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If you’ve read the story starter – a very long Chapter 1 – and you’re ready to dive into the story with me, please continue reading.

About the story: (short description. Click here for longer)

“Let Me Love You” is not just a tale of love and sacrifice but also a poignant story of self-discovery, celebrating the human capacity to find love in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Please enjoy the current WIP of Iris and El. This will be published freely up to a point… like the old days and then the entire book will be posted for the full download. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And don’t forget to check out the companion stories. (Wicked Chances, Dreams of Reality, The Convenient Wife & Ravenous)

Enjoy, Your Author, Sylvia Hubbard

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Read more: Let Me Love You – Chapter 2✍🏾📚❤️ #SylLit #WIP #livestory

Chapter 2

Iris’s oversized dress was very itchy, and she was very uncomfortable with the safety pins she had utilized to keep it on her body. Unlike her deceased sister, Iris wasn’t as full-figured in the front but curvy in the rear. The dress fitted very loosely up top but very tight in the bottom. 
Dwayne demanded Iris wear this dress today on his rare occasion of actually taking her out with him. 
Her mind tried not to think about last night because the whole experience seemed surreal. Yet, something broke inside of her. She was past the point of being sick and tired, and just passing by Gaston’s Restaurant and seeing people out and about; she realized she hadn’t been around other people in so long that she barely remembered the last time she was around people other than her family.
From the moment she stepped out of the car in the rain, unable to take Dwayne another second, her brain pushed through the darkness in her soul and gave her light…
Or Iris thought.
She could never imagine being picked up by some gorgeous man in a magnificent car smelling gorgeously handsome. How the hell do you smell gorgeously handsome? The guy smelled pristinely clean. 
No! It was a dream. A gorgeously handsome man HAD NOT driven her to her aunt’s home. Iris forced herself to believe she had walked those twenty blocks and fell on the cot in exhaustion. All of that had been some dream.
Although this morning she noted the empty box from Gaston’s was in the garbage, but maybe it had been there from something else. And the sugar still coursing through her system.
Auntie Rose let a lot of people use her backyard shack. 
Of course, Dwayne came and instead of letting him come on Aunt Rose property, Iris went out and got in the car. He didn’t speak to her all night long and she knew it was in fear that she would get sick and tired of the way he was treating her and jump out again.
All the way home, she pushed out the thought some gorgeous light skinned black man in a beautiful car had treated her better in the twenty minutes she had been with him than any man had ever treated her all her life. That was impossible. She was stressed, and her brain had to have made the whole thing up.
While Dwayne paid the babysitter, Iris went to check on Clem, who was fast asleep. She then retired to Dwayne’s office and began to finish up the reports by morning. Every once in a while, she would think about her dream and then push it away in her thoughts because that had not been true. That was impossible.
Before she dozed off over the keyboard, she determined it was all a hallucination!
“Hurry the fuck up!” Dwayne sneered from downstairs, rocking Iris back to the present. “We still gotta drop the boy off to your dad’s house on the way and get the shit to Mr. O’s office before the event. And that attitude from last night better be gone. I don’t have time for your shit today, Iris. Be ready in an hour!”
Her husband was extraordinarily bitchy about everything on the way there. Nothing she did was right, and she was positive there were pinch marks lining her entire arm. Dwayne’s public display of abuse was worse than his private, but Iris knew this was her punishment for her past misdeeds and yesterday’s tantrums, so she took each lick in stride, not crying out or screaming from the sharp pain.
They arrived early at the office before anyone else. Getting to Dwayne’s office as her husband pulled down the blinds, she pulled the Financial report she had just finished yesterday afternoon.
This had been the source of the argument. Dwayne didn’t understand how important the report was. All he knew was that he had to get it done before this meeting to look good for the new boss. She hadn’t slept for two days putting this together and was glad Clem could fend for himself.
Dwayne had been on her all yesterday, and the drive home was so stressful as he talked about “his promotion” and “his VP” spot. Iris couldn’t take another second of him gloating and jumped out of the car, letting the tears cover up her crying. 
