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

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

“Let Me Love You” is a tale of love and sacrifice and 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 in the old days, and then the entire book will be posted for 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, The Other Side of Love, She Works Hard for the Money & Ravenous)

Enjoy, Your Author, Sylvia Hubbard

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Read more: Let Me Love You – Chapter 31✍🏾📚❤️ #SylLit #WIP #livestory 📖💓 #marriedwife #demandedconsensual #darkromance

Author’s Note:

It’s Friday! And yes, I’m way behind, but I’m still posting. I wanted to leave this weak on a low note, so this chapter gets down to the dirty details of what her father was doing.

Now, if you know The Literary World of Sylvia Hubbard, you know about my first book, Dreams of Reality, and what happened to those women. The doctors were arrested, but my brother asked me a question about a decade ago when he read the book. What happened to the scientist? That’s a good question.

As I prepared for King and Lethal Heart’s books, I needed to return the drug because one of their storylines will entail this.

Side note: I’ll be posting a video on my social media about my feelings for Aunt Rose because many of them came up – good and bad.

I don’t know if white-knuckling is a word, but it is today. I was not changing what Grammarly told me to change.

Happy Reading. Your author, Sylvia Hubbard

Changing the subject suddenly, Aunt Rose said, “Shouldn’t you get cleaned up, Iris?”

She probably should, feeling her underwear with dried remnants from El and most likely on the side of her thighs, along with her arousal as well, but all that could wait, knowing what her aunt was struggling to reveal. “This is more important, Aunt Rose. I must understand why you feel so strongly that we must leave this house. My father had never tried to get into this home after what you did, and even if he tried, there’s no way he could. A one-person tank couldn’t break this house down.”

“I need you to see what I know, Iris, but I don’t know how to explain it without sounding like some crazy woman, which everyone has always thought of me – doing my home remedies and never leaving. Back in the day when the neighborhood was rampant with children playing outside, I used to be called a batshit witch until Pete went around and told everyone different.” She smiled fondly. “I say all that to say I see things people don’t see because all I can do is listen, watch, and smell things on people that come from the outside world. I must put my conspiracies and assumptions aside since I don’t live in that world.” 

Her aunt took a long moment while taking an intense breath to calm herself before continuing,  “Asum has some hidden motives. I thought my threats would stop him once your mother died and then after I tried to put a bullet in his head, but somethings happened more recently to make him desperate.” She took another deep, troubling breath. “He’s going to hurt you or use Clem to hurt you. This house won’t protect the two of you forever from him. Plus, Clem needs his freedom, and this is a prison for him. I can’t let him suffer like that.”

“So what are you saying?”

“If you get an opportunity to get out of here with that boss, go. We can still work the business somehow. I already know the ingredients to everything and can get down in the lab through the rear greenhouse entrance. Pete made the ventilation hole large enough for me to take a ladder down there. I know you’ll figure out how to get orders to me to keep the business going, but don’t you sacrifice anymore. Look out for you, Iris. Promise.”

Aunt Rose’s voice was brutal desperation, almost like fear. “Yes, ma’am,” Iris promised her aunt. 

Rose calmed herself and poured their tea. “So tell me all about your night before Clem wakes up. And leave no detail out.”

Helping her aunt carry the tea back to the front room, Iris did as she was told and left no detail out. Aunt Rose would know if she did. The older woman had too much good sense and a lot of suspicions. 

Plus, Iris needed to talk to someone about the swirl of emotions she was feeling for El, and if he could do so much to her body now before they had sex, what was to stop her from losing her mind once they did?

“Wait a minute,” Aunt Rose stopped her. “He wasn’t naked, was he?”

Her aunt had stopped her at the part where they were lying on the bed together.

Iris blushed. “Yes, but I still had my underwear on.”

Aunt Rose’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

“And some more playing around, and I fell asleep.”

“Did you use protection?”

Talking about this with her aunt, Iris was embarrassed, but she reiterated confidently, “I told you we didn’t go that far, and if anything, I have an IUD.”

Her aunt seemed to let it go as she asked, “You’ll ask him about helping you, right?”

“If you think I should move away, I’ll look for another place. Dwayne only rented the house we previously stayed in. I can get Clem’s things-“

“No, after last time, I don’t think you should go there anymore without security. Arrange with Pete to get anything that you need out of there for Clem, please,” Aunt Rose demanded. “But finding another place is going to take too long.”

Feeling uneasy about her aunt’s anxiety about getting her out of the house, Iris said, “If I’ve done something to upset you, please let me know, Aunt Rose.”

