Rengoku Flame Breathing

Because of a last-minute business trip, my husband missed the Thanksgiving family dinner. I spent the entire day helping out at my in-laws' place in the countryside with our five-year-old son, only to receive a complaint from the downstairs neighbor just before dinner. "Ari, could you please close your kitchen window when you're cooking? I can smell the hot sauce from all the way here. My husband has a lung condition—he can't handle it." My neighbor's words shocked me, and I immediately called my husband, who was allergic to chili peppers. "Honey, did someone break into the house? The neighbor said there was smoke coming from the kitchen." His breathing hitched for a second before he let out a casual laugh. "No break-in. My flight got canceled, so I was home alone cooking. When are you two coming back? I really miss you." I smiled and told him we'd stay a couple more days, but in the middle of the night, I packed up our son and drove straight home.

Back then, Alice was framed by her stepsister and had a one-night stand with a strange man. When they met again three years later, she was a single mother and a urologist, and he was David, a billionaire with sexual dysfunction who couldn’t get an erection. She said, “Go lie on the treatment bed and take off your pants, including your underwear.” He stood up, unbuttoned his Tom Ford suit, and casually threw it on a chair. Then, he walked to the bedside with those long legs that would go on a runway, and slowly undid his belt, each movement carrying a kind of silent threat. “If you can‘t cure me, be prepared to be completely blackballed in the American medical circle. Don‘t even think about holding a scalpel in California for the rest of your life.” When she examined him, the change under him was astonishingly fast, like a sudden Flash fire, burning away the wasteland he had maintained for three years. His breathing instantly became heavy, and the bottom of his eyes was stained with a scarlet mixture of shock and madness. “Who the hell are you?” His voice was incredibly hoarse.

"You're not avoiding me after this... are you?" he asked hoarsely. I stopped breathing when I felt how close his mouth was to my ear. The heat started to radiate in my body. His voice and his closeness are starting to make me weak. I would have fallen on my knees if he isn't holding me. "N-No... I won't. I p-promise," I stuttered. "Good girl." ********** HOWL SERIES #1 Lucien Hellion Salvatorri is the Alpha of the Crescent Moon Pack. He did everything to be the Alpha his people deserve, but it is not enough. Filled with pressure from the Elders, he was forced to find his Luna. But fate did not favor him, he failed to find her. And so, he made a decision that will change his fate because he had no other choice. He intended to cut the red string that binds him to his mate and choose someone else to be his Luna. But then fate intervenes, and just as his red string is about to break, he hears his Luna's voice... begging him to stop the pain. Will Lucien still proceed with his plan or will he end it?

It was about time because my dad got a new girlfriend and said he wanted us to have a meal together to introduce the new woman into our lives. On the day we met, my college roommate saw my chat background, which had a photo of me and my dad, along with a series of transfer records. She lost her mind. She enlisted the support of our other roommates, who rarely paid me any attention and began to attack me, insisting that I was a side chick who deserved to die. I did not expect that my roommate would soon become my stepmom. Before I could explain, she accused me of trying to seduce my dad behind her back, shouting, "Shameless side chick! Going behind my back to seduce my boyfriend! All those times you said you were out studying?! Who knows if you were just meeting up with him?" I was once physically assaulted, stripped of my dignity, and forced to the restaurant for a public confrontation wearing ragged clothes. Then my dad came running to where I was hardly breathing and barely moving on the floor, bruised to the extreme. “Sweetheart, who did this to you?!”

"Why do I have to be so lucky?" The stranger smirked, moving closer to Eve. Eve bit her bottom lip, breathing hard as she heard his deep and unmistakably sexy voice for the first time. He was not doing anything to her yet, but the mere sound of his voice and his brown eyes slowly traveling down to her body made her burn with desire. Suddenly, she realized she should have done something during those years of being alone because, at this point, she was like a walking volcano at its highest alert level, ready to erupt. "I..." She forgot her name, even her purpose of being there. Maybe that was because she had forgotten herself and put others first, thinking it would mean a happy life. She was a single mother and hoarded problems like they were collections. Her problems grew faster than her children. When the stranger crushed her mouth with his soft lips, she kissed him back. Eve thought of becoming selfish, wishing him to fill that emptiness in her life, even for a while. She was already unhappy. What else could go wrong?