“Get back in the fucking car!” Dwayne ordered.
“Go home, Dwayne. Just go away. I-I can’t.” She was glad for the torrential downpour because she needed nature’s storm to cover up her own emotional tsunami.
He kept ordering her into the car until she screamed, “LEAVE ME ALONE!”
Maybe it was her tone of voice or the rage vibrating from her body. Or maybe it was the car annoyingly honking behind them, but Dwayne pulled off a block away, most likely to drive around eventually, and came to pick her up.
Dwayne whooped as she handed him the printed-out financial report. “Good, Imma deliver it to that snot nose assistant as he’s just arrived.” He handed her a shit load of files. “Start writing up the analysis on these in the conference room. Keep your head low, and don’t talk to anyone. If anyone asks, you’re just here for the event.”
Her feet hurt her like hell in the shoes she was wearing, but she obediently took the files to the conference room and dug into the paperwork.
“Excuse me,” a timbre voice said, coming from a handsome white man, olive skin and green eyes. “They told me to come here to wait for Mr. Olorun, but I don’t want to interrupt you.”
Iris hurriedly started to gather all the files together in panic. The boss was coming?! In there? “Oh no,” she whispered under her breath.
“You can continue working. You look like you were very immersed in something pretty deep. I see a lot of numbers. That’s impressive.”
It felt fun to tease her knowledge of the company: “Well, with the potential of being a billion-dollar company, Mr. Olorun made a great decision buying, and depending on his decisions, he can either make or break this company.”
Those green eyes danced in excitement. “Seems like you know a lot of stuff.”
Feeling too comfortable and then remembering the boss was coming, she said, “I was just leaving.”
“Not on my account, I hope,” he said, coming closer to her.
“I’m not supposed to be-” 
The door to the conference room opened again, and Iris didn’t dare look in that direction. She gathered the files and walked out of the room, almost running back to Dwayne’s office. 
Dwayne was trying to figure out which tie he should wear in the mirror behind his desk. “What the fuck is your problem?”
Iris didn’t feel like telling him what almost happened. “Nothing,” she grumbled. 
He started concentrating on his ties again, while she just stared at the door, waiting for someone to come in there.
“Oh shit, it’s time,” Dwayne said abruptly, scaring her. “Don’t forget-“
She cut him off, imitating his disgruntled voice. “I know. Don’t say shit to no one.”
He narrowed his eyes and clenched his fist. 
Wincing as his nails dug into her arm, Iris only nodded her obedience. 
Dammit, she needed to keep Iris in the box; she reminded herself as they made their way to the event room. 
Staying slightly behind Dwayne, hoping no one stared at her too long, once she was hissed at to get the fuck away, she wandered around the edge of the room, ear hustling various conversations, making her way towards the unbothered food table. Iris was sure other wives would have been over at the table if their husbands starved them, too. 
It seemed everyone was nervous about meeting the new boss. Iris was a little glad she didn’t work for this company because she had heard and read so much about him that she could understand everybody’s nervousness. The man had more degrees than her. With a Master’s in business analysis and a Bachelor’s in International business operations, Iris knew she could probably do everybody’s job in the room, but her father had demanded she repay her debt to society, and in return, her father would pay off her education debt, while never speaking about what she had done.   
Feeling a lot guilty about her sins of the past, Iris obediently did what her father ordered her to do and married a man who knew absolutely nothing about business. Dwayne was dumb as a sheep, but somehow lied his way into a corner office position at this company. Prior to knowing Iris could do his job, he was barely hanging on. 
Violet, her sister, had come to her and said it was all for the good of the family. Iris was so desperate to do almost anything where her family wouldn’t stress her she jumped at the chance. It gave her an opportunity to get away from her father’s guilt and disgusted glares she had to endure daily, while she was living under his roof and be able to sit in a library for hours reading books, doing research, and writing up reports. Most people thought this work was boring, but Iris loved extolling what she had learned on paper and connecting the dots to research that most people would just look over. It was something she learned from her mother, who had fostered her love for numbers and details in her daughter before dying.
