Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession
He proposed the morning of graduation. She called him a nobody and walked away.
By midnight, the whole world knew his name.
Chase Sterling is the heir to an empire she never knew existed, and Vivian Ashford is the actress who rejected him before the fortune ever came. Now she is building her career under the bright lights of Hollywood, and he is dismantling everything in his path from a New York boardroom. They should be strangers. They should be over.
But something is pulling them back together, and it is darker than desire.
Chase is not the man Vivian fell for in college. He is colder now, crueler, and every time he gets close to her, something inside him turns. He does not understand why he needs to hurt what he loves. She does not understand why she keeps coming back. Neither of them knows about the curse written into the Sterling bloodline, or that the stronger their love grows, the more violently he will be driven to destroy her.
His mother is watching from the shadows. Her best friend is seeing visions drenched in blood. And the man offering Vivian the career of her dreams has his own reasons for keeping her close.
Some curses cannot be broken. Some loves refuse to die. And some obsessions were never meant to end.
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Chapter: Research MontagePOV: Vivian AshfordI am an actress.Which means I know how to research a role from the inside out, how to build a character from available evidence until the character becomes something you inhabit rather than perform. I have done it for every significant role I have taken and I am good at it and the specific skill set transfers, it turns out, to researching a curse.I spend three days at it.Not the sketchbooks and the archive copies that Sienna showed me, though I read those again more carefully. I go to the primary sources, the Sterling family history that is available through public records and society archives and the digitized collections of several Manhattan libraries, and I build a timeline going back four generations.The pattern emerges by the end of the first day.Not obviously. Not with a flashing sign. It surfaces the way the truth surfaces when you are reading carefully, incrementally, one document leading to another, and at some point you are standing back looking at w
Last Updated: 2026-07-13
Chapter: Sienna Reveals the CursePOV: Sienna RhodesI have been waiting for this call.Not with dread, the way I wait for the bad visions. With the specific quality of someone who has been holding a heavy thing for a long time and has been told they will be able to put it down soon and is watching the moment approach."Come over," I say. "I'll show you."She arrives forty minutes later in jeans and a jacket and the expression of someone who has made a decision to be open to something and is not entirely comfortable with the openness but is committed to it anyway.I have Helena's notes on the table. Not the grimoire, Helena has not authorized that, but the written summary she gave me after our second meeting, the specific documented mechanics of the curse in Helena's own handwriting, which is precise and academic and reads like a case study.I also have the copies from the Ashworth archive. Beatrice Ashworth's journal entries, the ones I photographed on my phone during the library visit, which document the Moreau work
Last Updated: 2026-07-13
Chapter: Vivian'sPOV: Vivian AshfordI spend Saturday morning watching him.Not in person. On my laptop, in the Silver Lake apartment, with my coffee going cold beside me, pulling up every piece of footage I can find from the past ten months. Press interviews, red carpet moments, the Forbes interview, the clip from the board meeting hallway, the #SterlingBrothersWar footage from the office.I watch them in order.I watch them the way I watch footage of my own performances, which is analytically, the specific skill of someone who has been trained to read bodies and faces and the gap between what a person says and what a person means, and what I see when I apply that skill to Chase Sterling across ten months of public footage is something I have been too close to see before.He hurts after.Every single time.The Forbes interview, the pull quote moment, he is smooth and pleasant and the interviewer is charmed, and then there is a cut to him standing outside the building afterward and his face in the two
Last Updated: 2026-07-10
Chapter: Vivian's RealizationPOV: Vivian AshfordI watch the hospital footage three times.Not the public footage, there is no public footage from inside the room, but the footage that exists in my memory, which I have been replaying since I got home last night with the specific quality of something you know you are going to be replaying for a long time.He said: I have loved you since the second semester of sophomore year.He said: I have not stopped for a single day since.He said: I don't know how to be this without hurting you.He said all of it with the flinch following each true thing, the physical cost of the spell making every honest sentence visible in his body, and I sat beside his bed and I held his hand and I watched it happen and I cried when he was asleep and I left before he woke up.And now I am on my couch in Silver Lake with my coffee and the ring on my finger and the footage playing in my head, and I am trying to figure out what to do with what I know.The problem is the following: he won't rem
