Duke Library Hours Novels & Stories

Rachel Martínez is drowning. Shuffling multiple jobs, settling debts, and taking care of her sick brother, whose failing heart needs a surgery she can't afford, she's out of options. When the hospital gives her forty-eight hours to come up with twenty thousand euros or lose Benjamín forever, she's desperate. Then a stranger walks into the bar where she works. A billionaire tech CEO who left Spain years ago to escape his family. He's back, and his dying grandmother has one wish: to see him happy with someone real before she dies. Joseph makes Rachel an offer: fifty thousand euros for one night. Just show up to his grandmother's birthday dinner and keep him company.

It was the day of our wedding trip, and my fiancee only hurried over to the airport at the last minute. Right before we boarded, she got an urgent message from her male secretary. "Sorry, honey. There's a big project that needs my attention. Just showed up. You go ahead without me. I'll catch up once I'm done with work." It was a shame, but work was important. "Yeah, I get it." Then, I tore up the flight ticket after my fiancee was gone. My fiancee talking about a big project when I just bought the whole company hours earlier? Well, I'd like to see who was the idiot who worked around their new boss to talk to someone who did not exist.

Emma Harrington never dreamed of stealing her twin sister’s groom. But when Sophia runs away hours before the wedding, Emma is forced to walk down the aisle in her place to save her family from ruin. Alexander Voss, the ruthless billionaire CEO, only agreed to the marriage for a multi-billion-dollar merger. On their wedding night, he discovers he has married the wrong sister. Bound by unbreakable contracts and family pressure, Alexander cannot send Emma away without destroying everything he built. Trapped in a marriage he never wanted, Alexander’s cold fury slowly turns into burning obsession as Emma’s kindness, intelligence, and quiet strength melt the ice around his heart. What began as the wrong bride becomes the only woman he cannot live without.

When hedge fund mogul Marcus Hale serves his wife Valentina with divorce papers, he believes he's trading her in for a shinier upgrade. What he doesn't know: the devoted woman he's discarding—the one who overlooked his coldness, his absences, his wandering eye—is the sole heir to the Reyes family's sprawling motorcycle empire, the most powerful MC dynasty on the East Coast. For seven years, Valentina buried her roots, reinventing herself as the perfect society wife while her real world waited back in Blackridge. Now, with her grandfather's health failing and the Reyes empire leaderless, she's forced to return home—straight into the orbit of Duke Callahan, the club VP who built himself from nothing after she left, and who never stopped waiting for her to find her way back. *Some men trade gold for glitter and call it an upgrade. Some women have to lose a husband to remember who they were born to be. In Blackridge, the most dangerous roads don't run on asphalt—they run straight through the heart.*

“You are driving me crazy” the stranger murmured, his voice low and strained. “I need you right now.” “Then take it, take the wheel and give me a good ride” I whispered with reckless abandon. “It seems your p**sy is also sobbing?” His breath skimmed my neck, slow and deliberate as he slipped a finger into it. “Fuck me already” I begged. This sin tested like everything I vowed not to commit but too late, I've lost control. For five years, Camille Christopher Hayes played the role of the obedient wife to a narcissistic, cheating husband who stripped her of her voice, her dreams, and her freedom. Until the night she snapped. And ended up having a one night stand with a stranger in the dark. A man who turned out to be her husband’s powerful boss. and his secret stepfather. The almighty Duke Smith. Older. Ruthless and devastatingly irresistible—with a sprinkle of scandal, who was also rumored to be impotent. Yet one forbidden night shatters every lie, leaving the allegedly barren Camille pregnant and entangled in a passion powerful enough to destroy empires.

