Falling in Love Read Online Free Page B

his face
darkened.
    “ Very impressive.” She did
her best, and his face cleared up in a beatific smile.
    They sat as an announcer barked and
nattered at the people from a long brass megaphone. The lights over
the audience began to dim as the lights over the centre well went
on one by one.
    There was a man in there, a huge man
with a sword hanging in his right hand. From behind, she made out
the head and shoulders of another man, but he was obscured from the
neck down by the intervening heads of people in the front row. The
noise began to abate.
    Her hand flew up to her
mouth.
    “ No!”
    Olaf’s head came up and the great chin
lifted and their eyes locked.
    His mouth opened but no sound came
out.
    The sword dropped from his hand just
as the bell rang and with a snarl, the smaller man stepped forward
quickly, perhaps sensing his only chance at life, and with a wild
swing of a heavy scimitar, stuck Olaf in the side of the neck with
all of his strength and a grunt of exertion.
    Olaf’s head fell to the sand, staring
off straight along the sandy floor as she gasped. The magnificent
body tottered and then fell as his opponent stepped back and then
flung his arms upward in a wild gesture of triumph and
relief.
    “ Damn!” Chauncey was
furious.
    She would be lucky to survive the next
few minutes.
    His eyes turned and locked on
hers.
    “ I had a lot of money
invested in him.” He grimaced and then spat out the front of the
booth, drawing a curse from someone out there who glared until the
bodyguards glared back and showed signs of restlessness.
    “ Still, I suppose it’s not
your fault.”
    She tried to pull herself away from
Olaf’s dead eyes as the victor strutted around the ring and
Chauncey marveled at his bad fortune in the foulest
tones.
     
     
    Scene Three
     
     
    The night ended as she knew it must.
Chauncey had all the power and his mood was artificially boisterous
one minute and then bloody murderous the next. Chauncey hated
disappointment, and he’d had a big one tonight.
    She knew she was in for it when he
dismissed the boys outside of his bedroom.
    She had made no protest, simply
clinging to the purse and maintaining her dignity.
    “ Well, come in. Come in.”
The lights were always on in Chauncey’s room.
    She stepped through the door. Chauncey
flung his jacket over a chair and went to the side table where
decanters stood.
    He came over with wine and helped her
out of her wrap.
    “ Are you all right, old
girl?” He lifted the glass to his mouth and stepping back, looked
her over from head to toe as she desperately tried to look bold and
brassy, and not wither under his gaze from disgust.
    “ You, are a very beautiful
woman, Selena.”
    She swallowed wine, to numb
herself.
    “ Thank you. You’re very
kind, sir.”
    The prim formality was a lucky
impulse. He smiled, drinking again, and then putting down the
glass.
    Taking the glass from her, he set that
aside too.
    Selena’s heart began to throb in her
chest and she was afraid he would feel it within her as he drew her
in close.
    He kissed her, long and deep and hard,
and she tried to respond as best she could.
    His feet rocked from side to side as
his hands crept ever so slowly down to her buttocks. Her arms came
up and she held him lightly by the shoulders as they rotated in a
half circle. He kneaded her bum firmly, the breath noisy through
their noses and the sound of light music coming in through the open
window from half a block away.
    She kept her eyes closed and feigned
unbridled passion.
    He walked her in reverse until the
backs of her knees hit the bed.
    He pulled his mouth away. Looking
down, he took the dress in two hands and ripped it down, until the
thing fell away and dropped past her knees. She lifted her feet and
it fell away. She stood stock still, wearing nothing but her shoes
and a string of artificial pearls, waiting.
    He stared at her breasts, taking them
in his hands and then he forced her back onto the bed, with their
eyes