LOGINAt nineteen, Linda crossed a line she can never uncross... she let her sister’s fiancé taste her in the shower while Laura slept down the hall. What began as one devastating night of forbidden pleasure becomes an all-consuming secret affair that stretches across years, cities, marriages, and betrayals. Vincent Hale is the man every woman dreams of marrying except the one who truly owns him isn’t the bride walking down the aisle. With slow-burn obsession, reckless passion, near-misses, shattered trust, and devastating consequences, Linda and Vincent spiral deeper into a love that destroys everything it touches. Family fractures. Weddings burn. Lives are rebuilt only to be torn apart again. Desire becomes addiction; guilt becomes identity; and the question is no longer whether they can stop but whether anyone will survive when the truth finally comes out.
View MoreI didn’t sleep.I lay on top of the covers in my childhood bedroom and watched the ceiling change colour as the hours passed, the deep blue of midnight, the pale grey before dawn, the first thin stripe of gold that meant morning had arrived whether I wanted it to or not.At six-fifteen, I gave up and went to the kitchen.My mother was already there.She was standing at the counter in her dressing gown, both hands wrapped around a mug of tea, looking out the window at the garden the way she’d done every morning of my childhood. The bougainvillea along the back fence was going wild again. She’d been threatening to cut it back for three years.She looked up when I came in. “You look terrible.”“Good morning, Mama.”“Sit. I’ll make you something.”I sat at the kitchen table, the same chair I’d always claimed as mine, and watched her move around the space with the efficiency of a woman who had cooked in this kitchen for thirty years. She put a pan on the burner without asking what I wanted
He backed me against the sink and I felt the cold edge of the marble dig into the small of my back, a sharp contrast against the heat of him pressed flush to my front. His mouth was still moving against mine, unhurried now, like he'd already decided how this would end and wasn't in any rush to get there.I pulled back first.“Vincent.” My voice came out steadier than I felt.He kept his hands on my waist. “Don’t.”“Don’t what?”“Don’t think. Not yet.” His forehead dropped to mine, eyes closed, chest rising and falling. “Just give me a minute.”I should have stepped back. Instead, I stood there breathing him in — cedar and warm skin and a faint trace of scotch — my hands still pressed flat against his chest like I was deciding whether to push or pull.The problem was I never knew which one I wanted to do. That had always been the problem.Three years of this had taught me that the moment I started thinking was the moment everything fell apart. So I let myself have one more second of no
My fingers hover over the knob and I feel his heat radiating through the wood, like the door itself is alive and waiting. I turn it slowly, slip inside, and ease it shut behind me without a sound.Vincent was standing in the middle of the small room, sleeves rolled to his elbows, top two buttons of his shirt undone. The overhead light is off, only the vanity bulbs glow, throwing shadows under his jaw and along the sharp edge of his collarbone. He looks like he’s been waiting an eternity and five seconds at once, with the same calm, ravenous hunger in his eyes.“You came,” he says, voice low and rough.“I said I would.”He takes one step forward and his mouth crashes into mine before I can speak, before guilt can catch up. The kiss is hard and desperate, tasting faintly of the scotch he must have finished downstairs after everyone went to bed. My hands slide up his chest, fingers twisting into his shirt, pulling him closer even as my brain screams to stop.He backs me against the sink,
Three years.That’s how long I let Vincent ruin me, one stolen moment at a time.It didn’t stay confined to our family home for long. Once we crossed that line, the hunger grew teeth. We became experts at lies, small ones at first, then bigger, more elaborate. He’d tell Laura he had a late client meeting. I’d say I was studying at the library or crashing at a friend’s. We’d meet in places that felt safe because they were anonymous, like cheap motels on the edge of town, his car in deserted parking lots, once even the back room of a bar during a weekday afternoon when no one was looking.Every encounter left me higher and lower than the last.The first year was raw need... we couldn’t get enough. He’d show up at my off-campus apartment with takeout as an excuse, and we’d devour each other instead of the food. He’d push me onto the kitchen counter, scatter my notebooks, hike my skirt up and take me hard and fast while I bit his shoulder to stay quiet. My roommate was usually in class, b
I didn’t sleep that night.Every time I closed my eyes, I felt his mouth on me again, the slow drag of his tongue, the way his fingers had curled inside me, the low growl of satisfaction when I came apart. My body still hummed with it, traitorous and alive in a way it had never been before.By morn
I was nineteen when Vincent first touched me, and I’ve never forgiven myself for letting him.I’d just finished my first semester of college with nineteen credits, two all-nighters a week, and a newfound ability to drink black coffee without flinching. The drive home had been long, rain-slicked hig












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