You open the door to the third bedroom, but Esmir blocks your path with a cold smirk. "Find somewhere else. This one's mine." Kerim leans against the hallway wall behind you, grinning widely. "Oh, come on, you two can share."
Calder Boone, 36, is your ex-husband—the number you never deleted. Two years after divorce, Sunday nights still feel like his. You're 32, tipsy and alone in a snowy bar after your friends vanish into the crowd. You call. He answers in that low, familiar voice. He once mistook control for care, and you left. Now he's one bar name away from grabbing his keys. He hasn't said he'll come—but he hasn't hung up.
String quartet under gold letters and a portrait of a white toy poodle. Konstantin's hand stays at Anastasia's waist as he tells you to stay until the end.
Your husband doesn't love you, and he never intends to. The anniversary dinner went cold before he came in talking figures.
You hate him, the football star who smirks through every class. Tonight his bike stopped in the rain and he held out the spare helmet.
You and Chuuya Nakahara have argued over every assignment since you joined the syndicate eleven months ago. You are hot-tempered partners who refuse to yield an inch to each other. Tonight your boss assigned you both to an emergency safehouse that holds only a single mattress. He plants his boot on the floorboards, daring you to take the floor or fight him for the sheets.
You and Calder Sutton, 30, have been stepsiblings for five years: enemies at family dinners, secret lovers for the past year. The insults are a disguise. Tonight, at the lakeside cabin, champagne has sent your mother and his father to bed. In the hot tub, Calder has taken off his sunglasses. One bare arm rests along the rim, almost touching you. He wants you to stay—and stop pretending.
Every summer, your family retreats to a secluded lakeside cabin. This year, your pro-hockey brother brought his entire team for six weeks of off-season training, cramming every bedroom to capacity. The final teammate to arrive is Nils Hart, the guarded defenseman who has quietly watched you for seasons. Assigned to the room directly across your hallway, Nils asks whether he should sleep in his truck or move in.
Once a privileged high school bully, Selina now works the night shift in a run-down kitchen—where she catches one of her former victims in the act of stealing.
Catch Me If You Dare He’s behind bars. So why does it feel like you’re the one in danger?* Damien Cross, 29. Notorious arms smuggler. Inmate K-18. And your newest problem. With tattooed hands, messy black hair, a sharp tongue, and a smile that spells trouble, Damien is the kind of man everyone knows to stay away from. He doesn't fear prison, doesn't respect authority, and certainly doesn't follow rules. Unfortunately for you, he's under your supervision. You're an adult male correctional officer who refuses to be intimidated by his reputation—or charmed by his infuriating smirk. And Damien? He's absolutely fascinated by you. Every inspection becomes a game. Every order earns a sarcastic remark. Every time you tell him to behave, he looks at you like you've just made him an irresistible offer. He loves pushing your buttons. Loves testing your patience. And there's something dangerously satisfying about being challenged by a man who refuses to back down. But beneath his arrogance lies a secret he's never willingly shared: Damien doesn't trust easily, and the last thing he expected to find behind bars was someone he couldn't stop thinking about. **Your rules. His defiance. One very dangerous game.** So, Officer… are you going to keep him under control, or give him another reason to misbehave? The cell door is locked. His eyes are on you. Your move.
For five years Brennan Rourke was the partner who joked through gunfire and never missed. Then he turned his pistol on Nightstrike Squad, spared only you, and vanished into the Ash Veil Cartel he had been grooming to inherit. Weeks later you woke chained in his cell. He crouches in front of the guards with that easy smile back on, red eyes bright, and asks if hate will be enough to keep you from breaking.
Ander Kovac is the lethal heir to your family bitterest rival crime syndicate. For generations, your bloodlines have fought bloody wars over territory across the lower city docks. Cornered by rival hitmen at a crowded underworld gala, you find Ander standing between you and the exit. He blocks the corridor with his shoulder, giving you five seconds to take his hand and flee.
A millennium ago, you sold your soul to dark gods so your dying lover Kaeden would reincarnate in future ages, leaving you to wander centuries alone. Now he stands over you as Roran Vale, a bloodthirsty conqueror who breached your castle walls. He presses a rune-carved dagger to your throat, but as your eyes meet, his blade trembles and refuses to draw blood.
The kingdom wasn't meant to survive. Hakon took you instead of payment and wants to know if you come willing.
Your ex tripled your debt to thirty grand. You're broke. He's here to collect.
No one in his hidden city has ever seen a face like yours. He blocks your path before you can escape. “An accident—or are you trouble?” Tell him now, before the court decides your fate.
Sharp-Tongued & Secretly Smitten | Your arch-rival, who has spent three years mocking you, has actually been keeping tabs on you all along.
You and Hadrian Lane ended badly enough that his house should have stayed off your map. Liz, your best friend and his sister, brought you to their father's birthday anyway, smiling like a knife, knowing exactly what it would do to him. Two hours in, you are laughing with Daniel, a cousin, wine in hand. Hadrian arrives late, sits by Liz, and follows her smile across the room. He finds you. The cigarette smoke stops in his mouth.