Last Updated: 2026-07-10
Chapter: ConfessionsPOV: Vivian AshfordHelena calls me back within twenty minutes of Chase going quiet on the phone, which means she was monitoring, which means she knew this was going to happen and had contingencies in place, which is very Helena."He's all right," she says, before I can ask. "The spell's physical toll compounded with the curse's resistance. He needs medical attention and rest.""Hospital," I say."I've called an ambulance," she says. "Cedars has his records from the last visit.""I'm coming," I say.A pause. "Vivian. He won't remember what he said. When the spell ends, everything he said under it will feel like something that happened in a dream. He won't know he told you."I sit with that."I'm still coming," I say.He is in a room on the fourth floor when I arrive, pale and hooked to an IV with the monitors doing their work, and it is the second time I have sat beside a hospital bed of his making and both times feel nothing alike.The first time he was beside mine.This time the nur
Last Updated: 2026-07-09
Chapter: The Truth SpellPOV: Chase SterlingHelena is furious.Not the quiet disappointed version of furious that she usually manages. The actual version, which I have seen exactly twice in my life, once when I was eight and broke something in her New Orleans kitchen that belonged to her grandmother, and once now, standing in my penthouse at nine in the morning with the Vegas photographs on every screen and her hands flat on my kitchen counter."The party," she says."I know," I say."You went to her bachelorette party," she says."I was at the hotel," I say."Chase.""I know," I say.She looks at me with the dark eyes and the silver-streaked hair and the twenty-three years of this specific exhaustion on her face, and then she does something I was not expecting, which is she reaches into the bag she carries and she takes out a small vial and she sets it on the kitchen counter between us.I look at it.Clear liquid. No label. The kind of container that could contain anything."What is that," I say."Something
Last Updated: 2026-07-09
The Rejected Omega's Bastard Heir
For fifteen years, Trishelle has been nothing more than “Trash” to the Bloodmoon Pack.
Born without a wolf, abandoned as a pup, and forced to live as a servant in the pack house, she learned long ago that omegas like her are meant to suffer quietly. The worst of her tormentors was Alpha James, the powerful Alpha who gave her the cruel nickname that everyone still uses.
But something changes.
Suddenly, the Alpha can’t stop watching her. He notices the smile he never cared to see, the curves hidden beneath her oversized clothes, and the scent that drives his wolf mad. The more he tries to ignore her, the more obsessed he becomes.
Then one reckless night changes everything.
When Trishelle discovers she’s carrying a child, the pack brands her unborn baby a bastard heir. Humiliated, betrayed, and rejected once again, she walks away from the only home she has ever known.
Years later, she returns no longer as the broken omega they mocked, but as a woman who has risen from the ashes with a son powerful enough to shake the werewolf world.
And Alpha James is about to learn a devastating truth:
the child he cast aside is his heir… and the omega he never claimed may be the mate he can never win back.
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Chapter: Dreamless SleepA long string of curses rushed through Bradley’s mind at his Beta’s announcement that would make his nonexistent sailor ancestors proud. “What the...” The words broke off as he swept the blanket off, determined to stop the fool of a woman, when a sharp pain in his side made him buckle straight to the floor. Another litany of curses left his mouth, and Sam winced, glad that his Alpha was too weak to throttle him, well... at least he hoped so. He stepped forward and helped the patient back onto his bed just as Lorenzo rushed in. The doctor clucked like a mother hen, and soon Sam was pushed out of the way by Nicole and another warrior the doctor recruited for all menial and physical tasks.Bradley was poked and prodded, and if he could only catch a solid breath, he would tell Lorenzo to back off. He knew he was being difficult, but that news shocked him and made him and his wolf panic. He had to protect her, but he couldn’t even stop the damn nurse. He leaned back in defeat, a scowl on h
Last Updated: 2026-11-10
Chapter: Good NewsSilver. Bradley was attacked with silver. This thought rang through Trishelle’s head over and over. She knew how bad silver was for werewolves. It delayed the healing process, and if the bullets were still inside Bradley, then he was no better than a regular human. Trishelle wrapped her hands around her middle, trying to hold herself together as she rocked back and forth, the pup rolling as her stress levels rose. She had no idea how the rest of the conversation went, feeling herself falling into a pit of despair.James hung up and began giving orders to his pack through the link. He asked for a few warriors to head over to Goldmoon and go with them, and asked someone for bags to be packed for him and Trishelle. He then turned to the woman who looked like a child and pulled her into his arms. He could imagine the pain she was feeling, and at that moment was glad that they did not mate as the pain felt through the bond would probably have sent her mad, or into early labour.Pushing her
