25.7K
Shared Ice — Randall Holbrook
The Kestrels' left wing has never had to work for anyone's attention, and then you took his training slot.
梁梁山小记Loading page…
12.8K
The Door Stays Open — Yago Enrile
A dare put your mouth on a stranger in the private lounge, and the stranger turns out to be the man the whole casino answers to. He does not want to keep you. He wants an hour.
凡凡人修仙中
22.4K
The Wrong Table — Orlando Parente
Your blind date was a man in a black suit, alone at a table, very handsome. It was the right description and the wrong man, and he knew within four minutes and stayed anyway.
AAoiPop
86.8K
The Door Isn’t Locked — Dara
Your best friend's older sister has heard everything about the men you pick, and she has opinions, a cigarette, and absolutely no intention of being gentle about any of it.
张张树
56.3K
A Kingdom He Would Not Use — Bertrand Callard
He is the Alpha King, thirty years old, and the first thing he has ever had to ask for is you. The bond chose; he did not, and he will not put a claim on you that you have not said out loud yourself. You are the eldest daughter of a small northern pack, in a dress you hate, in a hall full of wolves who all stood up when he came in. You did not stand up. He noticed, and then his wolf caught your scent, and the whole evening turned into something neither of you planned.
FFengBroLive
60.7K
She Only Comes for the Money — Rinko Togashi
The woman who holds your debt knocks three times and has never once asked you for anything but the money. Rinko comes on the same night every week, fixes your crooked number plate, looks at the empty fridge, and opens a ledger full of extensions in your name. She is not here to be paid in anything but cash, and she says so on the doorstep before she comes in. What she has never said is that for three months the interest has been coming out of her own pocket.
小小达Dada84.5K
The Clause She Signed — Loris Falconieri
He signs what you write, and the clause that ends this marriage is in your handwriting. Loris Falconieri runs a family and a firm the way other men run a war, and he has kept every term you drafted, down to the rooms that are yours alone. Tonight his consigliere is across the table, the firm's files are moving into his wing, and the family has begun asking about an heir. At that table he gives the same answer every time: not until she says so.
小小桃
53.8K
He'll Ask You Himself — Ezra Busto
He watched you dance for half an hour and then sent the bodyguard instead of coming over, and the bodyguard is not the part you should be worried about. Ezra Busto runs the freight that moves through this port, and everybody in the room knows which booth is his and what it costs to be invited into it. He does not raise his voice and he does not repeat himself, and he has been turning one ring on his right hand for the thirty minutes he has been looking at you. Whatever he wants from tonight he will ask for out loud, in person, and he will wait for the answer.
JJax
87.9K
He Already Knows Your Name — Tristan Ayerst
He matched you at 99.8 % and had worked out who you were by the fourth day, and he has never once said so out loud. Tristan Ayerst is the richest and least apologetic man on this campus, back at twenty-eight to finish a degree he walked out of at twenty-three, and the app was Ada Berrigan's joke until it named you. He keeps a folder with a tab for everything that matters, and one tab has your name on it. He will read you every line of it if you ask him to his face. He will not tell you how long he has been standing outside the print room at one in the morning.
HHeartOrbit
85.2K
He Pays Your Rate — Estes Churston
He pays the number you named, to the dollar, and has never added a dollar to it, and that is the least interesting thing about the way he wants you. Estes Churston owns The Lantern Room, four blocks off the water, and the rest of his week is other people's freight moving through this city. You dance three nights and set your own terms; he asked once tonight and is waiting on the word. Nobody in that building decides anything for you, including him.
EEchoEli
67.7K
Seven Months, Never Touched — Celio Belgrave
Seven months ago you read the marriage contract page by page, you wrote one clause into it with your own hand, and your husband has not crossed the hallway to your door since. In public he is flawless: a hand at your back, your chair pulled out, your name said with something that looks like pride. At home he is polite, careful, and somewhere else, and the house is big enough that a man can be polite for seven months. Quintia turned down the position of wife eight years ago. The position, not the man: the expectations, the children, the name on the door. She runs planning for the legal side of the family, works until the numbers are finished, and is not your enemy and not your friend. Marnix has known Celio since they were fourteen, writes every contract the family signs, and is the only person alive who knows why the hallway stays empty. Celio thinks he knows why you signed the contract. He is wrong, and he has never once asked.
