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Huling Na-update:
2025-04-05 16:55:24
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Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance THE MEAL
DAMIAN BLACKWOOD I returned to my home only once the week after that.That night, I painstakingly realized how drawn to Eleanor I had become, and how I felt by just being around her. It was a long night I could barely endure, and one that filled me with relief when the rays of sun touched my eyes. After that, I returned to my grandfather's house every night, where I found peace in the silence, the dogs, and above all, the woman.I was there again on this particular night when I found her cooking a large meal. The kitchen smelled of broth and garlic as Eleanor moved with a quiet grace that was only interrupted by the tone she hummed while her hands chopped some greens on a board and a pot blew off steam on the stove. She did not hear me come in, and would not have known of my presence had she not turned and caught me all of a sudden, screaming in fright for it. I stood still, my hands folded as she held a hand to her chest, taking in deep breaths.“You scared me.” She whispered, whil
Huling Na-update : 2025-04-06Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance DESIRE
DAMIAN BLACKWOOD I moved even closer to her, and her breath paused.There was a flicker of surprise in her eyes, before that disappeared and something warmer followed it, a thing that filled my chest with a sensation I thought strange. She didn’t move away now, but stood so close to me that the whole house suddenly felt smaller, and the space between us seemed to pull us even closer together, drawing us nearer to each other.I looked at her and caught a loose strand of hair across her eye. It was like a crack on some beautiful wall, or a random scribble across a painting by some unskilled artist who impeded the original work. She also turned to say something to me, and caught me staring at her.“Damian…” she began…Her voice faded off so that her lips hung open, and I found myself insanely wanting to kiss her. Something in my gut held me back, and I only lifted a curled finger and brushed that strand of hair from her face. Her skin was warm against the skin of my own fingers, and I l
Huling Na-update : 2025-04-07Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance THE POWER OF LOVE
DAMIAN BLACKWOOD Sex was nothing new to me.I had done it a thousand times and with hundreds of women. Some wanted favours. Others lied about loving me. Others simply wanted me for being Damian Blackwood. I served them all and put them behind me, refusing to pay them any more attention than I would have a mannequin standing in the street after. Only a few had even got a second chance with me. But Eleanor…She was different. Lying there before me, open and willing out of pure desire, I thought she was different from all those women. Something far purer and divine. Sometimes, you find yourself so taken by the beauty of something that you lose yourself staring at it, and that was Eleanor's nakedness to me. I leaned back and watched, taking all I saw in with a sort of euphoria. The view of her expectant body lying across the bed had an effect on me, a once in a lifetime experience. Her white skin and the pink that showed elsewhere was almost ethereal in the moonlight coming through the
Huling Na-update : 2025-04-09Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance I'VE ALWAYS LOVED YOU
DAMIAN BLACKWOOD I wasn't thinking about a lot then, but I thought she was perfect.Picture perfect, heavenly perfect. The most perfect that any form of perfect could aspire to be. She was warm and soft and oozing with life from beneath me, with her legs tightening around my waist and pulling me even closer to her.“Damian… oh Damian…” she moaned, and her voice was comparable to the sweetest of sounds. It was breathless and desperate, the harmony of the most sonorous choirs and the songs of the sweetest birds. It was the sole reason why I didn’t need to be told twice, and drew back until I was almost all the way out of her before pushing back into her with a force that slammed both our bodies and made her cry out in pleasure, her body bouncing about in the bed. The sound of her pleasure drove me to near madness, and I continued to a rhythm that was a dance for the both of us—slowing down until it was gentle for the first steps before becoming more deliberate. Her hips rose to meet m
Huling Na-update : 2025-04-09Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance MY PRINCE CHARMING
ELEANOR SINCLAIR I think love is a creeping feeling.It comes upon you like a thief in the night, and remains with you like your shadow—unnoticed, but realer than fiction. It holds sway over you like a powerful spell, and causes you to make decisions under its full influence. And all the time, it goes unnoticed.Another thing I think is that Grandfather knew that I was in love with Damian. When I did, I did not know. Maybe it had to have seized me on the day that I ruined his shirt in the most egregious of ways, so that I was sure of two things. That I had permanently ruined that shirt and that I was going to lose my job. I do not know about the first, but he graciously saved me from the second and even put the manager down. Maybe it was because I spent days and even months after that waiting for him to come again. ‘So I could serve him better than the first time,’ I told myself, but I knew deep inside that it was more than that. That it was just because I wanted to be seen by him.
