“But, well, yes, you both were incredible, Mr. Davenport. We’d be happy to include her with the girls used at the club for special occasions. She heeds your direction beautifully.”
“The only one who touches my slave’s sweet mouth and tender cunt is me. Next time you inquire, I’ll cut your bollocks off, is that clear?”
The judge shot a look at the rest of the panel but nodded. It was clear they had no idea who Xan really was, that this New York branch hadn’t heard of the legends of the unconquerable Earl.
“Oh, and please,” Xan said, smiling his predatory smile. “Call me Lord Thornton.”
We didn’t leave right away. We weren’t allowed, and while Alexander was the kind of man who only listened to demands when they suited him, he relented and tucked us both into the dark recesses of a corner table to watch the remaining “performances.” He had cut me out of the ropes, washed away my sweat and grime with a warm, damp cloth in one of the back rooms, and wrapped me in his huge dress shirt so that I didn’t have to stay in the minuscule lingerie set I’d arrived in. I belted it at my waist and laughed at the way it covered a decent portion of my legs and drooped over my hands.
Alexander had watched me laugh, then tucked a lock of hair behind my ear before ushering us back out into the club.
Now, I sat on his lap as many of the other slaves were doing, but I had his shirt covering my body and a blanket a server had unearthed from somewhere that smelled of oak barrels keeping me warm. Alexander cradled me; there was no other word for it. He tucked me into the crease of his body and his right arm, my cheek propped on the bulge of his pectoral, my legs curled up against his chest. I could feel his strong, steady heartbeat against my cheek, and the hard planes of his muscled body bracketing me like armor.
It was an illusion dreamed up in my lingering subspace, but I thought I might never have felt so safe.
We didn’t speak, and I didn’t attempt to. It wasn’t the time or place, and I was desensitized to Alexander’s long, heavy silences even after all these years. He was content to hold me, and I was more than content to be held.
Of all the things I’d missed about being Alexander’s, I’d missed his physical affection the most. In some ways, it was more eloquent than his cultured, highly educated words ever could be.
I was drifting into a post-climax nap when Alexander turned to concrete. My eyes snapped open, instantly alert as someone slipped into the shadowy space beside us.
She was speaking before I could get a sense for who she might have been, but her words made it impossible to mistake her for someone else. “Master Alexander, I-I I am sorry to b-bother you when you are with…s-slave.”
Yana.
Her sweet Russian accent and nervous stutter only highlighted her delicate, almost fragile beauty, like a flower that would be too soon out of bloom. It shocked me how young she appeared given that she had been Noel’s slave almost three decades go. There were scars highlighted on her skin in the blue light of the club, and fear worn tightly in the skin around her eyes, but otherwise, her slight build and ethereal beauty made her seem no less than twenty-five. It was no wonder she was popular with the men of the Order. She looked built to be broken, a clay pigeon constructed just to be shot open.
“Don’t worry yourself, Yana, I asked you to meet me here.”
I looked up sharply at him, jealousy so acute in my chest it felt like a poison dart punctured right through my heart. He placated me with a hand smoothed down my hair, wrapping familiarly in the strands.
When I looked back at Yana, her huge almost translucent blue eyes were trained on his fingers in my hair as if she was witnessing a miracle enacted by God.
I supposed affection from a Master was exactly that to a woman so inured to the cruelty of slavery.
“I-I am happy to s-see you, Master, b-but I do not know what you w-w-would want from me,” she admitted in a timid voice, her eyes trained on Alexander’s neck and never straying higher out of engrained respect for his superiority over her.
I wondered if she even knew how deeply grey and enchanting his eyes could be.
“You are slave to Master di Carlo now, aren’t you, Yana?” Alexander asked.
I stiffened at the name of the Cosa Nostra’s crime family boss. He was part of the Order?
“But he’s an Italian-American?” I accused without filtering myself.
“The American faction of the Order works a little less discriminatingly than its British counterpoint. There are no titles here, only wealth and power. Di Carlo is enough of both now that he warranted an invitation, and as part of his initiation, he was gifted his first slave.” He tipped his head to Yana.