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 4
CLARA'S POV
I stop at the sight of the seven special, climate controlled cases mounted on the wall. The big one in the center is empty, but the other six contain charcoal sketches of Jace...a Jace, however, who I've never seen in real life. The drawings span the time from when he was a newborn to his mid teen years. My gaze lingers on one. It is of Jace when he was just a toddler. Despite the rough lines, joy beams from his wide eyes as he gazes back at me.
The housekeeper always dusts the cases daily Jace's explicit instructions. I once asked him why the center case was empty. He said it was reserved for his grandfather's painting. He was...reverent when he ran his hand over the glass, and there was a palpable longing in the way he gazed at the empty spot. Judging from the sketches, his grandfather's painting must be something very special. I've never seen Jace react like that to any other artwork and he has a very large collection.
My office is nice, with plenty of shelf space, cabinets and a great view of a sparkling blue pool and flower garden that cost five figures a month to maintain. The place feels like a slice of southern Florida heaven...so long as I don't look too far beyond the pool and see the concrete gray walls with barbed wire and security cameras along the top. Jace doesn't have a mansion. He has a compound.
A big box covered with red heart stickers waits for me on my antique Louis XIV desk. It has YOUR GREATEST FAN in all caps...like that would make Jace notice. Despite the lack of return address, I immediately know who sent it. This one comes from a particular loony tunes I've dubbed Loopy because of her overly rounded handwriting.
I place my cup of ginger ale it calms my nausea on my desk and fish for the box cutter in the upper drawer. The furniture is ridiculously ostentatious for an assistant, but it's part of Jace's home, so that's that. Interior decoration isn't my responsibility or prerogative, and if Jace wants me to use a pricey antique desk, so be it. At least it comes paired with an incredibly comfortable ergonomic chair.
I run the box cutter along the clear packing tape. Inside is a white card. "Loopy, Loopy, you really need to stop." I pull out a card with fat, childish handwriting. The overzealous woman never signs her name. And she always sends food at least once a week. The card reads, The expressway to a man's heart is through his stomach. Pure delusion. There's no expressway to Jace's heart. There are roadblocks all over. Countless women are currently stuck, mired in the traffic jam. They'll all die before they get anywhere near his stomach, much less his heart.
On the other side of the card it says, Don't forget I am your soul mate, the Cinderella you've been looking for all your life. I shake my head. She never used to say that until Jace starred in a blockbuster retelling of Cinderella. He played Prince Charming naturally and rumor has it that the ushers were scooping melted women off the floor after each viewing.
I look inside the package. A red, heart shaped tin of homemade chocolate truffles sits in the center, just waiting to be devoured by the object of Loopy's loopy desire. What a waste. Nobody touches food items delivered to Jace. Everything is restuffed into the boxes for storage. Ever since a psycho fan tried to run him over in her Jeep screaming, "If I can't have you, nobody can!" Jace has everything from his fans tagged and shelved in storage as evidence. Just in case the police need them. It turned out that the psycho in the Jeep had sent him over two hundred letters in five months' period.
I dump the box on the floor behind my chair, making a mental note to put it away later. Then I see another piece of mail a big manila envelope. Thankfully this one doesn't come with heart stickers. Just the logo and address of one of the most expensive and exclusive hotels in the state. What is this about? It's not the place I went to drag Jace out of the hot tub, and hotels this exclusive do not send junk mail. No, they stick to the old way of doing things like having humans hand deliver messages that could've just been emailed instead.
I work a letter opener under the flap. A letter and a three page long invoice along with colored photos spill out. I snatch the letter and start reading, toying with the apple shaped silver pendant around my neck that I never take off. The general manager has addressed it to me directly. I would've been impressed if it were his first time. That one, he addressed to "To Whom It May Concern."
Dear Ms. Clara Bellamy, the letter begins. That is the only nice part. The rest is a litany of complaints about the woman Jace screwed and left behind in the hotel's presidential suite. I can't decide if it's good or bad that the general manager used such polite yet pointed language. The H&D women can be forces of destruction, fueled by spite and a sense of betrayal. The former is completely understandable, but the latter? I don't get it. Jace never promises anyone anything. When he takes you into his suite, it's for a night of good fucking. You can't even call it sex, if what the media reports is even ten percent accurate.
I toss the letter on the desk and pick up the invoice. Then wince. The bill lists over twenty thousand dollars' worth of damage to the suite. Twenty thousand dollars? Did Jace pick up a feral cat? I scan the enclosed photos. The minibar is cleaned out. Broken glass everywhere. Numerous green and brown stains of dubious origin cover the pale ivory carpet. The woman also left a message on one of the walls with what looks like bright red lipstick. F U! assole
I laugh. I can't help it. It's either that or cry, and I'd rather not waste any tears on a person who can't even spell "asshole." I've already shed plenty over my worthless ex, Cole. I take a few deep breaths. How did I get on Cole? I'm better off without him. He only wanted me for my connection to Jace. I'm not going to let him know about the baby either since he would only use it against me to get me to help his "career transition" into acting.
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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?"