A Lesson In Thorns

I died on the day I won the Global Medical Doctorate Award. Fresh from celebrating the sixteenth birthday of my younger sister, my parents, brother, and my fiancé finally returned home, but it was three hours after my death. My family photos were beaming with happiness on social media, while I laid in the suffocating basement drenched in blood. Before I died, I had struggled to slide my tongue across my phone screen in a desperate attempt to call for help. My parents and brother had blocked my number. Only my fiancé answered my call. The moment his voice came through, he snapped, "Winona, Winnie's sixteenth birthday is important. Stop trying to hijack attention with your pathetic excuses. Enough with the theatrics!" It murdered my last spark of survival. In that electronic death rattle, my heart flatlined. The 100th time they chose her. The 100th time they abandoned me for her. But it was also the last time. They thought I had ran way to get their attention again, and that if they taught me a harsh lesson, I would come crawling back pathetically. But not this time. Because I didn't leave home. I had been lying in the basement of my house.

Everyone knew that Aria Jackson had loved Larry Spencer for years. The usually obedient Aria got tattoos for him, broke rules for him, and even moved to a foreign city for him. But when she fell into the lake and he rescued her rival instead, leaving her soaking and miserable, her heart finally shattered completely. The man who came after Larry held her protectively in his arms and suggested with a gentle laugh, "Miss Jackson, have you considered teaching your ex-husband a lesson?" She promptly filed for divorce and married Archer Duncan, the heir to the Duncan empire and the powerful CEO of Duncan Industries. That evening, their marriage certificate was posted on social media. The typically aloof Larry finally showed his desperation, begging her not to marry Archer and then turning to threaten him, "You think she loves you? She's just using the Duncan family's wealth and connections!" Archer simply tightened his arm around her waist and replied calmly, "So what? Fortunately, I have both in abundance." What no one knew was that Aria had been Archer's carefully laid plan all along. He had deeply loved this rose from the beginning—he admired her ambition and was eager to support her boldness and independence.

Presley Brookmore was bullied by her older half-brother Odin and his two best friends Cruz and Anderson, all of her life. They made it their life mission to humiliate her at every turn. Was it her fault her father carried on an affair with her mother who got pregnant with her and wrecked Odin’s idyllic life? She didn’t think so but apparently, Odin and his cronies did, and so they bullied her at every turn. When an opportunity to get back at Odin’s best friend Cruz Hawley presents itself in a serendipitous moment, she doesn’t let it slip away. Taking full advantage of the fact as a billionaire, an attractive one at that, all eyes are on him and people are snapping photos and videos of the celebrity in the restaurant, she makes a scene straight out a daytime soap opera. Cruz Hawley returned to Vancouver with the intent to take his billion-dollar medical equipment company to the next level. When his childhood best friend’s younger sister pops out of the woodwork and not only destroys his chance at a connection with a client, but makes him a social media sensation, his businesses take the hit. Cruz is going to teach the troublemaker a lesson but it’s his heart on the line when he finds himself looking forward to every challenge she is presenting. It’s win, lose, or draw and as a former Olympian, there is no way he can lose. Let the game of hearts begin. Winner takes all.

"A stubborn young woman never imagined she would end up married to a mafia boss." Amaya lives with the constant suspicion that the bubble of her reality will burst. Being the illegitimate daughter of an oyabun, the leader of one of the Yakuza clans, her life was a path to anonymity. Raised outside of mafia traditions by her American mother, who was a beautiful woman, she was not welcomed within the mafia's ranks. However, she was always warned that when her father needed her, she must present herself. Her life takes a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn when she's kidnapped from university and brought before her family. At a dinner where she is not only exposed to the top echelons of the clan but also showcased in front of other mafiosos, she captures the attention of one of them, someone who steals the future she had envisioned for herself. Alessio is the capo of the Camorra and a beast in his own right, making his word law. After his parents' murder and the fire that scarred part of his face, he needs to form the right alliances to strengthen himself with everything necessary to go to war against the Russians who seek to seize his territory. In pursuit of this, he strikes a deal with the Yakuza, one that results in him being married to one of the oyabun's daughters—a man who aims to deceive him. After extracting what he needs from Alessio, the oyabun plans to teach him a lesson by using his own daughter. Neither of them was prepared for what lay ahead.

He is my art coach. And he sucked my dick after our first lesson, obviously, I didn't know he was gay! Now, I have to accept that I am impossibly attracted to a man who is eleven years older than me and a relationship between us could never be possible….or? ~~~    “Do you regularly do this with men you meet for the first time?” Min-a asked, his eyes still appearing a little dilated.    “If you mean giving them a ride in my Mustang? No, I don’t do that.” Seung-ho replied, sounding serious. He glanced at Min-a to see a frown knitting his eyebrows close, and he chuckled. “If it would make you less grumpy, sucking your dick bruised my jaw. So, I don’t think I would be giving free blow jobs to any other man I meet in the near future…”  ~~~~ 22-year-old Model influencer, Korea's number one bad boy, Seo Min-a, has everything a boy could want: great looks, amazing talent, the only son of a billionaire family, millions of followers, and fangirls at his feet. Min-a’s quest to help his sister sign a contract with the defiant artist Kwan Seung-ho, who was a much older man leads him to a brilliant art coach who challenges his understanding of love and identity. Could they really be a couple in a society where being gay is seen as condemnable? What Epic Love Story will they write?

