The Keeper by Tilly GreeneThora, an elfin woman, has a plan to get her creativity back on track and it involves Mother Nature. To be happy and content, she needs to re-establish their connection and then her artistic energy will once again flow with ease, putting her back in her happy place. Driving home she passes through Fortunes Forest and stops for a walk, only she ends up with so much more. She never expected communing with Mother Nature would turn into a delightfully thorny interlude with a stranger she discovers is also a keeper.
Pleasurable pain changes her needs and dreams, but what about the stranger who takes her?
Excerpt
Thora, a normally strong-willed independent elfin woman, feared her heart would burst from her chest. Already the organ pumped faster and harder than it ever had before. The situation she found herself in had changed for the worse. All she could hear was the speedy hammering of the muscle in her chest.
Shifting from one foot to the other immediately brought more pain, clouding her mind to everything but what happened to her body. The very real terror she experienced now felt unlike anything she’d ever encountered before, and she wasn’t sure she’d survive. Tears filled with hurt and frustration formed in her eyes, and threatened to spill at any moment. Mentally she chastised herself for taking the detour through the forest instead heading straight home. The view from her car window had been beautiful, soothing, and seemed to invite her to spend more time in the tranquil space.
Unfortunately for her, all the beauty had turned into a nightmare—a living, breathing, intoxicating nightmare.
* * * *
The day had started out normally. Work, work, and—oh yes—more work. Being a secretary in a major elfin corporation involved in projects across the planets could be interesting, but not that day. No, it had been filled with annoying phone calls and tedious paperwork. Breakfast had been a banana sliced over a bowl of granola and wheat germ, and a cucumber and beet salad at her desk for lunch. Neither offered much excitement, but they had given her energy to get on with things.
By the end of her time behind the desk, she needed to relax and find a peaceful place where her imagination and dreams could flourish, and only after that happened could she enjoy the weekend. Those two days belonged to her and she had planned to spend them locked in her true passion—painting. With that aspiration in mind, she was thankful one of the ways home led past Fortunes Forest. When she spotted a layby, she pulled over, stepped onto the pebbled verge, and walked in search of inspiration.
What made her current predicament so horrible was that she’d found a brief glimpse of her little personal spot of heaven, and then it was gone.
A few minutes ago she’d traipsed across a velvet soft, mossy hillock, thinking about how it felt—as if she walked on cool clouds. Ancient limbs, heavy with foliage, waved gently overhead. They whistled softly in the breeze and allowed small trickles of sunlight to drip through their boughs, lighting her way.
Everything had been lovely, idyllic, and yet it turned even more beautiful the moment she stepped into a clearing with an enticing, crisp little pond at its center. In less than a second, she stripped down to her skin and dipped beneath its smooth surface. There was nothing wrong with skinny dipping other than it played into a feeling of being naughty, she was an elfin adult and elfin’s were all sorts of wicked. Once her body finished fleshing out, her ears had found their final form, and she thought they had a delightful shape.
If only she could run a finger along them, she’d surely calm down and find a way out of this mess.
No comments:
Post a Comment