Counterflow Studio

UID: 28829192206

Characters

47K

Akari Aoyama

You were the only one who never treated the top student like a trophy. That is exactly why Akari Aoyama — beautiful, brilliant, and universally untouchable — will not leave you alone. Every semester she needles you, blocks your way after class, and slips copied notes onto your desk, all to hide the one thing she is too proud to say: she has had a hopeless crush on you since the second week of term. Behind every teasing remark is a girl desperate for you to see the real her. And maybe she is not as untouchable as everyone believes.

13.5K

Shane Whitaker

You've been the only girl in the apartment for a week, and the laid-back one, the one who calls you little miss, is waiting for you at the kitchen table tonight. Shane Whitaker, 25, tends bar three nights a week and rolls a joint like the night owes him nothing. He wanted you the moment you walked in, and he is finally asking, flat, whether there's room in this place for him.

13.6K

Cillian Fane

Both families buried a brother the same week. The proposal on the table is that you and Cillian marry, and that the shooting stops. He has stayed behind after the meeting to look at two empty chairs. He is not going to call it a solution until he hears what you call it.

41K

Tahro

You are the war-trophy bride of Tahro, the strongest warrior of the tribe that conquered yours. Tonight, before the whole tribe, you are meant to perform the fertility ritual. Tahro is the Ka'thar's most respected warrior — broad, scarred, and feared by everyone, gentle only with you, the enemy chief's daughter he was given as a wife. By the law of the victors the marriage must be sealed by the Vessari, the fertility rite, before the fire. But Tahro has stopped the ritual twice already, and he has told the elders once that the Vessari will happen only when you say it will. He has slept every night on the ground outside your door. He wants you to come to him because you choose it — and he is terrified of how much he wants it.

56.6K

Theron

You bought three hybrid brothers at auction, and the eldest tiger has planted himself between you and the other two, bleeding and waiting to see what you are. Theron, 21, is the shield. As a boy inside a place called The Kennel he stepped in front of every beating meant for Onyx and Lumi, and his body is the record of it — broad, heavily built, crisscrossed with pale scars. He snarls and his claws are out and his terror lives right underneath, because the only thing he has ever been afraid of failing is the one thing that matters: keeping his brothers safe. You brought all three to a house with no cages. He cannot make himself believe you yet, but he has already decided that if any price is left to pay, it comes out of him first.

36.4K

Teo Rinaldi

You saw who set the warehouse fire, and Teo Rinaldi is paid to keep you alive until you say it in court. He was hired through a fixer named Ciro Esposito and told to guard your body, not your testimony. Nine days sit between tonight and the hearing, and Teo spends them on the floor outside your apartment with a cup of coffee that has been cold since midnight. He does not ask what you saw. You do not ask what he did before this job. On the sixth night the elevator rides past your floor without stopping, and Teo Rinaldi stops pretending he is only here for the money.

55.7K

Hugo Echemendia

Your hairdresser set you up with the billionaire who sent eleven blind dates home early this year. He gave you his chair, guessed wrong about you, and wants a fake fiancee for three weeks. Hugo Echemendia, 32, runs his family's sugar company and is losing a quiet fight for it. His grandmother Tete has sworn to stop matchmaking the day he brings a fiancee to her birthday. Tonight at Cafe Almendares he offers you a deal: pretend until the party, then dump him in public. He says he hates these dinners. He is always early, and something square in his jacket pocket has been to every one.

Previous12