by J. H. York
“I can’t believe what just happened,” he said in disbelief. Taking a small double-take in seeing Olivia’s face, he paused and motioned to her before asking gently, “What’s wrong?”
“It’s my memory. I remembered something,” she said, starring up at the ceiling. “I was watching someone having sex. I was with a group of people who smoked some weed at a party.” Concern draws up her face with concern. “Nick – do you think I was a drug addict?”
He laughed; righting himself but sweetly rested his lips on her hair.
“If you are, then so am I along with many other recreational partiers. I believe there are many people who have smoked weed at one time or another.”
She nestles her body into his, fitting into his every crevice. He sighs in return.
“Listen, I can’t be your therapist now,” he whispers.
“You can. You’ve already helped me,” she answers.
“But we can’t keep our hands off each other.”
“It’s helping,” she insisted. She smiles. “Isn’t it?”
“It’s certainly helping me,” he laughed.
She wanted to ask him why he sometimes looked so sad, but he stood up as if he was wrapping up this session of intimacy.
“I don’t know what to do now,” he says, frowning, as he dressed hastily. “I have to think. I need to think clearly, so I need to do it away from you. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Olivia, but since I first met you I can’t think about anything else. I have to get my head straight. I’m sorry.” He gestured to turn away, but she stopped him.
“Nick?” She stepped out of bed, naked and unashamed, right in front of him.
He gazed at her greedily, “Thank you, for everything. I’ll see you next week.”
He turned back and kissed her passionately, then rushed out the door as if the devil himself were chasing him. Olivia felt so happy inside despite his evident feelings of concern. She danced and sang around the apartment for ten minutes before she getting dressed. Hungry, she decided to check out the kitchen for any groceries. Finding a full refrigerator, she began searching inside of every cupboard. They had all been considerately filled with groceries, and underneath the 12 ounce ground coffee packet, she found an envelope that contained a thousand dollars. Reflectively she exhaled in confounded shock. A smile slowly spread across her face. She had to sit down. She found herself on the bed and cried hard with tears of pure joy and appreciation...
Nick was absolutely floating on a cloud. He drove home on autopilot and could barely remember the journey when he got there. His hunger was ravenous. He cooked himself a massive steak and drank a celebratory beer. Energized, he walked inside the walls of his home gym. Thank the heavens, he didn’t have to drive to a gym and put on a face for a crowd. He could just get lost in his own thoughts and work out. He just couldn’t stop reliving his lovemaking with Olivia. Those firm breasts, the smell of her arousal, that moment when he slid into her. And he couldn’t believe two orgasms in one minute! How had he done that? How had she made him do that? He dropped to the floor mats. He rolled over on his back and began to masturbate again, but this time, it was even better since he didn't have to imagine what she might be like, anymore. When he climaxed he called out her name over and over again.
Olivia lied in bed, alone for the first time in months. It felt odd, pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. Pleasant because there are no other patient roommates in her living space... Nor are there any other strange women around her. Her only regret in relishing in this new place is the lack of Nick being there to share her enormous sense of relief. No muscular stomach, no masculine musk, and no hard warmth. She began to stroke herself and imagine the moment when the hard shaft of his penis entered her and thrust into her again and again. When it came, her orgasm was titanic, and she fell asleep with a smile on her face.
The next day she started her job in the bookshop. She loved the work. She realized that she was in her element. The staff was pleasant and made her feel welcome. She found a love in loving these books. Then it came… another memory.
Find the continuation of Finding You Beneath…
on Amazon by Jessica Hart. If you’re reading a digital file, like Kindle or an epub file, just click here …
Did you love Finding You Beneath?
Then you should read:
Wounded Heart
by Jessica Hart
Once unmasked, can beauty love the beast…?
Kayla Mistry’s new home is now a remote castle. And the man, Mr. Wadleigh, who owns her, she has never seen him.
His face is hidden beneath a mask. She only knows fear of him at first, but his voice and his touch brings a secret desire to her surface. She is escorted to him each night to be ravished but he leaves her while she sleeps.
There are dark secrets that she intends to uncover. He will do everything in his power to prevent her discovery of his truth.
Will the beast survive the consequences of her desire?
Note: This romance story is of more intensity and it explores a darker topic that may be unsettling for some readers, however it does conclude with a happily ever after in the end…
The content is recommended for 18+ due to mature themes and sexual content.
Wounded Heart
JESSICA HART
Copyright © 2016 Jessica Hart
All rights reserved.
Published by Heart2Heart Bookreads, 2016.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
WOUNDED HEART
First edition. September 30, 2016.
Copyright © 2016 Jessica Hart.
Written by Jessica Hart
Wounded Heart
PART I
“Each word leads us to an elsewhere.”
