Chapter 9: To Carry My Weight
To Carry My Weight
I strolled in, shutting the door behind me. When I was close enough to her sleeping form, I squatted beside her. I watched her sleeping face with a frown. Her cheeks had those trails of tears again, and her countenance looked disturbed. It was visible that she had cried again after I left.
I lifted one of my hands, gently cupping it on her face and she sighed heavily at the feel of it. Then I caressed her spotless milk skin with my thumb and watched as her expression began to soften slowly and her breathing gradually began to return to normality. I stared at her innocent pretty face, my eyes studying every form and angle until they stopped on her lips. Small, pink, and succulent. I pulled away, stilling myself from claiming them. Then my phone suddenly rang, and my attention was pulled from her. Seeing the caller id, my mood turned sour. I rose from my position and walked toward the bed.
“What is it, Smith?” I returned to Rayne on the sofa after dressing the sheet. Then picking her up, I carried her to the bed.
“Can’t it wait?” I demanded over the phone, simultaneously leaning to put Rayne down on the bed, but her eyes suddenly fluttered open, stilling me in my action.
“I can’t come,” I said and hung up the phone.
RAYNE’S POV
I opened my eyes to the stranger staring at me, making me flinch a little with apprehension and embarrassment. He had his big arms wrapped around my waist and was leaning so close to me while I lay in between the bed and his body. As soon as I opened my eyes, he raised a brow at me and then said something on the phone to whoever he was on a call with.
“I can’t come.” He said, while still staring at me and that too, with a strange unfriendly countenance before hanging up. And as soon as he did, his perfectly chiseled facial muscles flexed, stretching into a smile.
“Good evening wife, you’ve been falling asleep all day and waking up that you missed lunch and I don’t think you had something to eat before planning on running away. Come, let’s have dinner.” He said and I thought he was going to put me down but instead, his loosened grip around me tightened and he lifted me into his broad body. I gasped in surprise but he just winked at me smirking.
“Please, put me down.” I muffled a plea and to my surprise, he did although after much hesitation.
“Let’s go have dinner, and after that, I’ll show you to your room. But first,” he ran me a calm, accessible look from head to foot, and my cheeks burned hot under his stare. “You should get changed, that dress would be way too uncomfortable for dinner.”This is the property of Nô-velDrama.Org.
I looked down at myself and he was right. I was still wearing the blue halter dress I had on since morning. Sarah had gifted it to me on my birthday last year. It would really be a discomfort wearing it to dinner, especially considering that I would be needing my throat for swallowing.
I walked to my luggage and started going through it in search of something simple and comfortable. I had packed my bags with DC’s weather in mind. At this time in Washington, they were experiencing cold waves so I had mostly packed my sweaters. So it was difficult finding something simple and befitting of Los Angeles’ weather.
“You can wear my shirts.”
I turned around and saw him open a door I hadn’t noticed was there. Curiously, my eyes followed behind him as he walked into the… room?
I stared in shock as I realized what that was. A walk-in closet filled with clothes. He came out a moment later holding a silk milk shirt out to me. Considering that the shirt was his, it’d be very comfortable for me and would as well be for a dress, but I couldn’t just walk around his house, wearing his shirt like I was some committed girlfriend. Of course, I was his wife, although by word. But, I couldn’t wear his shirt and leave my lap on display in his house and presence.
“No, thank you, I- I’d keep looking, there must be something in my box.”
He led me downstairs to the dining room where a banquet lay in an array on a long dinner table that resembled a conference table from one of those huge companies.
Was he expecting guests or were there other occupants in the house?
As if the banquet wasn’t already enough, a host of servants were rolling in huge dish sets and unloading them on the table.
“Does your family stay here?” I couldn’t help but ask because the table was filled from beginning to end. Plus, I was getting anxious at the thought of having other people around.
“No,” he answered as he walked me to the table, putting a hand on the small of my waist, making me flinch a little.
“Are there people coming over?” I inquired further and watched him pull a chair out, gesturing for me to sit. I sat down and he turned around and took the chair in the opposite direction. I stared at him, curiously awaiting his reply, but instead of giving me a reply, he picked up a glass plate and opened one of the large dishes. A delicious aroma oozed out, sipping into my nostrils and my stomach growled at it, making me realize how hungry I was.
“No guests are coming over. It’s just you and I here. You know what that means right?” It took me a few moments to realize what he meant by that and my face immediately turned red. He dished a sizable amount of a variety of mouth-watering meals into a plate and pushed it in front of me. I gasped at the quantity of the food.
“You should learn to eat more, you’d be needing a lot of strength to carry my weight.”