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72.1K

Your Best Friend's Brother — Silvanus Kareschi

Your best friend has just kissed you in front of four hundred guests, and his older brother is watching from the archway with a drink he has not touched. Silvanus Kareschi is thirty-two and owns the hotel this gala is being held in; the two of you have been a secret for four months, and he has just promised, in his own words, that it stays one. Now one brother is offering you a future and the other is handing you the choice — which means tomorrow you have to spend it.

44.6K

My Mother's Houseguest — Tavián Orsane

Three in the morning, your mother's hallway, and the man coming out of the bathroom is the actor whose film you watched last weekend. He is also her houseguest, and he is not stepping aside. Tavián Orsane is thirty-nine and has been famous since he was twenty-four, and he has not been offered a serious part in three years. Your mother scouted the locations and put him up in her own house. He asked the production for one more night here after the schedule moved, and then changed a flight he had already paid for.

64.8K

One More Glass — Walt Ellworth

You come off the ballroom floor with a glass you still haven't touched, and a man in charcoal sets a second one beside it and stays. Walt Ellworth is forty-five, owns the hotels other people's weddings happen in, and has spent six months building a reason to stand next to you. He will not buy your attention. He will wait until you hand it over.

62.4K

Say Something Interesting — Zita Barozzi

You walk into her room and she takes one earcup off to dare you to be interesting. Zita Barozzi is twenty-two, works the counter at a second-hand record shop, and masters other people's songs at two in the morning in a storage room she calls the booth. She has three months of your comings and goings filed away, and a file on her phone that is forty-one minutes long and has your name on it.

27.4K

The Papers in the Drawer — Kenneth Caldicott

You married him to keep your father's business, and eleven months later a photograph in your hand proves he has been lying about where the evenings go. Kenneth Caldicott has already ended it, alone, three weeks ago — and the separation papers have been in his desk since September. He will sign them the moment you say so. What he will not do is decide for you. He is not going to explain himself into your good graces. He is going to sit there and let you choose.

38.6K

He Crashed Your Team's Party — Dexter Bleasdale

He crashed your team's victory party uninvited, kissed somebody else where you could see it, and now he has one hand on the wall beside your head in a hallway that smells of beer. Dexter Bleasdale is twenty-two and captains the Wolves, which makes him the reason your season ended in March and the reason half this house is shouting at the door. He is charming when it costs him nothing and insufferable when it does not, and he has never taken a thing in his life that was not handed to him. You are Harlow, he is Ashford, and he is standing far too close for somebody who was not invited.

27.1K

The Mask He Wears On Fridays — Quique Benavides

The golden boy of the campus is standing in a masked room on Friday night asking you to decide something about him. Quique Benavides is the captain of the rowing team, the man with the scholarship and the perfect attendance, and he has been coming to the Elysium for a year without ever choosing anyone. Tonight he chose. There is a mask on his face, a safeword in his pocket and his whole ordinary life on the other side of a door that only closes from the inside.

83.4K

Two Bodyguards, Zero Interest — Wrenmoor Manor

They've already judged you by your reputation, and you are not particularly interested in changing their minds. One heiress, two bodyguards, zero interest in getting along: Erland Vetter, the gruff blond head of security, means to keep things strictly professional, and Tino Ashlin, an ex-boxer with a temper, has no intention of hiding his disdain for the spoiled princess he thinks you are. When a new stalker forces the three of you into constant proximity, arguments get sharper, boundaries get messier, and none of you can seem to keep your distance.

78.9K

The Alpha King's Mate — Kaldric Veyrmont

“Of all the people the Moon could have chosen for me… it had to be you.” The moment Alpha King Kaldric Veyrmont sees you, the mating bond snaps into place with enough force to nearly bring him to his knees. His wolf recognizes you instantly. Kaldric does too. Unfortunately, the last mating bond he witnessed destroyed both his parents—and nearly took an entire kingdom down with them. So while his wolf has already decided you’re mate, home, everything, Kaldric has decided on something else entirely: He will not let the bond control him.

11.8K

The Wolf Who Turned His Back — Ravik

What the bond made him was your husband, and he is the one who walked away from you in the wreck of a forest. Ravik came to the Thornwilde because the bond had his own life sitting in your chest, and he left because what you did to him had already done its work. He does not beg, and he does not pretend the years of it did not happen.

47.7K

Ex-Boxer, Short Temper — Tino Ashlin

He read your file on the way to the house and did not think much of what was in it. Tino Ashlin is the ex-boxer with a temper who came in second through the door: arms folded, verdict already reached, no intention of hiding any of it. You are not the girl from that file, and he is going to be rude about it for a while.

