Held

A group of unwelcome visitors suddenly show up at a relative's funeral. The man in the lead claims to be my wife's boyfriend and wants to punish me. Apparently, I'm her fresh-faced lover. I don't want this to turn into a big deal because we're at a funeral, so I tell him we'll settle this after everything's over. Unexpectedly, my wife's boyfriend causes a huge fuss and instructs his men to pin me to the ground, wanting me to get on my knees and grovel at his feet. The rest of my relatives are unmoved by this. They watch as my legs get broken. I sneer and say, "Your girlfriend bought this urn for my mom. She spent a fortune on this, you know!" Sure enough, the man is furious. He clamors and wreaks havoc, ultimately smashing the urn to pieces. "How dare you parasites latch onto my girlfriend and try to exploit her! Don't think you're getting a cent out of her!" What he doesn't know is that the "mom" whose funeral is being held is my wife's mother and my mother-in-law. The funeral that is crashing is hers, and her urn is the one he's just smashed.

[ NOW ONGOING. ] ‘I can’t wait to make you mine, Lorelei.’ I read the text with a naughty smile. That’s Leo. The man I fell in love with via chat. I thought it was dumb to love someone you’ve never met, but look at me now. ‘I can’t wait for you to rip off my underwear.’ I texted and sent. Shivers ran down my spine while waiting for his response. Sexting through casual texts has become a thing I enjoy with him now. I bit my lips as I stared at our chat, anticipating. Just then, someone barged into my room. I put my phone down like I was doing something wrong. It was my mother. She has a worried look on her face. My father and stepmother walked in holding an envelope. I stared at them confused. “Pack your things and leave. You will get married on Thursday.” My father said cruelly. My brows creased and I tried to object but he held out the papers. “You don’t have a say in this Lorelei. I already sold you out.” What is he talking about? How can he arrange my own wedding? I knew I wasn’t my father’s favourite child, but this is next level hate. “Go and live with your husband. He bought you. And darling, there’s no turning back.” My stepmom added with a smile and threw the document on my bed. I picked it up and read the first page. ‘This contract seals the marriage between Ace Salvatore and Lorelei Stanley.’ Ace Salvatore? The man rumoured to be the devil himself.... My phone made a gentle ding and I looked at it. It was Leo. Tears cascaded my eyelids. How can I marry someone when I’m in love withsomeoneelse?

The bread knife stuck in Jon doe’s chest had an unusual pattern, I grabbed a camera from the nearest person and clicked a few pictures of the design “Email them to me.” I said as I was handing the camera back to them. It looked ancient and rare, not the usual bread knifes you’d find at our local stores here in Seattle. I looked up to find a detective watching my every move, it seemed that his one side of the face looked sunken in, similarly you only see this in people who don’t have teeth, which prompted me to look into his mouth, to find that all of his teeth had been pulled out. I sighed loudly and said “well, here goes our identification route of checking dental records, this body was left in the hopes that no identification will be made!” Craning my neck to have a look at the coroner who had just arrived on scene, I recalled working with her once before on another case when I first started as a rookie, Dr Leslie Adams is an expert in her field and one of the most professional and efficient woman. She looked down at me, and stated “Detective Rush you do know that the body you are looking at has been dead for more than 3 days, and also looks as if it was stored in a body freezer before being planted at this scene” I shook my head and realised that this is getting more intense by the second, “I hadn’t realised so Doc, that’s the reason we have you here, to help me solve the mystery “- I said whilst walking up to her, I held out my hand and gave her hand a firm handshake.

Mitzie Damos had always considered herself to be just another average woman. She came from what would be considered an average middle-class family with a father who was now retired from construction work, and a mother who was a now retired schoolteacher. Even though most would consider her spoiled by her parents, she maintained an honor roll student status from elementary through high school and held a high GPA in college. She was not so good to where she qualified as Valedictorian or any of that other genius student stuff, but she made her parents proud. Mitzie was an only child due to the loss of her twin during her mother's pregnancy. She'd heard her mother recount of how she had a very rare and rough pregnancy. Mitzie's twin just was not strong enough to maintain sharing their mother's womb. Doctors had believed that Mitzie had somehow absorbed her twin and amniotic sac, but when and how that occurred was a mystery. In her mother's first trimester there were 2 fetal heartbeats and 2 fetuses, but by the second trimester, there was one heartbeat and one fetus. It had remained a scientific enigma throughout Mitzie's 28 years of life. Mitzie had a successful career of her own. She married well, a CEO for one of the biggest corporate umbrella companies in the world, and life seemed to be grand. Until Mitzie's pregnancy revealed things about her life that would change it forever.

