Marrying Him Was Easy, Loving Him Was Hell

They Faked a Marriage in Summer. But Autumn had a Plan of Its Own. Ivy Monroe is in a bind. She's got a shot at the research grant of her dreams. There's just one catch: it's for couples only. No husband? No deal. That's where Lake Hart comes in. He's a broody, charming filmmaker who needs quick cash. She needs a fake husband. It's supposed to be simple: pretend to be married for one summer, fool a few people, and walk away richer. But nothing about this fake marriage is simple. They arrive at a romantic mountain retreat and things get complicated-fast: - Weird "touch therapy" that's way too intimate - One tiny bed that squeaks like crazy - "Practice" kisses that don't feel fake at all - Judges watching their every move-and a prize on the line Ivy swore she wouldn't catch feelings. Lake never sticks around long enough to. But the more they pretend, the more real it starts to feel. One lie. One summer. So many sparks. If you love: - Fake marriage shenanigans - Forced to share a bed (and a shower) - Enemies-to-lovers tension - Slow burn with major payoff - Hilarious, messy, steamy rom-coms Then this is your next read. Funny, flirty, and full of feels.

Chapters

Chapter 2

Lake

There are a few things I never planned on doing with my summer.

Pretending to be the doting husband of a neurotic psychology professor? Not even on my bingo card.

Yet here I am. Sharing a tiny cabin with Ivy Monroe-Miss All Work, No Play, Queen of Color-Coded Calendars-and pretending we're madly in love. It's either going to be a disaster or... well, definitely a disaster. But at least it'll be a profitable one.

The moment we stepped into that cabin and she saw the one bed, her whole body froze like she'd just walked into a bear trap. Honestly? I almost felt bad for her. Almost. But watching her panic while trying to maintain her composure? Kinda entertaining.

I tossed my duffel onto the mattress and gave her a grin. "This is going to be fun."

She didn't respond. Just glared at the bed like it had personally insulted her PhD.

The truth is, I wasn't doing this just for the money. Okay, fine-that was a big part of it. I needed the cash. My last gig filming a docuseries about burnout in med students fell through thanks to a morally questionable producer who decided trauma wasn't "marketable." But there was another reason I said yes.

I wanted to see if Ivy Monroe could actually let go.

You see, I remember her from that university mixer two years ago. Not just her pencil skirt or her perfectly parted hair. It was the way she talked about emotional vulnerability like it was some foreign concept, something you could dissect and analyze with charts and theories.

And now she needed to fake being emotionally vulnerable.

With me.

God bless irony.

Day one of the retreat kicked off with orientation. A chirpy woman in a floral jumpsuit-who I later learned was the director of the program-gathered us all around a fire pit near the lake. Ivy and I sat on one of the rustic benches, pretending to be cozy while I tried not to laugh at how stiff she looked next to me.

"Lean in," I whispered, nudging her with my elbow.

She frowned. "Why?"

"Because we're a couple. Act like it."

With visible reluctance, she shifted closer. I wrapped my arm around her shoulder, and to my absolute delight, she stiffened like someone had just poured cold water down her back.

"So natural," I murmured into her ear.

She elbowed me in the ribs.

We were off to a great start.

The first workshop was titled "Emotional Synchrony Through Movement." Translation: a slow, awkward partner dance class taught by a barefoot man named Sky who believed eye contact was the key to salvation.

Ivy looked like she'd rather walk on hot coals.

"You'll begin by matching your partner's breath," Sky said in a soothing voice. "Then mirror their movement. Flow together as one unit."

I turned to Ivy and waggled my eyebrows. "Ready to breathe together, babe?"

"If you call me 'babe' again, I will strangle you with a yoga strap," she muttered.

We moved through the motions, horribly out of sync at first. I swayed left. She stepped right. I leaned in. She flinched back like I was holding a live snake.

But then something happened. Somewhere between the exaggerated arm circles and the rhythmic foot tapping, she started to laugh.

Like, really laugh.

It started as a tiny giggle, the kind she tried to smother behind a clenched jaw. But I saw the moment she gave up. The moment she let go of the tight grip she had on her composure.

And damn, she was beautiful when she laughed.

We caught eyes. Just for a second. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair messier than usual, and there was a lightness I hadn't seen in her before.

"You're terrible at dancing," she said breathlessly.

"I was trying to lead," I said, smirking. "You were doing some kind of interpretive rebellion."

She rolled her eyes but didn't pull away when I placed a hand on her waist.

Progress.

Later that night, back at the cabin, I caught her pacing near the bathroom, mumbling to herself.

"You okay there, Professor?"

She turned, startled. "I just realized I forgot to bring my lavender sleep spray. It's fine. I'll survive."

I leaned against the doorframe. "Didn't realize lavender was the key to mental health."

"It helps regulate cortisol levels."

"Right. Science-scented sleep."

She narrowed her eyes. "You're mocking me."

"Only a little."

A long pause stretched between us. The air felt... different. Not just awkward. Charged. Like we were standing too close to a storm.

Then her eyes flicked to the bed.

One bed.

I raised an eyebrow. "Want me to take the floor?"

She hesitated. "No. That's not necessary."

"You sure? I'm okay with roughing it."

"No, Lake. We're adults. We can... share. Just stay on your side."

"My side has better energy."

"Lake."

I grinned and held up my hands. "Fine, fine. No funny business."

But when we finally lay down-her stiff as a board on the edge, me relaxed and half-sprawled-we couldn't help it. We kept talking.

About nothing.

About everything.

She told me about growing up in suburban Ohio, her obsession with rules, her fear of disappointing people. I told her about my chaotic childhood, my filmmaker dreams, the time I accidentally lit a kitchen on fire trying to flambé something I saw on TikTok.