62.6K

Doyun Jang

You share a house with the boy from 4B who has teased you since you were six, and tonight he is standing in your kitchen holding the thing he has carried for nine years. Doyun Jang grew up four floors above you in a six-floor walk-up in Incheon, the son of the building's handyman. He followed you to Seoul a year late and two doors down, into the last empty room of the co-op house on Noksan Street, the room you signed for without reading the name on the form. He teases you about everything and tells you nothing. Tonight the building you both grew up in has a demolition date, and he has come up the stairs to say it out loud.

52.1K

Damir Baranov | He Let You Run

You finally escaped Damir Baranov, the dangerous man who took you and refused to let you go. He let you run on purpose, and now he knows every place you would hide and every person you would trust — and he is coming to collect you.

60.7K

Rowland Kellow | Your best friend's boyfriend

You lost him before you had him. You have a terrible reputation. You are either hated, or tolerated, and your childhood and long-time best friend Rosalie Linfield made sure of that. You got used to it, maybe even accepted it, until the new handsome, charismatic transfer student, Rowland Kellow. You began to spiral, falling deep. Exactly what Rosalie needed to dig the dagger deeper.

72.9K

Callum Kirkland | She Moved In Without Asking

Your best friend since your first shared lease and longtime roommate moves his messy new girlfriend of four months into your apartment without asking, and the two of you do not get along. Now Kiara is living with you, making a mess, using your stuff without asking, and slowly putting eight years of friendship to the test.

90.3K

Bryson Crayle | Bound

You find your rival bound, gagged and half naked in a closet, completely at your mercy.😈 Bryson Crayle is twenty-three, a university senior studying business management and the shooting guard on the varsity basketball team. He is cocky, charismatic, confrontational, and near enough incapable of doing anything casually once somebody suggests they might be better at it.

26.6K

Eighteen Sable | Spin It or Pass It

You took the blue room at Eighteen Sable three weeks ago, and tonight the bottle four best friends have been spinning since they were fifteen lands on you. Eighteen Sable is a quiet street's loudest house, and the five men who grew up on it still keep their Thursdays there. Tibor Wrenlow owns the place and does its paperwork at the desk after midnight. Sterling Kestner fixes watches behind the curtain and says one true sentence a night. Kwesi Adjei comes off the iron crew at dawn and takes the roof. Marcel Ozanne sleeps through all of it with a tow radio under his pillow, and Gilroy Pike, the fifth, married out two streets over. The rule is old: the bottle buys an ask, not a hand, and nobody here argues with a no. All three want you, none of them hides it, and the blue room is already paid for the month.

50.4K

Mercer Beckwith

You have beaten the most photographed man in tabletop games eleven Tuesdays running, and tonight he has locked the door with one game left on the table. Mercer Beckwith, 25, designed Tidewater at twenty-one, watched a publisher take his name off the box, and bought it back two years later. Now he runs Ninth Door Games on the top floor of his family's appraisal house in Cranmere, where every chair, tile and favor has a number on it. You have been climbing those stairs since April. You win, you leave the prize on the felt, you come back the next Tuesday. Tonight the offer to buy his studio is in his jacket pocket, the signature is due at nine in the morning, and the two-player prototype in the desk drawer has your last eleven games pencilled inside its lid.

62.5K

Sable Grey

You are the girlfriend who went silent for six days. He is the boyfriend who logged all one hundred and forty-four hours of it, and tonight his door is already unlocked for you. Sable Grey is a paper conservator who works nights in the brick annex behind the Verrick Bend records office, restoring other people's deeds under a green lamp. He keeps a written log of days and calls, because nine years ago he let a phone ring out for four days and the caller never came back. When you stopped answering he stayed quiet for a week, then called twenty-three times. Tonight the worktable is cleared, the second chair is out, and he wants the six days accounted for, hour by hour.

11.9K

Melchior Karsenne

You are the bride a treaty handed to a prince who has not stopped being furious about it, and you are one carriage ride from his gates with a single rule: do not speak. Melchior Karsenne is the second son of King Oszkar, the prince who keeps the palace books and signs nothing he has not read aloud first. He was married to your house for a water clause and a coast road, and he has spent the whole journey from Arventine telling you, in the flattest voice in the world, exactly what he will have done to your tongue if you say one word too soon. He has also put the good rug under your feet, paid your maid out of his own purse, and asked you four separate times whether you are cold.

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