"Good morning, Stace," said Scott, briefly laying his hand on my shoulder in passing. I reflexively shrugged my shoulder out of his grasp, then cringed. A little too late to run from his touch now. A little too late to pretend I don't love it. "Good morning," I said, the words coming out as a squeak. A pained look flashed in Scott's eyes as he withdrew his hand from me. I wished I could stop myself from acting stupidly around him. I wanted to drown myself in my coffee cup. Things were such a mess. When he held me after we did it yesterday afternoon, I thought we were good. Then nightfall came and it suddenly hit me. We boned. After that, I couldn't look him in the eye, much less let him hold me all night. How naive was I? Of course we weren't good. We did it. Boning seemed like the wrong word for what happened. Did Scott Brady make love to me? I don't know how much sleep he got. We had our backs to each other all night. I barely got any, and yet I felt wide awake. "You okay, Stace?" Kenny asked, looking at me with concern. "You're not coming down with something, are you?" Scott and I looked at each other. Again, I was the first to look away. Dammit. "All good. Thanks Ken," I said, raising my coffee cup to my lips. Flashes of Scott's lips lightly brushing up against mine danced before my eyes and I stopped drinking, setting the mug down with a thump.

John Smith is but a common name given to a child actor prodigy. As he grows, he aspires to become the greatest actor the world has ever seen. However, a tragedy involving his parent's death made both him and his sister's downfall. On his way home from school, thinking about giving up his whole acting career, he’s looking at the ticket his sister gave him to an audition that made him dream one last time. There he meets Anastasia Frey, a girl who wears a mask of a "kind princess" who happens to be a guest judge at the said event. Seeing witness to John's superior acting skills among the other participants, she takes him by his collar to a secluded room, and guess what? Keeping her ulterior motives hidden, she offers him to become her husband and be the CEO of her grandmother's company. Sounds too good to be true, right? Can John, a virgin his whole life refuse such a seductive offer coming from a total knock-out beauty right in front of him? Even more, now that his sister is being held captive by this tyrant princess. Will his superior acting skills help him become the perfect husband and be the ultimate CEO? Can love actually bloom in such a charade relationship?

"Don't ever leave me, Jae," he slowly met Jaesung's eyes, and gently inched his face forward, observing his beautiful confused profile. "You're the only thing keeping me alive." All he could see was Jaesung as he took in a low deep breath and released a shaky minty breath on Jaesung's lips. "Only thing." ♡ Jaesung has a secret, one he has held on to for years. Many in his position would've probably let it go but he can't. Even if it's been over 10 years, he would still be in love with his boss's only son. Yihai is an angry child and he hates the fact that his father got custody of him, moving him an entirely different country. For a second time. However when Yihai meets Jaesung, the orange haired boy whose smile makes his insides go warm, Yihai doesn't dislike the idea anymore. Just the way he doesn't dislike the feelings arising for the older male.

This is the first book in an 8 book series of hockey romances. All 8 books have an underlying theme of ‘life after loss’. My first book is about Natasha, a librarian in her 40s who lost a sibling as a teenager and never healed, preventing her from ever finding/committing to love…and the hockey coach who is twice divorced and has given up his dreams of ever finding his match and having a family-until he meets Natasha…. Will Coach Alex's love (along with his superior skills in the sack) be enough to break down the walls Natasha has held firm for over two decades? The 8 books go through the different players of the team, all having their own versions of loss to overcome, with the captain (Adam) being married to a woman (who happens to be a teacher at Natasha's school) who has a terminal illness and will eventually commit suicide in book 6 and the series ends with Adam's own second chance love story….

Cynthia Perin is a 19-year-old art teacher.She is kidnapped by mysterious people and held in a cage in a villa as she walks home from school after class. When Cynthia wakes up, she discovers that her abductor is Carlo Ricci, a wandering young fool she once took in.Carlo regains all his memories and his identity as the head of Mafia North. He turns back into a man full of danger. Carlo takes advantage of his drunkenness to have forced sex with Cynthia in his cage. He violently takes Cynthia's first time. Carlo hates Cynthia for treating him like an abandoned dog and abandoning him at will. He had loved his master-Cynthia Perin so faithfully. Now it's his turn to trap her in the prison of his possessiveness and torture her... And Cynthia is planning to inform Antonio, her former crush, to come to her rescue ...... "I can't give you the freedom to leave with another man! That's my bottom line Cynthia. leave me and I'll kill him!" ...... "No! Don't touch there!" Cynthia shrieked, it was the secret garden in the deepest part of her body.Cynthia could not struggle out of his grip, fear and terror taking over inside. Her sensitive body trembled uncontrollably beneath him. "Cynthia you ARE mine!!!" Carlo muttered in a drunken slur, but his hands kept moving. The warm touch enveloped his icy heart tightly.It was as if this was the only way he could gain what little security he had left. Dangerous lust burns beneath their bellies and the sound of the gang betraying gunfire seems surrounds Carlo. It didn't matter, as long as Cynthia was entirely under his control. It didn't matter...it didn't matter...

Marriage was the happiest thing that happened in her life, but she didn't think that it would also be the nightmare in her life. She did everything to beg him not to leave her, but he just pushed her away and threw her away like just garbage. So, it occurred to her to commit suicide, but a man suddenly came into her life. He held out one hand to her and offered her a help in exchange for her heart. Will she accept his sincerity to her, Or will she just reject him?