365 Nights, Two Stepbrothers, One Me.
I moaned out his name. "Damien, you are not trying hard to get me, yet .."
He smirked and whispered to my ears. "I like being hard, Not "trying" hard."
When Lila Sinclair's mother is sentenced to life in prison, her world collapses overnight. With nowhere else to go, she is taken in by Sebastian Blackwood, her mother's former lover. A powerful, reserved man who agrees to shelter her under strict conditions.
Lila is placed in his household... and into a life she never asked for, sharing a roof with two stepbrothers who change everything.
Damien is danger wrapped in charm...intense, controlling, and impossible to ignore. Ethan, on the other hand, is steady, kind, and grounding...the only place she feels safe when everything else feels like it's slipping away.
But Lila's situation comes with a hidden clause: her stay in the country is temporary. Within 365 days, her legal protection expires. To remain, she must marry one of the Blackwood heirs.
One house. Two brothers. Twelve months of blurred lines, buried secrets, and emotions she was never meant to feel.
As desire clashes with safety and passion wars with peace, Lila is forced into a choice that could secure her future...or destroy it completely.
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Chapter 6
Lila's POV
"Look who called today, pussyyy!" JoJo's voice blasted from the screen before his face even popped up.
I burst into laughter. He was leaning against some neon-lit wall, the strobes from a club bouncing across his dark shades like he thought he was a celebrity. "JoJo!" I grinned, instantly lighter. "God, do you ever change? Every time it's some dumbass word first thing on the call."
"Why would I?" He smirked, lips glistening from a drink. "You love me for it. Admit it."
I rolled my eyes. "You're insane."
"Insanely fine, maybe. Anyway, where the hell are you? This doesn't look like your ratty apartment."
I snorted. "Long story. But first, where are you? And why do I hear 'Despacito' blasting in the background?"
JoJo tilted his phone, showing flashing lights, half-naked strangers grinding against each other. "Club, baby. Some Tinder guy dragged me here. Thought he was gonna be my Prince Charming. Turns out, his cock was like a crayon. I had to cancel the deal."
I threw my head back, laughing so hard my stomach hurt. "A crayon? You didn't!"
"Bitch, yes I did." He rolled his eyes dramatically. "And not even the jumbo pack, like those tiny-ass broken crayons you find at the bottom of a kindergarten desk. Tragic."
I wheezed. "You should never settle for a crayon in the form of a cock, JoJo."
"Period!" He snapped his fingers. "Big, bold, thick, like a Sharpie, minimum. Otherwise, I'm out."
We both cracked up, the easy banter filling my chest with warmth. That's what I loved about him. No matter how shitty things got, JoJo could make me laugh.
"So, babe..." He sipped his drink, smirking. "Who you fucking tonight? Ethan? Damien? One of the butlers?"
"JoJo!" I shrieked, covering my face. "Shut the fuck up and speak to me like an educated human for once!"
He cackled. "Ohhh, listen to Miss Blackwood now. All proper and prim. You've been living there too long."
I sighed, suddenly serious. "Speaking of Blackwoods... I'm cooked, JoJo."
His smirk dropped. "Wait. What? Why?"
I chewed my lip. "Damien."
"What about him?"
I flopped back onto my bed, staring at the ceiling. "You remember how I told you someone almost hit me with a car last night? That was him. And then today, at breakfast, he literally called me a stranger to my face. Said I was too 'ordinary' to be part of this family. Like... he's brutal, JoJo. Ruthless."
"Aww," JoJo said softly, like he was watching a rom-com.
I sat up, glaring. "Aww? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means," he smirked, "this is the perfect love story in the making."
I gagged, fake retching. "Please. Trash that thought. That man doesn't have a romantic bone in his body."
JoJo raised his brows. "Oh, but he's got bones elsewhere....tell me, who's hotter? Damien or Ethan?"
I hesitated. My face burned. "...If I'm not gonna lie, Damien is so motherfucking hot it's not fair."
