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Chapter 11: Attempted Nomalcy

Penulis: Mercy Babe
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-09-19 19:53:33

For a week after the bus station, Rose practiced normal like a litany. She told herself repeatedly that she had made a decision, that she had left and returned and that the echoes of Adrian’s words would dull like music from another room. She wanted the lie to be true because the truth felt like an animal that would not be tamed.

Morning routines were easier to control than nights. She brewed coffee the same way every day—exact measures, the same swirl of cream, two sugars stirred clockwise—and sat at her tiny table with an open textbook. The campus library smelled of dust and that faint mildew that lived behind stacks, and when she parked herself at a study table there, she could almost be the student she’d been before the collar and the hotel rooms and the Sundays that had rearranged her life.

She took small, practical steps. She called her brother and let him share the mundane details of his job. She checked the rent account and murmured thank-yous at numbers she didn’t remember ev
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  • Craving Forbidden Pleasures    Chapter 22: The Final Claim

    The night smelled like rain and danger.Rose sat curled on Adrian’s sofa, her nerves humming too loud to let her sleep. The collar lay on the table in front of her, polished from how often she touched it when he was gone. Tonight it looked less like a symbol of surrender and more like a question: what did it really mean to be his?Adrian had been gone for hours. He hadn’t said where—only kissed her hard, promised to “end this,” and left with a look that made her blood run cold.When the door finally opened, he wasn’t alone.Two of his men dragged Marcus inside. His face was bloodied, lip split, but his smile—cocky, defiant—remained. Adrian followed, coat hanging off his shoulders like the cloak of an executioner.He dismissed the men. The lock clicked behind them. And then it was just the three of them, the air thick enough to choke.“Rosie,” Marcus rasped, spitting red onto the floor. “Did he tell you what he is? You think you’re his lover? You’re his trophy. He’d kill me right here

  • Craving Forbidden Pleasures    Chapter 21: Breaking and Marcus Returns

    It started subtly.When she mentioned maybe taking an extra shift to make up for lost wages, his eyes had hardened. “You don’t need to work more. I’ll cover it.”When she tried to slip out early to buy her own groceries, she found one of his men waiting downstairs, pretending to check his phone.When she suggested dinner with her friend Clara, he tilted her chin and said, “Why waste your time with people who don’t understand you?”At first she brushed it off. He was protective. Jealous. Maybe even overbearing. But wasn’t that what made him different from everyone else? Didn’t his obsession prove she mattered in a way she’d never been before?Yet the walls were closing in.The breaking point came one evening when she stood at the window, staring out at the blur of city lights. She hadn’t been outside in three days.Adrian came up behind her, arms snaking around her waist, chin settling on her shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”Her throat tightened. She wanted to say freedom. She

  • Craving Forbidden Pleasures    Chapter 20: Jealous Fire

    The Velvet Room was thick with perfume and sweat, but Rose had grown used to it. The stage lights no longer blinded her; they bathed her. And always, somewhere in the shadows, Adrian was watching.That was what Selene hated most.Rose could feel the rival’s eyes like knives as she adjusted her red dress in the dressing room mirror. Selene leaned against the lockers, hair glossy black, lips a defiant scarlet.“You think you’re special because he looks at you,” she sneered. “Men like him always look—until someone better comes along.”Rose swallowed the retort. She’d learned silence could be a shield. But Selene wasn’t done.“You don’t even know who he is, do you?” she pressed, stepping closer. “Men like that don’t play house. They break toys when they’re bored. And when he’s done, don’t expect him to leave you anything but pieces.”Rose tightened her grip on her bag, refusing to rise to it. But inside, Selene’s words hit where she was softest—her gnawing fear that she was disposable, an

  • Craving Forbidden Pleasures    Chapter 19: The Outside Threat

    The world had begun to shrink to the size of Adrian’s apartment. Rose hadn’t realized it until one afternoon when the sunlight slanted in at a different angle and she couldn’t remember the last time she had walked down her own street without imagining his shadow behind her.She was still going to work at the club, but even that had changed. The Velvet Room had become less of a workplace and more of an extension of his orbit. She danced, she earned, she smiled at customers when required—but her body wasn’t truly hers anymore. Every time she swayed under the colored lights, she felt his gaze whether he was in the room or not. And she craved his touch. And people noticed.Selene most of all.The rival had sharpened her attention to a blade. Rose could feel it in the way Selene’s eyes cut across the dressing room, the way her comments slithered just loud enough for others to hear. “Not all of us need a sugar daddy to get tips.” “Guess some men like the innocent act.”Rose tried to ignore

  • Craving Forbidden Pleasures    Chapter 18: Chains of Comfort

    The morning after her surrender tasted of metal and warmth. Rose woke in his sheets, skin damp from the memory of what she had given, throat bruised from his mouth, body aching in places she had never known could ache. She expected shame to greet her in the dawn. Instead, she found stillness. And in that stillness, she still felt him, Craved him and for the life of her, could not sincerely say she regretted her submission to him yesterday. She had to admit that it had been worth the risk. Adrian was already awake, sitting at the edge of the bed with his back to her. The room’s blinds cast slatted shadows across his shoulders, marking him like a prisoner of his own cage. His hands moved with precision as he poured black coffee into a porcelain cup. No sugar. No cream. He drank the way he touched—without compromise.“You’re awake,” he said, not turning. His voice was low, controlled.Rose sat up slowly, the sheet sliding off her bare chest. She wanted to cover herself, but the act felt

  • Craving Forbidden Pleasures    Chapter 17: The Surrender

    She told herself she would never go back to that place where her choices felt like currency.She told herself the bus, the empty hotel, the nights spent clinging to the idea of freedom had been lessons she would not need to repeat.But words are thin things. They tear at the edges of bone when the music changes.Sunday came soft and ordinary—the kind of day that should have cushioned her back to ordinary life. She folded laundry with the mechanical efficiency of someone who wanted to avoid thinking. She ate toast the same way she always had, butter melting in the center like a small, manageable pleasure. She practiced breathing that afternoon until it felt like a contrivance: inhale for four, hold for two, exhale for six. She rehearsed the iron wall she would present to him if he came. She rehearsed the refusal on the tongue until the syllables tasted metallic and flat.When he arrived, he did not knock. He never did what she expected anymore. The door was open a crack when she return

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