All Chapters of WHERE SIN FEELS LIKE HOME: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Chapter 42: Punishment~Zella Pov ~"This is my apartment," I said, my voice steadier than my body felt. "How do you get in?"He didn't answer immediately. He just sat there in the dark chair, looking at me the way a predator looks at something that's walked directly into its territory."Where are you coming from with the clothes I sent to you at this hour, Zella?" His voice was cold. Precise. The temperature dropped in the room simply from the way he spoke.I froze."I... I...""Come here."It wasn't a request. I walked toward him, my legs unsteady for reasons that had nothing to do with the drugs in my system. His eyes scanned my entire body as I approached, and I watched him register exactly how small the dress was. How much it revealed. How perfectly it displayed what he'd already claimed."You wore the clothes I sent to you to another man?" he demanded. The words came out like an accusation, like a

Chapter 44: Morning After I woke up sore. Not the good kind of sore that came from consensual, enthusiastic sex where both parties were fully present and in control. The kind of sore that came from being thoroughly, relentlessly used by someone who knew exactly what he was doing and had decided to do it completely. The kind of sore that told a story my body couldn't hide even if my mind wanted it to. My thighs ached. Not just a dull ache, a specific, targeted soreness that came from friction and force and being spread open for hours. My core ached with the deep, internal kind of soreness that came from being stretched in ways my body wasn't used to. My breasts were sore when I moved, the sensitivity heightened, and when I looked in the mirror I could see marks, fingerprints on my ribs, a bruise on my shoulder blade from his mouth, evidence of his claim written across my body in colors that would take days to fade. My entire

Chapter 46: Princess Treatment.~ Zella Pov ~He carried me to the bathroom like I weighed nothing.My legs were unsteady, my body aching in places I was becoming intimately familiar with, my mind still fuzzy from what had just happened against the wall. I should have felt self-conscious about being carried like this, naked and marked and completely exposed.Instead, I felt claimed.The bathroom door opened and I stopped breathing.He'd prepared a bath.Not just a bath, a statement. The tub was filled with water that steamed gently, and floating across the surface were flowers. Roses, mostly, in shades of deep red and blush pink. White peonies. Something delicate that I couldn't name. Candles lined the edges of the tub, their flames casting everything in soft gold light. The air smelled like jasmine and something floral and expensive, the kind of scent that came from candles that cost money.When did he prepare

Chapter 48: What He Knows~ Evander POV ~I was on my laptop in the sitting room when she walked through the door.I didn't look up immediately, there were emails, correspondence, the usual demands of a life that felt increasingly irrelevant but I felt her the moment she entered. That was the thing that had been happening for weeks now: my entire nervous system registered her presence before my conscious mind caught up. After ten years of solitude, after a decade of being completely self-sufficient and untethered, I'd forgotten what it felt like to have someone matter that much.And then she'd walked into my life soaking wet on a London street, and I'd remembered everything I'd spent ten years trying to forget.I closed the laptop without finishing the email and watched her move toward me. Something had happened. Something had shifted. I could read it in the way she held herself, that wariness, that specific tension that hadn't been there this morning when I'd kissed her forehead and

Chapter 50: Moving ForwardI was still staring at my phone when the knock came.I knew before I opened the door that it was him. I'd recognize his knock anywhere now, deliberate, patient, the knock of someone who has nowhere else to be.He was holding flowers. Roses, mostly, with white peonies mixed in. The same flowers he'd put in my bath. Behind him was a small gift bag, silver, with a ribbon."Come in," I said.He did, and he handed me the flowers like they were something fragile, like I was something fragile."I might not be sure about my feelings yet," he said, his voice steady in a way that made me understand he'd rehearsed this, "but I know this: I promise I won't hurt you. I'd appreciate it if you let us continue. Let us figure this out together."I took the flowers. I held them against my chest like they could shield me from what was coming."I promise to be faithful with you," he continued. "Sincere with you. Real with you. No games. No calculations. Just us trying to unders