Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
She fidgets when she’s near a man, especially attractive, powerful men. Men like me.
I’ve never seen her pick up a cell phone or talk to a friend. She’s a loner in every sense of the word.
I went over the plan again this morning with Dimitri.
Capture the girl.
Marry her.
Take her inheritance.
Get rid of her.
I swallow another sip of coffee and watch Sadie through the sliding glass doors of the library.Today she’s wearing an ankle-length navy skirt that hits the tops of her shoes, and she’s wrapped in a bulky gray cardigan the color of dirty dishwater. I imagine stripping the clothes off of her and revealing her creamy, bare, unblemished skin. My dick gets hard when I imagine marking her pretty pale skin. Teeth marks. Rope marks. Reddened skin and puckered flesh, christened with hot wax and my palm. I’ll punish her for the sin of hiding a body like hers. She won’t be allowed to with me.
She’s so little. So virginal. An unsullied canvas.
“Enjoy your last taste of freedom, little girl,” I whisper to myself before I finish my coffee. I push myself to my feet and cross the street.
It’s time she met her future master.
Chapter Two
Sadie
I breathe in the comforting, familiar scent of well-worn books and newsprint, and sigh. The anxiety I struggle with assaults me and begins its insidious attack whenever I leave the library. When I return, the smells and sights soothe me. My frayed nerves calm.
I knew from a very young age that I would want to work in a library one day. I discovered books as a means of escape when I was six years old, living in the abusive foster home that mars my memory like an ink stain. The family I stayed with could barely afford to clothe their own children, much less me, and I was treated like little more than a servant. One day, when I failed to serve breakfast on time to her screaming baby, Mrs. Enry locked me in the second-floor closet. There I found a stack of books likely forgotten by the previous owners, for I knew Mr. and Mrs. Enry never bothered to read. Some of the words were too big for me, and I still trailed my index finger along the lines like I was reading primers, but eventually I learned to escape into my books.
I’d learned to read in school, but the books we had there were simple and dull, likely chosen for emergent readers and not for someone like me. I picked up a copy of Little Women, read it in a day, and never looked back.
My books are my friends. They take me on journeys to places I’ll never travel. My friends know what I think, what I feel, what I long for.
I was in eighth grade by the time I discovered romance novels, and by high school, my fantasies took an entirely different direction.
Scottish highlanders. Swashbuckling pirates. Earls and lairds and scoundrels. They sweep me off my feet, and I dream about the type of romance I find in these pages. It’s easier knowing these stories don’t take place in the modern world. I can fantasize about being dressed in the gowns of the era. Wearing the dainty shoes. Being wooed by a rogue. When we have the library book sales, I sneak in early and buy all the books I can priced at only twenty-five cents. When I’m given a budget to order books for the library, I order all the new books from the catalog. They come in, I enter them into our system, then I’m the first one to check them out. Today, a new shipment’s arrived.
I glide a finger along the raised golden edge of the title. I fan the pages and inhale the scent of fresh ink. I sigh in contentment when I think about how good it will be to lose myself in these pages. I’m so lost in thought, I don’t notice anyone arrive until his deep, masculine voice arrests me.
“Excuse me?”
I stifle a squeal of surprise at the sound of his voice and look into the most mesmerizing brown eyes I’ve ever seen. I blink. He’s so beautiful, it’s intimidating.
Though he wears a jacket, I can tell he’s muscled and strong. His hair is roguishly long and so dark brown it’s nearly black, a little unruly, and he sports a heavy, dark-brown beard. High cheekbones underscore the depth of his eyes. He’s got the blood of kings in his veins, and I half expect him to speak a foreign language.
I blink dumbly for a moment before I find my voice.
“Yes, sir?”
My cheeks heat. It’s uncustomary for us to call our patrons sir or ma’am but there’s something about the way he looks at me that makes me instantly respect him. When he smiles, revealing white teeth and full lips, my belly gives a little flip. His brown eyes dance at me.