Duke Library Hours Novels & Stories

When my family went bankrupt, I was drugged and sent to the bed of my childhood sweetheart, Craig Kennedy. From that night, he brought women home every evening, tossing a divorce agreement in my face. "Beg me, and I won't leave you." He stood above me, watching as I humbled myself to dust, pleading to preserve our marriage. He even ordered me to kneel in his office and massage the feet of his secretary, Lucia Langston. On the day the Moore Group needed ten million to survive, she blocked all my desperate calls for help. I waited 24 hours, watching my family's legacy collapse and my parents take their lives. Craig, with Lucia at his side, entered the house and threw the signed divorce agreement at me again. "You wanted money to save your family, didn't you? Beg me, and as long as I don't divorce you, no one will touch them." But I signed it with calm despair. "Don't bother. We no longer need your help."

Ivanna graduated in Harvard with the course about businesses, her parents wanted her to exactly cope about their business. She was having a party in Harvard with her best friend when her parents called her in the middle of the night that she badly needs to go home. She asked her parents the reason why, they didn't tell her. Early in the morning, she packed up her things and her best friend Ivy Simmons also help her. She took an early flight; she was so nervous what’s the reason behind. She had arrived in London after few hours, her parents sent her their driver to fetch her up. Upon arriving at their home after how many minutes, she was shocked to see people inside their house. There she met Ashford, her future husband. She was so surprised, and her parents tried to explain at her. Ashford doesn’t want to marry her also but it was just their parents’ agreement. After a month, they already got married. They accepted their parents' intuitions for them, they got to live in their own house which their parents give them as a gift.

I never thought the cocky tattooed Hockey captain I hooked up with in Las Vegas would become my stepbrother. His name was Damon—arrogant, dangerously sexy, and built like pure sin. After my boyfriend cheated on me, I met him at a club. Within hours, he had me in luxurious hotel suite, fucking me senseless against the glass window overlooking the glittering city. One wild night of raw, filthy pleasure with no promises. A week later, my mom revealed she had secretly married and we were moving into her new husband’s luxurious mansion. The second I stepped inside, my stomach dropped. There stood Damon in nothing but low grey sweatpants, his powerful tattooed body on full display. The same man who had bent me over while I moaned his name. We agreed to bury our Vegas hookup and pretend it never happened. But living under the same roof makes it impossible to forget. Damon is strictly off limits. Yet I can’t stop craving my forbidden stepbrother.

I was hired to eliminate the untouchable. Matt Davis, the ruthless leader of Lawson City. I took my shot, but instead of hitting him, he caught the bullet with his hand. At that moment, my existence as a ghost ended. What followed was a swift and terrifying punishment: hours of forced intimacy that broke both my training and my will. I pleaded for death, but Matt wouldn’t grant it. He claimed my submission was the sweetest thing he’d ever known and swore I would never leave his side, chaining me to his dark world forever. Now, I live in luxury, spoiled by the man who broke my virginity, fighting off the pain of my violation and the shock of his protection. The organization that hired me knows I failed and is coming for me, convinced I have the key to defeating their obstacle. They want me dead, and Matt, my captor, is my only shield. In the middle of this war, I realized the monster who shattered me is the only one who truly sees me. I confessed my love, and now, bound by chains and vows, we fight side-by-side.

One night. No names. No lights. No mercy. Elias Hawthorne walked into that room seeking a distraction, a way to escape the crushing weight of his own expectations. He walked out undone in ways he still cannot name. The man who claimed him in the shadows was skilled, relentless, and completely anonymous. Until the blindfold came off. Damien Blackwood. His father's most hated rival. The very man whose corporate empire Elias had helped dismantle only hours before. Now, they are forced into the same high-stakes boardrooms, the same private jet cabins, and the same impossible orbit. Elias knows he should walk away, yet he cannot stop returning to the dark. Every single time, he tells himself it will be the last. But it never is. Damien isn't just shattering Elias's control behind closed doors; he is methodically dismantling everything Elias was engineered to be—his loyalty, his silence, and his perfectly calculated life. And the most terrifying part? Elias is letting him. Two rival empires. One explosive secret. What begins as a volatile game of mutual destruction slowly transforms into the only thing left worth saving.

Amanda Light, I am a normal girl, but the thing is, I don't live in a normal town. I don't go to a normal high school; I go to a high school of werewolves because, you guessed it, I'm human. Also, I get bullied by the Stone Rock Fab 4. They call me humi, plus they are gorgeous. They told everyone at the school not to talk to me, including my cousin Arica, Xavier, and Xavier, one of the Fab 4. He is best friends with the demon himself, Sage Stone, the Future Alpha of the Stone Rock Pack. So now it's been a week since school started. I am heading to the Library, but just as I was walking down the hallway. I heard a growl, then when I look up I saw the most blueish grey eyes I have ever seen it was Sage Stone, and the next minute I felt being lifted up in the air and onto his shoulder, he then shoved me in the Janitors closet I feel heavy breathing on my neck .."humi I mean girl" he says but then I wasn't focusing on him I was focusing on the locked door I was scared of him now then he says "you better not be talking to other guys " then he slammed me in the wall and says something in my ear stop wearing slutty clothes and showing your bits no one wants to see that and look at the filth" then I look down at myself then thought I just wore jeans also a T-shirt. Still, I look up at Sage; he has his hands on my hips, growling. He is clenching his fingers. It was hurting, then I said, " Get off, Sage, now.

