Lahat ng Kabanata ng Craving Forbidden Pleasures : Kabanata 181 - Kabanata 190

The gym was silent except for their ragged breaths. The straps hung limp above them, leather still warm from her skin. Sweat slicked Ciaran’s chest, dripping down over scars that caught the light like rivers of fire frozen in flesh. Elodie lay crumpled against him, thighs trembling, wrists red, her pulse still hammering in her ears. She should’ve felt ashamed. She should’ve demanded answers. Instead, her cheek pressed to his scarred chest, listening to the furious drum of his heartbeat as though it tethered her to something more real than anything she’d ever known. He hadn’t put the mask back on. That fact alone made her stomach twist. “You should run now,” Ciaran muttered at last, voice hoarse. His hand gripped the back of her neck, not quite gentle, not quite possessive. “You saw too much.” Elodie tilted her face up, searching his eyes. “And if I don’t?” His jaw tightened. A muscle ticked. “Then I’ll destroy you.” She thought he meant it. The danger in his tone was not theatr

The silence was unbearable.Ciaran stood like a storm about to break, shoulders taut, fists trembling, eyes fixed on her with a hunger that burned hotter than fire. Elodie could feel it in the air—the pull, the inevitability. Every word they had spoken, every confession they hadn’t meant to give, had dragged them to this moment.She didn’t move. She didn’t have to. He snapped first.Ciaran closed the space between them in two strides, slamming his mouth against hers. The kiss was brutal, desperate, as though he was trying to silence the truth she’d forced out of him. His hands fisted in her hair, yanking her head back, exposing her throat to his teeth.Elodie moaned into him, her nails digging into the ridges of his scarred shoulders. There was no hesitation, no room for thought. Her body remembered him, craved him, welcomed every rough edge of his hunger.“Say it again,” he growled against her neck, biting hard enough to leave marks.“What?” she gasped, shuddering as his hands dragge

The fire was still eating at the sky when they staggered out of the warehouse. Smoke curled upward in black ribbons, carrying the acrid tang of charred steel and blood. Sirens wailed in the distance—too far to matter, too late to save.Elodie’s lungs burned as if she’d swallowed the flames themselves. Her knees buckled on the cracked pavement, palms scraping concrete. Ciaran didn’t falter. He just stood above her, a looming shadow, chest heaving, face unreadable behind the half-mask streaked with soot.“Get up,” he said, voice hoarse.Her body obeyed before her mind did. Rage steadied her trembling legs. “That’s it? No explanation? No—” She bit down hard, tasting iron. “No truth?”His head turned, the mask glinting under the ruined glow of firelight. “Now’s not the time.”“Then when?” she snapped, her voice slicing through the night. “When we’re buried under another one of Rourke’s games? When you’ve killed another dozen men in front of me? You think I don’t see it?”Something flicker

The room narrowed to the red blink of the detonator.Elodie’s heart hammered as she saw Ciaran lower his gun. Every muscle in his body screamed resistance, but he dropped the weapon anyway, the heavy thud echoing like betrayal.“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Don’t—”“Quiet,” he rasped, never taking his eyes off Rourke. Then, slowly, deliberately, Ciaran went to his knees.Rourke’s grin spread wide, triumphant. “There it is. The beast, finally collared.” He stepped closer, savoring every second, the detonator poised like a crown in his hand. “I made you kneel once before the flames. I’ll make you kneel again, and this time in front of her.”Elodie’s breath stuck. The image—the history—cut through her chest like glass. She wanted to scream at Ciaran to fight, to stand, to be anything but broken. But then she saw it—his eyes. Cold steel, razor-sharp. Not defeated. Calculating.Ciaran’s hands rested on his thighs, fingers curled. He looked like a man submitting, but Elodie knew b

The private room smelled like leather and citrus—clean and deliberate in the way the rest of the club was not. Red Room Three had been stripped of artwork and pretense; a single low couch, a small bar cart with a decanter and two tumblers, and the heavy blackout curtains that swallowed light. He kept his jacket slung across the back of the couch like a scepter, an accessory to the control he wore so easily.Rose closed the door behind her and the sound of the club retreated into muffled bass. The world narrowed to the hush of the room and the man on the couch. He reached for the decanter, poured, and then paused, like he was considering whether some small ritual would make things easier. He set a glass within reach and slid one across the coffee table to her.She took it because hands had to do something besides tremble. The tumbler was heavy in her palm, the liquor smelling faintly of orange peel. It was both absurd and soothing; an adult thing to hold while adults negotiated an adul