Placating Gesture Novels & Stories

My husband, Daniel Thompson, looked down on me. I was just a farmer's daughter in his eyes, and he never loved the son I gave birth to. It wasn’t until our baby turned 100 days old that he held him for the first time. Then, one day, his first love, Claire Matthews, came back to the city. That night at dinner, Daniel, who was always cold and distant, finally smiled. He even reached across the table and placed a piece of meat on Noah’s plate. Noah beamed all evening, clutching onto that tiny gesture like it was a treasure. Just before bed, he whispered to me, "Mom, do you think he likes me now… even just a little?" I wrapped him in my arms, tears blurring my vision as I gently shook my head. "No, sweetheart. It’s because the woman he truly loves is back. It’s time for us to go."

"I've known you forever, Mathia. I can read your every move, every gesture, every reaction, and every word. You don't need to say it out loud because you're mine, and that's all that matters. Your feelings for me don't change the fact that you belong to me." ~ Draken Luzevia. ---- Mathia and Draken were deeply in love, and fate seemed to have destined them to be inseparable. However, life had other plans, and their relationship bore fruit in the form of a child growing within Mathia's womb. Instead of joy, Mathia felt overwhelming sadness and a heavy heart when Draken abruptly left her. Uncertain about her future, she found strength in her determination to care for their child. As time passed, the inevitable happened - the two were reunited, and Draken laid eyes on his child with his former lover. But what drove Draken to abandon his child and the mother of his child in the first place?

"You should rest." I said, my voice embarrassingly breathless. "Probably." he agreed, but made no move to put distance between us. "You're trembling." "I'm tired. It's been a long night." I lied, my voice lacking conviction. "Liar." His free hand came up, brushing a strand of hair from my face. The gesture was surprisingly gentle, at odds with the raw intensity in his eyes. "Your heart's racing. I can hear it." ~ When the fierce Alpha wolf Roman Blackthorn shows up injured at her doorstep, village healer Mirabelle's life turns upside down. She's forced to join his pack as their healer, and honestly? She can't stand him. He's arrogant, dangerous, and infuriatingly attractive. As threats close in from all sides, Mirabelle and Roman find themselves drawn to each other, despite their best efforts to keep their distance. Can they survive each other long enough to face the real threat?

Seven years into our marriage, my husband, Lucas Thorne, is hailed as a legendary astronomer in the field of astronomy. It is no secret that he absolutely adores me, his wife. He always keeps a polite, distant demeanor with those around him. Even when his new assistant, Serena Cox, asks for his number, he coldly turns her down. In the year he proposed to me, he named a star "LAW", which was an acronym for "Lucas Adores Wilma". Since then, every asteroid he discovers is named with initials that hold a special significance only the two of us know. To others, they might just be scientific achievements. But to me, they are unspoken love letters. This goes on until this morning, when I stumble upon an unfamiliar phone. I unlock it easily with my middle name, thinking it's yet another quiet gesture of his love. But to my horror, I find a string of explicit messages between him and another woman. The person who was at the receiving end of those messages was none other than… Serena, his assistant.

Newly married and over the moon, Sienna inks her husband’s name on her lower back. A permanent gesture for a forever union, right? Wrong. Five years later, in the throes of a messy divorce, she is back to the tattoo shop to get a coverup tattoo. But she doesn’t expect to find that her tattoo artist is the hottest man alive — and he has been waiting for her. He is Gavin Kessler, the Tattoo Master. Tough on the outside, tougher on the inside. With an ugly past casting a long shadow on his present and future. What starts out as a crazy contract between them spirals into something far more dangerous. Sienna soon realizes she wants more than a tattoo from the Tattoo Master. She wants his díck, his protection, and if the differences between them will allow, his heart. Which of these is Gavin willing to give? ⚠️ WARNING: This book is exclusively for adult audiences (18+). It explores explicit sexual language, morally complex characters, toxic family dynamics and occasional violence.

