Ryan Library Hours Novels & Stories

On my birthday, my eight-year-old stepson dumped the cake I spent twelve hours on straight into the trash. His face twisted. "Smells like cheap frosting." Then he turned and happily dug into the plain pasta my husband's secretary made. I was about to lose it when the familiar floating comments popped up again. [OMG Nico's doing this again. He literally LOVES Reyna's cake every year. Boy just too prideful to admit it LOL.] [Fr fr, he's just using his late mom to test Reyna. Kid's lowkey possessive and messy!] [Alex, HELLO? Your son's jealous af. You not gonna say anything? Oh wait... you jealous too huh? Watching Reyna dote on Nico got you pressed. lol.]

“Say my name,” he said. A shiver ran down my spine. “Jeremy…” I breathed, my voice barely steady. “Good girl.” The words sent a sharp wave through me, my knees weakening slightly as I grabbed onto the bed for support. My fingers curled against the sheets, my body arching without thinking. Stepbrothers who cross every line, best friends’ dads who take what they want, professors and students burning after hours, fake dates that turn dangerously real, rivals who hate-fuck their tension away, and strangers trapped together until control snaps. Slow-burn tension, raw power play, and irresistible cravings that refuse to stay hidden. If you love the thrill of breaking rules and giving in to what you shouldn’t, this collection will leave you wet and breathless.

What happened when the Devil set his eyes on a beautiful innocent Angel? Alexander Grissham is known as the ruthless, cold, dark-soul, leader of the Red Blood gangster in the town. His family practically owned the entire country and he was the next successor of his father's underground business. Aria, is a kind-hearted, beautiful angel in everyone's eyes. But her unfortunate life leading her to lost her parents at such young age. She lives with her very sick grandma and work for hours only to provide her and her grandma’s daily need, and medication. Aria never thought that one day, she would be targeted by the Devil. This cold, heartless creature trapped her and made her his favorite doll. Will she succeed softening his heart? Or is she actually falling deeper into the Devil's trap?

Charlotte Whitmore never expected to be a bride. Certainly not his bride. When her sister Victoria vanishes hours before her highly publicized wedding to billionaire CEO Damien Blackwood, Charlotte is pushed down the aisle as a last minute replacement. No warning. No choice. No love. She enters the marriage expecting coldness, resentment, and a swift exit. What she finds instead is far more complicated. Damien is guarded, powerful, and hiding something serious. The closer Charlotte gets, the more she realizes that Blackwood Empire is sitting on secrets that go back decades and somehow, impossibly, some of those secrets have her name on them. She came as a substitute. But what if she was always meant to be there? What happens when the woman everyone overlooked turns out to be the one person powerful enough to save an empire and the man who runs it?

Marriage, to me, was a sacred vow - not a business proposition. Yet, that's exactly what Hayes Caldwell, the enigmatic billionaire, offered: $200,000 to wear his ring. Just 24 hours prior, my world crashed down. Fired from my job after pouring years into a project, I sought solace in the bottom of a bottle. That's when our paths crossed, and the night blurred into reckless passion. But morning brought a harsh reality: our intimate encounter had gone viral. Hayes's solution? A contract marriage to salvage our reputations. I hesitated, but desperation won out. Agreeing to his terms, I sealed my fate. Little did I know, the line between pretense and reality would soon blur, threatening to consume us both. Hop into this ride with me… let’s see how the story unfolds.

