Lahat ng Kabanata ng Forbidden Pleasure: Sex, Secrets & Scandal: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

TANGLED WITH LUCA Leona POVMy mind was still fixed on who Luca really is, considering the day he blurted out my name with ease. His relationship with Valerio or probably someone else he knows around me. The walls felt like they were closing in, the air too thick to breathe, and my whole body shook like it was trying to tear itself apart. It wasn’t the first time, and maybe that’s the worst part. I already knew the signs—the black spots in my vision, the way my hands turned cold, the noise in my head louder than the world outside.I pressed my back against the wall, knees to my chest, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped when it got that bad. And I hated myself for being so weak, for letting everything in me break again and again when I should’ve been stronger by now. But how do you fight ghosts? How do you fight memories that aren’t even memories anymore, just pain with no face?The stairwell smelled like dust and smoke. Somewhere above, music thu

WE'RE NOT RELATED Marco POV My chest still hurts like hell, ribs still bruised from Valerio’s dogs chasing me through that damn estate, but I couldn’t stop. Not now. I needed something, anything to give me solid proof. I went into her room her soft scent now faint still lingering in the room. I hated myself for always noticing. I wasn’t supposed to be here, not like this. Her closet was half open the way I left it since I came here last. My eyes caught on it right away—my sweatshirt. The gray one she always wore after the first day we had sex. I had almost forgotten about it but seeing it there, folded sloppy on the shelf, hit me in the gut. “Damn it, Leona,” I whispered, rubbing my jaw. “Why’d you have to keep this?” I pulled it out, slow, like it was something fragile, and I swear my fingers hesitated before I touched it. For a second it felt wrong, like I was invading something too personal. But I pushed it down. Then I noticed a strand of hair, stuck near the collar. I pi

I MISS YOUR BODY, LEONAMarco POVI almost didn’t recognise her at first — pale, wet streaks on her cheek, hair loose like she hadn’t bothered with the world. When she turned and her eyes found me, everything in me dropped. Something that’d been coiled tight since the fake test — since all that lying — just snapped. I didn’t think. I moved.I grabbed her so hard the room blurred. My hands were all anger and need, all of it wanting her, needing to erase time off her skin. My mouth hit hers like I’d been starving for years and she was the only thing left to eat. Not the soft, careful kisses from before — no. It was rough, hungry, a thing that didn’t have patience for politeness. She tasted like tears and tobacco and the perfume that never really stuck to her, the scent that was Leona.She gasped, and then she clawed at me — god, those hands — slippery, desperate, fitting me like they’d been shaped to hold on. She pushed, she pulled, and when she said my name it was like someone had tak

WHO'S LEONA'S FATHER Marco's POV I didn’t go home after leaving Cassie’s place. I couldn’t. My head was too full, my chest too tight.I drove without thinking, like my hands knew the road before I did, until I found myself at that little café tucked between old brick buildings, the one where whispers carried better than shouts.He was already there, our family accountant. Old, bent a little, his shoulders sloped like the years had beaten him into a shape that wasn’t his. I hadn’t seen him since I was a boy, but his face—lined, tired, those watery eyes darting like a rabbit—it made something inside me twist.I slid into the booth across from him. He jumped, nearly spilling the coffee in his trembling hands.“Marco,” he whispered, voice cracked like paper. “You shouldn’t have asked to meet me. If anyone sees—”“No one saw,” I cut him off, sharper than I meant. My own nerves were biting at me, making me rough. “Relax. We’re just two men having coffee.”His laugh was short, humorless. “

GIOVANNI: MAIN DEVILMARCO POVI left her inside Cassie apartment and I swear my hands still shook on the wheel, the smell of her skin all over me like I couldn’t breathe right. But it didn’t calm nothing, it just made the storm louder. My chest was fire, burning me from inside. And when I hit the road I was already biting down so hard I thought my teeth would crack.The silence in the car was the worst part. Luca’s shadow hanging near her like he got some right to even look at her. And then Rafael’s face from that goddamn photo, next to Jessica. I slammed my fist on the wheel so hard the horn screamed back at me. It was stupid, reckless, maybe I wanted the car to crash and just end the thinking. But the road kept going and I was still there. And then his name slipped out of my mouth without me even deciding it. Giovanni. Like a curse. Like blood that had been rotting under the floor all these years and now it was bubbling up.By the time I pulled into the drive I was shaking. I ki