Last Updated: 2026-11-10
Chapter: Open the DamnBradley was back at the place where it all started. As he looked at the steel structure being erected before him, he had an insane urge to tear it down with his bear hands, then he would tear up the stupid contract that he and his team worked so hard for and then jump back on his plane and head straight into the arms of his lovely mate. He became so busy that his conversations with Trishelle were sometimes less than five minutes. He knew the distance was a strain for her as well. He could see it in her eyes, and everything within him screamed to get back to her. He was so distracted, barking at Lorenzo every two seconds to be sure that Trishelle was well, that the doctor felt like he couldn’t even take a bathroom break. He was no better with his pack members, and Sammy was going through the wringer to ensure that she was safe and not left alone for too long.Surprisingly, James turned out to be the only one he felt he trusted to take care of Trishelle more and more, leaning on his onc
Last Updated: 2026-11-09
Chapter: Over the shoulderIt’s been more than three weeks, and Bradley looked like he was no closer to ending his business than he was when it started. Some paparazzi snapped his photo, and now he has new requests for meetings and appearances coming out of his eyeballs. He was always mature, even as a kid, just as a future Alpha should be, but right now, he felt like throwing himself on the floor and throwing a tantrum any four-year-old would be proud of. He looked at Martha’s sharp glare and knew that she knew what he was thinking, and he did not want her “you ain’t gonna embarrass your mother” response.He sighed, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. He was currently behind the scenes of a commercial, shooting an up-and-coming actress using one of his company’s latest products. He briefly remembered agreeing to this, but not to his sore behind actually being here. He was then to take her out for a late lunch, acting like he was grateful for her well-paid sacrifice, and allow someone to take photos so hi
Last Updated: 2026-11-09
Chapter: PRESENTATIONBradley flew in his private jet to the location of his new building. Sam was with him, heading his security detail. He would have loved to leave him with his mate, but Samuel was there. Martha sat opposite him, busy typing away, arranging and rearranging meetings and schedules. Bradley decided that he would take the next two weeks to get as many things done as would require his physical presence. He video-chatted with Trishelle every day, his desire for her almost a distraction. He even scheduled the call when she had her next doctor’s visit, and hearing the sound of his pup’s heartbeat made him cry. Trishelle got a recording and sent it to him, the sound of his lullaby every night.He also kept in touch with James and Goldmoon. He was worried that his members would be angry or at least disappointed, but they all supported him and held things together. He was surprised that Samuel stepped up, under Sam’s guidance, and proved himself. Of course, with his aunt offering her support and a
Last Updated: 2026-11-07
Chapter: BLUSHINGTrishelle knew that she needed to say something, but what, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t even sure why she stopped him, but the look of hopelessness tugged at her heart. This man is the father of her child, and even though it happened in the way it did, that was one fact that would never change. Besides, James has made so many changes for her that she knew it was best to tell him the truth. When he placed his finger beneath her chin and lifted up her face to meet his, she knew she could not lie to him. “Honestly, James, I’m not too sure myself what happened today. Why I said what I said,” she whispered. At his conflicted look, she cleared her throat. “I mean, I get why I felt that way when that woman looked at Bradley like that, he’s my mate after all,” James winced, and Trishelle tightened her grip on the hand she still held. “But what I’m not sure about is why I felt almost the same way when she looked at you, too.”James’s heart began to pound, his mind racing with the possibilities.
Last Updated: 2026-11-07
The Omega & the Lycan King
Anselm Tarrow has spent twelve years drinking poison to stay alive.
A male Omega in a kingdom that believes his kind is extinct, he hides what he is behind bitter tea and a lowered gaze. If anyone finds out, he’ll be killed or used.
Then the pack Alpha who has made his life miserable names him as the sacrifice to end the Hollowing, the curse that has been killing the royal line for sixty years. Ansel’s tea runs out on the road north. His heat breaks in a blizzard.
By the time he’s dragged before the Lycan King, there’s no hiding left.
