Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 46501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
I caught up with her, the bright headscarf giving her away. “I said stop damn you.” I pulled her to a stop and turned her around to face me. The tears were no longer trapped in her eyes, but were now rolling silently down her cheeks.
Was there anything more humbling to a man than the tears of his woman? His woman, damn. “Let go of me Ethan. I’m leaving.” Leaving, what did she mean leaving? My heart almost stopped in my chest and I pulled her hard against me.
“Please don’t….” I cut myself off. What was I asking her to do here? To stay and watch me marry someone else? Could I be that selfish? The soft warmth of her slight body pierced my chest and went straight to my heart.
She felt amazing in my arms, just as I always knew she would. Her young body was just as I expected. Soft, plush, womanly. Nothing at all like my fiancée. And that’s unfair thinking Ethan, not to mention it makes you no better than a dick.
Helen was not to blame for my feelings. We’d known each other since we were kids. Our mothers had been planning our marriage since before we left the nursery. I’d already put off the wedding for too long, and now the families were insisting that we get the deed done.
I’d given in because as far as everyone was concerned it was a done deal. I wasn’t interested in falling in love, so it mattered very little to me who I met at the altar. It was my duty to have sons, someone to carry on the name and all that, and Helen was as good a choice as any.
That was all good and well until my own mother threw a wrench in the works. Not that she would know. She’d done nothing more than hire a new groundskeeper and housekeeper who came with a teenage daughter. She’d turned eighteen the week before they were hired, still in high school for fuck sake; a baby.
I’d been away at the time, in the middle of the desert to be exact, ferreting out slime, bent on destruction. When I came home I was in no mood for niceties. I’d seen one too many horrors and was fucking done with the world and all in it.
Marriage was the last thing on my mind. I didn’t even want to see another human being in those first few days back, and at night the horror I’d left behind followed me into my dreams. It safe to say that I wasn’t the same man who left these shores.
My family couldn’t get through to me. I shut myself away from everyone including Helen and spent my days in solitude. Then one day she’d come upon me in the garden. My first sight of her was like a reawakening. She hadn’t seen me at first, she was too busy chasing the butterfly that refused to be caught.
Her laugher was like a calming balm and when she finally turned and saw me, that smile still plastered on her face, the sun bouncing off her silky raven curls, my heart fell at her feet and I came alive.
It was as if a light shone in the dark and I knew that this was someone I could come back to and leave it all behind. I saw in her eyes all the joy and light that was missing in mine. In those first few seconds I saw something I thought had gone out of my world forever. Hope!
It died a quick death when I remembered who I was and what my future held. “Who the hell are you?” Those were my first words to her. I had a pretty good idea since mom had mentioned her and her family in one of her letters and then again when I returned.
I remember her putting her hands on her narrow hips and eyeing me down with no fear whatsoever. She opened her mouth and it was as if the sun came out again. I didn’t realize until that moment that my world had gone completely dark.
“I could ask you the same question but I’m afraid I know the answer. You’re the lord and master that everyone’s been harping about for days. Hmmm.” She’d given me one of her sneers as if to say I wasn’t much to look at after all.
From that day to this, I’ve been falling deeper and deeper in love with her. It wasn’t any one thing she did or does. It’s just her. Her light, her joy, her vivaciousness. The way she doesn’t give a shit how much money I have, or what my last name means.
I love her beauty, her youth, her… everything. And I can’t fucking have her. Not and live with myself. If my duty to my country was over maybe I’d risk it. But I still have a few more years to go. Years in which I might be called upon to leave her for months on end, while I go halfway around the world.