PAUL ASTER
0 PROLOGUE
As beauty begins…
Ayaan Mistry was a man who had truly carved out his own happiness. Like the lotus flower born within muddy waters, he was a soul hungry for light. And when light showed itself to him, he grabbed its rays like ropes and pulled himself out of the muck.
Born in India under harsh conditions and living a life of impoverishment, he came to the United States to pursue a business and marketing degree. He then proceeded to amass a small fortune with his position as the top salesman of a rich company that sold costly and luxurious pashmina shawls and scarves.
But the best part, the physician Crystal Shetland was his, the love of his life. And they had a beautiful daughter named Kayla.
Kayla's mother had long blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. Consequently Kayla's features turned out to be lightly olive, maybe two shades lighter than her father's. She had wide blue eyes like her mother, and dark curling hair. She definitely looked exotic.
Theirs was the happiest family for so long. Life was wonderful for them. Kayla's father's business continued to flourish, and Kayla's mother spent her free time away from the hospital doing the second thing she loved best in life after healing people, and that was helping the less fortunate to their feet. She belonged to many local charities and was renown in the county for her generous contributions and hands-on assistance.
Then the U.S. banking system was hit hard as The Great Recession took hold in 2007. At the time Kayla was only nine years old. Her father lost his job in the pashmina business due to company-wide layoffs. After that, he just couldn’t seem to get back on his feet.
That’s when Kayla's mother took over. Not in an angry or bitter way, no, she was happy and determined for their beloved family to keep flourishing. At first Kayla's father was so stubbornly proud and it was so difficult to watch his wife leave for work in the morning. He would just stand inside the doorframe and watch her car leave the driveway, and the look on his face was utter shame and guilt, as if he had let his family down greatly, it was the type of shame in his heart that was equal to the societal stigma of Ayaan having even tried to murder his wife and daughter
. For, in his eyes, in his culture, what he had let happen was equivalent to murder. He tended to believe in strict notions for male and female roles in society, and Kayla's mother and he could get in heated debates. But he always showed his beloved wife respect and demonstrated understanding for her viewpoints, even if he didn’t agree with them.
And Kayla's mother, though she worked impossible hours, still found the time to donate herself to her precious causes.
It had been maybe a week after Kayla's eighteenth birthday when her mother organized and funded a black-tie fundraiser whose purpose was to find and free those in child slavery. That very night Kayla was busy packing and preparing for the next day’s trip to what would be her new home, a dorm room at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dream was to study the stars. She was sifting through a pile of mismatched underwear when her mother came into her room.
“I’ve got a present for you, Kayla,” her mother said, coming towards Kayla to sit beside her on her bed.
“Aw, Mom, you didn’t have to do that.”
“Sure I did. My baby is going to college and that deserves a celebration!”
Kayla’s mother presented her with a little white box. She took it from her gently and opened it. Inside was the most exquisite silver necklace with a lotus flower pendant in the shape of a teardrop.
Kayla’s mother closed it around her neck as tears brimmed softly behind her daughter’s eyes. “Remember, when the lotus sheds its seeds,” she spoke softly, “it also blossoms. You are casting off your youth, my lovely girl, and embracing your life as a grown woman.”
“I love you so much, Mom,” Kayla said, throwing her arms around her mother. They hugged each other tightly in silence for some moments.
Kayla dried her eyes on her sleeve. “Okay, kids, off you go, be home by one or no TV.” She teased her parents with her whole heart of love.
Kayla’s mother laughed her radiant laugh. “Yes, Mom.”
Kayla walked arm and arm with her mother through her bedroom. Her mother walked to her father’s side, and they made a stunning couple at the door, she in her black velvet dress and pearls, and Kayla’s father in his tuxedo, so handsome and dashing and mysterious-looking. They smiled at Kayla with true love in their eyes, and it was palpable through the air.
She was a lucky young woman. She had truly experienced a life of being loved and cherished, just as a female child should.
Sometimes you look at someone you love as they walk out a door, or leave the car, or their form shrinks gradually into a little ball and disappears. And there is that little voice inside your head, saying, this may be the last time I ever see them. And you laugh in your mind and shrug it off, because you know it’s not possible.
That is exactly what Kayla did as her loving, perfect parents were swallowed into the black velvet mouth of the Chicago night.
* * *
Kayla lit the gaslights for her parents, those tiny beacons like breadcrumbs to lead them home, and went into her room and changed into her nightgown.
She thought of her Sylvia Plath as she crawled beneath the sheets of her bed. Plath’s writings seemed to speak to Kayla. Maybe she was feeling the anguish of her father’s depression despite her love for him. She read about Plath’s accolades on the Internet and the New York Times Book Review journalist, Joyce Carol Oates, who described Plath as a celebrated and controversial of postwar poet.