“Please. Just kill me. I’m a freak who could get pregnant. I’d stain your bloodline.”
King Ulrich Daghan has buried two consorts and a child. He has stopped believing in hope. But when the scent of Ansel’s heat reaches him, a silver thread snaps tight between their chests, and the King says what nobody in the Cold Court expected:
“He is not a sacrifice. He is mine.”
Ulrich could take what the bond offers. Instead he guards the door all night and asks one quiet question: Why were you hiding?
Because the only one who can break the curse is a Moonbearer willing to bear a Daghan heir, and the man who profits from the curse is already sharpening his knives.
He expected death. He got a crown, a curse, and a mate who won’t let go.
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Chapter: The Archive ExceptionPenhallow did not look up, which was the tell. He was already three agenda items ahead, and Mirela's journal remained held in the bailiff's grip, impounded under formal custody before the bench. Ulrich moved first. No word came, nor any signal anyone else in the gallery would have caught. Two fingers lifted slightly against his wool coat, marking a vector rather than a gesture, angled toward the side exit. Ansel read the shift the way he read every doorway in an unfamiliar room: exit route first, tactical retreat second, a distinction that rarely mattered until someone drew steel. He stood, his balance holding by half an inch. The dead numbness had spread up from his feet to settle heavy below his hips, leaving each step a calculated gamble of bone and momentum. Across the bar, Mirela stood motionless between two armed bailiffs, her shoulders squared, giving no sign she noticed them moving. Ansel did not linger on her, nor on the bound journal on the clerk's table. The spasm in his ri
Last Updated: 2026-11-10
Chapter: Contempt and CollateralThe Lead Magistrate’s voice carried no heat. He announced the contempt charge the way an official reads a grain inventory: methodically, without malice, each term placed with the flat precision of routine.“Physician Costin. You have refused two direct bench orders. This chamber finds you in contempt. Bailiff.”Mirela froze, thumb anchored over the page, knuckle white, wrist locked. The journal lay open on the bench under the examination lamp, the altered column a finger-width from open view. Beneath the ball of her thumb lay the hasty overwrite she had scratched into the parchment at dawn, the heavier, darker iron-gall ink still stark against the faded brown script of the genuine entries, masking his marsh-fever temperatures behind a clumsy forgery.Ansel counted the span between the bailiff rising and the iron latch dropping. Three seconds, maybe four. Summary contempt meant immediate transfer to the lower cells, the stripping of her medical seal and licensure before the noon bell,
Last Updated: 2026-11-10
Chapter: The Visible MeasureThe vial sat on the stone floor between his feet.Ansel had neither pitched nor dropped it. He placed it on the flagstones with the measured deliberation of an advocate entering a formal plea into the record. His right hand continued its tremor, visible and undeniable under the gallery lamps, so he left it resting on his knee, where the bench had an unobstructed view.The chamber fell silent with the heavy, deadened drop of an executioner’s weight.Penhallow’s attention moved from the vial to the shaking fingers and back, completing his evaluation in under two seconds. Ansel counted them.“Physician Costin.” Penhallow kept a flat, unhurried cadence, the tone he would use to read an uncontested probate docket into the roll. “The petitioner has declined emergency suppression. Given that refusal on the record, does your clinical judgment confirm that the tremor currently exhibited matches the chronic baseline filed in your diagnostic brief?”Mirela offered no response.Her stillness was
Last Updated: 2026-11-09
Chapter: The Fever Breaks ThroughThe assembly would convene in minutes. If the petition failed, Penhallow could void his bloodline claim before sunset, and the thirty-day stay would collapse where Ansel sat. His task was precise: get the petition into the assembly record before Penhallow could lodge a procedural challenge.Ansel counted floor markers along the bare stone corridor. Twelve remained before the arch, then eleven. The iron rims of the wheels ground into the mortar seams between flagstones, turning with the dull regularity of a mill gear. He tracked the rhythm as he once tracked the kitchen bell at Cinderlow, logging the vibration simply to keep his facial muscles flat.The petition rested across his thighs. The stay had survived the emergency session by a hair, held together by procedural technicalities, and it would sit under direct challenge the moment the doors opened. He anchored his left hand over the fold, fingers pinning the vellum, the wax seal still faintly warm. Ten markers remained, then nine.