JoJo let out a squeal. "See! Go wiggle that ass in front of him and watch him fall at your feet."
I snorted. "Do you ever give out advice that doesn't involve sex?"
"Nope," he grinned.
We laughed until our sides hurt. Then I softened, biting my lip. "But Ethan... Ethan's perfect. He's everything a woman would ever need. Sweet, funny, protective. But Damien..." I swallowed. "Every time I see him, my heart skips. I can't explain it. It's like...."
A sound.
I froze.
"JoJo... hang up. I heard something."
JoJo groaned. "Bitch, is it every day you hear noises in that creepy mansion? If you know it looks like a haunted house, just pack your bags and leave!"
I giggled nervously. "Shut up. Ethan said he'd pick me up in an hour, but right now I'm alone. So who the hell is here?"
"Then you better carry a cross and some holy water." He made the sign of the cross, laughing.
"Idiot. Hang up."
I clicked the call off and stood, phone light trembling in my hand as I stepped into the hallway. My pulse pounded in my ears. Each step echoed too loudly in the cavernous silence of the Blackwood mansion.
I reached the switch, flicked it on, and screamed. "Gracious heaven!"
My foot slipped on the polished floor, and I tipped backward, falling...
Until strong hands caught me.
My breath stilled. My palms slapped against a chest...hard, warm, unyielding. The scent of smoke and expensive cologne swallowed me whole.
Damien.
His eyes bore into mine, dark storms that froze me where I clung to him. My lips parted, my pulse betraying me. For a long, suspended moment, the world shrank to just us...the press of my fingers against his chest, the heat of his body, the sharp edge of his jaw so close I could trace it.
It was unbearable. Intoxicating. Dangerous.
Then he broke the gaze. Just like that. His voice came low, detached. "If you're not fit enough to stand, you shouldn't be walking around."
I straightened immediately, stepping back, adjusting my top. "Sorry."
His eyes flicked over me, unreadable. "Step up your game. Next time, you'll end up in the hospital."
I frowned, heat rising in my chest. "Do you actually think I just threw myself on you for no reason?"
He smirked faintly, still not looking at me. "Wouldn't surprise me. Any girl would kill to feel my skin."
My jaw dropped. The audacity. "Wow. What exactly are you feeling like? A god?"
He didn't stop walking, didn't even turn.
"Why are you so harsh to me?" I snapped. "It was a minor mistake. I apologised."
He paused, shoulders stiff. "Can I breathe?"
I stormed up to him, poking his chest with my finger. "Don't play games with me, Damien. Everyone makes mistakes. You too. And I said I was sorry....so forgive me, for fuck's sake!"
His hand shot out, wrapping around my wrist. He pushed it off him easily, like I was nothing. His eyes cut through me. "Do I need to remind you that you were picked to survive?"
I staggered back, breath catching.
He leaned closer, his voice razor-sharp. "Transfer this little fire of yours to the time when your mother was busy stealing, maybe she wouldn't be rotting in jail."
My mouth fell open. My chest burned. "You're... unbelievable."
He only shrugged, turning away again.
Fury surged through me. "You're not all that!" I shouted after him.
That stopped him. Slowly, dangerously, he turned. His steps were deliberate as he walked back, closing the distance until I could feel the heat radiating from his body. My back hit the wall.
He reached up, fingers sliding into my hair, tugging it back just enough to tilt my head. My breath hitched as his lips brushed the shell of my ear.
"See now?" he whispered, voice dark velvet. "I am all that. And your body knows it. It's begging for it....even if your mouth won't admit it."
My hands had betrayed me, gripping his chest, fingers trailing dangerously low, down toward the ridges of his abs. The pull between us was unbearable, a magnet I couldn't fight.
Then he pushed me back gently, stepping away, leaving me breathless.
"Damien..." I blinked. "uh... are you heading for the tea party? or is it over already?"
