Alle Kapitel von UNHOLY & FORBIDDEN : Kapitel 31 – Kapitel 40

Helena almost walked past the church. The evening Mass had ended twenty minutes earlier. Most of the parishioners were already gone. Only the side door near the confessional remained unlocked, the way it always had when she was younger. She told herself she was only stepping inside to get out of the light rain. The lie lasted until she saw the young priest sitting alone in the front pew, head bowed, purple stole still around his neck. Father Tomas. She would have known him even without the collar. The same dark hair, the same serious mouth. Twenty-eight now. Newly ordained that spring. The last time she had seen him he had been seventeen, an altar boy with ink-stained fingers and a habit of lingering after services to put the hymnals away. She had been twenty-four then, home for the summer, and she had noticed him more than she should have. Nothing had ever happened. She had left town. He had gone to seminary. Now the boy was a priest and the woman who remembered him too clearly wa

The rectory was quiet in the way only a priest’s house could be after midnight. Helena stood in the small study while Tomas locked the outer door and then the one behind them. A single lamp burned on the desk. The room smelled of old paper, beeswax, and the faint trace of the incense that clung to his clothes. A crucifix hung on the wall above the bookshelf. Tomas looked at it once, then deliberately turned the frame face-down on the shelf before he came to her. He did not speak. He simply walked to her, took her face in both hands, and kissed her like the last of his resistance had stayed behind in the sacristy. Deep. Slow. Certain. Helena’s coat slipped from her shoulders. Tomas pushed her dress up and off in one motion and let it fall. She stood bare in the middle of his private study while he remained fully dressed in black. The imbalance felt deliberate. He looked at her for a long moment—flushed, already marked by the two nights that had come before, the evidence of him still

The train kept its steady rhythm long after the first crossing. Clara lay awake in the lower berth listening to the rails and the soft sound of his breathing on the other side of the aisle. The blue floor lights still glowed. Somewhere in the car a passenger coughed once and then fell quiet again. She did not know how much time had passed—only that the ache he had left inside her had settled into a deeper, restless need and that the curtain across from her had not moved. Then it did. The soft slide of fabric. The quiet shift of weight. He was standing in the aisle again, shirt gone this time, the blue light cutting across the dark hair on his chest and the open waistband of his pants. He did not ask. He simply waited until she pulled her own curtain open the rest of the way and moved back against the wall to make room. He climbed in. The berth was even tighter with both of them fully awake and no longer pretending this would happen only once. He braced himself above her on one fo

The last guest left at 10:47 p.m. Ivy locked the front glass doors and turned off the main overhead lights one bank at a time until only the track lighting above the central sculptures remained. The gallery smelled of spilled wine, expensive perfume, and the faint sharp scent of fresh paint from the installation that had gone up that afternoon. City lights glowed through the tall front windows, painting long rectangles across the polished concrete floor. Julian Voss stood in front of the largest piece—a white marble torso on a low black pedestal—with his hands in his pockets. Forty-six. Tall. Dark hair going silver at the temples. The kind of artist whose name on a wall label was already enough to sell the work. He had spent most of the evening speaking to collectors. He had looked at Ivy only three times. Each time had felt deliberate. She should have started packing the leftover catalogues. Instead she walked across the open floor until she stood a few feet from him. “The in

The last staff member left at 7:20 p.m. Ivy locked the front glass doors from the inside and shut off the main overhead lights bank by bank. Only the track lighting above the sculptures remained, throwing sharp white pools across the polished concrete. The gallery still carried the faint scent of the day’s visitors—perfume, rain-damp wool, and the metallic edge of the heating system. City lights pressed against the tall windows, brighter now that the interior was dim. Julian came out of the preparation room and stopped when he saw her. Whatever professional restraint he had managed during open hours was gone. He walked the length of the floor, took the keys from her hand, and set them on the nearest pedestal base. Then he kissed her with the slow certainty of a man who no longer intended to stop at once. He backed her toward the low black platform that held the white marble torso—the same pedestal from the first night. The cool stone met the backs of her thighs. Julian’s hands p