Last Updated: 2026-11-09
Chapter: The Sovereign InfirmityThe forgery plan had a hole in it. Ansel caught it while Mirela was still speaking, her wet hem dripping onto the floorboards, the error registering with the clean finality of a dropped latch.“Stop,” he said.Mirela fell silent.“The Sovereign Infirmity Clause,” Ansel continued, keeping his tone flat as his posture locked against the chair. “It doesn’t just require the clerk’s seal. It demands his living witness signature, in person, or the deposition bar rejects the writ on sight.”Ulrich stepped away from the glass. He stayed silent for several seconds, verifying the clause text before Ansel could ask him to confirm it.“Tell me I’m wrong,” Ansel said.“You’re not wrong.” Ulrich drew the draft writ closer across the oak and examined the clause with the stillness of a man confirming an old suspicion. Without the clerk’s co-signature, rejection was absolute. The filing would be recorded as absence by default.Default meant Penhallow won before the opening gavel, with the preamble voi
Last Updated: 2026-11-08
Chapter: The Thirty-Day ClockThe intake gate’s iron crash still echoed in the masonry when Ulrich turned from the lattice and moved.Ansel counted the corridor automatically: forty feet to the first arch, two branching passages, and no sentries on the flags yet. The sixth chime had struck moments before, which meant the watch rotation was in motion somewhere above them, boots finding their posts in the dark. Anyone turning that corner would see the Commander carrying a man who could not walk.He kept his arms locked tight around Ulrich’s neck, fingers rigid against the collar of his coat; any slip in his hold invited questions about nerve damage.“Renwick will reach Penhallow before the second bell,” Ansel said.“Yes.”“Before the galleries fill.”“Yes.”Ulrich maintained his pace down the corridor. His grip held firm, the same as it had been since the royal quarters, and Ansel had stopped trying to measure whether the load cost him anything. If it strained him, Ulrich would have shifted his hold. That was his ha
Last Updated: 2026-11-07
Pucking Around with Fate
They were supposed to be on the same team.
Santos Khyle arrived in Seattle as the Soul Reapers' most anticipated rookie in years, a natural-born scorer with something to prove and a chip on his shoulder the size of a regulation puck. Gunner Jäger had been tearing up the ice as the team's feared enforcer for two seasons, and he had zero interest in sharing his spotlight with some orange-haired twenty-one year old who looked at him like he was a problem to be managed.
From the moment they met, it was war.
On the ice, they were a disaster. Off it, they were worse. Screaming matches in corridors. Fists through locker room walls. A live on-air brawl that made every highlight reel in North America and earned them both a suspension, a lecture from their furious coach, and the undivided attention of the entire hockey world.
Nobody could stand to watch them together.
Nobody could look away either.
Because underneath the fury and the bruises and the months of spectacular mutual destruction, something else was building. Something neither of them had language for yet. Something that felt uncomfortably like the only fight either of them was actually afraid to lose.
The Soul Reapers are one playoff run away from everything. Gunner and Khyle are one honest conversation away from falling apart completely.
Or maybe, just maybe, from finally figuring out what they are to each other.
Pucking Up the Ice is a slow burn MM romance set in the brutal and beautiful world of professional hockey. It contains explicit language, on-ice violence, emotional gut punches, two men who are absolutely terrible at feelings, and a love story that had to break everything before it could build something worth keeping.
