Lahat ng Kabanata ng Craving Forbidden Pleasures : Kabanata 201 - Kabanata 210

The club’s dressing room had always smelled of cheap perfume and desperation. Tonight, though, the air seemed charged with something sharper, like static before a storm. Rose sat before the cracked mirror, smoothing a shimmer of powder along her cheekbone, trying to still the trembling in her hands. She told herself it was just nerves—the stage always did this to her. But deep down she knew it was him.Since his confession, she couldn’t walk into the Velvet Room without scanning the shadows, searching for his eyes. The other girls noticed too. They’d whisper when he appeared in his tailored suit, tipping the servers without sparing them a glance, his gaze fixed on Rose as though she were the only one dancing.Most of the girls laughed it off—men came and went, obsessions flared and fizzled. But not her. Selene.Selene was older, sharper, with the kind of practiced beauty that came from years of knowing exactly what men wanted to see. She wasn’t used to being overlooked. Her laughter a

Obsession doesn’t announce itself with sirens.It seeps in quietly, like water under a locked door, until the floor you stand on warps and bends beneath you.For Rose, it began with little things.A text at odd hours, not of endearment but of command.Don’t go in tonight.Meet me instead.Wear the black dress.She told herself she didn’t have to listen. She could ignore them, go to work, keep her own life. But the truth was, whenever she tried to defy him, her chest tightened with something that felt an awful lot like fear—and worse, desire. Because when she obeyed, he rewarded her with the kind of attention that made the rest of the world feel paper-thin.And when she disobeyed? Resisting his control? That’s when the grip began to show.It was a Thursday when she decided to test him. She went in to dance even though he’d told her to stay home. The club was half-empty, neon humming, the usual faces in the usual places. Selene watched her from across the room, smug as though she knew

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

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

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