He smirked faintly. "Yes, I am."
My brows knit. "uh ..Ethan....He was supposed to pick me up... but he's late. Like, really late, and I don't know why..."
Damien didn't even look at me. "Definitely, he forgot about you, wear something decent. I'll drop you."
I blinked. "Wait... really?"
He was already walking off.
"Thank you... Dada," I teased, testing him.
He only shrugged, not slowing. "Don't make me regret it."
And just like that, he was gone, leaving me pressed against the wall, breathless, furious, and... trembling.
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7.2
Azura Briggs was just a broke college student working freezing valet shifts to pay her adoptive mother's crushing medical debt.
Her desperate life shattered the night a bulletproof Maybach violently cornered her in an alley, and a ruthless billionaire kidnapped her by mistake.
After a harrowing escape, Azura was forced to take a humiliating "plus-one" gig at a high-end gala just to survive. But her date turned out to be the billionaire's arrogant nephew, who promptly abandoned her to the wolves. Cornered by a sleazy executive and his psychotic wife, Azura was publicly slapped, her dress torn, and left bleeding on the floor while hundreds of elites watched in disgust.
Just as she prepared to fight to the death, the crowd violently parted. Hunter Mcintosh, the terrifying man who had kidnapped her days ago, dropped to his knees in the broken glass and wrapped his bespoke jacket around her trembling shoulders.
Azura was completely paralyzed. Why was the monster who threatened her life now destroying billionaires just to protect her?
But the illusion of safety didn't last. Trapped in his Maybach hours later, Hunter threw a draconian employment contract at her feet.
"Sign it, and her care is covered. Forever."
He knew exactly how to break her. He was offering to pay off her mother's debt, but only if she signed her life away to become his personal assistant. With no other way out, Azura picked up the heavy pen.
8.3
He laid me on the sheets, climbed over me, caged me with his arms. "Last chance to run," he said, voice low."I need the money," I whispered, feeling so tiny in his arms."You're soaking," he muttered. "Virgin or not, your pussy wants this."I moaned, looking away, couldn't help it,"Eyes on me, sweetheart," he pushed his tip in slowly."Fuck," he groaned. "So tight."He fucked me like he was claiming something. "Come for me," he whispered in my ears, moving faster."Damien," I cried out his name as I came."That's it," he growled. After a long minute he pulled out slowly. "One night," he said again, almost like a reminder....weeks later, I walked through the quiet hall of my school. A massive portrait stared back at me.Damien BlackwoodPrincipal Benefactor and OwnerColumbia University.Same man who'd just taken my virginity for money. My stomach dropped. "Oh fuck... what have I done?"
9.2
When Alma's father stood in front of the bulldozers to protest, the energy company's thugs beat him half to death in the mud.
Instead of arresting the attackers, the police handcuffed her bleeding father and threw him into a cruiser.
"Stay back, kid," the officer barked, shoving Alma away.
Her father was denied bail and framed for assaulting an officer. The corrupt mayor just smiled and told her not to cause a scene. Meanwhile, the company mailed her weeping mother a severance check that barely covered a month of groceries.
Alma was forced to watch her family be completely destroyed by men with money and power.
Kneeling in the cold dirt where her father's blood had spilled, she didn't shed a single tear. The panic in her chest died, replaced by a cold, absolute hatred.
She realized that crying wouldn't do anything. In this world, justice didn't exist for the weak.
Years later, Alma stepped onto a prestigious Ivy League campus, her cheap backpack slung over her shoulder.
She was surrounded by the arrogant children of the very executives who ruined her life.
She lowered her head, hiding her dead eyes, and put on the perfect mask of a timid, helpless charity case.
Undergrad was just a training ground, and these elite kids were just her practice dummies. The hunt was officially on.
9.8
Erica Murphy had spent three years rotting in a freezing prison cell.
