Sukuna Sitting

After the school cafeteria for elementary school kids shut down, I decided to offer meals for all the kids in our building at my home. At the end of the month, when it came time to settle the bill, one of the neighbors wasn’t happy. “The new caterer downstairs only charges $2.50 per meal, but you’re charging us $5! That’s an extra $75 per kid per month. Do you have no shame?” she accused me. I calmly explained that I only used free-range meat and organic vegetables in my meals. But no matter how patiently I tried to reason with them, the parents insisted I refund the difference and demanded I charge no more than $2.50 per meal moving forward. When I lowered my costs to meet their demands, they started accusing me of mistreating their children. They went online to expose me and even reported me to the authorities. The online attacks were relentless. I was fined, and my husband lost his job because of the controversy surrounding me. The stress pushed me into depression, and in the end, I jumped off a building to end it all. When I opened my eyes again, I saw those same parents being swayed by others in the neighborhood to send their kids to the new daycare service that only charged $2.50 a day. What they didn’t know was that the lunch caterer next door did serve meat every day—but it was frozen, diseased pork that had been sitting in storage for two years.

Jane William is finally free of her bullied high school life and living on her own while she attends college. Finally free of her prison, she thinks her troubles are over, until her high school bully shows up and crashes her chances of enjoying her college years. Alex Davis realizes as soon as he steps foot into his first college class that his mate is in the room. However, it blindsides him when he sees Jane, the one girl he loathed in high school, sitting there with a rebellious snarl on her face. Not only did he hate her growing up, but she's also human and doesn't know anything about supernaturals. Knowing he has no choice but to pursue his mate, he finds it harder than ever to break down that wall he built when he bullied her years before. When lycans begin to terrorize the neighboring packs and the college campus, Alex finds himself doing whatever it takes to protect his mate. However, Jane hates the sight of him, and even if she feels an invisible pull, she pushes him away until she breaks. She never realized that Alex held so many secrets, and when they come to light, her entire existence flips upside down, and she's bombarded with a truth she never knew was real.

In an attempt to help her get over the pain of being cheated on by her boyfriend on her 22nd birthday, Sophia Clark’s friends take her to a club and force her to consume alcohol. In her intoxicated state, Sophia’s blurry vision mistakes a stranger sitting beside her at the bar for her cheating boyfriend. She kisses him intensely and goes to a hotel with him where they both engage in a one night stand. The next morning, realizing her mistakes, Sophia hurriedly leaves the hotel room before the strange man wakes up. Regrettably, she didn't see his face. Six years later, Sophia begins to work as the secretary of a cold CEO and one of the wealthiest billionaires in Glasgow, Damon Graham. To avoid his mom's threats of choosing a bride for him and confiscating his properties if he doesn't get married, Damon Graham proposes a marriage contract to Sophia, offering her £10 million. A helpless Sophia who is in a challenging situation has no choice but to consider her boss's offer. What prompts her to accept it? Sophia has a strong feeling that her one night stand from six years ago is connected to a mysterious artwork in Damon's Mansion. Will she be able to unravel it? What happens when Damon finds out about his fake wife's one night stand, and that she is a single mom of two kids?

Los Angeles was supposed to be my home. Instead, it had always felt like a golden cage. The Smith mansion stood tall behind iron gates, glittering with wealth and silence. Servants bowed. Cameras watched every corner. And the man who called himself my uncle smiled sweetly for the world while hiding knives behind his back. I was seventeen when I heard the truth. “He will take care of the girl tonight,” my uncle said over the phone, his voice calm. “Make it look like an accident.” The girl. He meant me. Fear became the only thing that kept my legs moving. I ran from the driver who was meant to take me home, sprinting through unfamiliar streets until the bright city lights disappeared and the world turned darker. Detroit. Wrong place. Wrong time. Engines roared in the distance when I saw him. A man sitting on a black motorcycle like a shadow carved from danger. Tattoos curled up his neck. His eyes were cold enough to freeze the night. Everyone knew men like him were monsters. But monsters were sometimes the only ones who could save you. I jumped onto the back of his motorcycle and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Please,” I whispered. “Help me.” That single moment would destroy his life. And change mine forever. *******

“Do you feel that, Rose?” He asked in a gruff tone. “The effect I have on you is real. Don’t deny it. Don’t deny me.” Rose’s cheeks burned with shame, even though she pushed her bosom more into his hand, seeking the pleasure she knew he could give her. Then, she recalled that they were in a restaurant, and stilled at once, eyes wide, heart thudding wildly, and breathless. “We’re in a bar,” she told him, her protest sounding weak even to her own ears. “A desert one,” he chuckled. She turned around, and saw that the restaurant was indeed vacant, save for them, and Enzo and Stefan who were standing by the door, their backs to them. It was rush hour, and that couldn’t have happened, even if the food was terrible — and it wasn’t. She understood immediately that the divillish man sitting next to her, who starred in all her fantasies as of late, had ensured that they would have the privacy they needed. For a ruthless mafia boss, he sure could be considerate. ... ... ... ... When Rose meets a mafia boss on one of her night shifts, she thinks he is a peculiar and unpleasant patient whom she would do well to avoid... Little does she know that that encounter is but the beginning to a tumultuous passionate chapter of her life. Risking everything for the man shouldn't be an option... And yet, she soon finds herself caught in his web of sin, desire, and obsession.

