The Forbidden (The Forbidden Clause #1)

Chapter 1

Evelyn

The Night of My Life

The city didn’t just glow tonight, it throbbed.

A slick, sinful heartbeat kept time with my own as I stepped out of the cab and into the sharp bite of downtown air.

Neon bled across wet pavement, streaking pink and electric blue over my borrowed dress like some prophetic warning.

I didn’t belong in this part of the city.

I don’t usually do this. I didn’t usually pretend so hard it burned.

But tonight wasn’t built for my comfort.

Tonight demanded sacrifice. A work function—mandatory, political, suffocating.

The kind of gathering where careers were made and destroyed depending on who saw you, who didn’t, and who pretended not to.

I had never belonged in rooms like this, no matter how convincingly I smiled.

The ballroom swallowed me the whole moment I crossed the threshold.

The chandelier above looked like a constellation trapped in glass—a frozen sky suspended by wealth older than my bloodline.

Light fractured across tailored suits, glittering gowns, and predatory grins. Laughter ricocheted off marble walls, silky and artificial. The air tasted like expensive perfume and inherited arrogance. People here were born into thrones.

I’d grown up clawing for the right to breathe.

And then there was me. A dress I borrowed from a friend with better finances and worse morals.

Heels that felt like medieval torture. A spine held together by sheer performance.

My fingers tightened around a champagne flute I hadn’t dared sip.

My stomach groaned, but nerves had alchemized hunger into nausea.

Every hors d’oeuvre on the passing trays looked like a still life instead of food.

I made a polite, aimless loop around the ballroom—nodding at strangers, side-stepping ambitious interns, ducking the bored wives of executives who scanned the room like hunters searching for entertainment.

The music thrummed low, a smooth jazz number that crawled under my skin instead of soothing anything.

My shoulders stayed locked, my breath shallow.

Finally, I reached the refreshment table and abandoned restraint.

One flute. Then another. The champagne went down bright and reckless, a poor substitute for courage.

My borrowed dress clung too tightly around my hips, the zipper threatening mutiny.

My heels bit my ankles. The smile I wore felt like a porcelain mask ready to crack.

A tray swept by. I snatched a cracker, nibbling automatically as I scanned the crowd—and then I felt him. That gaze hit me first, hot as a hand pressed between my shoulder blades.

My heart stuttered violently before I even turned.

Alexander Hunt.

The name alone commanded silence in meeting rooms and shivers down corporate ladders. CEO. Power incarnate. The kind of man people orbited but never touched. The kind of man rumored to ruin lives with a single well-timed smile.

He stood across the ballroom like he owned not just the company but gravity itself. Tall, polished, lethal. A midnight suit sculpted to a body built for violence and immaculate control. A face carved with cold intention.

Our eyes met—and the world slid out from beneath me. His stare locked onto me with a precision that felt indecent, as if he were already imagining me without the dress, without the borrowed confidence, without the breath in my throat. Heat shot through my chest.

My fingers trembled around the champagne glass. I looked away because I had to. Because if I didn’t, I might’ve drowned in him right there on the marble floor. And something in his gaze told me—He would have let me.