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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 75✍🏾📚❤️ #SylLit #WIP #livestory 📖💓 #marriedwife #demandedconsensual #darkromance

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I have finally gotten through the action part – well, the hard one. I’m trying to decide who’s going to do the dirty deed and will I have Iris save herself? Let me know your thoughts.

Iris was holding Lester in place so the knife couldn’t cause further damage. Pulling out the blade would kill the former assistant, and she must’ve known. As soon as El handed her the towel, she thanked him and pressed it against Lester’s wound to try to slow the bleeding. 

Her outer demeanor was calm, and she even soothed Lester.

“How are you so calm?” El asked, fascinated. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t care,” she said, looking up at El. “I just know he was most likely manipulated into this. Call down to the security desk. Instruct them to call the cops here so we aren’t waiting. If they can save him, maybe…”

Lester gripped her arm tightly, and El noticed the nails were newly painted. El then looked at the panic in Lester’s beady eyes as if he were letting someone down.

“P-Petty…” Lester gurgled. “Pet….Pet…”

There was too much blood coming out of his mouth for him to speak anymore, and his body shook hard but collapsed in the next moment, his death cry filled with pain and so much suffering.

Iris held the man until his final moments, giving him verbal palliative care until the end despite how what a horrible man Lester had been.

El wanted to draw her in his arms and kiss her, but he fought the urge and waited with her quietly. The police arrived inside the office, and his call to the desk helped them quickly through the building.

Time passed as the police swarmed in, EMS arrived, and then Salicious Heart sauntered his know-it ass in, shooting daggers at El. Salacious allowed El to keep the cream he needed for his nose, but he noted it was new.

“Changing up?” Salacious inquired.

“It’s better. She made it for me,” El remarked proudly, winking at Iris.

She blushed profusely but quickly straightened up, trying to cover her indifference.

Salacious made sure to check all of El with a thorough pat down in the partner’s office while forensics took over the scene where Lester’s body lay, which was outside of his office. “I thought I’d find you over Ernest or Wexford’s body.”

“I’d love to, but that would put me in the same predicament that made you start trying to arrest me in the first place for Damien getting his ass whooped. I’m no murderer, Salacious.”

Salacious removed El’s weapons from his body, put them on the office’s desk, and finished his sentence, “Except for Uncle Sam and Blaque.”

El stiffened and looked over to see if Iris was listening to their conversation. She was intently listening, catching every nuance of the detective. El remarked, “I only did what my senior officer wanted me to do.”

“I bet you did and enjoyed it too,” Salacious sneered, patting Iris down. 

Jealousy ripped through El as he watched Salacious touch Iris from head to toe. Yes, the man was professional, but the idea of someone touching her ground his gears. 

Salacious removed a phone and a smaller red object from her pocket. “Why didn’t you use this phone to call for help?”

She gasped. “I didn’t know that was there. She…” Iris cringed. “Blaque must’ve slipped it in there after she blindfolded me and put me in the trunk.”

“Blaque did this to you?” Salacious questioned, looking her up and down and glaring at El, who hadn’t mentioned anything about Blaque. 

In fairness, El had not started explaining events, so Salacious had no idea how the whole event happened, but at least he wasn’t slamming El to the ground trying to arrest him. 

Iris read Salacious’s glare and immediately explained: “It wasn’t El’s fault I was kidnapped. She explained it was her brother.”

“Explained?” El said with just as much shock as Salacious asked simultaneously.

Blushing profusely, she explained, “Perhaps it was more or less told as if she needed me to understand El had nothing to do with this. And I know it’s her phone because she had me record the conversation between the councilman, his wife, Wexforth, and Sharlie Costello, to prove they were involved in trying to arrange to have El killed.”

Salacious put the phone in an evidence bag. “After I take Olorun’s explanation, I’d love to hear this. What about this?” he asked, holding up the small red object.

El froze in terror, wondering how the hell she had gotten her hands on that. 

Iris looked directly at El and asked. “Do you want to explain this?”

It had been so long since El had blushed that he thought his cheeks would burn off his face. “Blaque gave you that?”

“Yes. But I suspect you knew that had fallen out.”

“What the hell is this?” Salacious asked. “And do I need to put this in evidence?”

Iris snatched the object away. “It’s my IUD.”

Salacious didn’t protest. “That’s not part of my problem,” he resolved. 

El craved the urge to speak to Iris immediately. They had so much to discuss, but she looked like she was barely holding everything together. He knew the dead body lying right outside the other office was more important at that moment, and he would have to wait to have a private moment with her. 

Salacious could sense the tension between them and said, “You two can talk once I get everyone’s statement. Could you sit outside the office while I question Olorun, ma’am?”

Iris nodded and did as she was told.

There was only a large glass door for the partner office with a digital shade that needed to be activated for privacy visually and auditorily, but Salacious didn’t know of this. El could see Iris, but he saw her eyes, avoiding him, and looked straight ahead while she took deep breaths.