A moment. A mistake. That's all it took for Kennedy Reynolds to lose her first love and her family. She's spent a decade traveling the world, building a life, hiding the truth, never looking back at the past—until her adopted mother's unexpected death pulls her back to the small town—and the secret—she left behind.A chance to apologize. That's all Xander Kincaid wants from the woman who ran away with his heart years ago. At least that's what he tells himself until he sees her again and that old flame flares bright. As she struggles to mend fences with her sisters and save the legacy and the foster child her mother left behind, Kennedy finds an expected ally in Xander. Falling back into his arms is beyond tempting, but accepting his support is dangerous. He can never know the truth about why she really left. Will Kennedy be able to bury the past or will secrets revealed destroy her 2nd chance?The Misfit Inn is created by Kait Nolan, an eGlobal Creative Publishing author.

"Little wolf, I'm sorry, but there is pack business to be dealt with." Raven's phone interrupts our fifth anniversary dinner. As his mate and Luna of the Silver Moon Pack, I have grown accustomed to such disappointments. But when I discover his "pack business" was to comfort his dead Beta's widow—his former flame Astrid—my perfect world begins to crumble. *** Sylvia thought she had everything: a powerful position as Luna, a responsible and loving Alpha mate, with only her inability to conceive casting a shadow over their happiness. But Astrid's calculated manipulations shatter these illusions one by one, pushing Sylvia toward an abyss she never saw coming. The man she thought loved her unconditionally repeatedly chooses another, and even her fertility struggles seem to hide darker secrets. "You're still my Luna," Raven whispers, his touch both familiar and foreign. "Nothing has changed." "Everything has changed," Sylvia responds, her voice breaking. "You chose her over me, again and again."

Sara Michaels is a smart, hardworking woman who once loved her husband, Tom McCarthy, a busy CEO of a big company. He promised her the world but chose his career and an old flame over her, leading to a painful divorce. Sara walks away quietly and rebuilds her life. She starts her own small design firm and discovers she has a rare talent for creating viral apps that big companies want. Years later, Tom's company faces a crisis—they need her new app to survive a tough competition. He tracks her down, shocked to see how successful and independent she has become. At first, Sara refuses to help, wanting payback for the hurt he caused. But as they work together on the project, old sparks fly again. Tom realizes he never stopped loving her and fights to win her back. Sara must decide if she can trust him this time or if she'll walk away for good, leaving him to lose both his company and his chance at true love.

He hated to see her happy, he hated how a girl from a low class, poor family became his wife, a crown prince's wife! She was abandoned by the ruthless prince on their wedding day. When he left, she suffered all kinds of trauma, pain and abuse inside the palace. Her blaring screams were either muffled or ignored mercilessly. However, the trampled and sinless soul was still hopeful that one day she'll be freed from the malicious clutches of her tormentor but the prince of Svamgarh had some other vicious plans of torturing his bride and making her life a hell inside his abysmal cage. He re-entered in her life only to make her sufferance more heightened. Why? Because she is the sister of a scum bag who ran away with the crown prince's sister and now he's hell bent to destroy her dignity and snatch away her mental peace till she stays nothing but a breathing corpse. He hurt her, crushed her dignity in order to avenge the bruise created on the royal status but her innocent beauty drew him towards her ending up into a web of lethal obsession, pain and lust.

Isla Bennett survives on poverty math and a meagre $14.22 bank balance until Gabriel Hunt, the ruthless, intelligent CEO known as The Debt Collector, acquires her $250,847.36 inheritance debt and forces her into a clinical, eighteen-month contract marriage. Told through an alternating first-person POV, this dark romance and financial thriller exposes the cold utility assessment behind a billionaire’s search for an asset chosen specifically for maximum compliance. In a world where finance is a weapon and boardrooms are battlefields, Isla is dragged into a thirty-year revenge plot against the Black Swan, a price-fixing syndicate that murdered her father in 1988. As Gabriel deploys mafia-style tactical teams and extraction protocols to protect his interests, Isla begins a weak-to-strong transformation. She evolves from a waitress who feels like breathing, walking furniture, into an interim CEO capable of executing the hostile absorption of forty-seven companies to dismantle her enemies. Behind the silk dresses and staged performances of a perfect couple lies a lethal game of medical hostage taking and manufactured stress tests designed to prove whether she is Option Zero, the only variable that will not break. From the glass towers of Manhattan to the remote Morrison Estate, the bought variable must choose between the $4.7 billion profit of a ghost and her own sovereignty.