
Teach Me To Sin- Jace and Clara
One year. One deal. One irreversible mistake.
I agreed to be his bride so he could claim his grandfather's legacy. Jace Sterling Hayes is a movie star, filthy rich, and absolutely forbidden. Our marriage was supposed to be strictly business.
But the way he looks at me? The way he touches me? Nothing about this feels fake.
Now enemies old and new want to destroy us. His scheming agent blackmails me. My sister lies bleeding in a hospital because of my connection to him. And the world watches, waiting for me to fail.
I have one problem I never planned for.
I'm hopelessly, desperately in love with my fake husband.
Teach me to sin. Teach me to trust. Teach me that forever is possible.
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Chapter 1
CLARA'S POV
The spacious hall vibrates with music as I trail the hotel manager and security team in their neat suits. It's past one in the morning, but when my job demands it, I leave my bed and dress for work. This time, I have to rescue my boss from himself.
The manager swipes his keycard over the lock. "After you, Ms. Bellamy."
The second I push the door open, my head pounds in time with the deafening music. I'm shocked my eardrums didn't burst. It's dark inside, but I can see women, some barely dressed, others completely naked, moving everywhere.
If they believe they can get anything long term from Jace, one of Miami's biggest movie stars and wildest men, they ought to give up now. Jace doesn't do relationships. He has the H&D the Humped and Dumped. Yeah. Some reporter who thinks he's far cleverer than he is came up with that term for the groupies Jace supposedly sleeps with.
I inhale. The suite reeks of alcohol, sweat, and perfume. And marijuana. "Dear God, or whatever being watching over me, don't let it be Jace smoking pot," I whisper under my breath. And no hard substances. Jace has no past with drugs, but you never know. After all, this is Miami...and he has too much money and too much free time lately. And he's hunting for an excuse any excuse to avoid traveling tomorrow.
I hit the light switch, making several people suddenly cover their eyes, and look for the source of the music. I can't even hear myself think in this racket. Finally, I locate the plug and yank it out. The music stops, thank goodness, even as complaints and swears come my way.
"Turn that back on, you witch!" one of the women shouts.
"Be quiet before I summon the police on everyone," I state in my firm voice. I face the hotel manager and his security crew. "Can you remove the women from here? I'll handle Jace."
The security team, all men, glance at the crowded mass of barely dressed female bodies and agree. At least someone will enjoy themselves tonight.
The suite is a disaster. The floor is covered with leftovers of gold crackers, empty bottles of all kinds of alcohol, and something dark and gooey probably caviar. The four vases stand empty, their petals scattered everywhere. One of the bare bottomed women has a lily wedged in her rear.
There are a couple of motionless and naked women on the grand piano in the corner with vacant stares, and several others sprawled across the living area. They look sad in the light, hair messy, and makeup smudged. Nearly all of them fit a pattern, young, tall, slim with oversized breasts, courtesy of implants. Their hair likely isn't real either. I notice a few dark roots.
Breathing softly through my mouth, I stride with purpose into the bedroom. More women on the bed. One offers me a cigarette with a foolish smile. I tilt my head to ease the tightness in my shoulders and neck and push into the huge master bathroom, which offers a stunning view of Miami.
