Lock-on Love

"Watch out for your expressions, Everhart. People might start thinking you've got a thing for me.""No one would assume I'm that desperate, Sterling."***After transferring as a scholarship student to the prestigious Elysium University, Lily Everhart is determined to pursue her dream of becoming a geneticist. However, her orderly life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Adrian Sterling, the charismatic campus bad boy, igniting a rivalry between them and disrupting Lily's plans for an uneventful academic year.Amidst the challenges of university life, she grapples with conflicting emotions about Adrian while also discovering that Elysium isn't what it seems.Can she finish her remaining years of college unharmed? Or will money and power prove to be everything that matters? Will Lily and Adrian overcome their differences, or will it push them further apart?Fragments of Elysium: Love on Campus is created by Amelie Bergen, an eGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

In the fifth year of our long-distance relationship, I secretly quit my job without telling my boyfriend, Ian Gambino, and travelled more than a thousand kilometers to South Bordington. I wanted to give him a surprise: to get registered and married to him. He worked as a bodyguard for the biggest mafia Don in South Bordington. His job kept him extremely busy, and we were often out of contact. The last time we spoke, he said he had to accompany his boss to an underground auction for security. The job would last three months. Relying solely on the address that I remembered, I managed to find the place. When the guards at the entrance heard that I was looking for Ian Gambino, their expressions turned a little strange. "Don Ian is still busy. Please wait a moment," one of them said. I froze. Don Ian? Before I could process what he meant, I heard him whispering to the person next to him, "So, she's the one that the Don keeps outside? How did she end up here? If Donna Jeanine finds out about this, she's going to cause a huge scene." I was just about to explain to them that they had the wrong person when a woman in a custom-made evening gown walked in. The staff immediately fell silent and addressed her respectfully, "Donna Jeanine." She was on the phone, her voice coquettishly sweet. "Honey, I'm here. You promised you'd come with me and the baby for the medical checkup this time!" From the other end of the call came a deep male voice, filled with affection. "Darling, it'll be over soon. Go take a rest in the VIP lounge. Don't tire yourself out." I had listened to that voice for five years. It belonged to Ian Gambino.

Selene's whole world ended the day she walked in on her husband and the man she gave up everything for, cheating with not just anyone but his own step sister. Filled with anger and pain, she decides to drop her usual good girl act and drown her sorrows. What she doesn't expect is that her attempt to forget leads her straight into the clutches of Aries Dimitriou, a reclusive and crazily wealthy man whose eyes were so cold, it sent goosebumps all over her skin. Before she can take a breath, he suddenly proposes a deal. Live in his home, cook and care for his three troubled children and earn a fortune. At first, she wants nothing of such a shoddy deal but the moment she finds that he is the fiancee of none other than the same woman who ruined her life, she accepts it without any hesitation. Now, trapped in a mansion so ridiculously large it seems like a maze, while also surrounded by mean little brats out for her life and an emotionless man whose gaze both scares and makes her body burn, Selene is starting to think that her little petty revenge plot might not be as easy as she thought. As if she doesn't have enough to worry about, she still has to deal with the Dimitriou crazy family members who think their all that just because they are rolling in wealth.

Vienna Carter’s life is a living hell and her home is Earth’s chapter of Tartarus. But when her husband goes on a month-long business trip, she seizes the opportunity to know something other than her world of pain. She joins the passengers on Queen Odette, a cruise ship that promises her the best month of her life. As she takes in the elegance of the ship and is pampered by their first-class services, she starts to believe that the promise will be fulfilled. But her hopes of a perfect vacation are thrown overboard when she finds out the man staying in the suite next to hers is none other than the love of her life,Ex-boyfriend and reason for all her suffering. Only a psychopath would choose to be hunched over a desk, working for hours on end over the deckchairs of a luxurious cruise ship, watching the sunset on the Atlantic Horizon. Hans Griffin is that psychopath. He craves his office’s cold glass walls and despises his luxurious suite aboard Queen Odette and is beginning to despise his best friend for convincing him to do this. Work helped him forget his demons but this ship is made to tear down the walls he spent the last two years rebuilding and after meeting the woman staying in the suite next to his, he fears those walls might be reduced to nothing but piles of rubble before the month is over. How will Hans endure one month with just a wall separating him and the woman who scarred him? How will Vienna keep her distance from the one man she’s forbidden to be with when she’s stuck on this cruise with him? But most importantly, what secrets will be revealed before the thirty days are over?

The day before the spacecraft launch, I am anonymously reported for concealing a mental illness and lose my qualification to board. After being confined in a psychiatric hospital for three years, my husband, Simon Bergman, who is now a decorated figure in the aerospace field, personally brings me home. "I had no choice but to send you there. I even applied to be demoted just to bring you back. Let's just live our lives well from now on," Simon says. Burdened by guilt for affecting his career, I spend the rest of my life carefully taking care of him and busying myself in the kitchen as a dutiful wife. But before I die, my daughter finds the letter accusing me of having a mental condition—it is written in my husband's own hand. She also discovers decades of correspondence between him and a deceased war buddy's widow named Charmaine Marlowe. In those letters, he writes that to fulfill his buddy's dying wish to take care of Charmaine, he fabricates a false mental illness record and inserts it into my astronaut application. As a result, I was sent to the psychiatric hospital, and my position was taken by her. The glass shatters, and the sharp fragments pierce me, like they are stabbing into my heart. I was supposed to be the one to go to space. But my husband sacrificed my chance so that another woman could have it! I die in despair. When I open my eyes again, I am back on the day of the astronaut selection for the manned spacecraft launch. This time, when Simon offers to help submit my application, I refuse to let him.

