All Chapters of Craving Forbidden Pleasures : Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

The first time he let her choose the music, she picked something she hadn’t listened to since she’d broken up with a boy whose name tasted like cheap cologne. It was soft at first—an old jazz song with a saxophone that sounded like it could hold a whole night in a single note. He didn’t comment when she threaded the playlist into the little tablet on the bar cart. He just watched, the way someone watches a small, unfolding miracle or a crime scene. Either way, his face never betrayed what he felt.They were both naked under a thin blanket. The collar had become a private punctuation mark in between them: obvious to both, invisible to the rest of the world. He’d removed it earlier—some ritual of leaving marks elsewhere—but tonight it lay at the foot of the bed like an object that did not need to explain itself. She liked the curve of it in small, tactile ways; hated it in others. The trick was, like everything in their arrangement, she could hold both feelings without them canceling ou

The first time she saw him outside the Velvet Room, she thought she had imagined him.The club lights were one world, the dim, measured private rooms another. But the city street on a Saturday afternoon—shoppers with bags, children tugging at their mothers’ sleeves, the hum of buses—was hers, not his. Or so she believed.He stood across the café she frequented, crisp in a dark suit, hair slicked back like he had been sculpted rather than dressed. No coat this time, no dim-lit velvet to absorb him. Just sunlight. And it didn’t make him less dangerous—it made him impossible to ignore.She froze halfway through her coffee order, heart lurching. He did not wave. He didn’t move toward her. He simply watched her, eyes level, unreadable behind the glass wall of the café. A man of patience. A man who knew she’d see him eventually.When her drink came, her hand trembled. She left quickly, pulling her scarf tighter, every nerve prickling under her coat. A block later, she glanced back. He was g

Morning had a way of making things ordinary that were never meant to be.Sunlight threaded through the hotel curtains, laying pale stripes across the bed. Rose sat upright, legs tucked beneath her, Adrian’s shirt draped loosely over her shoulders. He had showered already, steam still ghosting from the bathroom, the sound of water cut off but the echo of it clinging to the air.She should have left before dawn. That was the rule she had written in her head: enter when called, leave when finished, keep the edges sharp. But she had slept beside him—really slept, not just collapsed into exhausted stillness. And that felt like the most reckless act of all.“Coffee?” His voice broke into her thoughts. He stood in the doorway, hair damp, a white towel slung low around his hips. It was such a simple question, one that should have belonged to ordinary couples, not to dangerous men and desperate dancers.“Yes,” she said, though her voice was small.He smiled faintly, the expression almost shy,

Sunday night arrived like a storm cloud, heavy and electric, the weight of Adrian’s ultimatum pressing down on every breath Rose took.All weekend, she had circled her tiny apartment like a caged animal, haunted by the leather collar sitting on her dresser. She couldn’t look at it without remembering the feel of his hands at her throat, the hunger in his voice when he said she belonged to him.And yet—something in her still fought. She fought against his dominance. Fought against her craving of him. Fought against her desire to go to him, to be owned by him, to experience once again and perhaps again and again, the pleasurable heights only he could take her. give her. It was terror, pride, maybe instinct. The thought of walking willingly into his hotel room, of placing herself in his world without the buffer of stage lights or smoky velvet curtains, was too much. It wasn’t surrender—it was erasure.So when the clock ticked past eight, then nine, and finally neared ten, she made her c

She was almost convinced she had succeeded until the sound of the knock at her door stripped the conviction from her bones.It was late; rain had started again, soft at first, then thickening into a steady drum. Rose was halfway through reheating leftovers when the knock came: three beats, precise. Her hand paused on the container. Her breath stalled. She knew that rhythm like a trainer knows a horse’s gait.Part of her wanted to ignore it. Let him be the man who’d failed to break her. Let the weekend ultimatum, the bus station, the collars, all be part of a chapter she’d closed. But the other part—more honest and more admitable to itself—stood and walked to the door.Adrian stood in the hallway, water beading on the lapel of his coat. He looked wet and somehow utterly composed, like someone who had walked through a storm and emerged deliberately arranged. He didn’t smile. He didn’t say anything until she opened the door wide enough for him to enter.“You shouldn’t have come,” she sai