Todos los capítulos de RUINED INNOCENCE: 40 Sinful Nights Of Corruption: Capítulo 481 - Capítulo 490

Best friends are not supposed to know how you taste.I have told myself that for six years. Through high school hallways. Through late-night study sessions. Through every time Noah Cole dropped onto my bed like he belonged there and stole fries off my plate like it was a birthright. Through every girlfriend he introduced me to with that easy, stupidly handsome smile, as if my chest didn’t tighten every time he said her name.I told myself it was fine. That wanting him was a private, harmless sickness. That as long as I never said it out loud, I could keep being Ley—the best friend, the safe one, the girl he called at two in the morning when he couldn’t sleep.Then someone dared us to kiss.It started as a house party we should have skipped. End of junior year. Cheap beer. Too-loud music. Someone’s off-campus living room packed with people who would forget most of this by morning. Noah’s girlfriend, Tessa, was in the kitchen laughing too hard at something that wasn’t funny. My roommate

Morning made it real.Noah was still in my bed, one arm locked around my waist, his face buried in my hair like he had always slept there. Sunlight cut across the sheets. My body ached in places that had nothing to do with friendship. Every shift reminded me of his mouth, his hands, the way he had looked at me when he asked if I still wanted him to pretend.I didn’t.That was the part that scared me.He woke when I tried to slip out from under his arm. His grip tightened first, instinctive, then loosened as his eyes opened.“Don’t run,” he said, voice rough with sleep.“I was going to make coffee.”“That’s not running?”“It’s caffeine.”A faint smile touched his mouth. He tugged me back until I was half on his chest. His heartbeat was steady under my ear. Too steady. Like he had already decided this was simple.“Jenna’s going to know,” I said.“Jenna already knew you were in love with me.”I lifted my head. “I never said that.”Noah’s fingers traced the line of my spine. “You didn’t h

A month later, the noise had thinned.People still looked. Some still talked. Tessa had stopped posting about it. Jenna had decided we were disgusting and also inevitable, which from her was as close to a blessing as we were going to get. Noah’s mother had come around enough to invite me to Sunday dinner with the same tight smile she used for situations she could not control.It was not perfect.It was ours.I kept a drawer at his place. He kept a charger at mine. We still argued about whose turn it was to buy coffee and who left wet towels on the bed. The friendship hadn’t vanished. It had just stopped pretending it wasn’t also this—his mouth on my shoulder while I tried to finish an essay, my laugh against his throat when he carried me down the hall because I was taking too long.Friday night we stayed in.No party. No audience. Just his apartment, low lights, leftover Thai food on the coffee table, and Noah on the couch with my feet in his lap like the dare had never happened and a

I lasted four days.Four days of sitting in the third row of his lecture hall, taking notes I would not remember, watching Professor Hale write on the board like he had not had me on his desk the week before. He never looked at me longer than he looked at anyone else. That was worse than if he had. It made the whole thing feel like a fever I had invented.On Thursday I told myself I was only going to office hours for the midterm review.I knocked.“Come in.”He was behind the desk again, jacket on this time, every inch the faculty member students whispered about and never touched. The lock clicked after I shut the door. He did that himself, without looking up from the paper he was marking.“Miss Cole.”“I have questions about the essay prompt.”“No, you don’t.” He set the pen down and finally looked at me. “Sit.”I sat.The chair across from his desk felt smaller than it should have. My pulse was already misbehaving. He watched it happen in my throat and did not pretend he hadn’t.“Yo

The address was a brick walk-up twenty minutes from campus, far enough that I didn’t recognize anyone on the street. I stood on the stoop for a full minute with my finger over the buzzer, telling myself I could still leave.I pressed it.Professor Hale opened the door in a black T-shirt and dark jeans, hair slightly damp, looking less like a faculty member and more like the man who had locked his office behind me. For a second neither of us spoke. Then he stepped aside.“You came.”“You doubted it?”“I hoped you would be smarter.” His mouth twitched. “I’m glad you weren’t.”The apartment was quiet. Books. Dark furniture. A single lamp. No photographs of a life I wasn’t supposed to enter. He took my coat, hung it, and only then touched me—hands on my waist, forehead against mine, like he needed a second to confirm I was actually here.“This is my brother’s place,” he said. “He’s out of the country until spring. No neighbors from the university. No cameras in the lobby that know my name