She read of how intensely autobiographical Plath’s poems were as they explored her own mental anguish, her troubled marriage to the fellow poet Ted Hughes, her unresolved conflicts with her parents, and her own vision of herself. So much of this story resonated with how she saw the pain of her father’s heart in his eyes.
Kayla felt like a blank sheet of paper being sealed within a clean white envelope. Her extra blankets against the chill caressed her legs and thighs in soft swathes of heat. Then her Eliot came to mind, and like a patient etherized upon a table, she slipped into the darkened sea of sleep.
Somewhere in the blackness, the calm, soft, melting blackness of slumber, came another blackness, but this one was heavy and clawing, and trying to pull her down within its depths.
She struggled, her eyes trying to push their way open. An ocean of light suddenly flooded her vision, and something hard yet soft was pressing against her mouth. She tasted sweetness and the dentist’s office when she was ten, and the blackness succeeded in pulling her down with it.
1 CHAPTER ONE
A delicious, familiar, new car smell met her nostrils. They were talking, two of them, two male voices raised in angry purpose and determination. Kayla knew her languages enough to discern the dialect was Russian. The gorgeous lyrical quality of the language was not heard between the two speakers, though. Their heated words and the hard consonants did not comfort.
She felt a tightness at her wrists and ankles and tried to pull away at her binds but it was futile. The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” played softly on the car stereo. Everything had a nightmarish quality, the sweet clean scent of the AC and the gentle purr of the motor. It could have been any other day where Kayla was taking a drive with her parents. What was happening? Or what had happened? She remembered seeing her parents. Sharing that moment when everything was safe and warm. She felt loved by her mom and her dad. How had her world changed? She was beginning to panic. She felt the fear rising inside her chest as it seized her stomach. It crawled up and she felt the piercing point of it within her heart.
It was as if everything she had believed was safe and trustworthy in this world revealed its true nature now and it had been turned as a weapon against her. Suddenly darkness came again, but not that pulling, heavy, choking darkness. Her vision had simply gone out. Then she was moving, there was a shuffle of movement, but it seemed the dark choreography of whatever was happening to her had gone smoothly for her kidnappers.
She knew suddenly she was within four walls. Strange how the human equilibrium and sensory capabilities can map out necessary information.
Kayla could hear someone breathing, and she knew she was female. Suddenly the darkness was swept away like a curtain, like tissue paper from a present. The cloak that held her in the dark was pulled away and now she could who stood before her.
She was a short, squat woman. Her features were somewhat coarse, and her eyes had somewhat of a languid slant. When she spoke, her Filipino accent was thick.
“Miss Kayla Mistry. I am Chona, housekeeper of Mr. Chadwick Wadleigh’s castle. You need not know much for your time here. You have been purchased, girl, solely for the master’s pleasure and fulfillment of his sexual needs. For tonight I will escort you to your chamber to wait for Mr. Wadleigh to call for you at dinner.”
Chona took Kayla’s arm and led her from the room and up a shiny mahogany staircase. They reached what would surely be her chamber. Inside were swathes of pale blue satin curtains, a bed with a blue satin bedspread and tasseled pillows, and white carved oak furniture.
“The master wishes for you to wear this to dine with him,” Chona said, turning to Kayla. She held up a dress with both of her hands. It was lush and black with silk spaghetti straps and a gold lace detail. Kayla thought if she’d had a mask, it would be the perfect ensemble for a masquerade.
“Change into this and freshen yourself, girl. When you are ready, ring this bell, and I will summon you when the master is ready.”
Chona left and closed the bedroom door behind her. Kayla suddenly felt like a doll in a dollhouse, within a dollhouse-like room and the glamorous dress lying upon the bed, waiting for her to be placed within it and her hair primped for formal presentation. She changed into the dress, too scared and nervous to rebel, and twisted her hair into a loose chignon with dark brown curls falling at the sides of her face.
Kayla looked in the mirror, and she did not recognize herself. She was a princess from some far away land, or a maiden in a fairy tale. She rang the bell and waited for Chona to escort her to her doom.
When Chona entered the room, she seemed
to pause at the sight of Kayla. “That will do,” she said. Then the older woman took her by the arm and led her into a darkened hall, where only an antiquated-looking oil lantern rested upon a hideously carved curio cabinet.
“This way,” Chona said, holding Kayla’s arm firmly where she could not escape her grasp easily, but softly enough to where it would not leave a mark.
It seemed they walked down an endless array of dark, twisting staircases. Their footsteps rang hollowly on the ancient wooden floors. Finally they came to a large door with a black oval knocker upon it. Chona opened it and veritably thrust Kayla into the room as she said, “Sit down and behave yourself, child. The master is in.”
A long, ostentatious table decorated with endless silver was softly lit by firelight. A chair was pulled out for Kayla already, and she sat down in it quickly and pushed herself to the table. Only then did she look up towards the man sitting at the end.