Huling Na-update : 2025-04-10Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance SEEING SHADOWS
ELEANOR SINCLAIR Six months later, Damian and I were married.The six months after that? Blissful heaven.Within a year I had gone from Eleanor Sinclair to Eleanor Blackwood, from Miss to Mrs, from unmarried to happily married, from poor to rich. I could swear that I now had all I could have ever dreamed of, but as everything turned positive for me, it went the other way around for Damian.I continued to live in Grandfather's house and as the housemaid, taking care of the place. At times, Damian would come to me there and the other times, I would go to him. Whatever it was, we spent all our nights together. It was our one rule—never going to bed without one of us seeing the other. I kept to this rule of ours faithfully, and so did he. Until the night my husband came to me and felt eerily like the old Damian Blackwood.The grumpy, unfeeling Damian. His face was turned up in a scowl that only lessened when he saw me, and I thought I could wipe it off completely. So I attended to my ma
Huling Na-update : 2025-04-10Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance EVERYTHING IS WRONG
ELEANOR SINCLAIR That moment was a disappointing one for me. I called the man he wanted me to call, and he soon appeared within minutes. I watched my husband give orders to the men who came with the one I called, and watched as they rushed to do them with a dutifulness that made them almost robotic. From inside the house, the dogs were barking, and the whole place had almost become a bedlam of noise.“John, Davis, both of you take him to the warehouse. I'll soon be there with you.”“Romeo, Julius. Both of you stay and watch my wife. Not a scratch must come to her.”“Tim… go get everything ready.”“Ellie,” he huffed, turning towards me as I stood still, watching everything before my eyes. His shoulders slumped a little bit as he looked at me, and he came towards me and to where I stood. “Romeo and Julius will be watching over you. They are my good men, and will not harm you. You will not even know that they are there, and you will be safe with them.”His voice was low in his throat,
Huling Na-update : 2025-04-11Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance THE TASTE OF BLOOD
ELEANOR SINCLAIR We moved—myself and the dogs—to the Blackwood home, where I was forced to swallow a bitter truth. I would never get my husband back. He became more distant and started to change after that. It was heartbreaking to watch him go even farther from me, to receive even less attention from him. His kisses became quick and hurried, and our lovemaking became so infrequent that I found myself driven towards the edge of madness.But the climax of everything would come the one evening I found a blood-stained shirt hidden in the laundry basket. It was hidden away, but I found it anyway, and my hands could not remain steady as I held it up, looking at the broken stain in horror. It broke my heart to realise that I was too late. Too late to see him for who he was. To see that he would not change. To see that it was what being a Blackwood meant, to him.At the very moment, he walked in and past me in the most casual way.“Damian,” I called out to him, holding up the shirt so he w
Huling Na-update : 2025-04-11
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Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance TERROR
DAMIAN BLACKWOOD The gun in my hand was heavy.I had used many kinds of guns over the years, but this was one that particularly weighed me down, holding me to the chaos that had erupted in our home while having nothing to do with its weight. For all I knew, I had had many enemies like my father before me, but none had dared to come close to our home, both during his time and during mine. None at all.As much as I tried to keep myself in control, my heart kept on racing, the adrenaline rush that had come from tearing through the bedroom like a psychopath while searching for whatever clues that could have been left still in my veins. From where Eleanor stood by her dresser, her fingers dancing around the edge of the drawer she'd just opened, I could see that her face was pale but had somehow managed to be serene. Too serene, maybe. I could see the questions churning in her eyes, which I guessed were the same ones bubbling in my own. Someone had lured her out of the house, while making
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance PANIC
ELEANOR SINCLAIR The outside air was bracing as I rushed through it, late autumn biting sharply at my exposed arms in the dress I had specially worn to please my now enraged husband, who was waiting. I tied up my coat and started off, my mind whirling with questions. Once again, I checked the number, and it was his. It had to have been sent to me in error, and it was going to be cleared up the moment she got home. The only thing that frightened me about it was that Damian hardly ever made such mistakes, and he would have checked it if it were her fault. As time went on and he did not call her again, she became more and more convinced that he truly did not send it. It was the one thing that bit at her.If Damian didn't send the message, who did, and why? On his phone, as well...The road was deserted as I stopped the only taxi in sight, the golden light of the afternoon fading into nothingness while being replaced by the streetlights that glowed as I passed through. My phone felt he
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance STRANGER THINGS
ELEANOR SINCLAIR The restaurant she sat waiting in was a soft buzz of clinking glasses and hushed tones.It was the kind of place Damian always chose as long as he wanted the meeting-someplace upscale but unostentatious, with soft lighting that cast a touch of intrigue and mystery over all who sat under it. I sat alone at our usual window seat, my hands tracing the edge of the silky white tablecloth in need of something to do while I waited, and my gaze cutting to the door every couple of seconds, just to make sure I did not miss him.Times were the best when he wasn't hitting me.It was what our marriage was sometimes. It could go from being sweet and enchanting to being a warzone, and I did all I could to make sure that I didn't displease him. Was that not the only reason we had fights, because it was all my fault?The waiter had already come by me twice, his smile polite but tightening each time my hand rejected his offer to place an order for me. "Just a few minutes," I had said
