Lahat ng Kabanata ng FORBIDDEN AFFAIR WITH THE BIKER I CAN'T HAVE : Kabanata 151 - Kabanata 160

ELARA’S POVThe burn calmed down after a few minutes under cold water.Dominic wrapped my palm in a clean cloth, keeping it loose the way he said, and then stepped back and gave me room to breathe. He was good at that. Giving room without making it obvious he was doing it.We ended up outside on the back terrace. Two old chairs and a small iron table between them, the paint chipped off the legs in places. The garden stretched out in front of us, quiet and green, Mr. Heng’s tools lined up neatly against the shed wall even though he’d gone home an hour ago.We sat for a while without talking.It wasn’t uncomfortable. That was the thing that surprised me. Silence with most people had started to feel like something that needed to be managed, filled, handled carefully. With Dominic it just sat there between us like it was welcome.“So what do you actually do,” he said eventually, “when you’re not working?”I thought about it honestly. “I read if there’s something worth reading. Sometime

KNOX’S POVI stood in the hallway for a full minute after she went down the stairs.Just standing there with my jacket half on and my phone in my hand like an idiot.I heard the front door open. I heard Priya’s voice, bright and immediate. Heard a car start in the driveway. Heard everything get quiet again.She was gone.I finished putting my jacket on slowly and stood there trying to understand what was happening inside my chest. It was an odd feeling. Not painful exactly. More like something that didn’t have a name yet.I went back into my office and sat down at my desk.Picked up my phone. Put it down.Picked it up again.I opened the security app out of habit. The front gate camera. The driveway. I watched Dominic’s car pull out onto the street and disappear.I put the phone face down on the desk.This was ridiculous.Dominic was good. I knew that. I trusted him. He was one of maybe four people in my life I trusted without condition.He was careful and steady and honest and he w

VICTORIA’S POVI called at ten.It rang twice and Knox picked up, which meant he wasn’t asleep and wasn’t busy, which meant he was choosing to answer quickly.“Hey,” he said.“Hey.” I kept my voice light. “How’s the evening?”“Quiet. You?”“Fine. I’m at home.” I paused. “Is everything okay there?”“Yes. Everything’s fine.”Short answers. Knox gave short answers when he was distracted by something he didn’t want to talk about yet. I had learned that in eight months of knowing him.“Has your guest settled in for the night?” I asked.A small pause. “I think so.”I left it there.We talked for a few more minutes about nothing important and then said goodnight and I put the phone down and sat with it in my lap.The next morning I called Maria.Maria was loyal to Knox first and always would be. But she was also honest in the way that certain straightforward women were honest, not cruel, not gossiping, just factual when asked a direct question.“How is everything in the house?” I asked.“F

KNOX’S POVI sat at my desk for twenty minutes after everyone came back inside.I wasn’t working. I had a document open on my laptop that I hadn’t read a single word of. I was thinking about Dominic’s motorcycle and the way Elara had looked standing beside it. The way her whole face had changed when she laughed.She hadn’t looked at me like that once since she arrived.That was the thing I kept coming back to.She was polite with me. Careful. She answered my questions and occasionally asked her own and she was always composed and measured and appropriate. But she never laughed like that around me. Never stood with her arms uncrossed and her head thrown back and her whole body relaxed the way it had been in the driveway this morning.She was comfortable with Dominic.She was not comfortable with me.I didn’t fully understand why that bothered me as much as it did. But it did. It bothered me considerably.I closed the laptop.I thought about what Dominic had said. You should take her

KNOX’S POVWe stood at the ledge for a while after the men left.I kept replaying it in my head. The four of them moving toward her. Her turning to face them alone. The shake in her hands when she took the coffee from me.“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have left you alone that long.”She nodded once. Didn’t say anything.She was looking at the water but I could tell she wasn’t really seeing it anymore. Whatever the morning had given her, that open quiet feeling she’d had before they came, was gone. Packed away somewhere I couldn’t reach.That was the thing that stayed with me. Not the men, they were nothing, they were gone. But the speed with which she had closed back up. Like a door swinging shut. One moment and everything good about the morning was behind it.I thought about what she’d said. It turns out I’ll never be free of what was done to me.She hadn’t said it out loud. But it was there in her face, in the way she held herself at the ledge, in the careful blankness she’d