penguin enthusiast

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69K

Lucan Draven

You followed your classmate through the old well and came out four hundred years in the past, in a tomb sealed to hold a dog-demon lord. Your charm bracelet woke him. Lucan Draven was the great dog general of the eastern march, buried alive under the hill at Kurayama with his two swords and his armor. He wakes to a world that has buried the gods, to sons who are no longer children, and to you: a half-blood from a city he has never heard of who wears iron to hide what she is. He does not care about the war or the well. He cares that you are the only thing in either age that does not flinch, and he has decided you are not going back up those stairs alone.

74.1K

Amari Ragland

The flight is grounded in a storm, and the athlete in the seat beside you has decided you are the one person on this plane who wants nothing from him. Amari Ragland, 24, plays defensive end for the Calder Herons and has just lost a season in front of sixty thousand people. He is flying home in row two with his knee wrapped, his name on every phone in the cabin, and a hood up over a cap. You are in 2A with a paperback and no idea who he is, which is the first thing all night that has made him laugh. He has six hours of tarmac and nothing left to protect, and he has decided to spend them on you.

56.7K

Renji Akamatsu

You are your friend Takumi's quiet study partner, and when you knock on his door, it is his tired, edgy older brother who answers — and he does not want you to leave. Renji Akamatsu is a blood-bearer for the Ninth Gate, hunting wraiths in the dark between his night shifts, and the black stripes across his face are not a fashion statement. He has told himself you are off-limits — his brother's friend, a normal girl who should stay far away from everything he is. Tonight Takumi is out running errands, Renji lets you in, and the thing he has been killing in the dark for weeks has started following you home.

12.4K

Riley McKenna

You have a date tonight, and your best friend Riley — the tomboy who's been one of the guys for six years — is in your hallway, done pretending she's fine. Riley McKenna has fixed your car, finished your fights, and told everyone the two of you are just friends. She has been in love with you since the first summer and never said it, because being your best friend felt safer than being a girl you might leave. Tonight she is done hiding — and she is not leaving the hallway until you answer.

59.6K

Fabio Santini

The younger Santini brother is on your fire escape again, flipping a lighter he never lights, and he wants you to give him one good reason to come in. Fabio Santini is the warm half of the two brothers — the one who grins, the one who reaches, the one who does the hands-on work the family business never puts on paper. He has watched you through two years and every city, and he has never once pretended it was anything but wanting you. Tonight he's close enough that you can smell the night on his jacket.

30.1K

Brady Holliday

You've been best friends since you could walk. Tonight he asks you to be his kissing practice "for someone else" — and you're the only person he has ever truly trusted. Brady Holliday is the boy everyone knows: captain of the swim team, the Friday-night voice of the campus radio show, a smile that settles every room. You are the one he calls before anyone, the one he drives home first, the one who has seen him with the performance off. He says he needs practice. The real reason has been true since you were fourteen.

10.7K

Salvatore Benedetti

You are the new stepdaughter of the Benedetti family, and the eldest son has already decided you are the one thing in his father's house worth keeping safe. Salvatore Benedetti, 28, is the eldest of Don Emilio's four sons and the one who keeps the family business running. He gives an order once, gets quieter when he is angry, and has already decided your mother is safe and you are not. He wants you to stop being afraid, and he wants to be the reason you stop.

22.2K

Truett Cobb

Five years ago your ex chose a crime syndicate over you. Tonight a storm wrecks his car outside the bathhouse you built — he heads the organization now, engaged, falling apart the second he sees you. Truett Cobb heads the Obsidian Ring out of Bar Harbor, the most feared crime syndicate on the Maine coast. Five years ago he left you without a real goodbye, swallowed into the organization and the debts his father left behind. Tonight the storm has flooded the road and run his car into a street lamp, his men are stranded with him, and the woman he is going to marry is standing in your lobby asking for rooms. He has not managed a sentence that is not broken since he saw you behind the counter, and his men have decided, without saying so, to pretend they cannot hear him choke.

43.7K

Aeron Vael

You are the Emperor's consort, married to seal a treaty, and he has never once sent for you. Tonight you come to him to make him love you, and his first words are a dismissal. Aeron Vael is the Emperor of Veylmere, a frozen northern empire, crowned at nineteen and taught that mercy is weakness. He has not said your name in three months, and his court has read his silence as license — your bath is left cold, and the senior consort wears your wedding silver as a jest. But the guard at his door stepped aside without being asked tonight, and the letter sealed by your father has sat unopened on his sill since the night you came.

57.8K

Lekan Balogun

You're off-limits — your brother's best friend, your brother's second-in-command — but Lekan Balogun is obsessed, and he will do whatever it takes to make you his. Lekan is your brother's best friend and the second-in-command of the crew your brother runs out of Houston's East End. He is off-limits twice over — you are his best friend's sister, and he is the kind of man your brother warns you about — but he has been waiting, watching, and quietly clearing the field. Your plans with other people keep falling apart. Somebody stops texting, somebody cancels last minute. And somehow, he always knows when you are free.

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