“How sore are you?” His unexpected presence made me jump in fright. “Your Majesty?” I spun around to see him sitting on the bed I had been staring at earlier. “Come here.” He didn’t repeat the question. Did I mishear? “Your Grace, if you’ll just let me finish cleaning up this area—” I rushed out, suddenly confused and nervous about why he’d want me to come closer. “How about you abandon that and come sit, Cassia. Now.” His tone was firm yet soft. I almost gasped when he raised his eyebrows and patted his left thigh. I gulped hard and took tentative steps toward him…. In a world where medieval and modern collide, werewolves, vampires, and hybrids rule while humans live in fear, their lives not fully belonging to themselves. Cassia is one of the unfortunate souls sold by her aunt to the hybrid palace, a place desperately in need of new servants. Living under the roof of the infamous Hybrid King, who harbors a deep-seated hatred for humans—especially due to their role in the brutal attack that harmed his mother—her fate becomes dangerously intertwined with his. As she navigates the treacherous palace with survival on her mind, she becomes entangled with the King, who fights against an undeniable attraction to the very human he despises.

"My incubus has been with me for a month, but he still won't let me touch him. What could be the reason for that?" I type my questions into the customer service feedback form and wait for a reply. The customer service representative replies at once in a very helpful manner. "Dear customer, our incubi are all very eager to stick to their owners like glue! I'm afraid your issue might be due to a malfunction on his end. "We can apply for your incubus to be replaced with a new one instead, and he will arrive in a week." I look at Riven Sterling, the incubus whom I had made tailored specifically to my tastes. After a moment of thought, I decide that maybe I can just wait and observe for a while longer. If he still doesn't change for the better, then I can perhaps send him in for repairs. After all, Riven is just too perfectly aligned with my tastes. I can't bear to give him up. However, at the family dinner, I quickly realize that Riven is having a reaction toward my younger stepsister, Teresa Ashford, who is sitting across from me. It's only then that I recall that Teresa is the one who opened my parcel the last time Riven arrived at the doorstep. That night, I contact the customer service representative again and say, "You said that the new replacement would be arriving in a week, right? Please send it out, then. Thank you."

Enzo Cavallo doesn’t believe in ghosts. As the youngest and most ruthless Don to ever lead the Cavallo Famiglia, his world is built on cold hard facts and absolute surveillance. But for months, a phantom has been bleeding his "black" accounts dry—millions of dollars vanishing into thin air, only to reappear in the bank accounts of the very people the Cavallo family has crushed underfoot. Enzo expected a seasoned professional, a man with a death wish. After six months of digital warfare, he finally traces the signal to a crumbling apartment on the edge of the city. He goes in expecting a war. He finds Jade. She’s young, she’s brilliant, and she’s sitting in the dark with a smirk that tells him she’s been waiting for him. Enzo can’t kill her—not yet. She’s encrypted his entire fortune behind a "dead-man’s switch" that only she can deactivate. Forced into a gilded cage within the Cavallo estate, Jade becomes Enzo’s most dangerous asset. While his brothers want her dead, Enzo becomes obsessed with the girl who robbed him blind. As a coup begins to rot the family from the inside, Jade realizes that being a Robin Hood in the streets is nothing compared to being the power behind the throne. She doesn’t want to save Enzo from his world; she wants to help him rule it.

The day Adrian Knight clinched a contract with our biggest client, I "accidentally" tipped a bottle of ink across the paperwork, voiding it on the spot. Because of that single blot, the project landed in Alex Lewis’s lap, and he won Chairman Henry Carter’s favor almost overnight, moving into the Carter mansion as their future son-in-law and watching his net worth rocket into eight figures. Adrian never blamed me. He just laughed that he’d never been executive material anyway and happily brought me home as his bride. Everyone whispered that, if not for my meddling, Adrian would already be sitting in the Carter family’s executive suite instead of scraping by in an ordinary life with me. Only I knew the truth: stopping him from signing that contract had saved his life. When Adrian learned I was pregnant, he locked me in the basement, fingers digging into my throat. "If it hadn’t been for you," he snarled, "I’d be Henry Carter’s son-in-law by now. You’re the reason I lost Rachel, the princess of the Carter family." That’s when I realized he’d been nursing this grudge for years. After he killed me, I woke up, reborn on the very day Adrian first reached for that fatal contract. This time, I’ll make sure Adrian Knight gets exactly what he wants.

After two years abroad in seclusion as I recovered, I received a selfie from my daughter, Lila Ashford. She was sitting on a bike, dressed in a work uniform. "Mom, you’ll be home soon, right? I miss you so much." My heart softened as I thought about how my girl had grown up. She understood that she needed to start from the bottom and work her way up. I was about to praise her when I noticed her skin seemed tanner, and her fitted shirt was the same one I’d bought her three years ago. It was frayed and worn thin, yet she still hadn’t thrown it away. As a child of the wealthiest family, Lila shouldn’t have to live like this, not even for "life experience". I zoomed in on the picture again. Her shoes were falling apart, the front gaping wide open. The more I looked, the more uneasy I became. The next second, I stumbled across Serena Ashford, my adopted daughter’s posts on social media. She was showing off male models, luxury cars, and on her wrist, the global limited-edition diamond bracelet I had given Lila. What shocked me most was the car that appeared in nearly every photo, the very one I had gifted Lila for her college graduation. How the hell had it ended up with her instead?!