Beneath Us

I never expected my life to change the day my mother remarried. Suddenly, the boy I once knew the boy I swore to marry when we were children became my stepbrother. But Roman isn’t the boy I remember. He’s colder now, distant, with eyes that hold secrets I can’t begin to unravel. Our worlds collide under the same roof, separated by just a thin wall and the tension neither of us wants to admit. Forbidden desire simmers beneath every glance, every touch. He keeps me at arm’s length, yet I can’t stop craving the dangerous pull between us. As the lines blur between hate and passion, I’m forced to confront the past I don’t remember and the truth Roman is desperate to hide. How far will we go before we step too close?

Seven years ended with one ringtone at the altar. One quiet apology, then he walked away to the pregnant ex he once called a mistake, leaving me beneath crystal lights and camera flashes, the perfect discarded bride. Publicly humiliated. I made a decision that shocks them all. I married Adrian, Marcus’s estranged elder stepbrother, the self-made billionaire their father once discarded. Cold. Untouchable. Far more powerful than the heir who betrayed me. Our marriage is a contract. He needs stability to secure his corporate takeover. I need a throne high enough to watch Marcus fall. But our 'fake' touches turn into an obsession neither of us can control. Now I’m carrying Adrian’s child the true firstborn heir of the legacy built on betrayal And this time, I’m not the woman left behind. I'm the prize.

"Touch me until I cum so hard that I forget my own name," I gasped, my lips brushing his, trembling beneath the weight of his stare. "You will forget more than that, wife," he rasped, gripping my throat with one hand and sliding the other down my body, "I will make you cum until you forget how to fight your feelings for me." * Elena Thrown into a marriage with the city’s most dangerous mafia king, I had one mission, to seduce him, overwhelm him and make him end it. So, I moaned louder, touched deeper, played the part of a woman consumed by lust, all in hopes he would be repulsed. But Dominic Moretti doesn’t fall for games. He plays them better. Colder, rougher and unrelenting. Every fake moan becomes real. Every forced kiss turns savage. And every time I think that I have the upper hand, he flips me over and makes me forget I ever wanted to get out of this marriage. He doesn’t believe in love. I don’t believe in staying. But when lust ignites war and pleasure starts to hurt in all the right ways, it’s no longer about breaking the marriage, it’s about surviving it. One of us will break. One of us will beg. But we will be both drenched in each other's lust before it’s all over.

I had avoided Snow Judson’s father for the entire five years of our marriage. My career never matched Snow’s, so in his eyes, I would always be beneath them. That day, Snow had a work dinner and asked me to take his father for a medical checkup. When we reached the hospital, the staff told us that the appointment was not scheduled for today. Snow’s father blew up on the spot and swung his cane at me. When I tried to call Snow, I accidentally opened a video that had been posted three minutes earlier. Snow wore a lace camisole in the video. She stood at a sink in a bathroom and washed a man’s shirt by hand. I looked at the caption. [Dinner is over. My boss took great care of me. If I had a wife like her, I would want nothing more.] Snow smiled so gently in the video that I suddenly felt empty. I left a comment under the video. [Wow, is he confessing?]

In a time long forgotten, when humanity roamed free, basking in the warmth of the sun and dancing beneath the stars, life was beautiful. But that time is a distant memory now. The vampires came, and everything changed. It's been a decade since my mother tried to kill me, and took her own life, leaving me to fend for myself. I've been living with Baron, our vampire master, ever since. Everyone either hates or envies me, but no one knows the truth. No one knows the hell I'm in. I am just about ready to end it all, when Aldric walks into my life. A vampire unlike any other. Despite my fear and hatred of his kind, I feel myself drawn to him. For the first time in my life, I know true kindness and love. As I grapple with my feelings for Aldric, I find myself confronting not only the harsh reality of my past and the unknown future ahead of us, but also the darkness that linger within my own soul.