It also features a gleaming marble double sink or at least it used to gleam and a hot tub. There are five women in the tub along with Jace Sterling Hayes. Or Jace Hayes, if you recognize him only from his films.
People assume Jace is incredibly photogenic. There has never been an unflattering picture of him. If a higher power had any fairness, Jace would be unphotogenic. Sadly, he isn't. That's just how the world works.
His face has the purest and most defined lines I've ever observed. Articles claim those are the Hayes traits he got from his mother, and it's likely accurate. His father, Alistair Sterling, is fair haired and of average build, while Jace has impressive height, thick dark hair, and a wide, strong physique covered with plenty of muscle.
He waves. His broad, bright grin is so flawless and attractive, it's nearly enough to make me overlook that his behavior has pulled me from bed at this ungodly hour. "Babe!"
He almost never uses my actual name. It's always "babe" or "doll" or something similar which would land ninety nine point nine nine nine nine percent of male bosses in trouble for harassment. But not Jace. He can escape anything. If there's even one woman on a jury, he'll be cleared.
Then there's his voice. It strokes your most sensitive spots and steals your breath. When I first began working for him, I believed he did it deliberately. Now I understand it's simply part of him.
I clear my throat. It's absurd he still affects me, but when you're Jace Hayes, you have that impact on every breathing female. I'm aware of what his agent Ivy Thorne will do if she discovers I'm drawn to him, she'll fire me instantly. She cautioned me on my first day.
There are at least ten empty champagne bottles around the tub. The women likely helped, but I'm sure he consumed most of it. He drinks like an extremely large and thirsty fish. Either his liver is about to burst, or it's constructed of titanium.
I grab a robe from the closet and extend it, looking away. "Exit the water."
"Why? There's plenty of space for you too."
"No! She's so heavy!" one of the women complains.
He flashes her his brilliant smile. "I prefer them soft and curved."
"Come on, Jace. Let's move." When he doesn't budge, I clench my teeth. The women are irritating me; they're attached to him like octopuses, stroking his body and pressing their chests against him. He's nearly trapped in the tub by silicone.
"You're aware you need to attend your cousin's wedding tomorrow for the rehearsal dinner." I dislike how I sound, like a rule enforcer. "You can't skip it. Your mother will be present."
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9.5
My boyfriend, Jefferson, convinced me to give up my Yale scholarship for him. He was my secret, my escape from the shame of my mother's past, and I threw away my future for our love.
Then, at a gala, he publicly announced his engagement to Aubrey Carroll-the girl who made my high school years a living hell.
He trapped me in his mansion, forcing me to become her personal servant. She tortured me daily, culminating in her brutally killing our dog, Charlie, with a garden trowel.
When her friends arrived, they joined in, stripping me half-naked and live-streaming my panic attack for the world to see.
The man who once promised to protect me watched as they destroyed me.
But as I lay bleeding out on the floor, it wasn't an ambulance that arrived. It was the private security of Alexzander Stevens-my estranged, billionaire grandfather.
He revealed I was his sole heiress, and now, we were going to make them pay for every last tear.