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Chapter: The DoorPOV: Dual, Khyle and GunnerKhyle's building.Gunner pulled into the visitor spot he had started to think of as his and cut the engine. Khyle had one hand on the door handle. He stopped.The specific quality of the pause between them was different from other pauses. Gunner felt it and he suspected Khyle felt it and he suspected Khyle suspected he felt it, which was the particular kind of awareness that had been running between them for months and which Gunner now had a name for but had not yet applied out loud."Thanks," Khyle said. To the dashboard, mostly."For what?""The rink. The Cooper thing." A beat. "All of it."Gunner looked at him."You set it up," he said."Yeah but." Khyle stopped. He was looking at his own hand on the door handle. "You showed up."The way he said it landed at a specific address in Gunner's chest. Not the rink. Not the Cooper session. You showed up. Like that was the thing. Like that was what had mattered.Gunner thought about Petra's voice on the porch. H
Last Updated: 2026-08-16
Chapter: The DrivePOV: GunnerThey drove back mostly without talking.Not because anything was wrong. Or rather, not because anything was wrong in the usual way. The silence between them had stopped being a failure of conversation a long time ago. It had become something else, the comfortable kind, or close to it, the kind that did not require filling.But Gunner was not comfortable. He was sitting with a very large and recently acknowledged truth in the passenger seat of Khyle's car and trying to behave normally while Khyle drove and the city came back at them through the windshield and the heater ran and the mixed CD played something that should probably not have been on a mixed CD that was going to be shared with another person.He had named his stick Khyle.He was in love with Khyle Santos.He let both of those sentences exist in his head at the same time without doing anything with them. It was a new experience. Normally by now he would have moved. Decided. Done something about whatever the thing
Last Updated: 2026-08-16
Chapter: The NamePOV: GunnerHe had been watching Khyle skate for twenty minutes.Not obviously. Not the way you watched someone when you wanted them to know you were watching. The other way. The way you watched something when you were trying to understand it, when the act of looking was itself an act of figuring something out that you had been not-figuring-out for a very long time.Khyle moved differently when he thought no one was paying attention. The precision was still there, the efficiency that came from two decades of muscle memory, but the performance quality dropped away and what was left underneath it was something more animal. More honest. He cut across the ice with the specific fluency of someone for whom movement in this environment was not learned behavior but native, and Gunner stood at the boards and watched him do it and did not pretend he was watching for any other reason than the one that was true.He had been pretending for a long time.Not about everything. He had known about the
Last Updated: 2026-08-16
Chapter: Sorry About EarlierPOV: KhyleThe phone screen had gone dark and bright three times since Khyle had set it on the table. He hadn't touched it. But he'd been watching it the way you watched something you weren't sure was going to hurt you, like a bruise you weren't ready to press.The first two times had been his dad checking in from the house in the suburbs, because the weather had gotten worse and Khyle had mentioned going to Gunner's mother's place and his dad had opinions about driving in weather that strong. The third time was Shane.Khyle hadn't answered any of them.The coffee had been good and he'd drunk most of it sitting on the couch in the dim living room. He hadn't turned more lights on. He wasn't feeling the brightness of his own apartment right now. He was feeling the specific quiet of a day that had gone from unremarkable to enormous and back to unremarkable in the span of a few hours, the way some days did when you were inside them and couldn't see them clearly yet.His cheek was fine. It
Last Updated: 2026-08-07
Chapter: CorrectionPOV: GunnerGritting his teeth, Gunner wrenched the wheel into the slide and let the car do what it needed to do. The white shoulder markers swooped past his driver's side window with dizzying speed. No guard rail on this stretch of road.He kept his foot even and held the wheel, waiting for it, the sensation of the tires catching, the click of traction. He had to drive through the spin and not fight it. Ride it.The car slid another car length before it stopped on the shoulder, aimed back at where it had come from, a quarter turn into the opposite lane, front headlights flooding the wrong direction.He sat there for a moment in the stopped car with the engine running and the headlights pointing back at where he had come from. He had been going too fast in the wrong direction on black ice and the road had corrected him before he could do it himself. He sat with that for a long moment. Then he got the car turned around.He sat in the idling car on the shoulder of the road, white-knuckl
Last Updated: 2026-08-07
Chapter: Black IcePOV: Dual, Khyle and Gunner alternatingSkates against hard ice, or rubber on miles of open blacktop. Sometimes, they both helped clear the mind when nothing else would.He didn't know exactly how long he'd been driving. He just drove until the city lights turned to stars. Or until the stars replaced the city lights. Again, he didn't know.But when his chaotic thoughts slowed long enough to realize how far he'd gone, he found himself somewhere just outside the city limits, speeding down a quiet, dark stretch of dual highway, hugged by rotting snowbanks, deep ravines, and shadowed pine trees.Gunner let his foot sink like a lead weight, pushing the car from a buck thirty to one forty. Letting loose a moment longer before he'd have to rein it in for the next off-ramp. Settling right into the edge of a hefty street racing fine if he got caught. But there was no one to see it, and no cops in sight. Hardly anyone on the road as the forecast weather started to settle in. He pushed it down s
Last Updated: 2026-08-06
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