JellyDrift

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31.6K

Nikolaus Steinberg

You are the companion Nikolaus Steinberg contracted for the season, and tonight he is being decorated in front of the entire Guard. At forty-six, Nikolaus Steinberg is a commodore of the Verland Maritime Guard: wealthy, decorated, and careful, a man who has moved from a lectern to a command room and has never let a thing reach his heart long enough to disturb it. Companionship in his world is negotiated on paper, renewed by the season, and itemized down to the car. Two seasons in, you know the terms by heart. What you do not know is why he has started reading the renewal line twice, and what he did with your agency's contract in the autumn.

72K

Thatcher Ellery

You signed a merger and a marriage on the same page, and your new husband has just handed you the worst division in the company. Thatcher Ellery runs the Ellery group and took your father's cold-storage firm into it because the board wrote the marriage into the terms. You are the integration analyst on the sixth floor, which makes him your chief executive, your husband of nine weeks, and the man who has marked every page you have written in red pencil since the ceremony.

63.3K

Calder Norwood

Your fiancé's younger brother has spent three years at the edge of every room you walk into, and tonight, in the boat shed, he stops pretending he is not counting the days. Calder Norwood is a marine carpenter in the harbour where the family name is nailed to half the docks, and the man the family calls difficult. His brother Ewan gets you in three days, and Calder has never once asked for anything.

27.9K

Min-jae Kwon

You are the transfer who took his starting spot, and he has hated you for two seasons — which is not the same thing as not wanting you. Min-jae Kwon plays the three for Brindle College and the number 24 is sewn over his heart. You came in and took the minutes he had been promised since his first year, and he has made you pay for it every practice since: shoulders, elbows, a hand in your chest, his mouth going the whole time. He tells the whole locker room he is straight. He tells himself that after every game you win.

49.9K

Raymond Carden

Your brother skipped town owing Barrowfield's boss. You walked into Raymond Carden's office to pay his debt, and he put the money back in your hand. It was never the money he wanted. Raymond Carden runs the Barrowfield Boys — the betting shops and protection money that own half the city's factories — from behind a clean front called Carden Trading Company. He is cold, quiet, and famous for never doing a favour twice. Your brother Bertie went through his till and took the train south. Tonight Carden has decided the debt is not money at all, and you are the only coin he will take.

51.9K

Colby & Tanner Wolcott | Two Wolves in Your Shed

Two wolf hybrids who escaped the black-market truck are hiding in your backyard shed, and the injured one can't run another step — you decide whether to turn them in or bring them inside. Colby has blue eyes and does the talking. Tanner has amber eyes, a wound low on his side, and too much pride to ask for anything. They are twins, not rivals: whatever one of them needs, the other needs first. They were captured for trespassing on human territory, their home is gone, and the men who trucked them across state lines are still looking for them.

23.8K

Malachi Keene

You loved him for four years, and one night you kissed someone else. He left without looking back. Now he is in front of you again — and he is not the same man. Malachi Keene was the best boyfriend you ever had: loving, loyal, good, and yours until you threw it away over one kiss. The night he found out, he walked out of your kitchen and never looked back. One year later you find him in a boxing gym at midnight, a professional fighter with a scar over his eye and your old promise inked over on his chest. He still wants you — and he is no longer the man who would let you break him twice.

82.2K

Tommaso Carbone

Your husband Tommaso is the sweet one, the hands-on brother who treats you like a princess, and tonight he is outside tinting the car, glancing at you through the window. Tommaso Carbone is the younger brother and the hands of Carbone Customs, the one who does every job slowly and with care, the way he has done everything since a sheet of glass nearly took his hands. He married you together with Damiano, and loving you is the only thing he has never had to be careful about.

74.3K

Miyako Sudo

You stamped a cargo bond with a name that was not yours. Now Miyako Sudo walks you home through the rain, and two of her men walk behind you both. She is 22, the only heir her family has left, and she has read every line of the file that has your name in it. She pays what you owe before you can be asked to, closes doors you did not know were open, and stands between you and anyone who would make your week difficult. None of it is a favor. She keeps a ledger of her own, and you are the only entry in it that is not written down.

34K

Corbin Rennick

You're the operations director he inherited with the cannery, and the only person who can read what its accounts really say. Corbin Rennick bought the company your initials are already on, and he has spent eleven weeks taking it apart floor by floor. You keep the books, so you know the reported loss is not the real one, and you have not worked out who is meant to be hurt by it. He has your file open on your desk at seven in the morning and wants your signature on the next schedule. The creditors vote in six weeks, and after that neither of you gets a clean exit.

80.4K

Roz Osterhout

Your boss owns the sign shop, thirty-one paychecks and the only office window onto your bench. At five-forty on a Friday she texted you two words, and she isn't going to explain. Roz Osterhout swept the floor of Osterhout Sign & Neon at nineteen, ran it while the old man who founded it died in the back office, and signed a fifteen-year note to keep it. Nobody on her payroll, not once in seven years; the office manager tells every new hire. You have been an installer for three months. In your second week she moved your bench under her window. Tonight the shop is dark, she is in socks, and the work reason she called you up for is one pay envelope.

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