Page 6 of A Wicked Viscount's Stormy Affair
“No! Douglas!” she cried.
Without even a moment of hesitation, Sophie knew what she needed to do. She had to get Douglas back before anything happened to the poor boy. He was always temperamental during storms. He truly did not like them, and there was no telling how her poor boy would react.
The idea of her poor dog getting hurt or even lost was utterly unbearable. It made her heart hurt, her whole chest ached, but she used that to drive her forwards, to keep her running. She did not even think about the other people on the ship and who she might be waking up with her yelling. The desperation to find her precious dog overshadowed everything.
“Douglas! Oh no…”
The moment she crashed on deck, her heart sunk.
The wind was terrible, blowing her all over the place, and she was immediately soaked to the bone.
If she was in this mess, then what about Douglas?
The desperation to find her little dog became even more intense.
It took her a moment to spot him, to find her best friend in the whole wide world, but she soon spotted Douglas up front, cowering in some rope.
“I am coming, Douglas,” she called out after him, even though she could almost feel her voice floating away on the wind. “Stay where you are.”
But the deck had become slippery, and Sophie did not have any shoes on her feet. She kept sliding, almost tumbling to her feet as the boat rocked…
Before she could make it to Douglas, the ship was tossed so violently that she could not hold her body upright any longer. She lost sight of Douglas as she was slammed into the side of the boat, her whole body smashing into the railings. The force was so much, the storm so huge, that her feet seemed to leave the floor. Just for a moment.
No, not just for a moment, she was soaring.
By the time Sophie felt anything again, it was the rope that she had instinctively grabbed hold of to keep herself from splashing into the waves below.
If she hit that water, it would fill up her lungs and she would most certainly die. No one would even know where she was to save her, and Douglas…
Well, she simply could not die for Douglas’s sake.
A scream burst from her chest the moment her body slammed against the side of the ship, almost knocking the air from her lungs completely. It was a sound that went nowhere, it simply seemed to cycle around Sophie as she clung desperately to the rope, but it was all that she had.
She did not have the arm strength to pull herself upwards and get back on deck, and there was nothing there for her to grip onto. Certainly not with the wind still blowing violently and the boat still rocking violently on the waves.
“Help!”
It was a pitiful cry, likely to go nowhere, but she had to keep going.
“Help me, please…”
Had her prayers been answered?
Or was this her brain’s way of letting her know that she had nothing left, and it was giving her a reason to let go?
No, that was silliness. She couldfeelthe warmth of hands gripping on to her. The electricity surging through her body.
There were fingers lacing through hers, pulling her up with a powerful strength that actually allowed her to feel a little safer once more. She was being tugged up, freed from the rope and the idea of plunging to her death below. She was being saved.
A crack of lightning allowed her to see the man’s face as he grabbed her and pulled her even harder.
It was a face that she had a glimmer of recognition of, but she could not place him. She did not know him enough.
He was handsome though, that much she could see from here.
Another flash of lightning and she could see how his dark hair hung just above his hazel eyes, which held a depth unlike anything Sophie had ever seen before. She could hardly catch her breath because of the deep impact that vision had on her. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced before.
In that brief moment, time seemed to stand still and that was just fine by her. She loved this moment, looking at this man, realizing that she was about to be saved…
