Temptation (Touch of Tantra Novella) Read online

Prologue

  April 23rd, 2005. Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, PA. 

  The sky shines a crisp, azure blue, but my heart is a lifeless gray and quickly turning as black as the muddied dirt I'm holding in my hands. I squeeze my fingers so tightly into a fist that my hand begins to shake and bits of grit embed into my palms.

  The task set before me is customary and very common among men. But the woman I mourn today was anything but common. She was brilliant, wise, and beautiful.

  Now she's gone. . . Forever. 

  Sorrow will no longer consume her heart and soul. Instead it passes on to me.

  I toss the black dirt into the dark and musty grave and fall to my knees. The eerie hollow sound of the clumps of dirt hitting the wood below is more than I can bear.

  The tears I’ve been suppressing for days now fall freely down my face like a dam’s flood after a breach. An unrestrained sorrow pours out of me, and the whirl of emotions I’ve hidden within myself is no longer concealed. My grief is freed as I realize all I love is now six feet below me, but it might as well be a million miles away. The distance will never be broached this side of heaven as she is God’s angel now.

  Returning to the hearse, I see a man’s face in the distance. We make eye contact before he raises the tinted window of his black limo. His vehicle pulls away, disappearing into the morning’s mist. Anger rises above my grief because he has no right to be anywhere near this solemn ceremony.

  He’s the bastard who slowly and silently destroyed the woman I’m leaving behind today in this cold and wet cemetery. She was my mother . . . My selfless life-giver, and I owe her everything.

  Chapter 1