“She’s quite obedient and amazingly deals with trauma well, but considering who her father is, I can imagine she’s been through the gambit,” Salacious noted. “Dwayne once beat her so bad, she passed out, and when she came to, her father beat her again for whatever she did to make Dwayne upset. Did you know that? She’s been beaten to submission. You must love that obedience?”

Not wanting Salacious to get any closer to how El felt about Iris, he said harshly, “Ask your questions, Heart. The sooner you’re done, the sooner I can ensure she forgets this – all of it. I only defended myself in this matter. I will fight; I fight to kill, not to wound.” He decided to dig in. “You should have known I had nothing to do with Damien’s beating before you started harassing me because I wouldn’t have stopped at an ass-whooping.”

Salacious smirked. “Harassing you was for fun, Olorun. And you know all about getting your ass beat, don’t you?”

El knew this was a dig at his childhood, so he grounded his anger away, wishing Salacious would get to the point and get out of there.

“It sounds like you’re more concerned about her than yourself. I never thought that would ever happen.”

El sneered impatiently, “Ask your fucking questions!”

“Did you know Lester was connected to the councilman?”

“I had no idea. From Lester’s resume and the councilman’s background, there was no way their paths would cross. Since Ernest got his goldmine on the council, he wouldn’t deign himself to be around people who are sniveling cowards.”

Despite the animosity between the detective and himself, El pushed everything aside and was able to answer all the questions after giving his statement from the time he arrived at the office building to look for Iris. 

Carefully skipping over going to her aunt’s house and then the abandoned factory, he convincingly lied to Salacious that Iris was kidnapped from their wedding location in Ohio. He came to this location after receiving a motion alarm from his office. 

He was glad he didn’t have to explain his whereabouts before heading to the office because he would have had a lot of explaining to do to let Salacious know El had to be aligned with helping King Heart. 

Salacious didn’t understand that this was to ensure Iris’s safety. He wouldn’t care—not like El cared. 

A few times, El caught himself staring at her, and Salacious had to clear his throat to get him to focus on the question.

Iris pulled herself together beautifully and sat quietly waiting. El couldn’t tell if she was upset about the IUD or this situation, and he desired to know what Blaque had told him about him. 

When he was done, El stepped out of the office, and Iris stood and faced him – bravely, looking up at him just like that first night, asking with her eyes, ‘Where do they go from here?’

But it wasn’t raining, and his mind and heart didn’t feel like a quagmire.

El was impressed because Iris was a mess, and her thoughts had to be raging and upset. Aside from what he could smell with the remnants of Lester on her, she had perspired, but the scent was heaven to him, which made him focus and not go insane by all the smells that inundated his senses. 

Yet Iris didn’t reach out to him like that night in the rain. Instead, she walked around him to enter the office, close the door, and sit before Salacious. 

El continued to watch her as Salacious started the questioning. His mind told him to leave. He needed to get this smell off his body, get into a space without everyone around, and get as clean as possible, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Iris. 

Iris felt his eyes on her and stopped speaking to Salacious, looking at El. With the most gentle gleam, she smiled at El and said softly, “We’ll talk soon.”

Damn, how those words reassured him she wasn’t going anywhere. 

Salacious interrupted their moment, clearing his throat loudly and asking her to continue.

Since they questioned him first, El could use the suite’s private bathroom and immediately clean up and change clothes. Before their last day at the office, he remembered seeing she had ordered this office to be set up to his specifications, and he had no problem having everything he liked around. Knowing she would need to clean up, he went to his vehicle and retrieved her messenger bag, which had been left at the wedding bed and breakfast. Her purse had been retrieved from the proprietor’s wife and put inside. El found a shirt, socks, and gym shorts she could wear. The cumbersome boots she wore would have to do until they could get someplace where she could change into some proper clothes. 

El found her phone inside her purse and took it to the small employee kitchen where he knew charge cords would be. When he clicked the power button five times, just as he suspected, the phone called Aunt Rose as her emergency contact. 

He assured the older woman that her niece was fine. “Could you please text to assure her that nephew is fine? I’m sure that will be her first concern once the police have finished questioning her.”

“You really do care about her, Mr. Olorun,” Aunt Rose said, surprised. “I hope you can bring her to us very soon.”

“As soon as we can, or at least make arrangements so she can see Clem. Asum is still out there, and your home could still be compromised if we come there, but I’ll update you as soon as we can,” he promised before disconnecting the call. 

Since the rest of the small office was occupied, he applied more cream under his nose and sat there taking deep breaths, calming himself as if preparing to take a precise kill shot. With Iris, he needed to plan this out. He was ready to have her alone to explain what he needed her to know.

What if she wanted to discuss other things, like feelings?

Almost an hour later, Salacious burst into the employee room and demanded, “How didn’t you know Blaque shoved her in your trunk?”

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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