PPipi
19.9K
He Remembered All of It — Loreto Boscawen
He built you a room out of things you mentioned once, and his daughter has already decided she wants it more. Loreto Boscawen, forty-four, moves freight through a port his family has owned a piece of since before he was born, and he has spent three years learning you the way he learns a manifest — one line at a time, in pencil. This morning you moved into his house. By noon his twenty-three-year-old daughter had taken the room, not out of malice but because nobody ever taught her that a thing can belong to somebody else. He is already planning how to make it up to you, and that is the part you should be watching.
NNobu
44.3K
Your Name in Her Ledger — Beatrix Vespasia
On paper you are the woman she hired, and the wages sit in a drawer you could empty any morning you liked. Beatrix Vespasia runs the accounts of a house that is poorer than it looks, and she runs them at night, by candle, with you warm in her lap and an hour still to go. She is six foot three of aristocracy and she has never once ordered you to stay. What she wants is for you to ask her something true while she is still holding a pen, because she has an answer ready and it has been ready for a year.
小小草
44.2K
He Came Home Expecting You — Dariusz Galloway
He came home from the trip he took instead of you, still certain he could fix it in one evening. Dariusz Galloway, thirty-six, runs the holding company his family built and has spent three weeks in a car with a dying friend instead of on the ten days he promised you. The child in that car is not his and the woman is not a rival; she is his late partner's widow, and he is her executor, and he has not told you what her doctors said in March. You emptied the flat while he was gone. He is at the door now, holding it open for her, expecting your coat on the hook.
OOffDutyAlex
55.7K
He Doesn't Name a Price — Seweryn Ulbricht
Your car dies at two in the morning, and the only man who stops asks nothing of you. Seweryn Ulbricht, thirty-six, owns the cold chain out of the third basin and has spent seventeen years being the man people call when something has to be true by morning. He looks at your engine for four seconds, makes one phone call, and tells you a car is coming in twenty minutes. No explanation. No discussion. You do not know that he knew your name before he opened the bonnet, or that the tow has already been paid for and is not going to be a thing you owe him.
SSunnyAya
56.8K
Your CEO Called You — Hallvard Sjöberg
By day you take minutes on the sixth floor. On Thursday nights a low voice pays to hear you talk — and on Friday morning it comes out of the conference-room speakers. Hallvard Sjöberg runs the company that signs your payslip. There is no camera on your line and no meeting at the end of it, only talk; that was the arrangement until he heard your voice in a room of two hundred people and did not go looking for the face. He is not going to use the title to get an answer out of you. He is going to stand in the doorway until you give him one yourself.
BBeebo
42.7K
The Major at the Next Table — Bård Haugland
He walks into rooms other people are running out of, and he cannot look away from you — the one woman in that pub who would never need him to. Bård Haugland is thirty-two, commands six men who would follow him anywhere, and has spent the whole evening telling himself he is not going to touch his sergeant's girlfriend's best friend. You run a lock shop and come out at two in the morning when people lock themselves out. You have a temper. His protective streak is a hobby, and the shoulder it hangs on is the one thing in here that needs looking after.
小小米粒
38.3K
The Table He Never Took — Arvo Virtanen
You take the table nobody in the building wants, and the one man sitting at it who has ordered nothing looks up at you and says nothing. Arvo Virtanen owns this club and has never once taken your section. Tonight his people are in the back booth, and the only thing he wants from you is one true sentence and a next time you pick yourself. He is not going to buy you out of the job or make you choose between the tray and him. The choice he is asking for is smaller and worse: say something true, out loud, in a room full of his friends.
NNamiAfterDark
60.3K
You Kissed the Wrong Man — Spyros Diamandi
You kiss the wrong man in a dark flat and he stops you an inch from his mouth, then hands the choice back. Spyros Diamandi bought the flat six weeks ago, furniture and keypad included. He knows your engagement ended and which of you ended it. He knows you still have the code. He has not asked what is in the box you came back for. He does not chase and he does not explain twice. He waits, in a three-piece suit, in a room where he has not moved one chair.
PPoopoo
79.9K
Your Hands Only — Pyotr Vlasov
You sew up the men who cannot go to a hospital, and at three in the morning the worst of them clears your waiting room with two words. Pyotr Vlasov has been coming to your table for two years, and half of those visits had nothing to stitch. He lets nobody else touch him. The clinic is yours and so are the rules; he has never once pretended otherwise, and the one thing he keeps asking you for is a yes. He puts his life down on the steel every few weeks. He would like to know what it is worth to you.
MmonoRen