Clarkson Roberts is America's youngest shipping billionaire tycoon, ruling his empire with ruthless efficiency. The world views him as immovable, unstoppable—yet behind the button-down collars and billion-dollar deals lies a man tangled in secrets. Jonah Jones is a brilliant marine architect with intransigent principles and a wall of debt. Assigned to revamp Clarkson's private yacht fleet, Jonah sees trouble ahead with his impossible new boss—but not lust. What begins as a sparring over ship designs and price tags quickly ignites into a dangerous passion. But when corporate scandals, shareholder intimidation, and past treachery are thrown into the mix, Clarkson and Jonah must decide: can their love be strong enough to weather a storm that could consume them both?

On the six-year anniversary of my relationship with my girlfriend, Sheila Loom, I buy some groceries with the intention to surprise her with a home-cooked meal. After I'm done, I head over to Sheila's place right away. That's when the reel I was watching automatically skips to the next one. It's a live stream where people call in to discuss legal matters. A familiar feminine voice drifts to my ears at that moment. "My boyfriend shelled out 500 thousand dollars to put me through school. I've already paid ten thousand back to him. "At first, I wanted to clear the debt before breaking up with him, but I don't want to wait any longer. If he insists on taking me to court after the breakup, can I still pay the debt off slowly?" Almost immediately, comments flood into the comments section, chewing her out and calling her a heartless wench. But the voice replies calmly, "If I truly were heartless, I wouldn't have paid him back to begin with. I no longer have feelings for him. Are you saying that I should sacrifice the rest of my life just so I can pay 500 thousand dollars back to him?" My heart skips a beat at that moment. It's true that I've spent 500 thousand dollars putting Sheila through school over the years. But I feel that I'm overthinking it, seeing as she's never brought up the matter of wanting to pay me back before. After I call Sheila repeatedly for half an hour, she finally answers my latest phone call. At the same time, the woman's phone call that's connected to the live stream is cut off. "It's my birthday today, Sheila—" "Have you secretly come looking for me again? Didn't we agree that we'll only meet up after you've successfully gotten into college?" I don't get to finish the rest of my sentence. Suddenly, I catch a glimpse of the notebook sitting on the corner of Sheila's table. The first page shows "debt repayment ledger". Some of the details are as shown. "The SAT study materials I bought for him: 188 dollars." "The Uber fees I've paid for him: 35 dollars." "The cologne I've gifted him on his birthday: 380 dollars." "Total: ten thousand dollars now paid."

Pertamakali melihatnya aku terpesona. Kedua kali aku menatap bola mata indah itu aku tahu aku jatuh cinta. Pada dia yang menarik aku dari pusat tempat ku berpijak. Namun sayang aku tidak berani mengatakan kepada gadis pemilik senyum manis itu. Kenapa ? Karena aku lumpuh. Aku memang kaya, dari keluarga terpandang, namun mampukah aku memiliki tulus cintanya ? Dengan kondisi diriku yang cacat ini.

Je regardai le téléphone cherchant à comprendre ce qui n’a pas marché. On s’entendait tellement Yama et moi. C'était ma meilleure amie et maintenant c’est limite si on peut se parler quelques minutes sans que ça vire à la dispute. Je l’ai encouragée quand elle sortait avec son mari alors elle pourrait en faire de même pour moi. J’ai quand même le droit de passer du temps avec Salif autant qu’elle en passe avec son mari. Pourquoi les gens ne peuvent pas comprendre que j'aime cet homme et que j'ai besoin de lui ? »

"Merciless and driven, billionaire Anthony Bertram built his company from the ground-up, dedicating every waking moment to creating one of the most powerful corporations in the world. The last thing he has time for is romance. He almost lost everything when his first marriage fell apart. Disillusioned from his divorce, Anthony knows from experience that love only makes you weak. When a mix-up results in a woman showing up at his supposedly private cabin during his vacation, all of his plans are completely upended. This woman is just what he doesn’t need: beautiful, spirited, and so maddening that suddenly all Anthony wants is to make her his. A free-spirited artist and activist, Thea Younger wants to leave the world a better place. When she arrives at the cabin she’s booked for a much-needed vacation and finds Anthony Bertram there—a man who represents everything she’s against—she refuses to let him intimidate her into leaving. When bad weather forces the pair to stay in the cabin together for a week, though, Thea soon discovers that the man behind the mask is no heartless monster. Anthony is all flesh-and-blood man, and one whose kisses she can’t resist. Desire flames between them until they both surrender to exquisite temptation. But as secrets loom over Thea, she must look inside her heart and find the courage to take a chance on love."