She thought she was serving time for a tragic accident, but the truth was much darker. Her husband, Colten, had framed her for his mistress's drunk hit-and-run, stolen her fortune, and left her to take the fall.
The day Erica was finally released, a speeding car intentionally slammed into her, shattering her spine. As she lay dying on the emergency room table, flatlining on the monitor, Colten and his pregnant mistress didn't come to save her. Instead, they tossed a stack of divorce papers onto her bloody hospital blanket. They wanted her to sign away her last remaining shares and take on thirty million dollars of toxic corporate debt.
"Sign it," Colten demanded coldly, looking at her crushed body with utter disgust. "Consider this the last bit of dignity I'm giving you."
The original Erica died right there, suffocating in despair and betrayal, unable to understand how the man she loved could be so monstrous.
But when the flatline on the monitor suddenly spiked and her eyes snapped open, the traumatized victim was gone.
Replaced by the cold, calculating consciousness of a future special ops commander. With microscopic nanobots rapidly fusing her shattered bones together, Erica picked up the pen, preparing to burn Colten's entire empire to ashes.
8.6
Eleanor Sinclair always knew her stepmother and stepsister were leeches, but she never expected their betrayal to reach into her private study.
In the dead of night, she caught the family's trusted nanny of twelve years photographing confidential trust documents. The mastermind paying her off was Lillian, Eleanor's stepmother, who had been secretly embezzling estate funds and bribing tutors to deliberately ruin the academic future of Eleanor's younger brother, the only legitimate heir.
Emboldened by their deceit, the parasites grew arrogant. Her stepsister, Isabelle, deliberately flaunted her secret affair with Eleanor’s billionaire fiancé, sobbing fake tears while waiting for Eleanor to suffer a humiliating nervous breakdown.
When the tension finally peaked, Lillian played the victim so perfectly that Eleanor's own father, a powerful U.S. Senator, stormed into the room with a raised hand, ready to strike his own daughter.
"You will apologize to your stepsister immediately! I will not have this family harmony destroyed by your petty jealousy!"
They actually expected her to be a weeping, heartbroken girl. They thought cheap hotel affairs and stolen pennies could outsmart the true Sinclair bloodline. Did they really believe a few fake tears and a weak-willed father could strip her of her empire?
Eleanor didn't feel anger; she felt the cold, detached fascination of a biologist observing doomed insects. She calmly pulled out the forensic audits, locked down the estate's exits, and prepared her stepmother's psychiatric commitment papers. The merciless purge of her family had officially begun.
9.4
Blurb;
"I don't love you and I will never love you, Isabelle Yang!" I froze as the hatred in his eyes held me captive. I knew he wasn't happy with this arrangement. Neither was I.
"But I am your wife, Emerson."
"Wife?" He scoffed, stepping closer until my back hit the wall and I was trapped between his arms.
"You mean wife... or just the woman chosen to carry my heir?" His words were the truth. That was the only reason I was here. Still, they hurt more than I expected.
"You hurt my girlfriend by coming into our lives," he continued coldly.
"And I plan to make you feel twice the pain you caused her."
Then he did something worse than yelling-he sanitized his hands after touching me, as if I disgusted him.
He walked away, leaving me heartbroken and shaking, wondering what I had done to deserve so much hatred.
...
Isabelle Yang never imagined that her life could spiral into more darkness after catching her boyfriend and twin sister in bed on the night meant to celebrate their two-year anniversary.
Before she could even recover, a call from home changed everything. Her marriage had been arranged with the Winters-one of the most powerful families in Europe. And her husband? Emerson Winters, the ruthless heir who cared about only two things... himself and his childhood sweetheart, Salma Hayden.
But what happens when his love isn't enough to bear an heir, and he is forced into a marriage with Isabelle-a woman he sees as a mistake, a burden, an obligation?
What will become of two hearts trapped in a marriage where hatred and resentment rule the day?
Read this book to find out;
The Billionaire's Unwanted Wife
A novel by Queenebunoluwa15