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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 74✍🏾📚❤️ #SylLit #WIP #livestory 📖💓 #marriedwife #demandedconsensual #darkromanceAUTHOR’S NOTE: Well, ooops! Guess who forgot to post this chapter. This girl!
An engine woke her up. She wasn’t asleep. It was like a cold coma.
Iris had managed to slow down her panic and calm herself so she wouldn’t expend a lot of energy, giving her body time to conserve. Hours passed, her hands lost feeling, and her toes were icicles.
Make a sound when she hears something? Those were Blaque instructions.
Oh, hell no! The less she got attention, the better, in her opinion.
An engine roared to life, bringing her back to reality. She tried to stay steady as the driver speeded erratically.
It could be her father trying to evade being found by El and escaping or trying to hurry and get somewhere by the way the vehicle served and weaved.
Iris had to use the last of her strength to keep herself steady, listening to everything around her to give her some clue to where she was. When the vehicle stopped, her head bumped into whatever she was lying on, but the cold helped her not feel much. Then she heard the driver’s door slam shut and someone hurriedly walking away.
They’d been in such a hurry they hadn’t put the alarm on the vehicle.
Come on! Fight the cold fogging your brain and think of a way out! She ordered herself.
She wasn’t sure about the car she was in, but most had emergency latches on the trunk’s door somewhere. With her hands tied from the back, she just had to muster the strength to raise her body up, feel around the center of the trunk where the latch would be, and then follow that path upward to a latch.
Pulling it down, she moaned at the pain of the awkward movement, but the click from the trunk made her reel in joy.
Pushing up her body more until she could get on her knees and use her shoulders to push the trunk open, Iris almost screamed in jubilation, but now she needed to get out of where she was and get this damn blindfold off before whoever was driving returned to the vehicle.
Fully blind, Iris used her ears and nose to gauge where she was. A parking lot? Feeling around the car until she reached the front, she kicked ahead and bumped her foot against a wall. Then, swinging to the left, she could touch a cement pole.
She couldn’t hear any voices but felt her time was limited. Being very vulnerable, Iris knew she needed to remove the blindfold from her eyes and free her hands. Leaning her back against the wall, she moved down to the ground and moved her hands under her butt. Straining her shoulders and back, she was able to squeeze her arms over her hips and move under her thighs until she could get her hands loose.
Did Blaque know this was possible? Of course, the woman did, but why make it easy for Iris? Had that been on purpose?
The cruel woman was too complex to come close to figuring out.
“I just saw him go up,” a familiar voice said. “I’m on my way now, and I’ll take care of him… I got tired of waiting up there! That’s why I’m not waiting for him! Damn! I said I wouldn’t fuck this up, and I won’t! Just make sure those cameras are shut down, and I’ll take the petty safe as the bonus to my payment.”
Since Iris was crouched behind the car, whoever was speaking nearby couldn’t see her.
Their footsteps were light as they walked away in the direction of whoever had been driving the vehicle.
As she stood halfway up, she rubbed the material holding her hands against her face and determined it was duct tape. Concentrating, she yanked back against her knee, breaking the tape from her wrist, and then she snatched the blind over her eyes.
Once she could focus, she gasped at the vehicle before her. El’s car?
Which meant…
And whose voice had she heard? Racking her brain for a second, she gasped again – Lester Basil.
Going to the trunk of El’s vehicle, she saw the large black box she’d been blocked from turning around, their bags from Chicago, and the iron four-way lug wrench. There was no time to change her clothes. Picking up the tool, she headed for the elevator. Her body hurt from the uncomfortable positions in the trunk and the box, but adrenaline was pumping hard through her veins, and she wanted to do whatever she could to save El.
El was most likely on his way to his office, and someone had sent Lester to take care of him. The senator? Russell Wexford?
All of them were determined to hurt El, and if Blaque didn’t do the job, they were looking for someone else.
But Lester? A needle nose little man that irritated her? Yet he was greedy enough to do whatever to get what he wanted.
Gripping the tire rod, Iris braced herself as the doors to the elevator opened on the floor where El’s new offices were located. The doors were open, and she braced herself with her senses on high alert.
The furniture and other files from El’s last assignment had been moved down there just as she had arranged. There was a lot to unpack, but that was the last thing she was worried about.
Lester was somewhere in there, most likely trying to sneak up on El.
