Soulbound Read Free

Eliza.”
    “All right.” She drew herself up, all five and a half feet of sweet curves and bitter resentment. “I swear it.”
    The triumph that filled Adam was absolute, yet not at all the satisfaction he expected. No, he feared. Feared that she’d somehow slip through his fingers and be lost to him again. Unacceptable. “Excellent.”
    With a flick of his wrist, he’d conjured a thin, golden chain and struck. The chain coiled around Eliza’s spirit and her body. Adam gave the chain a lazy tug, and Eliza flew into her body. A great gasp broke from her lips as her body arched off the ground and then flopped back, struggling against the golden bonds like a fish in a net.
    He felt her pain. He felt
everything.
Finally. Freedom. Finally, it was in his grasp. All he had to do was keep Miss Eliza May by his side. Forever.

Chapter One
     
Three years later… London 1888
    T he young man stretched out upon the table struggled to remain still. That much was evident in the way his taut, bared flesh twitched along his muscled thighs and lean abdomen. As the whitening of his wrists where they were bound with crimson satin ropes to the table, and in the way his narrow hips shifted ever so slightly, a tiny thrust upwards as if that one restrained action would bring some relief to his member.
    Eliza tried not to look there, at the obscene, angry length of him, bobbing about with each breath he took. Nor did she want to meet his eyes. She did not want to know what lay behind them, if he was in agony or in ecstasy. She settled for studying the pale length of his flank, smooth near his buttock, furred with blond hairs along his thigh, now glistening in the dim glow of the room.
    “This one is wonderfully obedient, is he not?” murmured a feminine voice in her ear.
    Eliza forced herself to stir, and she swore the tight clench of her corset threatened to put her off her turtle soup. “He has lasted longer than the others.” A benign statement but the only one she could muster. For there had been others. A parade of young and beautiful creatures looking for sensual pleasure in the hands of Eliza’s Auntie Mab and her court of fools.
    At Eliza’s side, Mab’s ivory skin was luminous and without line or flaw, her auburn hair holding glints of gold, bronze, and copper. An ageless beauty that did not seem natural. Unless you took into account that Mab was fae, an immortal.
    Fairies. Fae. Eliza had never paid myths much mind. In Boston, one was far more likely to hear stories of the Headless Horseman than those of little winged creatures. How very misinformed she’d been. Fae were beautiful, powerful, and able to alter their appearance to pass as human. Mab confided it took a measure of power to maintain, and that once their bodies were destroyed here, the fae must return to their lands to regenerate. Decidedly strange creatures. And, according to Mab, Eliza had their blood running through her veins.
    A year ago, Eliza would have thought her aunt mad if she’d claimed to be one, save Eliza had once been chained to the demon Adam long enough for the wool to be irrevocably pulled from her eyes. This brave new world was not the bland, colorless life she’d once lived amongst normal society.
    Around her, fine gentlemen and ladies ate a grand feast at the fifty-foot long white marble table. Candlelight and crystal turned the world into glitter and gold. Wine flowed with the generosity of Bacchus, servants dressed in emerald green ready to refill a glass should it lower even an inch. Which made for sloppy drunkenness. A respectable lord tossed a chicken leg across the table, and the room erupted into laughter as it landed with stunning precision directly between the large globes of a countess’s breasts.
    The countess merely plucked the little limb from her bodice and bit into the meat with pearly teeth.
    Eliza took a bracing sip of wine and immediately regretted it, as a low burn traveled down her throat. Sticky-sweet smoke drifting