These Gifts

To transfer my sister, Suri Voss, who was 13 years younger than I was, to a new school district, I took 7 days of annual leave and went back to my hometown. I pulled strings, delivered gifts, called in favors, and finally forced a spot for her in the best middle school in the city. At last, when I could pause long enough to catch my breath, I told Mom, who was heading out to buy groceries, that I wanted grilled pork ribs for dinner. Suri walked over with a cold expression, then threw a full glass of icy water straight onto my head and pointed at my face as she exploded. "You country leech, mooching off our family for years, eating our food and living in our house whenever you feel like it. I let all that slide. Now you want to steal my mom too? Do you have any shame at all?! "Listen carefully, Mom only has one child. She will only ever love me!" I stood there, stunned. Suri had no idea I was Mom’s biological daughter, too. All this time, she had treated me as some freeloading relative. I looked toward the doorway, where Mom was changing her shoes to go out. She seemed not to have heard a single word of Suri’s disrespect. She merely said casually, "Suri doesn’t like ribs. Let’s have grilled shrimp instead." She had forgotten that I’ve been severely allergic to seafood since childhood. I lowered my head and let out a quiet, self-mocking laugh. Unbeknownst to them, if I could secure Suri a place in that school, I could just as easily make sure she lost it.

He called me disposable. The Tribunal called me property. They both forgot what Lunaris does to cages. I was the Alpha’s kept woman for five years—his secret, his softness, his sin. Then, the night his missing Luna returned, Alpha Daire Vhaloren stood on the balcony with a cigarette dangling from his fingers and told me, without even looking, “You should go” So I did. Obedient. Quiet. Disposable. I left with his gifts, a deed to a house… and a secret I never planned to carry. Three months later, headlines screamed that Daire’s empire had collapsed. Frostveil Manor sealed. Nightmoor Covenant assets set for auction. The woman he “chose” over me, Calista Dravenne, smiled for the cameras like she hadn’t just burned his world to the ground. I tried to stay gone. Until the High Howl Tribunal branded me a recoverable asset and announced a “live appraisal” of Lot One—the pregnant omega they swore belonged to them. I went back for answers. What I found wasn’t the untouchable Alpha who dismissed me. It was a man with stubble on his jaw, a hunted kind of murder in his eyes… and a voice that made my knees weak when he said, “Why are you here, Elowen?” Because he rejected me once. Because he replaced me. Because he doesn’t know the truth. And because the bond he tried to throw away is coming for us both—along with the child he never knew I was carrying. Now Daire wants a contract marriage to save what’s left of his pack. I want revenge… and protection. But when an Alpha realizes the woman he discarded is his fated mate—and the lost heir of House Lunaris—he doesn’t beg politely. He hunts. ---

On the day of the earthquake, my sister Elena shoved me off the third floor, then burst into tears and said she had only been trying to save me. Everyone believed her. The only person who stood on my side was Nicolo, the youngest mafia boss Sicily had seen in decades. He lifted me out of the rubble, then proposed to me in front of everyone and said that from that day on, anyone who touched me would answer to him. Two months later, I was pregnant. Nicolo bought an entire island and planted it with my favorite irises for our wedding. My father spent a fortune on a one-of-a-kind gown made just for me. Everyone said I was the most envied woman in the family. Then I went into labor, and both of them disappeared. My father said the family had a deal on the line. Nicolo kissed my swollen belly, murmured that he would be back soon, and promised to bring gifts for me and the baby. Right before I was wheeled into the delivery room, an anonymous video landed on my phone. Nicolo was wearing a groom's suit. Elena stood beside him with a hand resting on her pregnant stomach. She was wearing my wedding dress. Her arm was looped through my fiance's as if she had won him fair and square. At the end of the clip, my father asked in a lowered voice, "If you and Valentina stay married only on paper, what happens to the child she gives birth to?" Nicolo was quiet for two seconds before he answered. "Valentina grew up with everything. Elena spent her whole life carrying the stain of being illegitimate. Her child will not grow up the same way." So all that tenderness had never been for me. It had all been for Elena. Fine. They could have each other.