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance HIS RETURN
VINCENT MOREAU The plan was unfolding on schedule, and with all efficiency.I watched from my own safe vantage point near their home and with a pair of binoculars-from a dark alleyway behind a gnarled oak tree opposite the house. I caught her shadowy form leaving the house, and thought that it was going well enough. Perfect.Long, golden strips of light lay across the pavement from the late-afternoon sun, and there was a fine scent of long dead fallen leaves in the air. I spotted her slow, methodical walk, her coat flying slightly in the breeze, confirming that she had gone. The message I had sent-one painstakingly crafted to mimic Damian's brusque voice-had worked. To think she hadn't even hesitated, hadn't questioned, and had done it all for him without thought.That was Eleanor when it came to anything concerning him. Loyal, trusting, predictable.If only she knew how much this was going to cost her...I let out a heavy, tired sigh, quite rattled that I was sitting in a tree like
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance PLOTTING
VINCENT MOREAU I do not know why it took me five years to finally do something, though. But I found myself staying in Vieuti longer than I had in any city since my dear Paris, and I like to think that it was because the place quickly became a sort of comfort zone for me. I invested my five million dollars with Damian and thirsted after his wife while harbouring secret plans to have him for myself. Oh... I still do not know why I was in for this couple. But it took me five years to decide that I truly wanted them apart. And when I moved, I struck right where I wanted. **The thing about Eleanor was that she rarely ever left home, which was a dent in my plans given what I planned to do with her. It was as though she enjoyed being indoors, and it was my first difficulty. To do that, I needed to do something believable. To execute my plan, I needed her out of the house more than anything else. It was a question that was almost difficult to answer...How was I to coax a woman who se
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance THE VISIT
VINCENT MOREAU I did not refuse when Damian invited me to come see him sometime after that.I thought it was a sign of good things, a sign that he was starting to trust me, and I chose to make the best I could out of it. So I took a trip from the hotel I was still living in-I had come to like the room I was in so much that I put away all thoughts of renting something more permanent and simply continued staying there. I had enough money to buy the hotel.Damian's mansion had been a profound revelation when I first stepped in. The sprawling on a raised part of the city that made it seem as though he was overlooking Vieuti's glittering skyline, with the building standing as a monument to his dominion of the city beneath him. The white, marble floors gleamed and shimmered under crystal chandeliers that were just as white, and every piece of furniture within the perimeter screamed of wealth-from hand-carved mahogany statues that sat here and there, gold-trimmed mirrors that were undoubted
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance THREE PHASE CYCLE
DAMIAN BLACKWOOD My footsteps echoed loudly on the marble floor of my home as I walked into it.Everyday, the weight of Vincent Moreau's words clung to me, as heavy as the file tucked under my arm which was slowly becoming a reminder of our discussion earlier that day, each word of his burrowing into my mind and turning it into a puzzle I didn't understand.'A chain. A beautiful one, maybe, but it holds you back.'Exhausted, I tossed the file onto his desk to relieve myself of it, but then it opened and the names of the nine traitors glared up at me, men who had turned and helped Wesley Black against me. It wasn't their betrayal that gnawed at me as much as the idea that I, Damian Blackwood, the untouchable king of Vieuti, was considered by these men to be vulnerable, predictable, and human. And they did not hesitate to use it against me. Not in the least.The door to the bedroom creaked open, and there she was. Eleanor, my wife.Her eyes were wary as they stared at me, and she froz
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance PRISON IN THE EARS
VINCENT MOREAU Our eyes met as he set his glass down on the table with a clink, his fingers dancing on the rim. "You think I cannot do enough to protect what is mine?""I think you're trying to protect too much," I shot back, launching into a dramatic show that required descriptions of my words with my hands. "A man like you-ruthless, calculating, untouchable-doesn't need attachments that make him predictable and even worse, vulnerable. Your wife is not just a person now. She's a target, and every time you go home to her, or let her soften your edges, you're giving your enemies a path to your open self, something they will use against you. And believe me, they're studying it closely."Damian's lips twitched. It was not quite a smile, but something that showed how amused he was. "You've got a sharp tongue for a man of your age and status, Vincent. Most men would have lost it by now for saying half of what you just did to me. No one ever says that."I allowed myself a small smirk, mas
Scarred Roses, Burning Vengeance PARANOIA
VINCENT MOREAU It was not surprising, then, when Damian Blackwood started to pay me attention.I knew he admired me—not in the way I would like, but he was impressed by how I managed to find out about Wesley Black and curb her kidnap just as it happened. So when he reached out to me for drinks a week later. I had a number of spies keep tabs on the Blacks, and waited for any tug of some unfortunate prey over the new web I had cast.Thankfully, there was nothing, not yet. Wesley Black had run off like a frightened dog with its tail between its hindlegs, and I waited for Damian so I could stun him with the names of the men who were involved in the plot, all of the nine former men of the Black family.Again, we sat across each other in the restaurant where we first met, sipping glasses of brandy. I handed him a file of the names he wanted which he flipped through, silently nodding his head. Then he kept it aside and continued to drink."They should never have dared to attack me,” he sudd
