The Second Sleep

They were fated mates. When they met, it should have been happily ever after. But it wasn’t. For her, he was her previously unattainable celebrity crush. Someone she wanted to impress and be worthy of… even if it meant sacrificing parts of who she was. For him, she was his second mate. Someone he had never noticed before, but someone he definitely noticed now. He wanted to get things right with her, and he was eager to start their lives together. Unfortunately, all of their plans are forced to change when his first mate makes an unexpected re-entry into his life. She is forced to become his secret second, and they are both forced to deal with baggage they didn’t even realize that they carry. Then he hurts her in ways that she never saw coming. The end for this couple is inevitable. The real question is this: after life tears them apart, will it bring them back together, or will it push them into the arms of others?

The last thing Valentina Serra sees before she dies is the crack in the ceiling above her bed. She is 45 years old. She is not unhappy. That, she realizes in the last seconds of her first life, is the most devastating thing she could say about it. She opens her eyes in a university lecture hall in Barcelona. She is 20 years old. Her notebook is open, her pen is in her hand, and she can feel — with the precision of someone who has lived an entire life — exactly how much she is about to waste if she does nothing. She does something. Armed with 25 years of memory, Valentina sets out to close every loop she left open: the military commission she dismissed, the marketing career she let others architect for her, the relationship she stayed in long past its expiry date, and the mother she visited but never truly knew. One by one, she reaches for the life she talked herself out of the first time around. But the two people closest to her — the friends who have always been there, always supportive, always first to suggest the safer, smaller option — are watching. And when Valentina begins exceeding the quiet ceiling that they built for her, Isabel and David begin to coordinate. Then there is Ethan Cole. Washington D.C. Investment sector. Five years younger, which bothered her the first time. He will walk into her life again in Barcelona, and this time Valentina already knows what the long dinner and the careful conversation and the late-night walk along the Passeig de Gràcia will mean — if she doesn't talk herself out of it. She is not going to talk herself out of it.

"I'm sorry," he looked at me. My smile fell, "Sorry for what..." A silver knife was plunged into my heart before I could understand what was happening. Ava believed she had found solace in Sage. Their marriage seemed affectionate, even loving. But on the night of their wedding anniversary, her world shattered when she was stabbed by her husband. She uncovered a devastating truth, Sage was having an affair with none other than her twin brother. In a shocking twist, she wakes up two years in the past, reborn. Armed with the painful memories of her betrayal and death, she refuses to be a pawn ever again. This time, she won’t be the prey. She will be the predator.

Rated 21+ / Matured content warning ⚠️ This book is for a mature audience only! Each short story contains strong language, taboo themes and very explicit sex scenes! THE TWIN IN HIS BED is a billionaire erotica short story collection filled with unapologetically raw, dark fantasies brought to life. It is not just a sex-capades, but a thrilling series with morally grey characters, life altering decisions, and the human nature. THE TWIN IN HIS BED After eleven years of silence, Ellesmere Morrison's estranged twin sister reappears with an outrageous demand: impersonate her for one week while she escapes on a secret trip with her lover. Refusal isn't an option. Armed with blackmail and a fortune Ellesmere desperately needs, her sister leaves her with a simple assignment—live in her mansion, fool the staff, and survive seven days as a woman she barely knows. The plan collapses on the very first night. Carlton Holland, her sister's devastatingly handsome billionaire husband, returns home days ahead of schedule. With a collapsed plan, and her sister conveniently out of reach, she is forced to maintain the deception. Ellesmere finds herself sharing a home, a bed, and a life that was never meant to be hers. But the longer the lie continues, the more Carlton becomes drawn to the woman he believes is his wife. The woman who is shy, kinder, warmer, and infinitely different from the one he married. As attraction ignites and dangerous feelings take root, Ellesmere falls for the one man she can never truly have—a man who doesn't even know her name.

Eidolon Avenue: Where the secretly guilty go to die. One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards. The sequel to Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast (“a great read...powerful and jarring” - Cemetery Dance) returns to the voracious Eidolon as it savors The Second Feast. A narcoleptic man in apartment 2A battles a vengeful past determined to rob him of everything as he runs from the barbaric disaster of a delusional love. A woman in 2B, reinventing herself to please a callous boyfriend, discovers the horrors that wait in the shadows of her self-renovation. The man in 2C, a teacher at the nearby Catholic girl’s school, collapses beneath the brutal consequences of his lecherous desires. An older woman in 2D, after decades dedicated to the church, is cornered at last by the grisly carnage beating at the hollow center of her faith. And a college student in 2E, hungry to escape an ignored life of invisible anonymity, finds herself captured between the pages of a ravenous book. All thrown into their own private hell as every cruel choice, every drop of spilled blood, every silent, complicit moment of cowardice is remembered, resurrected and relived to feed the ancient evil that lives on Eidolon Avenue. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

Two species and a viscious prophecy meant to tear apart everyone and everything in its path. Two halfs of a whole joined against all odds, but do they have what it takes to make the heart shattering sacrifices needed in order to save all they care about. Will love and heart reign over logic and mind? Can they even survive the horror that is the prophecy of the second moon, hanging above their heads like the sharpest of swords waiting to strike? ”I love you Shay” he whispered painfully and with that his eyes gazed upon their last star in that night’s sky.