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 5
Alex's POV
I took the stairs slower than necessary.
Not because I was tired but because my heart wouldn't calm down.
Rich men don't intimidate me.
I'd said it like a joke. Like a fact. Like it meant nothing.
But the truth was, Mark Windsor didn't intimidate me because intimidation implied distance. Fear. Power used loudly.
What unsettled me about him was quieter.
He listened.
He noticed.
And when he looked at me, it wasn't like I was background noise in his perfectly ordered world.
That was the problem.
I closed my bedroom door softly and leaned my forehead against it, exhaling. The room was neat, comfortable, unmistakably temporary. My suitcase still sat half-unpacked in the corner, like a reminder that I wasn't meant to settle too deeply.
Don't get attached, I told myself.
Easier said than done.
---
The next few days slipped into a strange rhythm.
Mark left early. I helped Mum in the mornings. Sometimes I cooked breakfast when she was busy, nothing fancy, just enough to keep my hands occupied and my thoughts from spiraling.
Mark never commented on it directly.
But he always ate.
Sometimes he'd thank me with a nod. Other times, a quiet "good." Once, just once he'd looked up from his phone and said, "You have a gift."
I'd nearly burned myself on the pan.
We learned each other through fragments. Passing conversations. Shared silences. Brief moments that felt heavier than they should have.
There were rules here. I could feel them.
They weren't spoken aloud but they existed all the same.
Don't touch.
Don't linger.
Don't ask for more.
I followed them.
Mostly.
---
One afternoon, I found Mum in the kitchen, arms crossed, watching me dice onions with more force than necessary.
"Who are you angry at?" she asked.
"No one," I said automatically.
She hummed. "You're cutting like the onion insulted you."
I sighed, setting the knife down. "It's just... weird being here."
"Weird how?"
I hesitated. Mum had always been my safe place. She knew about me. About who I loved. About who I didn't want to be.
Still this felt different.
"I don't want things to be awkward," I said carefully. "With Mark."
Her eyes softened. "Is he making you uncomfortable?"
"No," I said quickly. "He's not doing anything wrong."
That was the truth and also the complication.
Mum studied me for a moment, then spoke gently. "Alex, Mark has rules for himself. Very strict ones."
I looked at her. "Like what?"
"Like never mixing work with personal life. Like never depending on anyone. Like never letting feelings cloud judgment."
My chest tightened. "And?"
"And," she continued, "he breaks those rules only when he trusts someone."
I swallowed. "He trusts you."
"Yes," she said. "And that took time."
I forced a smile. "Then I'm safe. I don't plan on crossing any lines."
She reached out and squeezed my arm. "Good. Because some lines exist to protect both sides."
I nodded.
But later that night, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling again, I realized something uncomfortable.
I didn't know what line scared me more.
The one I might cross.
Or the one Mark had already stepped closer to.
---
The opportunity came sooner than expected.
I was in the kitchen, trying out a new recipe nothing extravagant, just something to distract myself when Mark walked in earlier than usual. No jacket. Tie loosened. Shoulders tense.
Rough day.
He paused when he saw me. "You're experimenting."
"Testing," I corrected. "Experiments explode."
His mouth twitched. "Fair point."
He watched for a moment, silent.
"You don't have to do that," he said eventually.
"I know," I replied. "I want to."
That seemed to surprise him.
"Why?" he asked.
I shrugged. "It makes the house feel... lived in."
The words hung there.
Mark looked around the kitchen, the warm light, the familiar counters, the quiet hum of something almost domestic.
"Yes," he said softly. "It does."
Silence settled again but this time, it was weighted.
"I reviewed your résumé today," he said suddenly.
My hand stilled. "Oh."
"You're qualified."
I met his eyes. "That's not an offer."
"No," he agreed. "It's not."
Relief and disappointment tangled in my chest.
"I won't accept anything I didn't earn," I said.
"I wouldn't give it," he replied evenly.
We held each other's gaze, mutual respect, sharp and undeniable.
That was another rule, then.
Earn it.
Don't owe.
Don't ask.
I turned back to the stove. "Dinner will be ready soon."
He nodded. "I'll be in my study."
As he left, I realized something that made my pulse quicken.
We were learning each other's rules.
And rules, once known, were dangerously easy to bend.
I just didn't know yet which of us would break first.
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7.0
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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.