My Darling Dreadful Thing

Isabelle couldn’t stop drinking as the music pounded through the club. She was trying to drown out the image of her best friend, Aurora, who was pregnant with her fiancé’s child, on what should have been Isabelle’s engagement night. But fate had other plans. When an employee calls in sick, Isabelle volunteers to fill in, unaware she is about to walk straight into the arms of Don Miller—the club’s most powerful and dangerous client. He was ruthless, commanding, and known for treating women as playthings. Don doesn’t believe in love… until Isabelle. One glance, one reckless touch, and something shifts. She stirs a hunger in him he thought he’d buried forever. And when he learns what broke her, Don makes Isabelle an indecent offer: He promises to mend her shattered heart and destroy everyone who betrayed her—if she surrenders to him completely. Two broken souls. One dark deal. Isabelle is about to learn that submission might just be the sweetest form of revenge. What begins as a dangerous bargain soon spirals into something deeper, darker, and far more intoxicating than either expected. Maybe love isn’t always gentle. Sometimes it’s an obsession. Sometimes it’s surrender. And sometimes… it’s the most exquisite kind of ruin.

I was born into a line of vampire hunters, but I was hopeless at it. I couldn't pass a single trial, couldn't make a single kill, so my family dumped me in the countryside and left me to rot. When they brought me back at eighteen, they packaged me up and handed me to the vampire noble Lucian von Karstein as his lowest blood-slave. I had already made my peace with being drained dry and tortured to death. He turned out to be nothing like what I expected. He built me a villa with good light. Every morning before dawn he went out to the garden and picked flowers still wet with dew, and left them by my pillow. When his family ordered him to kill me, he gave up five hundred years of glory for my sake. He surrendered his power, his title, his castle. He traded everything he had to keep me safe, and in the end he ran with me, away from the whole vampire world. But there was a curse in my blood. Every time I let myself feel something for him, it punished me, gnawing my heart to pieces one inch at a time. So all I could do was call him useless, force him to buy me jewelry, drive him away from my bed, and humiliate him every way I knew how. He ended up living in the garage, hauling cargo to survive, supporting a spoiled, vicious wife who treated him like dirt. One night I crept into his little partition and pulled back his collar. There was a burn the length of my hand, gotten from hauling freight day and night just to buy me a gift. I hid in the bathroom and ran the tap to cover the sound of crying. Dabbing ointment on the wound, sniffling, I asked the thing in my blood: "Curse. When is he finally going to hate me and leave?" The curse looked at the back of his hand, wet where my tears had fallen, then at the faint tremor of his lashes, and sighed. He's going to love you for the rest of his life.

Trigger warning: Matured content. Dark romance! ***** ~Jasper Morgan~ I hate him because he hates me. He's my first love, my bully. Yet, when his hatred turns into a burning obsession, I crave it, unable to live without it. Rhys' loathing has become my addiction, driving me to corrupt him, to claim him as my own. But what if he's just a beautiful nightmare? I can't let him go. ~Rhys Volkov~ I've never been drawn to men, never entertained the thought. Jasper Morgan was just a pawn in my vendetta against his father, who destroyed my life. I wanted to break him, shatter his perfection. But Jasper's twisted hate awakened something within me. I craved his scorn, his resentment. I wanted more than just revenge; I wanted him. His body, mind, and soul. He crossed the line. Now, nothing will stop me from possessing him. ******

Once a human, now a beast. Will she be able to overcome herself... Her life was a moment in a cruel world that her enemies rule. One to kill her, the other to capture her, and she will decide which path she will walk... A path of love, or hate.

She fell in love with the notorious antagonist. On the other hand, his heart beats only for one thing: her destruction. 🔞❗❗Trigger warning: This story contains mature themes, graphic content, explicit scenes, and may be triggering for some readers❗❗🔞

****Excerpt**** “You see yourself as ordinary,” he said softly. “But entire worlds have crumbled and come apart for far less than a woman of your beauty.” He pushed his horn further again, filling her another inch. Her flame flared white-hot behind her ribs. Begging, pleading, clawing. “That’s it, my little whore. You like that, don’t you?” he preened against the corner of her mouth. His voice hit her harder than the horn. Dirty, cruel, worshipful. The word whore sent heat spiralling down her spine, making her clench around the invasion. She hated the word. She loved how he said it. “Please…” She started. He squeezed her throat, cutting off the rest of her words. Her breath hitched violently at the pressure, but she surrendered to the feeling. “Unless you are about to beg me to fuck your ass harder with this horn, I don’t want to hear how you can’t take any more.” He growled, low and threatening. A wave of want crashed into her so hard she whimpered. Adelaide should have been scared. In a way, she was. It wasn’t fear that made her heart pound, it was the terrifying realisation that she wanted exactly what he demanded. She wanted to feel the thickness of his horn deep inside her, wanted the stretch, the pain, the pleasure. She wanted all of what she knew he could give her. She leaned her head back to run her tongue over the seam of his lips. “Fuck me harder.” She said softly, the words barely a whisper. They carried the desperation, surrender, hunger, devotion, need. Her voice trembled with the weight of what she was giving him. Of what she was asking him to do to her. He growled. The sound vibrated through her, deep and possessive.