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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

start reading below

Read more: Let Me Love You – Chapter 70✍🏾📚❤️ #SylLit #WIP #livestory 📖💓 #marriedwife #demandedconsensual #darkromance

AUTHOR’S NOTE: technical difficulties prevented me from creating posts and it’s still happening, but until I change the website’s template, I will get this error. That’s not your worry, though. I am getting through these chapters, and I might go really fast through these chapters; I hope you hang on for the ride.

I know you hate me for what I did to Pendylum and if you haven’t seen her story with Sheriff Heart, you should read Baby Doll

okay, on to reading / Your author, Sylvia Hubbard

Iris sunk into a depression, giving into closing and locking the box on herself forever – never ever to be opened again. By the time Salacious found her in a year or two, she would be her former self, ready to die all over again. 
“Ahhh, there she goes,” Blaque said, delighted, leaning into the scope. At the exact moment, the truck’s loud beeping as it lowered its load could be heard.
Iris covered her ears and closed her eyes tightly because she didn’t want to hear anything. Still, she silently cried because she almost wanted to be the one Blaque was going to kill. Returning to her father was going to be hell on earth. 

---

“She got what she wanted and left,” Tyler said.
“Not every woman is out there to get money and run Tyler,” he anxiously disputed.
“The woman got something better: The protection she needed to escape her father. She’s all he has besides the little boy and his hardon for his twisted legacy; Arum Folsom has a hardon to have her again. With her husband missing, you possess her; that man can’t touch her now.” Tyler huffed. “I’ve never seen you unhinged like this before, El, and I don’t want you to do something stupid. Something like New York.”
Gritting his teeth, El was not going to get into the truth of New York and said, relying on logic and reasoning, “But why wouldn’t Iris take the certificate with her? That doesn’t sound like her. She couldn’t have gone far; if she had headed for Detroit, she’d have picked up her nephew first. I’ll have Del start there, and you can file those papers.” El jumped in his car. “We still need to get that shit cleared up with Sharlie Costello, Wexford, and Ernest. You concentrate on that shit.”
“Unless we can get one of them to confess they lied, there’s no way to straighten any shit out. I’ll file these papers and return to the city to do what I can.”
El slammed himself into his car and took off, heading up Interstate 94 like the devil was on his ass. After sending a message to Del to head to the aunt’s house, he knew he had to stop in his old stomping ground and pick up some weapons. Deep in his heart, he knew this wasn’t Iris, no matter how desperate she was, and he needed to think all this out. An hour and a half drive, probably cut less going ninety once he hit Michigan, would help him think and figure all this shit out. 
Gripping the wheel tightly, El was determined not to lose Iris. He couldn’t lose her. This wasn’t a breakup. He refused to believe that!

