Love’s Cruel Stroke

Riverside Estate was a place for leisure on the outskirts of town.

Being a common gathering spot for the wealthy and powerful, almost everyone who came here was a person of significance.

Currently, a group of men was having a leisurely time fishing by the riverside.

“Say, Jordan,” Howard Sutton grumpily whined as he took a peek into Jordan’s pail. “Why do all the fish go to your rod, huh? The rest of us haven’t caught a thing!”

In response, Jordan only continued to sit at the shore indifferently.

Unlike his usual sharp look, he was only wearing casual clothes as he sat under the spring sun. The gentle breeze that gently blew in his face only added to his boyish charm.

It was a good thing that there weren’t any ladies to catch the view around. The quiet place would have been filled with squeals and shouts otherwise:

Ignored, Howard disdainfully spat, “What a monster. You aren’t allowed to come to my house ever again!”

Not only the fishes in the river, but even Howard’s fifteen-year-old sister had been charmed by the ridiculously beautiful man. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how much worse things were going to get in the future…

Just as he was about to turn away, he suddenly stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of something odd. “Holy sh*t!” he exclaimed. “I never knew there were mermaids in this river!”.

Quentin Wolf’s judgmental eyes fell on him then. “Can you lower your voice? You are scaring my fish away!”

“Why are you still fishing when there is a mermaid there?! Look! Tell me you see the mermaid in the water!” Howard urged.

Seeing how he didn’t seem like he was lying, all the men turned to look in the direction Howard was pointing at.

It was just like he had said-there really was a woman in the clear river water!

“Do you think the owner of the estate could have hired a performer to play the role of a mermaid?”

“The mermaid should have made the effort to get dressed in a pretty tail if she really

was hired with money…”

As they discussed amongst themselves, the woman suddenly emerged from the surface of the water.

Her fair face was especially eye-catching when the moisture on her tender skin reflected off the gentle sunlight.

“F*ck! Now that is a beautiful woman right there!”

“Isn’t she a little too pretty?! I didn’t know there was someone like this in Seaview City!”

“Don’t you think she looks kinda familiar?”

“Alright now, Howard. That is what playboys like you always say…”

Rachel could hear the chattering as soon as her head peeked out of the water, but she couldn’t make out their exact words due to the distance between her and them.

Even though she was put off by the idea of being seen after her great escape, she had to get onto the shore as her body was already exhausted after swimming for an estimated four hundred meters.

She then put her hands firmly on the bluestone slab on the river shore, and with a huff, pushed herself out of the water.

With her wet hair that stubbornly stuck to her slender shoulders and her pearly white skin that shone a healthy luster when she was hit by sunlight, she looked as ethereal as a water nymph that came straight out of mythology.

Her beautiful eyes brightly shone as she looked at nowhere in particular. Even the droplets of water on her lips looked as though they had been meticulously painted on by a skilled painter.

Her wet shirt, on the other hand, desperately clung to the curves and lines of her sensual, sculpted body.

The jaws of the group of men on the shore had unconsciously dropped onto the ground as they stared at the woman in a daze,

“F*ck! She is stunning!”

“Oh my goodness, I think I’m gonna have a nosebleed.”

“I definitely know her!” Howard exclaimed with wide eyes. “I’m a hundred percent sure I have seen her before!”

The crowd got a little quiet after listening to Howard’s words.

Oddly enough, Jordan felt somewhat repulsed as he listened to his friends uninhibitedly having a discussion about a woman’s body.

He didn’t need to think twice before tossing his fishing rod aside and going down the stone steps.

Under everyone’s stare, Jordan immediately took off his black jacket and covered Rachel’s wet body.

“F*ck! Jordan is such a dog. I can’t believe he went a step ahead of me!” Howard growled.

“Isn’t abstinence what Jordan is into? Why is he a step ahead of every one of us to pick up that woman today?”.

“Who said he abstains from women? Where could his son have come from if that was the case? You think he came out of a rock or something?”

It was only then that they recalled Jordan having two sons that he kept so well hidden. Even though they were Jordan’s childhood friends, they hadn’t seen Jordan’s sons around much either.

A few moments ago, Rachel was thinking about which direction she should head to when an aloof man suddenly appeared before her.

He then even threw a jacket on her.

She looked up and she quickly recognized him as Jordan whom she had crossed paths with just yesterday.

Her face instantly dimmed when she thought of the man’s prideful attitude yesterday

Immediately, her eyebrows knitted into a frown. “No thanks,” she said while taking the jacket off of her.

As though uninterested, Jordan looked back at her rather coldly and mentioned, “There are lustful eyes waiting for you on the shore. Might as well go up naked if you aren’t afraid.”

Rachel was about to rebuke by reminding him that she did, in fact, have clothes on. But upon feeling the texture of her wet clothes sticking to her skin, it did seem like it wouldn’t have made a difference if she went up naked as the day she was born.

Unhappy, she could only purse her lips before she unexpectedly asked, “How much does your jacket cost?”

His eyebrows shot up at that. “Why?” he asked in return.

“It is only natural to not owe anything to a stranger,” she casually replied. She then fished out her purse from her pocket and slapped a stack of wet cash on Jordan’s chest.

“Please take it, Mr. Ford.”

And with that, she walked to the shore without sparing him another glance.