Forbidden Hearts (eBook)

His Dark Obsession

Israel Blake (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
127 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-110505-8 (ISBN)

Infos

She wanted a fresh start.
He wanted control.
Neither expected obsession.

After a scandal shatters her old life, Selena Reyes transfers to Ridgeview University, determined to disappear. No drama, no attention, no mistakes. Then she meets Damon Cross, rich, arrogant, and dangerously magnetic.

He's everything she swore to avoid... but Damon doesn't play by anyone's rules.
What starts as hostility turns into a slow, forbidden pull, one that blurs every line between hate and desire.

But Damon has secrets, ones tied to Selena's past, the kind that can destroy everything she's trying to rebuild.
And when truth turns into betrayal, love becomes the most dangerous game of all.

How far will she go for the one person she should've stayed away from?

Textauszug

Chapter 1 — The House That Wasn’t Mine

The car rolled to a stop in front of the house that wasn't mine. Not yet.

Mom squeezed the steering wheel like she could compress the anxiety into a neat little shape and tuck it away. She smiled at me, too bright, a practiced lift of white teeth, and said, "They're good people, Selena. You'll see."

They’re family, she didn’t say. The word was still foreign to me, something borrowed and stiff, a dress that pulled at the shoulders. I stared at the house until the glass blurred, until I could only see reflected nerves and sunlight.

It was bigger than I’d pictured in the photos, three stories of white stone, columns, tall windows that caught the sun and threw it out in hard shards. The kind of house that made small houses feel ashamed of themselves. The driveway curved into a crescent, hedges clipped to geometric precision. There were cameras tucked like berries on the eaves. I imagined secrets nested in every corner and thought, with purely adolescent nastiness, that maybe those secrets were worth more than everything my old life had cost.

"You ready?" Mom asked.

Not even close. But I nodded. I’d learned to nod when life shifted underfoot.

My suitcase rolled over the driveway stones, wheels clacking like a slow drumbeat. The air smelled of cut grass and some expensive detergent. My heart tapped at my ribs, fast, like it wanted to get out and run back to the small apartment we’d left behind, the one with peeling paint and a kitchen light that flickered only at night. That apartment was the only place I’d ever really known as mine. It had flaws. It had the way my mother made coffee, too black at two in the morning, and how she hummed off-key when she worried. It had the memories of fights and laughter cramped into one room.

A shadow fell across the before we reached the steps. The front door opened, and a man filled the frame, tall enough to make the door seem smaller, broad-shouldered against the dark wood. He had the kind of face that belonged in heavy novels: strong jaw, cheekbones that made light look violent against them. His hair was thick and dark, combed back with casual brutality.

So this is him.

Damon.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t move to take the bags. He stood propped in the doorway, hands in his pockets, weight tipped to one side. His eyes scanned me the way a tide scans a shore, measuring distance, finding purchase. When they landed on me, it felt like the air had been pinched out of the moment.

"Damon," a deeper voice called behind him, warm and practiced. "Don’t just stand there, help them."

Damon’s hand stayed on the doorframe. "She can carry her own bags," he said. His voice was low, the kind of thing that reads as indifference but lands like a challenge.

I could feel Mom’s hand hovering over mine, a tremor I ignored on purpose. I tried to arrange my smile to make it ordinary. "Nice to meet you," I said, and flattened myself into the role of polite, grateful girl.

There was something in his look that tightened my skin, the faint tilt of interest that might’ve been protective, might’ve been contempt. It slid down into my spine and warmed there. Before I could decide how to feel about that, he stepped aside.

The house swallowed us. Inside, the foyer smelled of polish and something herbaceous, perhaps rosemary, perhaps some cologne that claimed it wasn't trying too hard. A sweeping staircase curled upward like a question mark. On the walls were framed photographs, faces smiling in pictures that looked like celebrations, a wedding, a graduation, a winter holiday with matching scarves. Heavily curated happiness. No obvious gaps. No ghosts in the frames.

"Welcome, Selena." The man who’d called earlier came forward with open arms. Richard had a softness to him, an easy warmth he seemed to wear the way other people wear a sweater. He hugged me without hesitation, his laugh easy and inclusive. He smelled faintly of citrus and something expensive. "We’re so glad you’re here."