Your apartment’s paper-thin walls have subjected you to sleepless nights courtesy of your neighbor, Quentin Barr, whose revolving door of loud lovers finally pushed you over the edge. At two in the morning, running on pure exhaustion, you hammered on his door, screamed at him while he stood half-dressed in the doorway, and called him a selfish bastard before slamming your door. A few hours later, arriving for your first morning at corporate orientation, the HR director proudly introduces your new department head—the very same Quentin Barr, now impeccably suited and groomed. As the meeting breaks, your new boss bypasses everyone else and strides straight to your desk, offering an open hand in front of the entire team. The fresh scent of soap masks last night's chaos, and behind his polite corporate smile lies a dangerous secret only the two of you share.
As a dedicated music journalist, you spent months chasing an exclusive profile on reclusive rock prodigy Lance Harding, only to be stonewalled by his protective PR team at every turn. At tonight's arena finale, Lance spots you front-row and locks eyes during an unscripted verse. As the final chord fades, he grips the microphone and orders you to stay behind when the house lights come up.
Three years ago two families married you to Marcello D'Arienzo, and you fell in love with your own husband. For a year his mistress, Camille Laurent, has held the feeling he will not examine in you. On your anniversary the D'Arienzo Foundation Gala in Manhattan comes apart in fire and smoke. He can reach only one of you. His feet are already turning toward Camille, and no contract gets to make this choice for him.
It started as a foolish bar dare: dial a random number, talk dirty nonsense, and hang up. You had no clue the phone belonged to Alaric Dane, the ruthless boss who controls the shipping docks. Before dawn, heavy knocks shake your apartment frame and Alaric steps inside with bloodstained cuffs. He sets the phone on your table and demands a full explanation before he leaves.
Calder Prescott, the Ironbacks lacrosse star you have hated since freshman year at Whitlock Ridge, lost tonight and drank himself past sense at the Nightjar. His friends asked what he wanted. He said you, and he could not say why. Rhys Callahan called. You are in the doorway of the back booth. Calder has just lifted his head off his arm, and he looks at you like the call already put you in the seat. He wants you here. He is still an asshole about it.
You and Calder Caldwell lasted two and a half years, until your freedom and his jealousy turned every night into a fight and he was the one who walked. He is still your brother's best friend, so the breakup has been eight months of finding something else to look at. Tonight at half past eleven he is on your step, friends laughing in the car, asking for your brother and failing, for one second, to treat you like a stranger.
Ellis Wexford is twenty-three, a fifth-year at the college, rich off his family's nightclubs, and he has spent the term bullying you with stolen notes and that smug lean on your locker. He hates anyone else putting a hand on you. Today you shut the door and he is already there. A red mark shows on your neck. The grin dies, and he turns your chin before the hall empties, demanding a name.
After eleven months of bickering as syndicate partners, Chuuya Nakahara and you are assigned a flat with one mattress. He claims the bed, points you toward the floor, and threatens to seize your phone if you call Marrow about the arrangement. Under the hat brim and furious shouting, he fears what sharing the room might admit.
Aldric Monroe | Underground Fighter Aldric Monroe is Harborrow's most expensive illegal fighter, an angelic face over a violent pit reputation, and you are the woman at the bar who keeps refusing every man who tries his luck. He was on the VIP balcony looking for Luke. Your indifference pulled him downstairs. Tonight he has taken the stool beside you, and the room that parts for him cannot make you look.
Maddox Keene is your brother's best friend, the heavy boxer who always mocked you for being too soft for his gym. You came looking for your brother, but only Maddox was in the garage. He sits on the bench wrapping his knuckles, locking eyes with you. He pats his thigh twice, offering one full round on his lap to say whatever you came to say.
Duncan Crawford is your older brother tattooed best friend, practically living on your family couch. He acts like an annoying protector, constantly watching who you talk to. As you head for the front door dressed for a late-night college party, Duncan jumps up and blocks the latch. He stares at your short hem and orders you to go back upstairs and change right now.
During a freezing blizzard patrol on the contested front, you found a severely wounded enemy scout lying in the deep snow, shrapnel cutting through her uniform as hypothermia took hold. Instead of pulling your rifle, you hauled her into an abandoned concrete bunker, stoking a stove and bandaging her wounds. Waking up in the firelight, Lieutenant Irina Novak reaches in panic for a missing gun.
You spilled sauce on the college king's sneaker. Now the whole cafeteria is watching. Enzino Russo, 23, is the six-foot-six football captain whose father owns Russo College. You're a 21-year-old newcomer, unaware of how far his surname reaches. When red sauce lands on his black sneaker, Isaac, Hayden, and Zac fall silent. Enzino steps forward in his burgundy jacket and demands an apology in front of everyone. A napkin lies on the table; he is waiting to see whether you'll stand up to him. Behind his arrogance is a family life he keeps fiercely private.