And somewhere around 2 a.m., I looked over and saw her asleep-face turned toward me, hair falling in her eyes, lips slightly parted.

She looked soft. Real.

Not the uptight professor who lived in spreadsheets.

Just Ivy.

And for a brief, fleeting second, I forgot we were pretending.

The next morning, I woke up to a shriek.

"I was on the edge! How did I end up in your arms?"

I rubbed my eyes, still groggy. "Morning, sunshine. You're surprisingly cuddly in your sleep."

"I am not-ugh, this is-this is unethical closeness!"

I sat up, laughing. "Ivy. It's fine. It's not like we-"

She threw a pillow at my face.

Yup. Definitely a disaster.

But I was starting to suspect it might be my favorite kind.

Continue to next part

This is my story of how to lose a mob boss in ten days. I have a I've been arranged to marry a monster. Run away? Good idea. Tried that. Didn't work. Because in my family, my father makes the rules. And he says this wedding is happening . But he still has a soft spot for me, his last remaining daughter. So he offers me a deal. Take ten days. Get to know Sasha. See if you change your mind. Yeah, right. Sasha Ozerov is a beast in Brioni. He's ruthless, flawless, utterly unconcerned with mortals like me. All he wants is what our marriage would bring My family's power and the city in the palm of his hand. But maybe, if I can make him back out of the deal... I'll keep my freedom. So I set out to do everything I can to drive him crazy. I have ten days to make my husband hate me. What happens if I start to love him instead?

Mafia Modern Romance

9.1

Beast World: They Hated Me, Then I Cooked Them Dinner

9.1

Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part. The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys. Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero. Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold. I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth. But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me." Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again. Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.

Action LitRPG Mafia Sci-Fi

9.5

Escaping the Pawn, Ensnaring the Don

9.5

"My father sold me to a sixty-year-old monster to clear his gambling debts. So, I made a desperate gamble of my own." Seventeen-year-old Isabella Rossi has two choices: become the broken plaything of a sadistic mafia Capo, or do the unthinkable. She chooses the latter. Sneaking into a high-end speakeasy, she slips an aphrodisiac into the whiskey of the deadliest man in New York—Damien Falcone, the ruthless Underboss of the Falcone family. Her plan was simple: steal his seed, secure his protection, and run. But you don’t drug a predator and expect to walk away. When Damien wakes up, he doesn’t kill her. Instead, he claims her. "You intercepted a delivery meant for my enemy. Turns out, it was you. Now, you are my Collateral."

Action Mafia Modern

8.2

Healed By Another: Rejecting The Ruthless Don

8.2

I spent a year in a Swiss asylum, swallowing pills to cure a madness that didn’t exist. It turned out the medication was just sugar. My insanity was a script written by Jaxon Francis, the Don of New York, just so he could marry a Cartel princess without his ward getting in the way. When I finally escaped and tried to leave him, his new wife staged her own kidnapping and framed me. Jaxon didn’t ask for proof. He didn’t look at the evidence. Instead, he tied a rope around my ankles and dragged me behind a helicopter across the jagged rocks of the Wastelands. He held his wife close and watched as my skin was flayed and my bones shattered, believing he was executing a traitor. He left me for dead in the dirt, convinced he had cleansed his empire. I took the hush money his mother threw at me and vanished, letting Alina Phillips die in that field. Three years later, I returned to New York as "Echo," the elusive artist the world was obsessing over. At a charity auction, Jaxon bid one hundred million dollars for a painting of a woman’s scarred back, desperate to buy redemption for the ghost he thought he killed. He chased me into the rain, begging for a second chance, swearing he had destroyed his wife for me. I looked at the man who once held my heart and simply smiled. Then I turned to the man standing beside me. "Jaxon, meet Darwin," I said, linking my arm through his. "My husband."

Mafia Modern Romance

8.9

My Cold Heart: Rejecting The Mafia Boss

8.9

My husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket. He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent. But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress. Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes. "If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you." To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife. When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala. He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent. He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters. He thought he had broken me. He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage. But he made a fatal error. He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign. They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me. And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck. I didn't jump to die. I jumped to be reborn. And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin.

Mafia Modern Romance

7.4

Pampered By The Enemy Of My Ex

7.4

I served the Dunlap family for six years, managing their dark accounts and raising children that weren't mine, all while waiting for my husband to truly love me. But when the "real" mistress returned, my devotion was rewarded with a death sentence. My husband, Gavyn, didn't just ask for a divorce; he dragged me to a cliff edge. He stood next to Iliana, the woman who stole my life, and looked at me with cold indifference. He called me a thief. He called me an "incubator"—a temporary vessel used to hold his place until his princess came back. Then, he ordered his hitman to finish it. I managed to bribe the hitman and jumped into the freezing ocean, but the fall cost me the only thing that mattered. Alone on a desolate beach, shivering and broken, I miscarried Gavyn's child—the baby he didn't even know existed. I lay in the sand, hollowed out by grief. I couldn't understand how the man I worshipped could discard me like trash. He didn't just break my heart; he tried to erase my existence. But fate wasn't done with me. On that same beach, I found a wounded young man hiding in the woods. He wasn't just a stranger; he was the lost heir to the Sosa crime family—Gavyn's mortal enemies. When the Don, Daniel Sosa, came to claim his nephew, he offered me a hand. Now, the world thinks Alex Dunlap is dead. But tonight, I am walking into the Grand Gala on the arm of the most dangerous man in the city. And I’m going to burn Gavyn’s empire to the ground.

Mafia Modern Romance

Marrying Him Was Easy, Loving Him Was Hell

Chapter 2

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