I forced a smile that matched the frames on the walls. "Thank you."

Damon lingered by the staircase, one shoulder pressed to the banister. He watched us move through the house with that same unblinking attention. Not merely looking, cataloguing, and storing. When he finally moved, it was to stand in the corner of the living room, arms folded, an island of cool.

"Dinner’s almost ready," Richard announced, clapping his hands. "Make yourself at home."

Home. The word felt heavy and improbable on my tongue. I had been living by the economy of sentiment for years. I knew how to save excitement for small things so it wouldn’t go rancid. This house wanted everything immediate, everything shiny. I felt naked and loud inside it.

The dining room was longer than any room I’d eaten in before. A chandelier hung like an overthrow of stars. The table was set with china that could collect dust in a museum. Richard poured wine for Mom and moved like a man who liked being seen doing things well. They both laughed at the same jokes; they both seemed certain the world would hold them. I had to pretend to be certain, too.

Damon didn’t sit until I did. He selected a chair opposite me like a deliberate act. When conversation drifted toward harmless things, school and friends and my plans, he listened more than he spoke. But every time I glanced up, there he was, an unmoving presence, the kind of look that made you second-guess your thoughts as if they might be audible. He ate methodically, the slow, small movements of someone who lives precisely.

"So," Richard said, casually as if dropping a pebble into a pond to watch the rings, "you’ll be starting at the academy next week. Damon can show you around."

My fork hung between plate and mouth, suddenly much heavier than it should have been. For an instant, my chest forgot how to breathe.

Damon’s lips twitched. "I’m not a tour guide," he said.

"Damon," Richard said, playful reproach. He glanced at him as if to say, Be nice.

"What?" Damon’s voice was cool as a cut diamond. "I’m sure she’ll figure things out. She looks resourceful."

The compliment was thin as paper and twice as sharp. It made my ears heat. Resourceful implied I’d done well for myself through grit, through hustle, through the kind of scrappy survival that didn’t fit the house’s lines. When his eyes found mine, I felt small as a thing that could be lit and set down.

I focused on the dinner like it could redeem normalcy, on the roast chicken, the creamy potatoes, the chatter. I tried to tell myself it was okay to accept that someone wanted me here. But words about acceptance felt like wet towels, smothering without warmth.

A laugh escaped my mother, too loud and a little wild at the edges. She said something about me practicing violin, about a teacher who’d praised my talent. Richard listened like he was collecting pieces he’d tuck into a cushioned archive. The conversation moved on, but beneath each sentence an undercurrent thrummed, Damon’s attention. I could feel the way he kept aligning himself opposite me, like a magnet pulled to a specific pole.

When the plates were cleared, I offered to take the dishes out of habit, but Richard waved me off with practiced gentleness. He insisted instead that the housekeeper show me to my room. The housekeeper, an older woman with prim hair and efficient hands, led the way up a flight of stairs I hadn’t noticed before. As we passed the family portraits, I studied Damon’s face again, frozen in time: a photograph of him in high school, a photograph of him at twenty, both with the same steady eyes.

"You have everything you need in there," the housekeeper said. "If you need anything, press the button on the bedside. Someone will attend."

"Thank you," I said, but what I really wanted to ask was whether anyone ever answered when the buttons were pressed for the wrong kind of need.

They’d set up a room that, with a different life, could have felt like a treat. Fresh linens, a throw folded perfectly at the foot of the bed, books stacked on the nightstand that had dustless corners. There was a balcony that looked out on a garden trimmed to mathematical precision. I placed my suitcase by the bed and sank onto the mattress, letting the too-firm springs give me a polite, noncommittal bounce.

Silence found me in the room. It had a different quality than the silence of the apartment; here, it was full of the echo of wealth, a polished hush that suggested a thousand small rules. My chest throbbed with the day’s adrenaline. I let myself breathe and let my memory drift back to a kitchen light that had flickered the night...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-110505-1 / 0001105051
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-110505-8 / 9780001105058