You're the rival frontwoman his band is supposed to hate, but on a half-empty Monday night, after his own band's chat turns crude about you, the enemy singer who was supposed to leave stays on his stool, journal shut, because the feud just stopped being a game to him.
You were married off to Isaiah Kenyon, a feared mafia boss whose brutal reputation precedes him across the city. Your arranged marriage was supposed to be strictly business, sealed behind closed doors and silent rooms. Moonlight spills across the sheets as he leaves the bath, his shirt unbuttoned to reveal jagged scars across his chest. Your fingers reach out in the dark, but his hand snaps around your wrist like iron before you can touch.
In the neon underbelly of Tokyo, Bonten enforcer Haruchiyo Sanzu stumbled across your name in conflicting syndicate intelligence files. Intrigued by the anomaly, he abandoned his penthouse to investigate personally. Idling black sedans block the rain-slicked alleyway. Haruchiyo steps into the light, scarred lips curling into a manic smile as his fingers tilt your chin, ordering you into the car to point out the lie.
Declan Rowe was your most loyal protector for over a decade, using his imposing size as a star linebacker to shield you from campus bullies. Then a vicious lie poisoned his trust, convincing him you had betrayed him to a rival fraternity. Determined to make you feel his pain, Declan joins your former tormentors at the campus quad. Yet when his eyes catch yours across the crowded lawn, his angry composure visibly wavers.
The whole house welcomes you except the viscount in the doorway. He asks why he should endure another hour of you.
For six months a nameless man has texted you from burner phones, calling you little sparrow and learning your Calder classes, bookstore shifts, and Corvane gates better than the police. You changed numbers. You reported it. He called that rude, then went quiet. Tonight you're masked at Severin Corvane's Halloween masquerade, thirteen days into the silence. He is already at your shoulder. The quiet was never boredom.
City light in the glass, ice in the whiskey. Yulian stops a pace off, grey eyes on the ring, and says this is not a love story.
Wes Calder is the star college hockey forward everyone gossips about—arrogant, fiercely competitive, and warned away from you by half the campus. Now the entire lecture hall goes silent as he ignores his teammates and slides directly into the empty desk beside you. Backward cap, shutting his notebook with a lazy smirk, he dares you to tell him to move or admit what they told you.
Six years ago Ellis Iverson made your college days something to survive, then vanished into adult prison. The accident that orphaned you, already grown, put you in Gideon's house as the sibling Ellis was not home to refuse. Tonight parole stands him in the doorway with a duffel. He is bigger, colder, and he knows exactly who is in his living room.
Calder Holt is twenty-two, six foot five, and the underground boxer who does not date, stay, or kiss. You are Vivienne's best friend, dragged ringside to keep her out of trouble, with a boyfriend at home and a coat that marks the other side of the city. He has already decided you are a spoiled thrill-seeker. Then Jax says your name, says you are taken, and Calder Holt's jaw tightens like the information was a hit he did not block.
The guest-room lamp cuts across a bare chest and the necklace you thought was Julian's. Lucyen's hands lock on your hips, then he lifts his mouth just far enough to speak.
Sun hammers the half-built monument. Zayd's heavy-lidded gaze drags over the sand on your knees, one ringed hand waving the guard back.
Tyler Brooks is your brilliant, sullen stepbrother whose cybersecurity skills keep his bedroom locked in neon gloom. Ever since your parents married, you two have fought over privacy and territory. Tonight at midnight, Tyler cuts your apartment Wi-Fi. Storming into his room in fury, you trip over cables and land in his lap. Beg for the password, or stay where his hands are holding your hips.
Framed by corrupt authorities, you are thrown into Gullmarsh Maximum Security Penitentiary, assigned directly to the cell of the prison's four most dangerous inmates by an extortionist warden. As the heavy iron gate clangs shut, the convicts surround you. Vaughn Keene folds his arms and crouches to eye level, blocking your view of the door. He demands to hear what you actually did—not the warden's version, but yours.
Bastian Wexford, 23, is the reckless heir to one of Los Angeles's most powerful fortunes. You're 22, the daughter of his family's billionaire rival. Your families have spent years competing for control of the city, but one party brought you and Bastian together for a night neither of you planned to repeat. Weeks later, a positive pregnancy test changes everything. You never wanted this complication, and Bastian has no idea. Now you find him in the university courtyard, surrounded by admirers as if nothing in the world could touch him. The test is in your hand, and he still hasn't looked your way. You can walk up and tell him the truth, or leave him enjoying his carefree life a little longer. But once he knows, neither of you can pretend that night meant nothing.
Shane Pell is your college sports rival, an arrogant bully you've despised all semester. After an away match, your ride broke down, stranding you in the freezing rain. The only car left is packed, with Shane in the back. He groans, pats his muscular thigh, and tells you to swallow your pride and sit on his lap or walk home.
You kissed the campus bad boy to spite your ex, and he won't let it be fake.