---

Only when the car started moving again did Iris take her hands away from her ears and open her eyes, but she didn’t look in Blaque’s direction. Disgust and misery filled Iris’s soul, but the tears refused to come. Her heart was empty, knowing the prospects were gone.
And then she thought of Clem.
Knowing he would grow up just as miserable and could end up like Dwayne. She was caught up in her father’s schemes, a bad life, and a terrible father figure.
“C-Can I ask a favor?” Iris said, trying not to sound pleading.
“I don’t owe you shit,” Blaque sneered.
“If I swear never to see El again, even if I get away from my father, can you protect Clem? Put him somewhere safe so he never get’s into my father’s hands.”
Blaque pulled the SUV over and gleamed at her like Iris had laid the world at her feet. “You’ll never set eyes on El ever again for as long as you live?”
Feeling more potent than before, Iris promised, “I swear as long as you keep your promise to make sure Clem is safe for the rest of his life away from my father.”
Smirking, the dark woman started driving again just as her cell phone went off. “What? I’m busy. Now? Can you just tell me what- Fuck!” 
Iris almost hit her face on the dashboard as Blaque jammed on the brakes while speaking, again stopping on the side of the road. When she recovered, Iris watched Blaque open an audio app and start recording. All her years of secretly watching her father and Dwayne work their phones since they refused to share information with her gave Iris a sharp eye for screens. 
“You’re going to have to get in the box earlier than expected, and you’ll most likely stay in there until I take you to your father,” Blaque sneered between her teeth and handed the phone to Iris. “You can’t use this, but I need some information from Sharlie Costello.” She tightened her hands on the wheel until the leather started to squeal. A rush of cold filled the car as if a window had been open when it had not. “I have a feeling I know what she wants.”
Iris held the phone against her chest, wondering if it was possible to call 911 even if it was locked. Most phones could. “But what if she opens the box?”
Blaque quickly retorted, “The box will be locked as soon as you enter. And I’ll dissuade that. She knows what I am and what is usually in the box.” Blaque smirked, but the joke was internal because Iris found nothing funny. “And if you get any ideas of asking for help, I’m not worried; they’ll do worse to you once they realize who you are.”
“Who am I?” confused, Iris asked.
“I forget your innocence is genuine,” Blaque said, again smirking. “You’re spoken about from mouths of people you don’t know. You do understand El has never kept anyone around him?”
“I’m aware El is a difficult man.”
“Yet, he craves your proximity.”
“Because he values my skills.”
“And your pussy.”
Iris blushed, holding tight as Blaque jumped several lanes to get on another interstate freeway. Blaque was sneering under her breath the whole time about owing people and being sick and tired of something. Iris was too afraid of the vehicle crashing from Blaque’s erratic driving to hear the woman.
Blaque finally slowed down once they got off the freeway and pulled to the side of the road. 
“Let’s go,” she ordered, pushing the trunk button to open and expecting Iris to follow willingly automatically.
Iris looked down at the phone, still holding the device close to her chest, and exited the car. Looking around, she knew they were in the Boston Edison District inside Detroit, near the abandoned side, and not even cars drove through her. 
Blaque had the box partially out. Iris looked around frantically for anything or anyone, but nothing was there. This box would be her future once she got inside – she just knew this!
“At least I’m not knocking you out to put you in there,” Blaque said as if this was a kind reprieve. “And I even added holes around the middle and some near the top with metal screens so rats and bugs can’t crawl in. Where you’re going, this would be considered a favor.”
“You can take your favors and shove them up your ass, Blaque.”
“There goes that Iris El can’t get enough of. Good thing we’re putting her in the box.”
Iris was a little shaken that her mental terminology was happening in real life. Trying to prolong the situation. “What if I cry out for help?”
Blaque smiled brightly. “You’ll make me forget I’m supposed to deliver you to your father unharmed or alive.”
Pushing past the fear that the evil woman would kill her, Iris asked, “How am I to record anything stuck in a box?”
“That speaker can pick up a lot. That phone is especially made for my needs. Hold it against any hole you want, and it will get what I need.”
“Doesn’t that mean you’ll owe me another favor?”
Rolling her black eyes in exasperation, Blaque sneered, “What the hell do you want now?”
Iris just thought about that favor and wasn’t prepared to answer this. “I got to think about that.”
“As long as it’s in the scope of what I feel like doing,” Blaque warned. 
Using the edge of the car, Iris stepped up and wiggled her way inside the box. Since she wasn’t tied, she could get inside on her knees and crouch down—still uncomfortable, but her neck, back, shoulder, and hips weren’t sore. 
Blaque closed the box, and the car started moving again after a few seconds.
Iris tried to see if there was an emergency button on the phone’s locked screen but surmised Blaque had been in the kidnapping and killing business for too long to make that mistake. The phone was locked completely, and Iris couldn’t even pull down the utility screen from the top. 
The box was adorned with attention to detail. It was lined with a special cloth that allowed the holes to be breathable, but anyone who tried to look inside could not see.
A hole was right on Iris’s side, and she propped the phone there just as she felt the vehicle slow down and then turn somewhere.
As soon as the vehicle stopped, Iris could hear the window roll down.
“Pull into the covered garage,” Sharlie Costello’s voice spoke from several feet away outside the car.
The vehicle moved yet again forward for a long moment and then stopped. Iris listened as a garage door closed. Blaque got out of the car, and the trunk opened. 
Was this a trick? Was Blaque turning her over to these people El hated? 
“What took so long?” Sharlie balked.
“I was in the middle of delivering a package.” 
Sharlie sounded horrified, “You brought a d-dead-“
Blaque cut her off with complete irritation and sneered, “Your favors are running out, Sharlie. What the fuck do you want, woman?”
“You still owe me big time, Blaque. I took that little brat in when you failed, and I had to endure the pain and suffering for fucking years for that. She could have killed me and my son-“
“You done?” Blaque sneered, cutting her off. “Like I said, your favors are running out.”
“Is this her?” a feminine voice that made Iris’s ears perk up. The woman in the stairwell at the hospital?
Sharlie warned, “Keep your distance, Ola.”
“I told you to call me Mrs. Washington,” the woman snapped.
Sharlie and Blaque sniggered, and it sounded like the woman was about to say more, but a door opened, and a man’s voice asked, “Is this her? Did you check her for any devices?”
“What the fuck, Shar?!” Blaque spat.  “I’m not yours to show off or use for your little political gain.”
“These are important people, Blaque, and I needed to prove I knew someone who could do the job,” Sharlie said.
“What the fuck is the favor?”
“I like a woman who gets down to business,” the man said, whom Iris was sure was the same man who was in the hospital stairwell. “We need you to take care of Eledumare Olorun,” the man said. “Do you know who he is?”
Sharlie huffed. “But creatively, Blaque, so this doesn’t get back to me or them.”
There was complete silence, and Iris’s ears strained to hear anything. 
“Why?” Blaque asked quietly.
“I thought you said she didn’t ask questions,” the woman said.
“What’s it matter?” Sharlie said at the same time. 
“Seeing the shit he’s drowning in that you all caused, I would think the man would off himself first before I get to him.” 
Mrs. Washington sneered, “Who the fuck-“
There was definitely some physical violence happening. So much so Iris heard Sharlie scream, “Blaque, don’t kill her, please!”

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) 2025 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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