All Chapters of Hot Desire( A Collection of Steamy stories): Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

We stayed in bed most of the morning.Uncle Theo’s hand never really left me—stroking my back, my hip, the curve of my waist—like he needed the constant contact to believe I was still there. I lay half on top of him, cheek against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart while sunlight slowly filled the room. The house remained quiet. No one was coming. No one expected either of us anywhere.“Hungry?” he asked eventually, voice still low.“A little.”He kissed the top of my head, then carefully moved me aside so he could get up. I watched him pull on the dark sweatpants again, the muscles in his back shifting under his skin. When he glanced over his shoulder and caught me looking, a small, knowing smile touched his mouth.“Stay there. I’ll bring it.”He came back twenty minutes later with coffee and toast on a wooden tray. We ate sitting up against the headboard, my bare legs tangled with his under the sheet. Every so often his hand would slide under the covers and rest on

The church settled into its deepest silence after midnight.Beatrice returned to the small room behind the sacristy with a tray—water, plain bread, a bowl of the thin soup left from the convent kitchen. Luca was awake, sitting on the edge of the narrow cot with his back against the wall. The lamp cast a low gold circle that left most of his face in shadow. He had removed the ruined shirt entirely. The bandage she had placed sat white against the darker skin of his shoulder; fresh blood had not yet soaked through.He watched her set the tray down without speaking.“You should eat,” she said.“You should not have come back.”“Someone has to check the bandage.”She moved closer. The room was small enough that every step felt deliberate. When she reached for the edge of the gauze he caught her wrist—not hard, but firm enough to stop her. His fingers were warm, calloused, still faintly streaked with dried blood.“Why are you doing this?” he asked quietly.“I already told you.”“Charity.” H

Three nights passed in ordinary silence.Beatrice returned to her duties as if the rain had never brought a bleeding stranger through the side door. She lit the candles. She swept the chapel stones. She answered Father Vincent’s mild questions about the unlocked door with a calm that surprised even herself. At night she lay awake listening to the city beyond the walls, waiting for a sound she could not name.On the fourth night the sound came.Not a knock. A single soft scrape against the side door, deliberate enough to be intentional. Beatrice was already on her feet before the second scrape arrived. She moved through the dark chapel without lighting a candle, heart steady and too fast at the same time. When she opened the door, Luca stood in the narrow alley as if he had never left.He looked worse than before.New blood darkened the front of his shirt, lower this time, along the ribs. A bruise had bloomed across one cheekbone. His breathing was controlled but shallow. When his eyes

The habit came apart under his hands like a confession.Luca did not tear it. He undid each fastening with deliberate, almost reverent precision, as if the act of uncovering her required the same control he used when handling a weapon. Beatrice stood still against the edge of the cot, breath shallow, watching the black fabric loosen and fall. The wimple followed. Her hair—hidden for years—spilled free in a dark wave down her back. The silver cross remained at her throat, rising and falling with every rapid breath.Luca’s eyes moved over her slowly.“On your knees.”The command was quiet. Absolute.Beatrice’s pulse slammed against the cross. For one suspended second the weight of six years of vows pressed down on her shoulders. Then she sank to the cold stone floor in front of him, habit pooled around her knees, bare from the waist up. The lamp cast her shadow long across the floor. Luca looked down at her with an expression that was equal parts hunger and dark satisfaction.“Hands beh

The estate sat high in the northern cliffs, carved from black stone and older than any living pack memory. Four Alphas ruled it. Four scents layered the air so thickly that even the wind seemed to bow.Lira had served them for three seasons.She was an omega—small, pale-haired, scent always carefully suppressed beneath layers of herbal oil and the heavy gray maid’s dress the household required. Her duties were simple: keep the fires lit, the floors clean, the private wing silent. She was not to be seen unless summoned. She was never to be scented.Yet every full moon the suppression oil burned thinner, and the Alphas’ presence grew harder to ignore.Tonight the moon would be full.Lira moved through the upper corridor with a stack of clean linens, bare feet silent on the cold stone. The lion’s scent reached her first—sun-warmed gold and musk, heavy with dominance. Then the tiger’s: sharper, spiced, restless. The wolf’s followed, deep forest and iron. Last came the dragon’s, smoke and