Forbidden

When my roommate told me, “Take me with you,” I knew that night was going to cost her more than her shyness. What I didn’t imagine was that he’d show up.

Four powerful men dead in the same way. All naked, exhausted. Someone chose them, seduced them, and took them to the exact limit before the end.

I’d spent a month dreaming of seeing him again when my roommate confessed she was jealous of me. That same night I took her with me to the rave.

I looked in the mirror, and the face I saw wasn’t mine. It was hers. And inside that borrowed body, something began to awaken that never should have.

When he opened the wrong box, he knew it was a mistake. But when she entered his office, small and frightened, doll and woman became one.

Behind those boxes, I thought no one could see me. The red camera on the ceiling and the footsteps at the door told me otherwise.

She had the champagne bucket in one hand and the other pressed against the wood, trying to convince herself she was only listening to make sure everything was in order.

For months, he had stared at the dark corner of his bedroom. The wrong doll they sent him was the closest thing to companionship he’d had in years.

That week I shouldn’t have noticed him. But when he hugged me from behind in the pool, I knew I was going to lose control that night.

When I opened the door that night, they had no idea I already had the taste of their friend in my mouth and a plan measured in every movement of my hips.

I climbed the gate at three in the morning, with my dress torn and my stockings bloodied, just to look him in the eye and ask whether I was making it all up.

When he said it out loud, the silence lasted exactly three seconds. I felt fear and desire at the same time, and I couldn’t tell which one was stronger.

When Marcos confessed he could help me with both things, I knew that night out dancing was going to end far better than expected.

The half-open door let out a muffled moan and I, frozen in the shadows of the hallway, couldn’t move or stop staring at what I was seeing.

She was thirty-six weeks pregnant and I was alone with her all week. No one knew what crossed my mind every time I helped her.

When she told me to kneel, I did. I understood I was no longer her patient, but something entirely different.

Camila pulled back the sheet without thinking and caught sight of exactly what she shouldn’t have. What came next changed forever the way my sister and I spoke to each other.

The boy from the neighborhood looked me up and down without shame while I tried to keep my voice from trembling. I was forty-six, with a son to save.

When he locked the library door, I knew my little game of skirts and glances had just crossed a point of no return.

We needed the money. So we signed without reading the fine print of a contract that would keep us in Prague six weeks longer than planned.