Billionaire CEO Damien Voss hasn’t slept peacefully in three years — not since the car accident that broke him. When his assistant drapes a forgotten lavender-and-strawberry scented blanket over him, Damien finally finds rest… until the precious scent is washed away forever. Desperate and unraveling, he turns to the blanket’s owner: Liora Kane, his assistant’s younger sister. With a single threat her brother’s job or her compliance Damien forces Liora into a contract: eight hours per night in his bed, nothing more. Her days remain her own. Six months only. He tells himself he is being reasonable. He only needs her scent to sleep. Nothing else. But Damien Voss was once the city’s most sought-after bachelor tall, devastatingly handsome, and powerfully built. Even after the accident, his striking looks and commanding presence remain. And though he has never been with a woman, he quickly learns how to use every inch of his body to seduce the innocent woman lying beside him. Night after night, Liora lies stiff beside the domineering CEO as he buries his face in her neck, inhaling her like a drug. What begins as clinical necessity slowly turns carnal. His touches grow bolder. His hips start to rock against her in the dark. He rubs himself against her thigh or stomach until he shudders and spills in his boxers, whispering filthy praises against her skin while she fights the unwanted heat building inside her. The contract promised safety. It promised only eight hours and nothing sexual unless she consents. Yet Damien’s obsession deepens with every shared breath. Jealousy ignites. Possession takes hold. And Liora finds herself dangerously seduced by the broken, beautiful man who needs her more than air a man willing to break every rule to make her crave him.

Selene Morie watches as the world starts crumbling, the stars are falling and people were dying. She was ready to die that moment, or maybe she indeed died that time but then she heard a voice asking her If the world is ending what would she do? She answered consciously and before she knew it, she entered a white blank space and was told that she can redeem her world and past life back if she can successfully finish the mission that will be given to her. It is to prevent a world from collapsing. •• When Selene Morie became Selene Aphelion also known as the Kingdom's moon and the Duke's daughter, she knew things aren't as easy as she expected. The moment she woke up, she appeared in a mysterious world of Immortals, Sorcery, Beasts, and War. She was told that her mission is to prevent the world from collapsing, how can she do that if she can't even save her own world? Furthermore, she became the destined woman of an immortal. Her soulmate is the same man who will declare war in the future. To prevent that tragic end, she must tame and unblackened the notorious Monarch of the Underworld, Azrael.

Elin was supposed to marry the crown prince and become the queen. That's what her father the duke had always told her, and that's what everyone believed. That is until the day the crown prince mysteriously loses his life in a tragic event leaving Elin drowning in grief, anger, and guilt. Fingers point out at her in suspicion as the next in line for the throne. As the conflict between noble parties began she's thrown into a fight for succession with her cousin and childhood friend, Louis. That's when the king interfered, sending Elin to study with her cousin at the royal academy postponing the announcement of the next heir, and giving her the perfect chance to realize her goals. Taking that as her chance, Elin begins to orchestrate her plans to investigate who killed her fiance while looking for a way to let her cousin win the succession battle. If only they would let her step down from the throne. She didn't expect that Louis too had his own plans in all this madness. And that she would meet someone else who would make her reconsider her decision and shake the fragile balance she was standing on.

Before Mom's surgery, Mason—yeah, the Mason Leonhart from one of Brighton's big-name families—suddenly "had" to go on a business trip and couldn't be at the hospital. A few hours later, Judy Yeager blasted a video on social. There was Mason, Mr. Born-With-A-Silver-Spoon, recycling bottles with her. Caption: [If we work hard together, no hardship can scare us.] I couldn't resist. [Future Leonhart heir, worth ten billion, still helping his girl recycle bottles to trade in for cash—heartwarming.] It vanished in seconds. My phone lit up. Mason's voice? Ice cold. "Shiloh Harrington, what was that? Call Judy. Tell her you were joking." I laughed. "Keep playing your little poor-boy cosplay without me." Hung up. Three days till the divorce cooling-off ended. Then Mason could be the broke man he was pretending to be.

In order to protect my father, I was tortured for ten hours, but my father was busy celebrating his adopted daughter’s eighteenth birthday. With my dying breath, I called my father and said, “Dad, it’s my birthday today. Could you wish me a happy birthday?” “You crazy monster! You got your mother killed in order to celebrate your birthday! How could you still ask me to celebrate your birthday? You should just die!” With that said, he hung up. The next day, my corpse was placed in different flower pots and put in front of a police station. My father was in charge of inspecting my corpse, and he could immediately tell that the murderer did this for revenge. What they did to me was cruel and made a mockery of the police’s authority. But he did not manage to tell that the deceased was the daughter he hated.