Lahat ng Kabanata ng His Forbidden Obsession: Tempting The Devil I Can't Have: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

TEMPORARY FREEDOMISABELLAThe silence felt different. Not empty. Not heavy. Just… quiet. For the first time since I arrived, the house didn’t feel like it was watching me. No lingering presence. No awareness sitting just beneath my skin. No voice slipping into my thoughts when I least expected it. Just space. Clean. Open. Mine. And God, I needed it more than I realised.“He’s gone.” Camille said it like an announcement. Like a victory.We were in the kitchen, sunlight spilling through the wide windows, painting everything gold. She was leaning against the counter, sipping coffee like she hadn’t just casually shifted the entire atmosphere of the house.“I know,” I said, reaching for a glass.“Why do you sound relieved.”“I’m not…”“You are. But it’s okay. Because I am relieved too. I love my dad but I need space. We need space.” She has no idea how true that statement was. “He’ll be gone for a week,” she added. “Maybe more if the meetings drag.” A week. Seven days. Seven full days wit

UNCANNY DISTRACTIONSALEXANDERThe conference room in Geneva was glass and steel, the kind of sterile luxury and comfort that usually commanded my full attention. But today, my head and mind was too filled to hear anything.My pen hovered over a document I had been pretending to read for ten minutes. My eyes were fixed on the presentation, but my mind was three hundred miles south, in a beach house that suddenly felt too quiet and ordinary without her.Isabella.I couldn’t stop thinking about the way she looks at me. That day in the kitchen when she stared at me like I was the only edible thing in the room. The way she had leaned in when I told her to stay away and the swell of her breast was in my face.God! The beauty of it!Get a grip of yourself Alexander! She’s 24 and your daughter's best friend. She’s forbidden in every language you know. She's supposed to be off limits.So why can’t I stop thinking about her?The innocence in her eyes, the hunger underneath, the way she had tre

ANNOYING EX WIFEALEXANDERI stared at the message for a long time wondering why and what she wanted to talk about.I hate to admit, but there was something about Elise that still unsettles me.Something deep inside me knew she knew something. She always knew something. That was her gift, collecting information, storing it and waiting for the precise moment to use it.I had learned that lesson the hard way over fifteen years of marriage.I set the phone down, picked it up again and set it down again.Outside, the city glittered beneath a cold sky. I had a dinner in an hour, a meeting in the morning and a flight to catch in the morning. Oh sorry… a private jet waiting.I had a hundred things that required my attention, and all I could think about was a woman I had divorced two years ago and a girl I had no business wanting.I did not respond to Élise, I’d simply realised it's better to let her wait and wonder. I had spent too many years jumping when she called.Instead, I opened Camill

GRAVITYALEXANDERThe phone buzzed in my hand like a crazed thing. I stared at the screen, watching headline after headline appear in rapid succession.Harrington Foundation Announces Major Restructuring. Élise Moreau to Rejoin Board After Two-Year Absence. Sources Close to the Moreau Family Confirm Turbulent Times Ahead.The notifications kept coming, each one with comments that followed, obviously something she wanted.Camille's voice cut through the noise that was already growing in my head. "Dad? What is it?"I looked up to see a frown on her face. Her eyes were fixed on the phone in my hand like she already knew or had an idea of what was going on. God! I hate getting her involved in whatever drama that involves her mother.Your mother," I said quietly, "has decided to make a statement.I turned the phone toward her. She read in silence, her expression shifting from confusion to disbelief then to something like quiet annoyance.She can't just—she's not even on the board anymore,

THE COST OF WARALEXANDERI did not sleep.The image of her stayed with me long after I left the water. The way her body had melted into mine. The way her breath had caught when my lips brushed her ear. The way she had trembled—not from cold, but from want.I had felt it. Her pulse racing beneath my fingers. The softness of her skin. The way she had pressed back against me without meaning to, her body betraying what her words tried to deny.I wanted her.God help me, I wanted her in ways that had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with hunger.But Élise was circling. And Isabella—innocent, dangerous Isabella—was standing directly in her line of fire.The morning came too fast.I was in my study by seven, coffee cold beside me, phone pressed to my ear for the fifth time in as many hours. Bernard, my lawyer, had finally decided to answer.You've seen the headlines," I said.I've seen them." His voice was careful. Measured. The voice of a man who had spent decades telling pow