AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It didn’t stop me from putting my head on his chest, away from the tubes and wires, my vision blurring before a tear plopped onto his skin. “Just know that I really do love you…that I’ll always love you.” I hiccupped. “I just…I wish things could have been different, but you were right, we were never going to work.”
The machine kept on beeping, his entire body lying still and unresponsive. I sniffled, then lifted my head away from his. If I was being honest, even being his captive had been better than not being with him at all.
I swiped away my tears. “I guess this really is goodbye this time.” I sniffed again, my eyes burning and my emotions barely held in check. I didn’t want to leave him, but I couldn’t stay. We couldn’t work, and I couldn’t risk bringing danger to him and everyone else in this house again. “Goodbye, Valentino.”
My love.
Epilogue
Valentino
Six weeks later…
I sat on the shabby, purple-puke lounge with a grunt, aware of my body’s limitations even as adrenaline surged through me and momentarily took away any further pain as I waited in the semi-darkness for Chantilly to return home.
Home. I glanced around at the one bedroom, beach house rental with a critical eye, noting the dull and peeling yellow laminate kitchen cupboards and faded floral wallpaper, the papery lemon curtains and barely legible beach prints. I had no doubt it’d come furnished this way since the seventies.
I grimaced. How many generations had sat their asses on this lounge and walked across the dirty shagpile carpet? The kitchen itself looked like a grease pit ready to suck some unsuspecting tenant into its filth.
It was more than obvious Chantilly hadn’t cashed in her jewelry. She’d probably barely touched the cash I’d given her. I tipped my head back. All I’d wanted was to look after her, but I hadn’t counted on her stubbornness, her independence.
Not that I blamed her for the latter. Independence and freedom hadn’t come easily to her thanks to men like Sean.
Men like me.
I refocused on the crumbling place she called home. What concerned me the most was its lack of security. There were no cameras, no fancy alarms. A burglar—or worse, someone like me—could as easily push through the thin exterior wall into the interior, let alone shove open one of the shoddy windows like I had.
Clank.
The big metal key inserted into the front door alerted me to Tilly even before it scraped open and she stepped inside. Shutting and locking the door behind her, she didn’t even bother flicking on the bulb that would have lit up the tiny kitchen and dining-lounge area. She was completely unaware she was no longer alone.
I frowned, vacillating between joy and sorrow that on this day, of all days, she was spending it alone. But joy won out. I’d pulled out all stops to be here.
“Hi, Tilly,” I said, my voice coming out hoarse from so little use.
She shrieked, then stepped back, twisting around then to flick on the nearest light switch. Her eyes looked wild, tormented in her bloodless face, her long white dress matching her skin color.
She shook her head. “No, you’re not real,” she whispered. “You were a vegetable when I left you.”
I cocked a brow, wanting to reassure her but aware she’d go flying out the door like a jackrabbit if I even moved a muscle. “Yet I heard every word you said to me.”
She gaped, her face flushed now. “You did?”
I nodded. “I knew I wasn’t dreaming, and yet I couldn’t wake up, it was like being stuck inside a cube with no way out.”
Her face seemed to drain of even more color. “I-I felt that too, like I was boxed in. It took everything I had not to panic and not to believe it was real.”
Had she visited the same plane of existence I’d been stuck in? Somehow I believed she had. Love transcended all logic, all rational thinking.
“You visiting me was the only reason I managed to wake,” I said. “You said you loved me, that you didn’t want to leave me.” I stayed calm, neutral, when all I wanted was to go and claim her and never let her go again.
A pity I was as frighteningly weak as an invalid.
“I-I did,” she admitted.
“You also said you wanted to feel every inch of my cock pounding inside you.”
She nodded, her face flushing just a little before she asked, “Was that before or after I said you were right about us never going to work?”
