy in this life with me.”