Mark & Alex
Mark Windsor, Australia's most feared and respected CEO, has built walls as high as his empire. After losing his parents, the only warmth left in his life comes from Mary Smith, the woman who cooks his meals and feels more like home than family ever did.
When Mary's son Alex visits the estate, Mark doesn't expect the sharp-tongued, smiling graduate to unsettle him. Alex doesn't expect to fall for the man who owns the house he lives in or the company he refuses to work for.
Forced proximity, secret glances, late-night conversations, and quiet meals slowly turn into something dangerous. When Alex finally joins Mark's company on his own merit, love becomes a risk neither of them can afford.
In a world where reputation matters more than truth, Mark and Alex must decide if love is worth the fall.
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Chapter 4
Mark's POV
The door closed behind me, and the house returned to its usual silence.
I stood there longer than necessary, briefcase in hand, replaying the look on Alex's face when I'd told him to use the kitchen anytime. The way his smile had come easily unforced, unapologetic.
It shouldn't have stayed with me.
I left the estate and slid into the back seat of the car, giving my driver the address of the office out of habit. Sydney blurred past the tinted windows, glass and steel rising like monuments to ambition.
Normally, this grounded me.
Today, it didn't.
You might regret that.
I exhaled slowly. He hadn't said it with fear or reverence. Just confidence. As if wealth didn't impress him. As if my name didn't carry the weight it usually did.
Rich men don't intimidate me.
He hadn't said those exact words but I'd heard them anyway.
---
Windsor Holdings buzzed with efficiency when I arrived. Assistants moved quickly. Executives straightened when they saw me. The usual deference, the usual distance.
I welcomed it. I needed it.
The morning passed in meetings, numbers, projections, expansions. I corrected mistakes before they were spoken. I dismissed excuses without apology. This was the version of myself the world expected.
This was the version I trusted.
And yet, between agenda points, my mind drifted.
Alex's easy sarcasm.
His insistence on earning his place.
The way he'd stood in my kitchen like he belonged there.
I cut a presentation short.
"Any questions?" I asked.
No one spoke.
"Good. Meeting adjourned."
They filed out quickly. My assistant lingered.
"Sir," she said carefully. "About the graduate analyst position, HR sent a shortlist."
I nodded. "Leave it on my desk."
She hesitated. "There's... an additional résumé attached."
I already knew.
"Alex Smith," she continued. "Mary's son."
I looked at her, expression neutral. "And?"
"He meets the criteria. Strong academic record. Relevant skills."
"Then he's on the list," I said.
No favoritism. No shortcuts.
She nodded and left.
I stared at the file.
This was dangerous territory.
---
That evening, I returned home later than planned. The house smelled like garlic and herbs, dinner in progress. Laughter floated from the kitchen. Alex's voice, unmistakable.
I slowed without meaning to.
"...telling you, Mum, if I don't get a job soon, I'll start charging you rent for emotional support."
Mary laughed. "You already eat enough to count as rent."
I stepped into the doorway.
Alex turned first. "Oh. Hey."
There it was again. That smile. Casual. Unafraid.
"Good evening," I said.
"Dinner's almost ready," Mary said. "Alex helped."
"I can tell," I replied, meeting his gaze. "The house smells better."
"High praise," Alex said. "From you, especially."
I raised an eyebrow. "Why especially?"
He shrugged. "You seem like the type who's hard to impress."
I held his stare. "Only when people try too hard."
Something passed between us, a quiet understanding.
Dinner was comfortable. Too comfortable. Conversation flowed easily, laughter punctuating the space in a way it rarely did. I caught myself watching Alex more than my plate.
Afterward, Mary excused herself early.
"I'm turning in," she said pointedly. "You two don't stay up too late."
Alex groaned. "Mum."
I ignored the look she gave me warm, knowing and focused on clearing my plate.
Alex reached for it at the same time our fingers brushed.
Electric.
We both froze.
"Sorry," he said quickly.
"It's fine," I replied, though my pulse disagreed.
We stood too close for a moment longer than necessary.
He broke the silence first. "So... you're really not intimidating, you know."
I laughed softly. "That's not what my employees say."
"Yeah, well," he said, meeting my eyes with that stubborn confidence, "rich men don't intimidate me."
There it was.
Spoken aloud.
I should have corrected him. Reminded him of boundaries. Of reality.
Instead, I found myself smiling.
"Good," I said quietly. "I'd hate to think my wealth was the most interesting thing about me."
His expression softened. "It's not."
The air between us thickened, charged, restrained.
I stepped back first.
"Goodnight, Alex."
"Goodnight, Mark."
I watched him head toward the stairs, shoulders relaxed, unaware of the effect he was having.
As I turned toward my study, one thought settled heavily in my mind.
Alex Smith didn't see the CEO.
He saw the man.
And that was far more dangerous than intimidation ever could be.
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7.0
Eight years ago, Alaina forced herself to say the most vicious, heartless things to break up with her fiercely loyal college boyfriend, protecting him from his billionaire family's wrath.
Now, she is a top maxillofacial surgeon, and Jarred Mcknight has returned as the ruthless CEO of Wall Street's most powerful corporation.
Their worlds collide in the ER, but Jarred isn't alone. He is accompanying his rumored heiress fiancée.
His eyes are pure ice. He treats Alaina with a suffocating, clinical detachment, fiercely protecting the heiress from Alaina's medical examination. The professional slap in the face shatters Alaina's heart all over again.
Later, at an exclusive restaurant, Jarred catches Alaina on a miserable, forced blind date. Still believing she left him for money and status, he publicly mocks her for working herself to the bone just to climb the ladder.
Her sleazy date, humiliated by the billionaire's sheer dominance, turns his bruised ego on Alaina. On the dark street outside, the lawyer aggressively grabs her arm, trying to force himself on her.