I was the girl no one noticed. Until I opened File Case No. 0001. Azrael Atlas St. Claire. They call him “The Architect.” A ghost. A cold-blooded killer. A man so dangerous the FBI can’t touch. His death would shatter the economy. Rival syndicates would burn the city to kill him. He has no weakness. Then he found me. He appeared in my archive and vanished without a trace. The next morning, gifts started appearing on my nightstand. First, a bullet coated in dried blood. Second, ten fingers belonging to the man who touched me. He watched. Followed. Stalked my every move. Then one night, he came through my window. He took what he wanted while I floated in haze. I woke up sore, terrified…and craving for more—needing for more. The FBI saw a fracture in me, and decided to weaponize it. They wired me. Made me their spy with a promised I’d be safe if I helped them cage the monster. Yet, at the first sign of blood, they ran. Leaved me in chaos. He stayed. Now, I lived in his world. My mother thinks the lawyer at her table is a kind stranger. She didn’t feel his hand between my thighs underneath. She doesn’t know he’s been sculpting my life for years, long before we ever met. The FBI wants me to betray him. His enemies want me dead for revenge. But the monster who stole my life? He’s the only one who ever truly saw me. And I’m starting to wonder if that makes me just as dangerous as him. They say there’s a line between the victim and the villain. I don’t think I’m on the right side anymore.

She loved him to the core, and from the age of four, a name called Neil Davis took residence in her heart. For the sake of his precarious career, she even went so far as to bear children for the unfamiliar Wilson couple. Twenty years of silent devotion led to him kneeling before another woman, promising her a lifetime commitment. No one knew she was the other half on his marriage certificate, trapped in a marriage that existed only in name for many years. "Neil, you'll never know what I've sacrificed for loving you!" "Then never tell me." With that, he coldly walked away, leaving her to sit alone in the living room until dawn. It was her twenty-fourth birthday, and the divorce agreement and a five million dollar check were his gifts to her. * Married for six years, she never imagined that one day, while he indulged in passion with his "fiancée" in bed, she would be curled up in the wardrobe, losing her virginity beneath another man! She was completely naked, while the man was impeccably dressed in a suit. He forced her to peer through the crack to witness the frenzied scene on the bed. "Same position, same frequency. Guess, between him and me, who will climax first?" The man's tone was serious, and under her startled gaze, he thrust even harder, penetrating deeper. "I love you, Neil!" She bit her lip tightly, but the ecstatic cries of Neil's "fiancée" from outside the wardrobe blurred her vision. Life is so ironic— While he was making love to other women, she was hiding in the closet having an affair with that woman's uncle, Mr. Wilson. After the divorce, a child in a little suit, resembling herself and Mr. Wilson, barged into her peaceful life.

I've been married to billionaire CEO Christopher Hayes for two years, and only now does my ex, Benjamin Clarke, decide to propose. The rumble of engines echoes as a fleet of black trucks lines up neatly outside my private estate. The drivers unload box after box of gifts—luxury watches, fine jewelry, couture gowns, and even a grand piano. Standing proudly among the shower of rose petals, he announces, "Sienna, I told you—the only reason I had a child with my sister-in-law was because my older brother died in an accident, and she wanted to keep our family's bloodline alive. "The baby just turned a month old. I've fulfilled my promise to her, and now I've come to marry you!" I lounge in the heated pool, having just finished my postpartum recovery exercises, and I can't even be bothered to look at him. He knits his brows, and his tone turns patronizing. "I know you're upset, but you're the heiress of the Grant family; you have everything you could ever want! Why can't you show a little compassion for a widow who just lost her husband? "I know it was selfish of me to make you wait for two years, but I'm back now! Our wedding will be held in three days. I can tell you still care about me. If not, why would you greet me in such a revealing bikini?" His overconfidence makes me chuckle. "Guards, get him out of here! I'm trying to swim here." What a joke. I've just welcomed the heir of Hayes Group into the world, and Christopher has been insisting that I take our baby home to visit my parents. Yet, somehow, I end up running into this idiot.

It had been five years since I started dating Ross Jenner. His family invited my mother and me to their family home in Fellaton to discuss our wedding plans and to spend Valentine's Day together. It was past 10:00 PM when my mother and I landed, but Ross wasn't there to pick us up because his college junior, Laurel Elledge, had just arrived in Fellaton. He told me to figure out a way to get a cab to the house myself. In a strange place, unfamiliar with the area, it wasn't long before we found ourselves in danger. Just over ten minutes outside the airport, we were robbed. My mother was injured while trying to protect me, and she collapsed, bleeding heavily. Desperate, I held onto her, frantically trying to call Ross. Each call was abruptly cut off, and when I finally reached him, he sounded irritated. "Jennifer, you're an adult, so stop acting like a child. You couldn't even hail a cab on the street? Laurel just got to Fellaton and isn't feeling well. I need to take care of her." Without waiting for a response, he hung up. I tried calling again, only to find that I had been blocked. In the end, my mother's injuries were too severe, and she bled out before the doctors could save her. As I stared at her lifeless body, tears flowed uncontrollably. When I finally checked my phone again, the first thing I saw was a picture Ross had posted on Twitter. In the photo, he was kissing Laurel and holding a bouquet of roses. [Spending Valentine's Day with the one I love most.] I quietly threw the gifts I had brought from home into the trash. Then, I left a comment, which said, [Wishing you both a lifetime of happiness.]

