Sinfully His – Gilded Decadence Read Online Zoe Blake, Alta Hensley

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Dark, Forbidden, Taboo Tags Authors: Alta Hensley, Zoe Blake Advertisement

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I watched her from my position leaning against the doorway, my arms crossed over my chest. I was just so unbelievably proud of my big sister. She had found herself in a way that I hoped to find myself. Her passion was art, not creating it as much as understanding and curating it. The way she fostered talent, awareness, and appreciation of the arts in these kids was inspiring, and she just seemed to glow with her resulting happiness.

My fingers ached with the desire to sketch her, to illustrate and highlight for the first time how truly comfortable she was in her own skin. She would give the credit to Luc, but she would be wrong. This, this was all about her.

I had hoped to come into my own in much the same way. I wanted to pursue art as my passion. Despite Mother’s insistence that I had no talent or eye for art, I applied to colleges all over the world, just to hear absolutely nothing back.

I got a business degree, one that my mother found acceptable, though not ideal. She would have preferred something more refined and ladylike, like English literature or art history. Dad, however, encouraged the business degree, calming my mother by telling her that whoever I married would be a businessman and it would be valuable if I could understand what he worked on and talked about all day.

I was a little hurt by that until he shot me a wink, and I understood that he just wanted to give me a choice.

I took the boring business classes not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t want to satisfy my mother. That rebellious streak that was so bold faded quickly after that. Somehow, I convinced myself that not getting into an undergrad art program was a fluke. Maybe there was an issue with the files in my portfolio. Maybe I had missed something in the applications.

So when I applied again to graduate programs with Amelia’s help and still heard nothing, my dreams were dashed. I knew that the excitement and joy that I watched my sister embrace were going to be forever out of my reach.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I applied to the most prestigious and competitive schools. Maybe I just didn’t have the talent, and that was okay.

Amelia turned and saw me waiting for her. She gave me a warm smile and held up a single finger, telling me to hold on for just another few moments. I nodded and signaled for her to take her time. I wasn’t in a rush. There was absolutely nowhere else I wanted to be.

I moved to a chair in her office, the soreness of my bottom reminding me of today’s earlier events. I considered telling Amelia about Father Manwarring. After all, she was a Manwarring now. Just because he wore a priest collar didn’t make him beyond the reach of his older brother, Amelia’s husband, or even his father. And if Amelia wouldn’t talk to Luc, or if she thought Luc couldn’t help, we could always talk to Stella.

Stella would absolutely talk to Lucian for me.

I just didn’t know if Luc or Lucian would help. What if they tried to influence Father Manwarring, and it backfired? What if he was in fact beyond their reach, and instead he just punished me for opening my mouth?

Or what if it worked, and he stopped?

Did I want this to stop?

Immediately my first answer was yes, but when I thought about it, I wasn’t so sure.

Had Father Manwarring really done anything terrible?

Yes, I was fairly certain that he at least had some type of involvement in Raul’s death, but could I be mad at him for that? Raul was going to use me. He had these plans that would have destroyed my entire life only to make a quick buck. Not to mention Raul had slept with my mother. That may not have been his fault, but it curbed my sympathies.

Father Manwarring stole from Mother, but I did not know what was in that safe deposit box. Maybe she shouldn’t have had it at all?

Then there were the sinful things he did to my body.

What did he do, really? There was no irrevocable damage. Sure, I was a little sore, but he showed me things my body was capable of that I had never known was even possible. I would have never even known that sex… there… could feel so good. My one time with Raul didn’t show me what my body was capable of, or what I could feel. No husband from a match negotiated by my mother would feel any obligation to ever make me feel that way either.

I wasn’t even a virgin when he took me. So it wasn’t like he stole my virtue.

Then there was the way he put his mouth on my body to soothe away the pain from the injuries to my face… Even the girls I hung out with in college whispered about men doing that because it was a rarity.

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