My husband's first love was scalded by boiling water. To punish me, he forced me into a customized steamer half my height, turned the heat to its highest setting, and sealed me inside. "I'll make you feel the pain Jessica suffered a thousand times over!" Trapped in the suffocating space, my breath came in ragged gasps. Heat seared my skin, and my body felt as though it would melt. I sobbed, begging him for mercy. "Please! I'm going to die!" But he didn't look back. Holding his beloved in his arms, he walked away. He even locked the door after he left the room. "Don't worry, you won't die. This is the only way you'll understand Jessica's pain." Despair swallowed me whole. I screamed, my voice raw, but the boiling water beneath me splashed up, scalding my skin, stealing even the strength to cry. He left the country with Jessica that same night. A week passed before he finally remembered my existence. "That wretched woman must have learned her lesson by now. Let her out." What he didn't know was that the water had long since boiled away, the heat had faded, and inside the steamer, my corpse lay rotting—swarmed with maggots.

Some bad girls need a steady hand to keep them in line. I'm bad enough to need two. Two old men can teach me a lesson when I misbehave. Two hot bodies to keep me warm in bed at night. Two best friends can learn to share with a dirty mouth kid like me. After all... dirty girls need very dirty dads. Anna Josephine is nothing but trouble. She's wild and tough. Not worth anyone's time. Anna is a beautiful little girl. She is also a vulnerable young man on my case list. She is half my age and has absolutely no limits. I broke every rule in the book by giving her somewhere to stay when she was out on the street with nowhere to go. And I'm breaking all the rules of friendship by locking her up at my best friend Jack's house while he's away on business. I thought life was hard enough when I fell in love with the girl, but it got even harder when Holmes came home early and discovered a beautiful stranger was causing a ruckus in his house. And it's even harder when he has a crush on her too. He is the only man on this planet with whom I want to share my last supper. I'm happy to share that. I'm not sure how I feel about sharing Anna.

Abandoned on a cold, stormy night at just 6 years old, Sudan Flair learned the harshest lesson of all that love cannot be trusted. The memory of his mother’s face disappearing into the darkness haunts him, shaping him into a man who keeps his heart locked away. Years later, as he begins college, Sudan is assigned a roommate, Zach Musk, whose warmth and kindness begin to thaw the ice around his heart. Their bond deepens, a quiet undercurrent of something more forming between them. Sudan fights it, terrified of losing control, until one day Zach’s stepmother comes to visit campus and Sudan’s world tilts on its axis. The woman is now called Mary Musk, Sudan’s mother. The mother who abandoned him, now living in comfort with a new family, her perfect life built on his pain. As old wounds reopen, Sudan’s desire for revenge burns hotter than ever. When Zach invites him to a family vacation, Sudan sees the perfect opportunity to destroy the family that replaced him but what begins as a calculated plan spirals out of control as Sudan’s feelings for Zach grows. When Bask Musk, Zach’s powerful and controlling father, learns who Sudan truly is, everything erupts. Secrets will be revealed, love will be tested and Sudan will have to decide whether to destroy the family that hurt him or risk losing the only person he has ever truly loved.

On the last day of the deadline for the loan repayment, I went to Liam Sommer's stepsister, Christine Sommer, to ask for the 300,000 dollars I had lent her. The next day, Liam threw a ledger I had never seen before in front of me. Liam said, "On your birthday last year, I transferred 8,100 dollars to you. On our tenth anniversary, I transferred 108,000 dollars to you. Also, at the beginning of every month, I transfer 20,000 dollars to you for your living expenses. You must pay me back by the end of today." I froze, but Liam smiled without a hint of warmth. "What’s wrong? You can't afford to repay me? Evelyn Lancaster, you shouldn't have given Christy trouble. This is my lesson to you. If you don't pay me back today, let's not meet for the next three years, and don't come looking for me." Over the next three years, I never saw Liam again, nor did I go looking for him. While he and Christine traveled around the world and wore couple rings, I married my childhood friend in front of our family and friends. While he and Christine walked along the beach and kissed, I moved into a new house with my husband, our cat, and our dog. Everything was moving along smoothly, but why was Liam standing under the window of my house in the middle of the night, crying and saying that he was unhappy?

Every Thanksgiving, my husband, Salvatore, brings home a showgirl from one of his clubs. He makes me kneel and serve them drinks. A lesson, he calls it, in how to please a man. This was the eighth Thanksgiving, and this time, he brought back a girl poured into a tight leather dress. "She doesn't have any decent jewelry," Salvatore announced. "Give her your heirloom diamond ring. Your grandmother's pearl earrings, too. And take off that silk choker for her." He smirked. "And listen, she's young, doesn't know the rules. You'll have to show her the ropes. Especially how to handle a man in bed." Every member of the Genovese family was watching, waiting for my humiliation. I didn't disappoint. I opened my mouth and asked Salvatore for a divorce. Salvatore let out a sharp, ugly laugh, his eyes full of contempt. "Francesca, you pull this same shit every time," he jeered. "Your act is pathetic. Even more dramatic than your performance in bed." He leaned in. "You really want to divorce me? Fine. I'll give you five million in cash if you actually walk out that door." The living room erupted in laughter. They all said I was playing hard to get, that I didn't know my place. But they didn't know. This was the 88th time I had asked for a divorce, and it was the first time I truly meant it.