☘︎ Jᴇɴɴɪғᴇʀ Rʏsᴏɴ ☘︎
I am drowning.
Bubbles form in my peripheral, the evidence of silent screams as I thrash against the hand holding my head firmly under the tub. My eyes burn from the foamy liquid onslaught, hair a floating halo around my face and arms flailing about pathetically. Water enters my mouth, my ears, my nose. I can't get out I can't get out.
Just when my eyelids grow heavy, drooping with wet lashes, the man loosens his grip, releasing me. The energy in my body is so depleted I can't even lift my body enough to rise from the surface of the water.
I try once, twice and the third time I can barely manage to get my hands out. There's a distant sound of a door opening, making heavy footsteps shuffle away from near the tub, the noise of someone jumping down the roof. A minute later, new, urgent footsteps approach me. My ears are so stuffed with water, my mind so boggled from slipping consciousness, I don't even know whether I'm making up those too. I'm far too tired to care.
I just want to sleep....
In a flash of movement, someone grabs my hands and I'm being pulled out of the water. I cough up a fit, my eyes barely open and my chest constricting from the sudden oxygen pressure. A hand rubs my back soothingly, holding my hair out of my face and letting me throw-up the water from my system.
Dunking his arms into the tub and looping his hand firmly around my waist, he rises me completely from the tub. My feet wobble, my head feeling way too heavy. I rest it on the broad shoulder of the person holding me. It's a guy.
"Oh fuck!" He curses, whoever he is, as if in sudden realization of something. Oh right, I'm naked.
His arm is still tightly wound around my waist, but there's a tension in them now. I feel him try to hold my weight on one arm. A second passes and another. Then, a soft, pure cotton material drapes over my bare body. He helps me into the clothing, holding me upright with strong, lean arms while trying to fit my arms into the sleeves. I think it's a shirt. It smells really nice. It smells of first rain and cologne. It smells of someone I know.
A frown starts to form between my brows. I try to lift my head off the guy's shoulder, but he stops me with a warm hand on my cold cheek and rests my face back on his shoulder. Before I can attempt to raise my head again, I'm being lifted from the floor, cradled into strong arms. The person carrying me starts walking in a direction exiting the jacuzzi area.
My frown deepens, my eyes can't seem to open anymore. A cough escapes my mouth when I speak, rasping in a croaky voice, "Lykas?"
Gentle hands run along the length of my hair, "You're going to be okay, sweetheart." He kisses the top of my head.
Nodding in a snail pace, my cheeks flatten against his hard, bare chest. His arms tighten around me, and I feel him hold me closer.
"You're going to ruin me, Jenna." His voice is so pained, emotions I don't understand coating them. He sounds like devastation poured into a human being.
I want to ask him what he means but my fleeting consciousness finally slips, and the world goes black around me.
***
☘︎ Lʏᴋᴀs Vɪᴛᴀʟʟɪs ☘︎
There's a nagging sting in my eyes when I lower Jennifer's worn-out body on the comfortable mattress of my bed. The stinging sensation grows as I tuck her under thick blankets, brush hair from her face and notice how blue she looks.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I hold her hands in mine, rubbing them to create warmth. My other palm extending to caress the apple of her cheeks, my heartbeat hammers in my chest like I've run a marathon. I'd never been more panicked in my entire life.
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The Secret Heiress | ✔️
Romance---▪︎ A Wattpad featured story ▪︎--- Twelve years ago, an incident changed my life. I was sent to London by my father with a new identity; all alone, away from my family and home, away from everything that was me. With a new persona as Jennifer Ryso...