This man, who could be the father of her baby if she was pregnant, needed to stay alive so she could hear him try to explain himself.
Pressing a hand on her stomach to calm her nervousness, Iris knew she had to do this. She would do this and hear him blubber about how he couldn’t admit he wanted her and possibly loved her. Getting to the first phone near the administration desk, she pressed nine-one-one but didn’t speak.
Her voice would attract attention, but the address could be tracked since the phone was a hard line. The lights were all low, but she heard movement at the far end, where El’s office would be. Setting the receiver down to keep the line open, Iris headed in that direction, staying in the shadows and moving quietly.
***
El rushed into his office with his partner in his ear. “I don’t see anyone here!”
“The motion alarms said there was movement in the main area,” Xavier responded. “It’s like the person knew where the cameras were before the disconnection happened, and all I could see was shadows on the edges, but I’m not sure-“
“Dammit, this isn’t helpful!” El snarled. “Blaque wouldn’t lead me on a wild goose chase.”
“I’m calling the police, El.
“No. I can handle this.” He hung up and went to his former office, but no one was there either. Slamming his fist in frustration against the wall, he took the steps back down to his new office, not bothering to close the doors behind him and checking Xavier’s office and the supply closet.
Positive that no one was there, El returned to his office and forced himself to calm down.
Blaque’s words from the note were she’s with you, but what the hell did that mean?
“El!” Iris screamed abruptly, but at the same time, the familiar sour smell he remembered from the old assistant assuaged his nostrils, and El pulled out his blade to strike.
As El turned, it was to see Iris swinging a tire iron at Lester’s head, who was holding a .45.
She only nicked him, making the skinny man falter, but pulled the trigger.
The gun went off, but El sunk the clean, sharp blade into Lester’s shoulder at the same time Iris had swung the tire iron. Muscle memory from combating Blaque was a bitch, but El didn’t feel a drop of guilt knowing the tip of the blade most like was piercing a critical valve in the man’s chest, preventing blood from going to his heart.
The bullet had whizzed past his ear, and he knew if it hadn’t been for Iris’s help, El would have been dead.
Lester screamed hysterically in distress, dropping the gun as he fell to his knees. El kicked the gun away from Lester and was ready to let the skinny bastard bleed to death.
Iris rushed into El’s arms and hugged him tightly, but they knew this reunion was only brief as they both looked down at Lester, still crying in agony.
She looked like she had been through hell and back, and he could smell almost everything she had touched or been near, but it didn’t matter to him. He needed her proximity and didn’t care if he got sick.
First, they needed to handle this skinny son of a bitch that had been trying to kill El.
El knelt to Lester, grabbed the front of his shirt, and shook the skinny former assistant. “Who paid you to do this?”
Lester gurgled, and his eyes were rolling around his head. “T-they…. No, no…” He groaned some more.
Iris was searching the former assistant’s clothes to find his phone. El could tell Iris was shaken by this situation because her hands were trembling. When she located the device, she held it up to Lester’s face and gasped as the phone unlocked.
Showing El the screen, it showed Ernest Washington’s number and name.
She pressed the number to call and quickly entered a record call app while signaling El to be quiet.
“Hello, Lester,” Ernest came on the line. “Is it done? Did you finally do what we paid you to do?”
Lester gurgled some more and desperately whimpered as blood spurted from his shoulder.
Ernest ragged, “Dammit, Lester! You better not be fucking with me again. I’m not giving you another dime for shit! Did you finish the job we paid you to do?! Answer! Say fucking something, NOW!”
El’s blood was boiling over, and he was about to speak, but Iris hovered her index finger over his lips to quiet him.
“What did he say?” Ernest’s wife said in the background. “Did he kill El?”
A cold chill swept over El hearing his sister’s voice. That bitch!
Ernest smeared on the line, “He’s not speaking. He’s fucking with-“
“Hang up the phone!” Sharlie hissed in the background. “I just heard on the scanner the cops are being called to El’s office address-“
The line clicked.
“Get a towel from the bathroom,” Iris ordered.
“We’re saving him?” El questioned, wanting to beat the rest of the life out of this man.
She gave him an exhausted, grateful smile, but that was enough for him to do as she asked.
El reluctantly bounded for the bathroom, briefly checking himself in the mirror. Whatever had been on Iris was now on him. This was the dirtiest he had ever been, and this was the first time in his life he didn’t give a fuck. Instead of washing up, he returned to her immediately.
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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