Additionally, Iris was able to be around her sister while Violet was pregnant. Violet hated every second of pregnancy, but Iris relished the idea of giving life. Albeit, her initial time was short-lived given the circumstances of the past, but seeing her sister’s belly grow with life was amazing.
Once Violet died, Iris easily agreed to her father’s command to ensure her nephew would be raised, loved, and appreciated. Dwayne had no idea what to do with children, refused to have any part in naming the child, and looked at the baby like it was a burden. 
Now Clem was going on five years old, extremely smart, so laid back and calm all the time. Every day, Iris had a reason to stay when she looked into Clem’s eyes. 
The smell of food made her stomach embarrassingly growl. She was glad everyone was too nervous to eat because she was starving, and there was a trough of shrimp that looked freshly cooked. As fast as she could, Iris stuffed several pieces of shrimp in the Ziploc bag she often had in her purse to eat for later, and then she proceeded to stuff as many pieces of shrimp as possible in her mouth. She hadn’t had prawns in so long; she started to get high from the deliciousness. 
A short, little, beady-eyed black man cleared his throat. “Your husband and his boss want you over there,” his nasal voice said.
Looking over in the direction the distasteful man nodded, she saw Dwayne’s mouth, “Get over here.”
As she walked over nervously, Iris cleaned up quickly, trying not to let them see her face, which must’ve been covered in shrimp juice.
“You!” a sharp, familiar voice said.
She looked over from Dwayne to the tall man, broad shoulders…gorgeously handsome smelling man. 
Instantly, her spine straightened as realization enveloped her. How could she have hallucinated Dwayne’s boss before seeing him? Drenched in rain, looking at her as if he never wanted to let her go. No! She couldn’ve, but…
“No…” She hissed and looked at Dwayne in panic. “I’m sorry.” Shyly, she looked back at the gorgeously handsome man in sheer desperation and fear. “Please, no.” Dammit, Iris was going to come out the box!
If Dwayne knew this was the man that picked her up last night, there would be no light of day… ever, and hopefully his boss was smart enough to pick up on what she was throwing out. 
Giving the boss time to assess what she needed him to do, she said to Dwayne, “I was hungry. I’m sorry.”
Dwayne narrowed his eyes in disgust and anger, but he shelved his emotions, putting on a fake goofy smile. “I was telling my boss about his name.”
Instantly, she announced, “Supreme manifestation!” Iris remembered looking up the name and being fascinated. Damn! She remembered when Dwayne came home and told her about the new boss, but there were no pictures of him up close or clear pictures of him anywhere, but she remembered that name! “E-le-du-mare O-lo-run,” she lovingly pronounced, looking the boss straight in the eyes. “Your name means the creator and ruler of the heavens. It’s beautiful.”
Dwayne cleared his throat, warning her to tone it down. 
Remembering who she was supposed to be, Iris looked down at the ground, looking deeply apologetic again. “I thought it was poetic.”
Yet, what man would want people to know his name was poetic? That was something girly, and this was no girly man. She bet Eledumare Olorun’s sweat-wreaked testosterone. His magnanimous presence was felt all over the room. 
And when he stepped toward her, Iris thought she would faint as she ventured to look up into those hazel almond eyes with specks of gray floating around in them, burning into her soul. “Thank you,” he said very softly.
“No, thank you… again,” she said, relieved, hoping he understood what she meant.
Eledumare Olorun looked at the beady, short man and announced quietly, “I’ll be in my office.”
It was as if no one breathed until the boss was in the elevator. If the music had been playing, she hadn’t heard a thing. The world had stopped when the gorgeous man was around.
Her world, at least.
Dwayne dug his nails harshly into her arm. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“W-What?” she asked, unsure if she had missed her husband saying something still consumed by Eledumare Olorun.
“Go wash your fucking face. You smell like fish and shit,” he hissed.
Oh, dear Gawd, she probably did look a hot mess. Rushing off to the bathroom, she gasped because her lipstick was slightly smeared, and her eyeliner was caking in the corner of her eyes. 
The dress was not her color or fitted her correctly. 
Hot mess! Iris looked like a straight-up drunk auntie at the cookout. And this is what the gorgeously handsome man, who was also her husband’s boss, had seen.
Dear lord! Could she just die of embarrassment?
Covering her hands over her face in shame, Iris prayed she never laid eyes on Eledumare Olorun ever again.

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Let Me Love You (c) 2024 Sylvia Hubbard All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
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