I’m Sadie Summer. Once I was an orphan, still treated like a servant by the family who adopted me—until fate threw me into a contract marriage with my cold, powerful billionaire boss. I stood by him when everyone else walked away. I saw the man beneath the armor, and for a moment... I believed he saw me too. But then came the accident. It turned us into strangers again. Still, I stayed—through the silence, the ache of being forgotten. Now he’s healed--almost whole. He still wants out. He wants a divorce. Worse, the people who wronged me are whispering lies, poisoning what little he remembers of us. Maybe we were never meant to be. But I’ve been alone before. I know how to survive. Only this time, I’m not walking away with my head down. Let him regret what he let go. Because I may have loved him once... But I won’t beg him twice.

My wife, Jana Webster, uses her work at the company as an excuse to skip out on Leah Haynes, our daughter's field day. She even tells us not to participate in the activity. Having noticed how disappointed Leah looks, I decide to take her to the field day myself. As soon as we walk into the school, I spot Jana sitting on the couch located on the stage with her first love, Barton Ritter, as well as his son, Trenton Ritter. They look so close, as though they were an actual family of three. With a microphone in her hand, Jana goes on and on about how she's capable of keeping her family happy while maintaining a successful career. As she speaks, she smiles at Barton from time to time. The audience beneath the stage applauds heartily, giving Jana an ego boost. Even Trenton wears a haughty look. Soon, it's time for the Q&A session. I quickly snatch the microphone over. "Ms. Webster, since when do you have a son? Does your husband know about it?"

Five months pregnant, I watched my fated mate’s foster sister pour oil on our sacred threshold and strike the spark. I didn’t reach for the pack-link. Last life, I screamed through our bond. Cassian—my Alpha, the wolf I’d followed since I was six—came for me. Pulled me from the flames while his foster sister burned to charcoal behind us. He said nothing against me, even arranged the best care for my pregnancy. But on the fourth night after our daughter was born, he dragged us to the Blood Moon altar. He stood upon the High Rock, silver fur gleaming in the dark, and gave the order. His enforcers pinned me to the stone. He watched, silent and still, as they lit the pyre beneath our daughter’s body first—then mine. "You let Eira burn," he said, while the flames devoured us. "So you burn with what you loved." When I opened my eyes, I was back on the floor of our burning den.

When the news of my death on the battlefield, pinned to the pack's watchtower by silver arrows, reached my pack, my Alpha mate, Killian, simply laughed. He thought I was just jealous he was going to claim the Rogue, that I was faking my own death just to get his attention. "I was just trying to bring Valerie into the pack, and this is how she threatens me? With her own death?" "I left her with my most elite warriors. How could she possibly be dead!" "Tell her to get back here. I will claim Valerie, but after that, the title of Luna is still hers." Seven days later, he appeared before my family's home, carrying the ceremonial Luna circlet. He saw me in my white ceremonial dress, resting quietly beneath the white birch tree in the garden, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "I knew it. You were just giving me the silent treatment again." But in the next second, a pack elder's voice thundered: "Prepare the funeral pyre. Let us pay our final respects to our fallen warrior, Sloane!"

I thought my life was finally turning around. Hope was just within my reach. But when my dad's life hung in the balance, fate dragged me back to the edge. To save the person I love the most, I agreed to marry my cold-hearted, arrogant boss-a man who made one thing painfully clear: this is just a contract. There's no room for love. After a childhood filled with the pain and loss of my mom, my dad was my anchor, I couldn't afford to lose him. So I entered into a loveless marriage, bound to a man who buried his pain beneath a hardened shell. But as the days passed, I saw glimpses of his loneliness, his hidden vulnerability. Against my will, I started to fall for him, breaking the one rule he'd made: Never fall in love. Now, I face an impossible choice. If I give in to these forbidden feelings, I risk not only my heart but everything—my dad, my freedom, and the fragile connection we've begun to build. Can love survive when breaking the rules could shatter us both?