At twenty-eight, I held the dubious honor of being the last unmarried socialite on New York's Upper East Side. Everyone around me was growing increasingly anxious about my single status. In my previous life, my mother arranged a matchmaking cocktail party, where I was told to choose a husband from ten handpicked elite bachelors. I bribed the event planner to place Mark West's profile at the very top—and as I had hoped, I chose him. After we married, Mark treated me with what seemed like tender affection. He even bought me an oceanfront villa in the Hamptons, making me believe I had finally found true love. But that illusion shattered the day I was nine months pregnant, just hours away from giving birth. Mark drove a scalpel straight into my abdomen—then, right in front of me, hurled our newborn onto the floor. "If you hadn't forced me into this marriage with your family's power, Sofia wouldn't have been heartbroken enough to go drinking and get drugged and assaulted. This… this is what you owe her!" He tossed the scalpel aside, then calmly let his private doctor pin down my blood-soaked body. I fought through excruciating pain for six agonizing hours, until I finally bled to death. Afterward, Mark dumped my corpse into the Hudson River. But for Sofia, he hosted a grand funeral—funded with my money, under my name—and paraded himself to the world as a grieving, devoted widower. Given a second chance at life, I refused to step foot in that cursed matchmaking event. Instead, I went straight to my mother with a demand: marry me to Robert Black—the most ruthless, cold-blooded titan of Wall Street, whose scarred face was feared by all. In the end, stripped of my financial backing, Mark's hedge fund collapsed. He became a disgraced fraudster, spat on by everyone on Wall Street.

I could see the countdown above a person’s head when they had already decided to leave their partner. The day my father’s countdown hit zero, he slapped a lawyer’s letter on the breakfast table and walked out on my mother and me. The day my best friend’s countdown hit zero, she finally threw her parasite of a boyfriend out of her apartment and changed the locks before sunset. That was why I’d always been terrified of seeing a countdown above my fiancé, Lucian Bellandi. Luckily, for seven years by his side, the space above his head had stayed clean. Lucian was the youngest Don the Bellandi family had ever seen. He owned the docks, the casinos, and half the South Side’s dirty money, yet he saved every soft part of himself for me. Until last month, when he picked me up after a family auction. I looked up and saw blood-red numbers stabbing into my eyes. [702 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes.] Less than two years. My heart tightened like a cold hand had closed around it. I started searching for an answer like a woman losing her mind. Had I done something wrong? Then, during a blizzard by the lake, we ran into Mia Crane at the back entrance of the Bellandi Hotel. Lucian had just brought her into his charity foundation as a new assistant. Snow clung to her hair and lashes. She was shivering from head to toe, but her smile was bright and painfully innocent. Lucian pulled a black silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. His face was calm. There was nothing openly improper in the gesture. But in that exact second, the countdown above his head jumped. [327 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes.] More than three hundred days, gone. And I knew I had found the reason.

Savannah Wilson, your typical normal girl, well as normal as a werewolf can be. She soon finds out her typically normal life, is about to get turned upside down. Her older brother Ryan, just packs up and leaves once he turns 16, she doesn't know the reason for his sudden urge to leave town, she misses him but decides to try and put him at the back of her mind. But when he returns a few days before her sixteenth birthday, she learns something that will change everything, even the way she views her "family" She always felt different to the people in her school, even her close friends. She would have never believed how different she really was

"What is it? Who sent it?" "It's the usual," Lucy replied with a shrug. "Ah," Adrienne took the package from Lucy and opened it. Inside, there was a red, sexy dress and matching heels, along with a note. The note read, "Wear this tonight ~ BOSS." ***** Adrienne is a woman who has it all - brains, beauty, money, power and a heart that's been closed off for years. Adrienne's past has left her crippled emotionally, and the only constants in her life are her successful business and personal assistant, Daniel. But when Ryan, the heir to a conglomerate, enters her life, she feels a spark of curiosity, not love or infatuation. As their relationship develops, Adrienne is confronted with the painful reality of her past and the people responsible for it. She's faced with a choice: to follow her heart or seek revenge. Will she find peace or further heartbreak?

At ten years old, I watched my mom jump to her death in a rainstorm. That same night, my dad brought home a glamorous woman and her nine-year-old daughter. I had feared and hated rainy days since then. My husband once helped me face that childhood trauma, staying by my side through every storm and promising, "Don't worry, Lena, you'll never face your fears alone." But when I refused to pick up his new assistant, he abandoned me on a highway in pouring rain, saying, "Marie is your sister, and you left her out there? Walk home!" That night, the rain never stopped, and I walked thirteen hours along a dark, endless road. That was when I decided I was done with him.