Emma Scott has always had it all—wealth, beauty, and power. As the privileged daughter of a business tycoon, she ruled her university years with confidence, arrogance, and an undeniable presence. But beneath her sharp tongue and ruthless attitude was an obsession she never dared to name—Killian Thomas, the one man who never bowed to her. Killian, a hardworking scholarship student from a middle-class background, despised Emma for the torment she put him through. She was cruel, entitled, and always seemed to have a target on his back. But when one heated argument after class turns into something far more physical, their hatred transforms into an addiction neither of them can resist. What starts as secret, no-strings-attached encounters after lectures spirals into something far more dangerous. They become study partners, but their breaks are filled with untamed passion. One night, they get locked inside the library and spend the entire night indulging in their darkest desires. Their obsession only grows stronger. Upon graduation, Killian is offered a job at Emma’s father’s company, the very place where Emma works. Their sinful rendezvous continue in secret—stolen moments in offices, forbidden trysts during business trips. They think they’re careful, but when Emma’s father catches them in a compromising position overseas, their affair is exposed. Faced with an ultimatum, Emma refuses to back down. She confesses that her bullying was always a twisted way of masking her love for Killian. She threatens to leave everything behind if her father dares to fire him. Forced to confront their true feelings, Emma and Killian finally make their relationship official. But even after marriage, their hunger for each other remains insatiable—whether at home, at work, or in places they should never be. Their passion is reckless. Their love is ruthless. And their temptation?

Talia grew up without trusting anyone but herself to live. With no father figure to look up to and a clinically depressed mother who keeps on betraying her, Talia crawls her way to the top of the social chain to survive. But upon one drunken night, she meets her terrible end. Just like that, Talia loses all she worked hard for, or so she thought. When she wakes up, she becomes a duke’s eldest daughter in a medieval era where alliances and conspiracies dictate a noble’s future and where love is a luxury that will lead anyone to ruin. No matter how twisted the world she is pushed into, Talia is determined to live long. She realizes that she is given a second chance to live – or not. Reality slaps her hard when she learns that she is now inside the body of a sixteen-year-old villain character of the Netflix series that she binge-watched, “Thorny Crown”! Talia, who is now the infamous Lady Victoria, entered a popular yet twisted Netflix series two years before the plot started. And in that plot, the character of Lady Victoria is meant to die like cannon fodder for the female lead! Talia refuses to die again. And this time, she is going to extend her helping hand to another side character, the second prince of the story, Prince Cory. She decides to be the queen and defy the plot called destiny with the king of her choosing. In an era of deceit and conspiracies, will she be able to keep her head as she walks the thorny path of a villain? With her head on the line, will she be able to control her blooming feelings for the pawn that she has chosen?

Victor’s private jet has barely cleared the runway when Amelia gives in to the one man she’s never allowed to touch: her husband’s son. She has everything money can buy, except the intense, raw passion her body craves. Ethan has the fierce intensity that finally gives it to her. For nineteen stolen days they turn the penthouse into their personal playground: the marble island where she loses herself in his embrace, the glass shower where he holds her dripping wet, the marital bed where they lose all control night after night while Victor is away thirty thousand feet in the air. She was a bored trophy wife. Now she’s obsessed, counting the hours until her husband leaves again, because only Ethan can break through her walls, ruin her composure, and make her forget she ever belonged to anyone else. Nineteen days. No limits. No mercy. And when Victor comes home, she’ll greet him with the memory of Ethan still burning inside her, smiling like the perfect wife.

June died the night her husband betrayed her. She came home pregnant to find him in bed with her stepbrother. Hours later, a bullet tore through her in a random shooting. She felt her baby slip away. She should have died. Instead, she woke up in someone else’s body. The face in the mirror wasn’t hers. Everyone called her Chloe. And the man who shot her? Nikolai, who was cold and ruthless. Their marriage was a business transaction. He used her body without tenderness, spoke to her with cruelty, and made it clear she meant nothing. He was still mourning his dead fiancée. He had no idea his wife wasn’t Chloe at all. Trapped in a stranger’s life, June had to survive in a world of wealth and secrets. She had to find her real body. She had to pretend. But things got complicated. Because secrets don’t stay buried, allies become lovers, and the man who destroyed her life is about to discover exactly who’s been sleeping in his bed.