7.4
In a city where data is power and truth is a weapon, some secrets are worth killing for.
Mara Quinn is a ghost in the system, an underground journalist known only as Cipher, feared by corporations and hunted by those with everything to lose. When she breaches a classified network inside Axiom Industries, she uncovers something no one was meant to see: ORACLE, a predictive AI capable of shaping human behavior on a global scale.
She expects retaliation. She doesn't expect Kael Draven.
Cold, brilliant, and untouchable, Kael is the architect behind Axiom's empire, and a man who doesn't make threats he can't execute. Instead of silencing Mara, he offers her a choice: work under his watch, or disappear from existence entirely. Trapped inside his glass fortress known as The Spire, Mara is pulled deeper into a world of surveillance, manipulation, and power plays that stretch far beyond anything she imagined.
But ORACLE isn't just a tool, it's already been used. Governments have fallen. Empires have shifted. And someone else is pulling the strings.
As a rival syndicate closes in and a hidden war erupts across the city, Mara and Kael are forced into an uneasy alliance, one built on intellect, suspicion, and a dangerous, undeniable pull neither of them can ignore.
Because in a world where every move is predicted...
the only thing more dangerous than control is feeling.
And the system is already watching.

7.1
I never should have let my mother hold my future hostage.
She paid my tuition with his father's money. Locked my birth certificate, my transcripts, every scrap of paper I need to survive in a safe I'll never open. And the one thing I had left of my dad, his old watch, she dangled like a noose.
Run, and I lose my education. Fight, and I lose the last piece of the man who actually loved me.
So I moved into the Hunters' mansion. Into the lair of the boy who spent years making my life hell.
Chase Hunter. Six-foot-five of pure venom wrapped in muscle and money. The senior who cornered me in empty hallways, who whispered filth in my ear just to watch me flinch, who smiled that sharp, cruel smile every time I broke a little more.
I thought graduation meant freedom from him.
I was wrong.
Now he's my stepbrother.
He hates that I'm here. Hates my mother for sinking her claws into his father. Hates me most of all, for breathing his air, for walking his halls, for daring to exist where he can reach me.
But hate isn't clean anymore.
It's tangled up in heat. In the way his grey eyes strip me bare every time they land on me. In the way his hand closes around my throat, not to hurt, but to own. In the way he punishes me over his lap, in his car, against walls, until I'm shaking and soaked and furious at myself for wanting more.
He calls me Little Lamb like it's poison on his tongue.
I call him every name I can think of under my breath.
How long until we stop fighting the deadly inferno raging between us and finally let it consume us both?

8.7
At eighteen years old, Estelle is kicked out of the only place she knew as home. With nowhere left to go, she goes toward Club Paradise, a place that offers the basic amenities she lacks: food, clothes, shelter, and a well-paying job.
***
The room was thick with smoke and muted chatter, but the moment Antonio D'Amico's eyes landed on her, the world narrowed to just her.
Estelle froze, heart hammering, as if some unseen force had pulled her into his gaze. He didn't move at first, simply studied her with a cold, calculating intensity that sent a shiver straight down her spine.
One night with him shifts the course of her life forever. Something in him fractures; obsession blooms, dangerous, consuming and he decides to take her away, forever.
***
What will happen to Estelle? Will her fortune finally turn around, or is she about to experience hell... and an unexpected, forbidden bond growing inside the darkness?

7.7
My husband, Hudson Higgins, used my dowry to buy his way into the Chicago underworld while his family treated me like a servant in my own home. I endured their insults for the sake of my five-year-old daughter, Josie.
But then, the unthinkable happened. I found Josie's small, lifeless body by the garden fountain, while my sister-in-law Karly and mother-in-law Eleanor stood by, complaining about their party plans.
"She was just too naughty," Karly sneered, adjusting her pearls over my dead child.
When I turned to Hudson for help, he looked at me with dead eyes and told me it was just her fate. In that moment of absolute grief, I remembered the words of the ruthless Don Damien Falcone: "Your husband is a man who knows how to close a deal."
The truth sliced through me like a blade. Hudson hadn't just ignored the Don's interest in me; he had actively sold me to the Devil of Chicago to buy his seat at the table. He let his family punish me for the very sin he committed.
I had lost everything-my dignity, my mother, and now my baby-all sacrificed for a man who traded his wife's body for power. The sorrow in my chest evaporated, replaced by a scorching, blinding thirst for a blood vendetta.
After lunging at Hudson and feeling the world explode into white, I opened my eyes to find myself back in the winter of 1928. It was the exact night the nightmare began, and Don Damien Falcone was walking toward me in his penthouse.
This time, I won't be the broken bird in his gilded cage. If Hudson wants to use me to climb the ranks, I will use the Don's dark obsession to burn the Higgins family to the ground.

7.8
Melanie had been in a secret relationship with her best friend's brother, Ethan, for five years, and finally, he agreed to make it public.
Her best friend excitedly called to confirm, "Melanie, I can't believe my brother's sweetheart is you..."
Just as she was about to nod, she heard her friend say, "Half-sister? I thought he would like you."
That single sentence hit Melanie like a ton of bricks. In a frenzy, she rushed to the company to confront Ethan for clarification.
Unexpectedly, she overheard him confessing his deep feelings to his half-sister.
"Rosalyn, you're the only one I love," he declared. "Marrying her was just to protect you. Keeping her nearby ensures she won't dig into her mother's accident and won't harm you!"
Upon discovering the truth, Melanie decided to accept the marriage to turn the tables on him.
However, after obtaining the marriage certificate, she realized she might have married the wrong person...
Before she could regret it, Ethan's rival, swept her into his arms. "You think you can just up and leave after tying the knot?"