They called him Father. She called him forbidden. Ayana Marcus thought coming home for Christmas would be simple—a few weeks of family dinners, church services, and small-town nostalgia before returning to her real life in Boston. She didn't expect him. Father Nelson has been her father's best friend for two decades. A priest. A pillar of their tight-knit community. A man who's supposed to be untouchable, unshakeable, holy. But when Ayana returns after four years away—no longer the sheltered girl who left, but a woman who knows her own mind—everything changes. One look across her family's dinner table, and she sees it: the way his dark eyes linger a second too long, the tension in his jaw when she speaks, the white-knuckled grip on his glass when she laughs. Father Nelson isn't just her father's friend anymore. He's a man on the edge of breaking. One stolen kiss beneath the mistletoe shatters two decades of self-control. What begins as a single moment of weakness spirals into a secret affair that threatens to destroy everything—his priesthood, her family, their souls. He tells himself he's corrupting her. She knows she's awakening him. In the cold December nights, between whispered prayers and desperate touches, they discover that some sins taste like salvation. That the line between worship and desire is thinner than either imagined. That love—even forbidden, impossible, unholy love—can be the most sacred thing of all. But in a town where secrets don't stay buried and the church sees everything, their passion will cost them more than they ever imagined. He's twice her age. Her father's best friend. A man of God. She's everything he's denied himself for twenty years. And this December, they'll learn that some gifts are too dangerous to unwrap… But impossible to resist.

My sister-in-law, Maeve Cohen, floored my luxury car and blew past traffic at about 125 mph, killing a family of three. She pretended to be me and acted as if nothing could touch her. "Those idiots walked into my path! It's not my fault they got hit!" she snapped. "I'm the Lincoln Enterprise heiress. Even if I ran, who would dare catch me?" In my last life, Maeve said her husband wasn't home and she needed a car to visit her parents, so she borrowed mine. She ended up racing down the road, plowing into a family crossing the street, and driving back over them to make sure they were dead. The couple had just bought a house. The baby was only a month old. When the victims' family demanded an explanation, she hid behind my reputation and spat venom. "They're just three worthless people! I'm the Lincoln Enterprise heiress; why should I explain myself? Tell them to come to me for funeral expenses!" The grieving family couldn't take it and came to my in-laws' place. "Three worthless people, huh? Today, we'll end you so you can apologize to them in person!" My husband had died the year before. With no one to protect me, the victims' family turned on me, and I was stabbed to death. The valuable wedding gifts my family had given to me became Maeve's overnight. My family tried to appeal for me, but trolls who hated the rich maliciously reported tax problems about my father's company. My father was driven to exhaustion. One night, he fell asleep at the wheel, and the car plunged off a cliff, killing him. Only after I died did I discover it had all been Maeve's plan to ruin us out of spite. Then I opened my eyes. I was back on the day Maeve took my car and ran into those people.

“Who am I to you?I want to hear you moan it” “You are my sugar dada,” I responded huskily, my lips trembling faintly. “And you are…?” he teased, his voice thickening with heat, while he devoured me with his eyes as he swallowed hard. “I’m your little toy,” I whispered,my voice dripping with desire. “That’s my princess,” he said with a wicked grin, his tongue trailing slowly around my neck. His hand slid up and grabbed my breasts, squeezing gently before his mouth found my nipple. He tugged with his teeth, sending a jolt through me. ***** Charlotte Dame wasn’t in London to cry over a breakup. She just wanted a change of scenery, a little peace, not another man. Then she bumped into Clinton Hinns— a 53-year-old billionaire way too sexy for his age. She was 27, guarded, and not looking to fall for someone twice her age. But some temptations don’t knock, they crash right into you. From quiet seduction, and risky demands, she soon finds herself wrapped up in wild evenings, erotic adventures, and illicit cravings tangled in reckless trios and thrilling paths of love, desire, and wicked indulgence awaiting Charlotte. She indulges her desires and embraces her freedom to the fullest. Her Sugar Daddy is irresistible, that’s for sure. He’s older, and It doesn’t bother her. He showers her with luxurious gifts and pampers her to the fullest. She’s definitely living her dream life, but a dark truth comes to light — one that could turn her world upside down and crush her reality. What if it’s more terrifying than she could have imagined? When it finally hits her, just one thought fills her mind. let’s hop on this ride! RATED 18 - proceed with caution