Alle Kapitel von UNHOLY & FORBIDDEN : Kapitel 21 – Kapitel 30

The key card light turned green at 9:41 p.m. Mira stepped inside first. The room was ordinary—one wide bed, neutral carpet, a desk by the window, the low hum of the air conditioner. Nothing about it should have felt charged. She set her bag down and turned. Theo closed the door. The automatic lock clicked. For three full seconds neither of them moved. They had sat across from each other in the same book club for eleven months. Same second Thursday. Same circle of chairs in the back room of the independent bookstore. He was thirty-eight, quiet, the one who only spoke when the discussion turned to something that actually mattered. She was thirty-two, the one who always stayed to help stack chairs. They had never touched. They had never even stood this close. Theo’s voice was rough. “If you want to leave, leave now.” Mira answered by walking to him and kissing him. It was not careful. Months of not looking too long, of not letting hands brush when they reached for the same

The second night settled over the room with the same ordinary quiet as the first. They had not left since the morning coffee. The trays sat stacked on the desk. The bed was a wreck of sheets and pillows. Mira stood at the window in one of Theo’s discarded shirts, watching the city lights blink on one by one. Behind her she heard the soft sound of him rising from the bed, the low shift of bare feet on carpet. Theo stopped close enough that she felt the heat of his chest against her back. His hands settled on her hips beneath the shirt, palms rough and warm. “This was supposed to be once,” he said quietly. “One night to get it out of our systems so we could sit across from each other next Thursday and pretend neither of us remembers how the other tastes.” Mira turned inside the circle of his arms. The shirt hung open. His eyes dropped to the bare strip of skin from throat to navel, then lower. “Do you believe that?” she asked. “No.” He kissed her like the admission had cos

The next night the hallway was even quieter. Sloane reached the office door at 10:07 p.m. carrying a thin folder of paperwork she had printed for no real reason. The light was on underneath. She knocked once. Reid opened the door, stepped aside, and locked it the moment she was inside. The soft click sounded louder than it should have. He didn’t greet her. He took the folder from her hands, set it on the desk without looking at it, and backed her against the same scarred oak surface as the night before. The kiss was rougher this time—less collision, more claim. Sloane’s back met the wood. Reid’s hands shoved her shirt up and off in one motion, then the sports bra. Her breasts spilled free. He groaned at the sight and bent his head, sucking one nipple into his mouth hard enough to make her gasp. His hand worked the other at the same time—kneading the soft flesh, pinching the peak, rolling it between rough fingers until both nipples were tight, dark, and wet from his mouth. He switc

The balconies sat close enough that the railings nearly touched. Rae had measured it once with her eyes: three feet of open air, maybe less. For seven months she had come outside after dark with a glass of something cold and pretended the man on the next balcony was not also there. Jonah never pretended as well as she did. Forty-two. Tall. Quiet. The kind of neighbor who nodded once in the hallway and never started conversations. He smoked only late at night, the ember of his cigarette a small red pulse in the dark. Tonight the courtyard below was empty. Most of the other windows had already gone black. Warm air moved between the buildings, carrying the distant sound of traffic and the faint smell of someone’s dinner. Rae leaned on her railing and did not look sideways. Jonah’s voice came low across the gap. “You’ve been standing there for eleven minutes.” She turned her head. He was closer to the edge than usual, both hands on the railing, cigarette forgotten in the ashtray

The sky had already begun to pale when Jonah crossed the gap for the third time. Rae was waiting on her side of the railing, bare feet on cool concrete, the same thin shirt she had worn the night he first stepped over. The courtyard below was still dark, but the air had changed—less night, more the thin quiet that comes just before a city starts to move. Jonah landed softly on her balcony and did not speak. He simply cupped the back of her neck and kissed her like the decision to stay had already been made hours ago. He walked her inside without turning on any additional lights. The living-room lamp from the night before still burned on its lowest setting. The sliding door stayed open behind them, letting in the early air and the distant sound of the first delivery truck somewhere blocks away. Jonah stripped the shirt off her shoulders and let it fall. She was bare underneath. He looked at her for a long moment in the half-light, then backed her toward the wide armchair that faced t