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 6
CLARA'S POV
One of them even uploaded a sex tape, which thankfully turned out to be of someone other than Jace. But the incident required tons of extra work by not just me, but Ivy and a team of publicists. Unlike me, she was mainly interested in capitalizing on the moment and twisting it into an opportunity to raise Jace's "hot factor."
"When a woman has sex, she's a slut. When a man has sex, he's a stud." Ivy didn't even look perturbed when she told me that. "It's unfair, but that's life. I'm not going to let this mess up all the good we've done for Jace." It was so sexist, it still makes my teeth hurt. And Jace always comes out of everything smelling like roses.
Still, this job is what pays the bills, and I know he's paying me a lot better than the going rate. Plus he covers all my medical and dental, and I'm going to need that more than ever.
"Don't pout, babe," Jace says. "What's done is done."
"Is this why you asked me not to accompany you to the wedding?" I wouldn't have attended the ceremony, but I would've gone to make sure every detail was taken care of to his satisfaction. Stuff like that is part of my job. "You said you'd be good."
"I was. I went to the wedding like I promised and danced with the bride. Told everyone how awesome it was, how much I enjoyed myself. I even made a toast. Call Mark. Ask him." Mark is Jace's cousin and the groom.
My teeth were still grinding. "You missed the rehearsal dinner."
"Hey, I apologized to Mark. And maybe to the bride, too." He squints and snaps his fingers a couple of times. "Anna? Hannah? Jenna! Anyway, I can't remember, but she probably doesn't care since she got to dance with me." He waves a negligent hand at the bill on my desk. "That's pocket change. Don't worry about it. It's all cool."
"Yes, except for your mother who's undoubtedly upset. I told her you'd be there, including the rehearsal dinner."
"She seemed okay to me."
"So you did talk to her?" That would be something, at least.
"Ah, I tried, but it was a big ceremony. Lots of guests. You know how those things can be."
A tiny, bean sized knot in my forehead starts to throb.
"Don't worry," he says. "She'll pout for a week and then get over it. We can send her something nice for her birthday. Or Christmas. Whichever you like."
His mother knows I pick out the gifts, not Jace. She will be angry no matter what I send her. If it's small and thoughtful, she'll call it stingy. If it's extravagant, she'll accuse me of being presumptuous and wasteful, even though money is never an issue in Jace's family since everyone's drowning in the stuff.
My cellphone rings. I glance at the ID Camilla Hayes. Speak of the devil... Normally I would let it go to voicemail, but I'm peeved, so I answer it before Jace realizes who's calling.
"Good morning, Ms. Hayes," I say, my voice extra sweet and professional. Jace's face crumples like a wadded piece of paper.
"Good morning, Clara." Jace's mother's voice is always cool with a hint of stickiness that isn't easy to describe. Kind of like half melted sugarless, fat free ice cream.
Divorced, Camilla Hayes refuses to be referred to as "missus." She doesn't want me calling her by her first name, either. I've never met the woman in person, but I've heard stories. She has to be the long lost sister of Miss Manners. If that's too far fetched, maybe a cousin, but nothing less.
"Is Jace available in the next two weeks?"
"The next two weeks?" I purr. "Let me check." I pull up his calendar. Across from me, he is shaking his head and hands frantically. I pretend not to see him and keep scrolling through the schedule. He leans forward, mouths "no" and makes slashing motions right in front of my eyes.
I take pity on him. After all, he did give me a chance when nobody else would. Back then I was just a girl fresh out of college with no experience or connections in Miami.
"I'm sorry, but he's unavailable," I say. "Is this something urgent? If so, I can see what I can do."
"Urgent? I suppose that depends on one's point of view. I simply thought the family should have dinner, seeing as how he missed the one at his cousin's wedding." Camilla's tone says she's too well bred to make accusations, but she knows where the fault lies me.
"If you can have your assistant figure out everyone's schedule... Is Alistair coming too?" I can call Jace's father Alistair because Camilla doesn't think he's worth the respect of "Mr. Sterling," and Alistair doesn't want me to be formal with him.
"Oh, I'm sure Alistair's busy with his new wife. It would be just the four of us." Her, Jace and his brother and sister Rhys and Audrey.
"I'll see what I can do, Ms. Hayes."
"Thank you, Clara."
"My pleasure."
I count to two and disconnect. The last time I hit the red button without waiting, she made a thinly veiled comment about how rude it was to hang up in hurry, as though one couldn't wait to be free of the other person's presence.
See? This is another reason Jace is a hard boss to work for. It isn't just him I have to please, but a mother whose blood is bluer than the Atlantic in winter. Probably just as cold too.
"Thank you." Jace is practically mooing with gratitude.
"Don't thank me yet. I haven't told you about your father's email."
He rolls his eyes. "Delete it. Not interested."
"You sure? He mentioned something about paintings."
That gets him to sit up straight. "What paintings? What did he say exactly?"
"Lemme see... Okay, here it is. Quote. You worthless sons of bitches better come to my new home in Palm Beach tomorrow at two p.m. or I'll personally piss on your grandfather's paintings. Unquote."
"What the hell?" Red blotches appear on Jace's high cheeks, and his eyes go darker than normal.
The reaction fascinates me. I've seen him act angry in movies, sure, but I've never seen him respond like this in real life. Every inconvenience and annoyance is delegated and forgotten. He has a platoon of people dedicated to making his life as easy as possible.
But this... This doesn't sound like something he can delegate and forget.
"What do you want to do?" I ask.
Jace doesn't answer for a moment. "No choice, I guess. I'll have to go and confront him myself." He presses his lips until they are thin and bloodless. "Get my pilot ready. I'm leaving tonight."
I've really never seen him like this. "I'll make the arrangements."
He starts to get up. "You don't have to come. Tomorrow's Saturday."
Like that's ever stopped me from having to work. I give him a bland smile. "Yes, I do. I'm not letting you deviate from the agenda again."
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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?"