Nanashima Kiss Him Not Me

My husband, Zachary Larson, and I are holding a welcome dinner for my sister, Julia Scott. When someone asks what Julia's greatest regret is, she raises her glass and looks at Zachary dreamily. "It's probably the time I wasn't brave enough to keep his child." Everyone starts to whisper amongst themselves. I tighten my grip on the pregnancy check-up report I'm about to reveal to them. My stomach twists with the emotions swirling in my head. Julia suddenly returns to her senses and chuckles. "I was just kidding. We were only friends with benefits, so don't take it to heart, Queenie. He married you, so you're the one he loves."

After going bankrupt, I do the unthinkable for my gravely ill younger brother, Ricky Ashford, and climb into the bed of Damien Blackwood, the notorious mafia boss. When his smoldering gaze sweeps over my shirtless body, I stay perfectly still. The reason is that I'm afraid to set off this infamous man in front of me. However, the next instant, his lips are everywhere on my skin, and the night dissolves into a wild, reckless blur. For three years, I endure every torment in his bed. Thoughts of escape and even suicide cross my mind, but the fact that my brother is fighting for his life in the ICU keeps me going. One day, I accidentally overhear him speaking with his childhood friend, Chloe Sterling. "How long do you plan to toy with your enemy's daughter? You're not falling for her, are you?" "Don't be absurd." "And what about her sickly brother?" "He died long ago." The last thread holding me together snaps. Now, there is no reason left to live. As I prepare to end my life by burning charcoal, tears well up in his eyes as he pleads for me not to leave.

During a charity gala, my boyfriend bids on a pair of matching watches but gives one of them to his true love. The media excitedly capture the scene and ask, "You bought a million-dollar watch without even batting an eye, Mr. Loewe. You've been single all these years—is it time for you to make an official announcement on your relationship status?" Everyone off stage applauds him, and I join them. I give him my blessings for his so-called announcement. To make it up to me, he attends my birthday celebration. Yet he pushes me into the cake to make his true love happy. Unbeknownst to him, there's a steel rack in the cake to keep it steady. I end up bloodied and on the brink of death.

At my coming-of-age ceremony, I confessed my feelings to Uncle Daniel, who wasn't blood-related to me. Yet, he sent me overseas to study. Later on, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. The headaches were brutal. Left without a choice, I turned to him for help. Yet, his first love accused me of being wasted abroad. Said I got into stuff. Claimed my pain were just withdrawals. He believed her and dragged me back home. He locked me up in the family's abandoned villa atop the mountains, guards watching me around the clock. With treatment delayed, my headaches grew worse. It was a complete nightmare. One night, I couldn't take it anymore. I quietly slipped out of the window and jumped. One year after my death, he finally remembers me.

On the eve of the wedding, my fiancé's adopted sister was drugged at a bar and called for help. Her body was burning with fever. I grabbed my fiancé as he was about to rush out. "Take her to the hospital. Doctors have proper antidotes." Julian Zane slapped me for suggesting that. There was a savagery in his eyes I had never seen before. "Nora, do you have any conscience at all? Elena is suffering a fate worse than death, and you're still nitpicking?" He yanked off his tie and spoke in a hoarse tone. "She's the sister I've cherished since childhood. I will save her even if I have to sacrifice myself to do it." I watched him undo his shirt buttons with his trembling fingers. Elena, flushed and feverish, fell into his arms. The private room door slammed shut in front of me. The sounds of passion inside struck me like blow after blow, shattering five years of blind devotion into dust.

Behind the glamorous facade of a billionaire marriage, a toxic game of cat and mouse is unfolding. Maya Perkins thought she had it all - a jaw-droppingly handsome husband, Larry Jonathan, a life of luxury, and a love that would last forever. But when Larry's obsession with Brandy Owens, the seductive widow of his late friend (and campus sweetheart!), threatens to destroy everything, Maya is forced to make the one phone call she swore she'd never make. Lies, deceit, and betrayal collide in a shocking tale of love, lust, and the true cost of perfection. Will Maya survive the wreckage of her marriage, or will she become the latest casualty of a love that's gone lethally wrong?

"This is what you wanted, isn’t it, little hunter?” he growled, flipping me onto my back like I weighed nothing. His hand fisted in my hair, dragging a broken moan from my throat. “Next time you put a blade to my throat… use it.” All my life, I’ve been trained as a hunter—my father’s perfect weapon. Born into a bloodline sworn to protect the human world from the monsters they can't even recognize. I thought I knew what monsters were… until the ancient, ruthless, obsessive Lycan King marked me as his mate — to break the witches’ curse that chained him to centuries of torment. One bite ruined everything — binding my body, mind, and soul to him. My touch quiets his endless agony — and he’d burn the world to keep it. Now I’ll play his wicked game — and turn his greatest weapon against him: me. I’ll remind him who’s really hunting who. But what happens when vengeance tastes like hunger? When I crave the monster I was born to hunt? When every lie my father hammered into me becomes just another chain — binding me to the beast I can’t let go? Now every step into his world drags me deeper — into secrets I was never meant to see, a darkness I was trained to destroy, and a forbidden life I crave more than my own salvation.

After serving five years in prison for Luke Dashwood, I walked out a free man… only to be handed divorce papers. It turned out his first love was terminally ill, and the dude's final wish was to become his family before he died. Swallowing my grief, I signed my name on the divorce papers. But when I reappeared hand in hand with another man, panic flashed across Luke's face. Suddenly, he wanted me back.

Jace Thorne—my childhood crush—crashed a car with me. I walked away fine. He "lost his memory." Plot twist: my dead grandma's soul moved in. "Jace is faking amnesia again to mess with my sweet granddaughter. If I were alive, I'd break his legs myself!" I blinked. Hard. Grandma's voice wouldn't shut up. "In her past life, Demi was miserable. Jace left her to rot while he partied with that Stafford girl. Had a heart attack, and he was lighting birthday candles. Trash!" Then came the kicker: "Your grandpa's letting you pick your fiancé. Don't even think about Jace. Pick Leroy. That boy's actually decent." Right on cue, Grandpa strolled into the hospital with the elder squad, slapped down pics of four legacy heirs, and told me to choose. I didn't even blink. Picked Leroy Leighton—my childhood nemesis turned fiancé. Because yeah, I'm a grandma's girl to the core. If she said Jace Thorne didn't love me, then I was so done.

“I don't care if she’s human,” Alaric growled, his golden eyes flashing with a predatory light. “She is mine. And I will tear down anyone—wolf or man—who tries to take her.” Juniper didn't believe in monsters. As a simple herbalist living on the edge of the Iron-Wood, her biggest worry was making rent and keeping her plants alive. But when encounters a midnight-black wolf in the forest, her quiet life is shattered. Alaric Sterling is the Alpha of the Iron-Wood Pack. Cold, powerful, and under pressure to choose a high-ranking mate, he has spent years resisting the council’s demands. He didn’t want a political match. He wanted a miracle. He found it in Juniper. The problem? Juniper has no idea werewolves exist. To her, Alaric is just a mysterious, possessive stranger with eyes that seem to see right through her. One bond. Two different worlds. As rival packs scent a weakness and a jealous she-wolf plots her downfall, Juniper must decide: Can a human truly survive the kiss of a wolf? Or will the shadows of the Iron-Wood consume her?