“No, love.” Her aunt put a comforting hand on Iris’s thigh. “Your father is doing things to upset me, and I feel that you need to be protected sooner than later. Just promise you’ll ask your boss about a place to stay until you can find somewhere secure. I’m sure he would help. You said he feels he must protect your peace of mind while you’re at work, and this is part of it.” 

“I don’t want to burden or owe him more than necessary, but I will do it, Aunt Rose.” After siping the delicious honey and Hibiscus tea, Iris circled back to what her aunt had said earlier. “What did you mean about smelling other men on my mother? You think she did have affairs behind my father’s back?” 

The old woman shifted around and looked as if she was reluctant to speak, yet some unknown force inside her pressed for the words to leave her body. Aunt Rose spoke in a low tone as if others could hear them. “I might as well just say it even though I promised your momma I would never talk to you about it.” The old woman shivered. “Even though I believe your father gaslit your mother until her dying words as she spoke, never tell her.”

It was Iris’s turn to feel uneasy, and she braced herself for what her aunt was about to reveal. 

“The night your Momma died, I was there by her side. She was in the throes of all-out pain and delusion, but your daddy wouldn’t take her to the hospital. I stayed by her all night while he celebrated his new concoction and venture. I knew that celebration was all because of what your Momma sacrificed, and in her delusion, she heard you outside the door crying. She would become just a little lucid and look at me for help as if I could make the madness stop. In all the books I read and in all the knowledge I knew, there was no remedy for what your father did to her. There were so many chemicals affecting her I couldn’t flush it all out.” The words were heated and bitter as Aunt Rose almost white-knuckled the teacup in her fingers. 

Iris couldn’t believe what Aunt Rose was insinuating. “Are you saying Daddy experimented on Momma? Did she know? Did she allow it?”

“I can’t answer those questions truthfully because your Momma would never admit any of that, but I knew. I could smell the chemicals he pumped into her. And don’t try to say he’d never and that he loved her. I see her suffer – seen her think things were normal when they weren’t. I saw that man gaslight her until she was lying in a bed, crazy with hallucinations, barely gripping reality as her mind was leaving her. She believed in that love he told her he felt for her, but I knew in my heart that man was only using her just like I knew he would eventually use you and make you think you had to earn his love. Seeing your Momma and her last minute of life begging me not to tell you because it would ruin your love for your daddy hurt me tremendously because I knew of the lifelong sacrifice I would have to make for the love of my sister.” She stifled a sob and pulled out some tissue she kept in her bra to dab the corners of her eyes. 

Iris was speechless, and her head was starting to hurt as her mind tried to think of how her father could have been drugging her, yet she refused to interrupt her aunt and waited patiently for the older woman to get herself together to continue. 

Aunt Rose’s voice had gone even quieter, and Iris had to lean in to hear clearly. 

“I knew I had to do whatever I could to save you without breaking my promise to my sister, which is why I did what I could to help you. I encouraged you to sober up and give you knowledge of natural herbs and the autonomy of your body so you could be aware of things that were happening to you. I thought that would help you, but Arum is getting worse. He’s getting desperate for something I don’t understand. I must break my promise to your sister or lose you.” 

Iris could feel her aunt was still at a crossroads of revealing the truth. 

Aunt Rose put her tea cup on the coffee table before her and then snapped her fingers. Herb was there in her lap to offer comfort in a second. “You need to know the truth about everything, and whether you believe me or not, I don’t care. I need my soul to be clear before I go on. You know your daddy was a chemist, and he was kicked out of college for illegal experiments on humans. I don’t know if you know that, but I remember that day. Your Momma was here when your father called her and told her he was kicked out, but of course, he didn’t tell her the entire truth. Word on the street was that Arum was practicing his chemical experiments on friends and unsuspecting women. I know this is hard to hear, but it’s what you should know. Your sister was already born, and your mother was too deeply in love to face the truth about him. Some of those women he experimented on came to me to flush their systems out, but some had too many chemicals to get better, and I watched them die. Then, when your mother started little by little, I knew your father was doing the same to her. She said I was jealous, but it wasn’t that. She wouldn’t listen. Her heart was too wrapped up, and he gaslit her so badly she couldn’t reason with the truth. She told me to keep my assumptions to myself. I did, but I watched…” Another sob was trying to escape. “And she’d come to me, off her rocker, talking about things and people I’ve never heard her speak about before. And she’d have that scent heavily on her. I’d flush her system out, but months later, she would end up at my doorstep again. I warned Asum to stop whatever he was doing, but he just scoffed and pointed out that no one would listen to me. And I knew that.”

Iris was feeling anxious, and she knew once Clem awoke, Aunt Rose might not want to speak on this again. “What made you think he was definitely experimenting on my momma and also me, Aunt Rose?”

End of This Chapter | Post your thoughts in the comment | Let the author know what’s going on in your head

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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