Dancers in the Dark and Layla Steps Up by Charlaine Harris

Author:Charlaine Harris [Harris, Charlaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-625672-65-0
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2017-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

She had never imagined she could be so relaxed, so content.

His hair had come loose from its ribbon and trailed across her breasts as he lay on his stomach looking down at her. He had never seen anything so beautiful as her face in the faint glow of the city night that lit the room through the frosted glass.

She wondered how he could have become so important to her in such a short time. She loved every line of his face, the power of his sleek white body, the passion of his lovemaking; but most of all she loved the fact that he was on her side. It had been years since anyone had been on her side, unconditionally, unilaterally. She thought, I should still be angry that he went to Pineville. But she searched for the anger she’d initially felt and found it was gone.

“I’m a wimp,” she concluded, out loud.

“I know what that means,” Sean said, his voice dreamy. “Why do you say that?”

“I’m glad you found out. I’m glad I don’t have to tell you all about it. I’m glad you care enough to want to find…Carver.”

The hesitation before she was able to say his name told Sean a lot.

“What did your parents do?” he asked. He hadn’t had time to ask Will Kryder all the questions that had occurred to him.

“They didn’t believe me,” she murmured. “Oh, my brother Les stood by me. He saved me that night. But he’s not a strong-willed, forceful kind of guy. See, my dad works for Carver’s dad, and my dad probably couldn’t get hired anywhere else now. He drinks a lot. I’m not sure he’d still have the job he’s got if he wasn’t my father. Dad knows Hutton’s got to keep him on, or else he might talk. My mother…well, she decided to think it was a clever ploy on my part to get Carver to marry me. When she found out otherwise, she was…livid.”

“She wanted you to marry him.”

“Yes, she actually believed that I’d want to be tied to the man who raped me.”

“In my time, we would have made him wed you,” Sean said.

“Really?”

“If you were my sister, I would have made sure of it.”

“Because no one else would have married me otherwise, right? Damaged goods.”

Sean perceived he had made a massive error.

“And for the rest of my life I would have had to put up with Carver’s little ways, like beating on me, because he’d raped me,” Rue said coldly.

“All right, in my time, we would have been wrong,” he conceded. “But we would have been on your side.”

“I have you on my side,” she said. “I have you on my side now. If this has meant anything to you.”

“I don’t get this close to anyone unless it means something to me.”

“That come from being an aristocrat? In your time, were you like Carver?” There was an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before.

“The night we first make love, you can compare me to the man who raped you?”

She hadn’t thought before she spoke.

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