My birthday present this year is a written contract titled 'Behavioral Reform Contract'. My fiance, who was the mafia head Matteo Giovanni, and my parents have already signed their names at the bottom. Together, they had me sent to the Behavioral Correction Center. … The windows are always shut, and the sunlight is filtered through the metal window bars. They drug, reprimand, and ostracize me to make me shove my feelings of aggrievement down. Even while I am being humiliated and punished, they teach me to force a smile and maintain a steady breath. It was all done in the name of "treating" me. A year passes, and I go from being a so-called "troublemaker" to their ideal version of me—quiet, elegant, and utterly perfect. Matteo beams at me and says, "You've finally become my perfect wife. We can finally marry." I match his smile, a gesture that they think means obedience from my part. However, it is not true. It is just me bidding my farewell before I leave for good. There's something I don't understand, however. They constantly found me lacking, so now that I am gone from their lives, why are they falling apart?

On our wedding anniversary, I ask my husband, Luke Blackburn, to buy me some fish stew. Since I'm in my first trimester, I keep vomiting every now and then due to morning sickness. Right now, I have an intense craving for fish stew. But Luke comes home empty-handed in the middle of the night. He claims that he's completely forgotten about my request. I don't say anything at all. All I notice is a strand of long hair sticking to Luke's collar that doesn't belong to me. Some time later, I see the fish stew I never got to eat in a photo that Luke's colleague, Ruby Pollard, has uploaded to her social media feed. The caption reads, "Luke ordered this dish for me. He knows that I love fish stew from this particular restaurant the most. I'm so touched by his gesture!" In the photo, I see a pair of familiar hands picking out fish bones from the meat tenderly just for Ruby.

During a road trip with my girlfriend, we accidentally collided with a limousine. Just as we were joking about having to pay an outrageous sum in compensation, the owner stepped out of the car. He greeted us warmly, asked if we were hurt, and even insisted we didn't need to pay a dime. But that simple gesture sparked a huge misunderstanding in my girlfriend's mind. At the proposal ceremony, she flat-out rejected me, ran to the restroom, and called her best friend to vent. "They're both Vanders, but Josh is a penniless loser, and Alexander is the richest man in the city! "The fortune teller said my true love's surname is Vander. If that's the case, why can't it be the richest man instead of Josh? "I looked it up. That car owner is Alexander. And he didn't even want me to pay for rear-ending him. He must have fallen in love with me at first sight! "In love, there's no such thing as first come, first served. I won't accept Josh's proposal. I'm going to marry the richest man!" A shiver ran through me. My years of devotion to her had moved only me. What she didn't know was that the 'richest man' she was dreaming of marrying wasn't anyone else—he was my father.

Riccardo Volsi, the youngest Don of Altamura, has an arm wrapped around my enemy, Sofia Greco, as they step over my dying body. On the night before, he had a hand clamped over my mouth and his other hand gripping my thigh as he thrust into me repeatedly in throes of passion. Yet, today he's the one who personally locks me into the workshop that will kill me. I've begged him for mercy before. I even crawl over to him like a bitch on all fours just so I can tug at his pant leg and gesture to him to save me. But Riccardo just looks at me as though I were a filthy mutt. "Sofia is the principessa of the Greco family. The fact that she likes your designs is enough for you to kneel and beg her for the right to work for her." They think I'm just a mute designer who's a nobody in this world. That's why they can trample all over me and humiliate me all they want without giving a damn about my life and death. What they don't know is that I've gotten reborn. Not only can I make them kneel before me, but I can also destroy them once and for all.

Three years of marriage, and it all ends with two words. Sign it. He didn’t even look up when he said it. Just slid the papers across the table like I was another business deal to close. We weren’t supposed to fall in love it started as a contract, something practical, something safe. But feelings have a way of growing where they shouldn’t. For a while, I thought he cared. The quiet moments, the small things he remembered my favorite song, how I take my tea, the way I hate the rain. I thought they meant something. Turns out, they did. Just not for me. Every gesture, every soft word, was borrowed from a memory. From her. The woman who had him first. The one who left. The one who’s now back. So I signed. I smiled. I walked away. Not because I wanted to but because I had to. He doesn’t chase me. Not yet. But I can feel it the weight of everything unsaid still hanging in the air between us. Maybe he’ll realize what he’s lost. Maybe he won’t. Either way, this time, I’m not waiting around to find out.