Alaina thought Jarred despised her. She thought he had completely moved on, leaving her to drown in the memories of the future they never had.
But why did Jarred suddenly explode from the shadows like a lethal predator, brutally snapping the lawyer's wrist just for touching her?
Pinning her trapped against the cold brick wall, Jarred's dark eyes burn with a terrifying, unhinged possessiveness.
"Is this the kind of garbage you date now?"
The eight years of separation mean nothing. The billionaire hasn't let her go, and this time, there is no escape.
7.1
"When she no longer believed in promises or happy endings, love crossed entire worlds to show her that magic still existed." Laura C.
Unexpected designs... Or simply capricious games of fate. A human who thinks she has lost all reason to live plunges into a world of fantasies and fangs that make her be born again. A story full of passion, fantasy, vampires, and other species that will make you shudder... Read with me and let your imagination reach wherever Valentin will take you.
8.4
I was the "diamond" of the Sargent Foundation, a perfect orphan polished for the cameras and high-society galas. But beneath the glittering chandeliers, I was suffocating. When the pressure finally broke me and I tried to flee the Sargent Gala, I wasn't met with comfort. I was hunted down by security and dragged into a sterile, white-hot spotlight in a room I was never allowed to enter.
Adrien Sargent, the cold-blooded CEO who controlled my every move, didn't want to help me. He wanted to devour me. He presented a legal cage: sign over my voting shares for his unethical hostile takeover, or he would have my only friend—the elderly butler who raised me—killed in his nursing home bed.
I became a prisoner in the East Wing, stripped of my phone and watched by hidden cameras. During a midnight storm, I tried to steal a security card to escape, but Adrien caught me in his study. Reeking of whiskey and corporate rage, he didn't just stop me. He pinned me to his desk and branded my neck with a bite so deep it bruised, treating me like a thief who deserved to be claimed.
The next morning, the house turned into a battlefield of lies. His PR consultant tried to claim she was the one in his bed, but Adrien found a pearl button from my pajamas under his desk. He didn't feel guilt; he felt violated. He accused me of orchestrating the entire encounter to blackmail him, his eyes filled with a terrifying, possessive fury.
When his grandmother caught us, she didn't see a victim; she saw a liability. To save the family stock price, she gave us an ultimatum: marriage.
"I’ll do it," I said, looking at the massive diamond ring that felt more like a shackle. Adrien thought he had finally broken me, but he didn't know about the encrypted file I just received. The corporate crisis he’s fighting was an inside job, and the trail leads straight to his own front door.
I looked at my new husband on our wedding night and let my silk dress hit the floor. He thinks he’s trapped a rabbit, but I’ve just gained total access to his world. I will sleep with the enemy, learn every dark secret he’s hiding, and then I am going to burn his empire to the ground.
7.1
Warning: R18+
His pierced cock thrust deep, the metal barbell dragging along my G-spot with every relentless stroke, sending shockwaves that made me scream his name. I came again hard, squirting around him while he growled "mine" and filled me bare, hot pulses claiming every inch inside me.
Thirty minutes earlier I'd been drowning in heartbreak and gin at a Mayfair club.
Now I was unraveling in a billionaire's penthouse, owned by a stranger whose name I still didn't know.
One forbidden night.
No names. No promises.
Or so I thought.
One reckless night with a stranger ignites a billionaire's obsession.
Elara thought it was over at dawn.
Damian Blackwood doesn't let go.
When her world crumbles, he offers salvation-with strings: Become his contract wife.
One forbidden night becomes a lifetime of possession...
8.9
BLURB
Lena Hale thought heartbreak couldn't get worse until she walked into a luxury restaurant with a Christmas gift in her hand and found her boyfriend on a date with another girl. Broken and humiliated, she flees home for the holidays, hoping her mother's new marriage will give her a quiet place to recover.
Instead, she walks straight into a nightmare.
Her cheating ex, Bryce Carter, is waiting at the mansion...
as the beloved nephew of her new stepfather.
And her new stepbrother, Cassian Ward, the cold, quiet son who sees too much and says too little can't seem to look away from her.
Trapped together for Christmas, Lena is forced to face the boy who broke her and the man who's slowly undoing her in ways she doesn't understand. Bryce wants her back. Cassian wants her safe. And Lena wants to forget she still feels anything at all.
But secrets run deep in the Ward family...
and desire runs deeper.
And this Christmas, falling for the wrong brother might be the most dangerous mistake she's ever made.
9.0
For a whole year, April believed her billionaire husband, Bartholomew, abandoned her in Europe the day after their arranged wedding. She hated him so much she drunkenly prayed for his death at a club.
But he suddenly returned that very night, catching her red-handed. Instead of a divorce, he trapped her, threatening to bankrupt her bloodsucking family unless she moved into his penthouse to play the devoted wife.
Forced to comply, she attended a dinner with her toxic family. Her stepmother deliberately served her lobster—knowing April had a fatal allergy.
"Eat up, darling. I know hospital food is dreadful."
When April refused and exposed their massive gambling debts, her furious father raised his hand to strike her across the face.
But it was Bartholomew, the ruthless tyrant she despised, who caught her father's arm and snapped his wrist.
"If you ever try to touch my wife again, I will erase your family by sunrise."
April was completely stunned. Why was he defending her with such murderous rage? And why did he keep a cheap paper airplane she had made at age six preserved under a glass dome in his study?
The answer came that night. When Bartholomew stepped out of the shower, April saw the massive, jagged surgical scar sliced directly over his heart. He hadn't run away; he had been fighting for his life on an operating table. Staring at the man who had silently survived just to come back to her, April made her choice. She was going to uncover the truth behind his surgery and their past.