Love and Pride

gurur ve önyargı

Sanem

Another night, another social event I had to attend when I'd much rather be at home in my pajamas drinking tea and writing or working on my perfume formulas. But my personal wants and wishes were secondary to my duties as a member of my exalted family and most importantly as the aspiring head of product development at my family's perfume empire. I sighed inwardly and plastered on my social smile, the one that made my face hurt. I moved through the room shaking hands and making dreaded small talk. It was a charity event the company put on every year at the Opera House and even though social interactions of this magnitude exhausted me, the children's charity we were sponsoring was very dear to me so I pushed on. After what seems like hours, I carefully disentangled myself from a conversation that was starting to veer into my personal life when I saw my sister deep in conversation with a strange man.

Mother wouldn't like this at all, I thought. I felt a small headache pulsing behind my eyes and I made a quiet but hasty exit out of the theater and up the stairs into the balcony where it was blessedly dark and free of people. I went to the railing careful not to be seen from below and took a full breath. Sometime between that breath and the next, I found myself swept off my feet and turned into a pair of strong arms.

"Hey, you," he said before his mouth covered mine. I stood stiffly momentarily outraged but the shock of being kissed by a stranger was quickly overshadowed by my reaction to it. 

Oh, there you are. I've been waiting for you. 

A quiet whisper in my mind that felt like a truth that lived in my bones. 

He raised his head in surprise as if he had heard it too. A knowing, a feeling of rightness swept through me and I reacted on instinct. I wrapped my arms around his neck,  pulled his head back down and met his lips with mine. His warm lips responded eagerly and he angled his head to deepen the kiss. When his tongue swept into my mouth, I released an involuntary moan and the kiss became hotly passionate, his arms banded around me tightly bringing my body flush with his. After a long moment, his head lifted, his breathing as erratic as mine, and what felt like electric currents were flowing between our heated bodies. I could feel him straining to make out my features in the dark. 

"Who are you?" He said in wonder. His hands came up to cradle my face tenderly. His thumbs tracing my cheekbones.

Before I could say a word I heard my mother. Her voice was like a bucket of cold water tossed into my face. Panic engulfed me. Oh my God! What am I doing? If she found me embracing a stranger in the dark... all my careful work would be undone.

Flighty Sanem

Impulsive Sanem

Daydreamer Sanem, time to get your head out of the clouds.

She thought me unqualified to do anything else other than marrying for advantage and becoming a rich man's arm candy and dinner hostess for the rest of my life. This situation would be another arrow in her quiver.

I tore myself free from his embrace.

"Wait!," he said. His hand reached out blindly and grabbed my purse. But my terror gave me a burst of speed and I yanked it away and ran down the stairs, 
straight into my mother's suspicious glare.

"Mother." I modulated my voice and controlled my agitated breaths by sheer force of will. I had years of practice hiding my emotions and I gave her no clue that my world had just been tilted off its axis. 

"Where did you come from?" 

"I visited the ladies room. Is anything amiss?"

"Yiğit is looking for you."