Page 2 of Beautiful Sight

The other women had run as soon as it had been safe. Only Tessa was left behind. She would leave, too, but wasn’t sure how to get down off the stage and out of the building. She also had nowhere to go. The son who had sworn on his college diploma to care for her the rest of her life, had handed her over to human traffickers like she’d been a bag of trash to be disposed of. She could not return to him.

Since he’d moved her in with him five years earlier when retinitis pigmentosa stole her sight, he had discouraged her from taking classes on how to deal with life as a blind woman, stay in touch with old friends, or even leave the house to walk around their neighborhood without him. He had made her completely dependent on him, though she hadn’t fought him.

Then, three nights ago, he’d allowed human traffickers to carry her out of the only place she was comfortable. Apparently, her sale was meant to cancel out half of a mountain of debt she did not know he had accrued.

So, here she stood, blind, homeless, with no ID, no money, and nowhere to go. She had nothing to her name except the clothes on her back. She didn’t even have her slippers, having lost them in the car’s trunk.

Where would she go from here?

How would she live now?

When she felt the vibration of footsteps approaching from several directions, Tessa tensed further, feeling like she might shatter into a million pieces from the stress.

“Tessa, are you all right? You weren’t hurt, were you?”

She recognized the voice as Gerri Markham, the woman who had been shoved into the locked room with them mere hours before. The woman who had taken charge. Though she knew nothing about her, Tessa felt they could have been friends in another time and place. But Gerri had her own trauma to recover from. She didn’t need to take care of Tessa as well.

When a soft hand touched her shoulder, she jolted and the arms wrapped around her middle tightened convulsively. “I’m fine,” she answered automatically. What else could she say?

Before Gerri could call her on the lie, a wild, woodsy scent of outdoors wrapped around her. A single deep breath and the muscles across her shoulders and down her back loosened. Something about that scent made her want to rub herself all over the man, or even better, take a bath in whatever cologne he wore.

“Who’s this?” the deep voice asked.

Just the sound of that voice sent a warm shiver down her spine. The scent of earth and forest intensified around her as the man moved to stand beside her.

“This is Tessa Dubois, one of the women set to be auctioned,” Gerri said. “Tessa, this is Jefferson Carstairs. He’s … um…”

“I’m a friend,” the man said, cutting Gerri off.

He moved close enough Tessa could feel the heat of his body along the outside of her left arm and hip. Two racing heartbeats later, he wrapped an arm around her back, his hand cupping the top of her shoulder. At the same time, she felt something brush against the side of her neck. Her pussy clenched and dampened as he took a deep breath, releasing it with a soft growl. “And you are completely safe with me, tigress.”

Tessa took another deep breath of the man’s scent. As she released it, all the stress in her eased. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Tessa felt safe. Another deep breath and she shifted closer to his body. It felt right to lean against him, despite his being a total stranger to her.

Everything about the last few days had been so far out of her lifetime of experiences that Tessa wondered if she had been shoved into another world. A dark and threatening Oz with no Tin Man, Lion, or Scarecrow to help her find her way back home. But then, she didn’t have a home to go to now, did she? How was she going to survive in this new world she found herself in?

A third man said something, but Tessa didn’t pay attention to his question. Nor did she listen to the answer from the man who continued to hold her, though she did find herself smiling when his chest rumbled under her cheek, tickling her.

Gerri and her man spoke and then she felt their steps as they walked away, leaving her with this man named Jefferson Carstairs. His arm pulled her around, cuddling her more firmly against his body. Her hands lifted and traced their way around his middle. She clung to him as if he were a big, deep-seated oak tree standing firm in the middle of a tornado.

“Now, tigress, are you really all right? Maybe we should have the medical team look you over before we leave,” Jefferson suggested as he slowly pulled his arms from around her and took a half step back.

Tessa had a hard time letting him go. When he took another step back to completely break contact, her arms once again wrapped around her middle. Maybe if she held onto herself tight enough, she would not start screaming about how unfair life had been. Then she stopped and took a moment.

She was stronger than this. She’d survived being abandoned when she found herself pregnant. She’d raised Theo on her own without any support from a man. She’d even survived slowly going blind. She shouldn’t feel so damn fragile, even if her entire life was in flux. She would get through this somehow.

She just wished she knew how.

It wasn’t until a callous-roughened finger stroked her cheek that Tessa realized she was crying. Well, not crying exactly, but tears of stress and emotional overload filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks like a waterfall.

“Oh, sweet Tessa, there’s no need to cry. I’ll take care of you. You’re going to be just fine.” His words sounded like a sacred vow as he stepped close once more and gave her a warm, gentle hug.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to me now,” she whispered as she leaned against him to keep from collapsing to the floor.

“Do you not have any family to return to?”

Tessa gave a gruff, watery chuckle. “My son, Theo, was the one who gave me to the traffickers. They were going to sell me to pay some debt he owed them. I don’t have anyone else. And being blind, I’m not exactly prepared to take on the world by myself.”

The man muttered a curse as he stroked one hand up and down her spine. Then she felt him drop a kiss on top of her head.

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