The Billionaire's Dare: My Secret Husband
I was the "little bird" of the Carlson empire, living a comfortable but caged life under the thumb of my guardian, Francis. To the world, Christ Carlson was the cold, untouchable machine who ran the family business, a man I called "Uncle" but who treated me like a ghost in the hallway.
One drunken night in Las Vegas, desperate to finally "poke the bear" and feel alive, I leaned into his shadows and whispered a dare that would ruin me. I asked the most terrifying man I knew if he dared to marry me right then and there.
He didn't laugh. He stood up, dragged me to a tacky chapel, and forced a massive diamond onto my finger with a grip like iron. The "asexual" machine everyone feared turned into a predator the moment we reached his penthouse, claiming me with a bruising intensity that left me breathless and broken.
By morning, I was trapped in a living nightmare. Christ forced me to hide the marriage, demanding I play the part of the dutiful niece while he owned me in the shadows. He replaced my ripped clothes with thousands of dollars in designer silk, essentially buying my silence and my body in one cold transaction.
Now, I’m back at the family estate, hiding a five-carat ring on a chain under my shirt and praying Francis doesn't see the marks on my neck. I thought I was being rebellious, but I didn't realize Christ Carlson had been waiting for me to walk into his trap for years.
I am legally his, physically his, and he has no intention of ever letting me go. Every time he looks at me, I feel the cage door slamming shut, realizing I’ve traded a guardian who ignores me for a husband who wants to dismantle me piece by piece.
At breakfast, Christ pressed his shoe firmly against my inner thigh under the table, his gaze locked on mine while he discussed my future with Francis.
"I think it's time we found her a match," Christ said, his voice a lethal, calm purr.
"I was thinking of keeping her in the family."
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Chapter 5
Calla stood in the center of the living room, clutching the lapels of Christ's shirt. The fragments of her phone lay in the corner like a dead insect.
"I can't go," she whispered.
Christ didn't turn around. He was pouring himself a glass of water. "Why?"
"My dress. You ripped it. I can't walk out of here in your shirt. Francis will ask questions I can't answer."
Christ paused. He took a sip of water, then set the glass down. He picked up the hotel phone and punched a single button. He murmured something low and indistinct, then hung up.
"Wait," he said.
Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Two women in black suits rolled in a rack of clothing. It was like a portable fashion week. Chanel, Dior, Saint Laurent. All in her size.
"Mr. Carlson," one of the women said, keeping her eyes respectfully lowered. "The selection you requested."
Calla stared at the rack. There was easily fifty thousand dollars' worth of fabric there.
"I can't accept this," Calla said, her voice shaking. She looked at Christ. "Francis checks my accounts. He'll know I didn't buy these."
Christ waved the women away. The door clicked shut.
"I am your husband," Christ said, walking over to the rack and running a finger along a silk sleeve. "According to the state of Nevada, my assets are your assets. It's a legal obligation."
"It's a trap," Calla countered. "If I wear this, I owe you."
"You already owe me." He turned to her, his eyes scanning her bare legs beneath his shirt. His gaze flickered to the untouched pill on the table. "Take it, Calla."
The phone call had completely derailed her. She had been so terrified of Francis finding out that the small, silver packet had been forgotten. Now, under Christ's unwavering stare, she felt her face heat up. She walked over, ripped the foil, and dry-swallowed the pill. It tasted bitter. Like regret.
"About us..." she started, turning back to him. "I need... I need time. Francis is getting engaged to Annamarie. The family image is fragile right now. If we announce this..."
"You want an NDA," Christ interrupted. His lip curled in a sneer.
"I want a truce," Calla pleaded. "Just until things settle down. Please. Don't tell him yet."
Christ walked over to the sofa and sat down, crossing one leg over the other. He looked like a king on a throne, deciding the fate of a peasant.
"A secret marriage," he mused. "Scandalous."
"Please, Uncle."
His eyes flashed at the word. "Don't call me that."
He was silent for a long moment. The hum of the refrigerator was the only sound.
"Fine," he said finally. "I will keep our marriage a secret from Francis. For now."
Calla let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Her shoulders slumped in relief.
"But," Christ stood up. He walked over to her, stopping inches away. He reached out and buttoned the top button of the shirt, his knuckles grazing her throat.
"Everything has a price, Calla. You know that."
"What's the price?" she whispered.
"Access," he said softly. "You are available to me. Whenever I want. Wherever I want. You answer my calls. You come when I summon you."
Calla felt a chill run down her spine. It was a deal with the devil.
"And if I'm with Francis?"
"Especially then," Christ's eyes glittered.
Calla looked at the clothes, then at the man who held the deed to her life. She had no choice.
"Deal," she said.
Christ patted her cheek. It was patronizing. Possessive.
"Good girl. Get dressed. The car is downstairs."
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7.7
A Whitmere Family Romance
Ten years ago, Sloane Hart ran from the only man she ever loved.
Not because she stopped loving him-
but because loving Rhett Whitmere meant risking everything.
Now she's back in Whitmere County, standing inside the luxury hotel he built from heartbreak, legacy, and a love he never let go of. Rhett is no longer the boy she left behind. He's a powerful CEO bound by family expectation, haunted by the past, and still hopelessly in love with the woman who shattered him.
Sloane only planned to stay long enough to complete a high-profile spa expansion.
She never planned to fall for him again.
But in a town that remembers everything, whispers turn into scandals, and old wounds reopen fast. When a dangerous betrayal threatens Rhett's empire and puts Sloane at the center of a storm, they're forced to face the truth they've both been avoiding:
Some loves don't fade.
They wait.
And this time, Rhett Whitmere isn't willing to lose her again.
Forever Yours, Almost is a slow-burn, second-chance romance filled with family legacy, small-town secrets, emotional tension, and a love worth fighting for
7.2
Elmore Thomas rushed into the emergency room, clutching his feverish seven-year-old son, Buddy, tightly to his chest.
When the privacy curtain was pulled back, the air in Elmore's lungs vanished. The attending physician standing under the harsh lights was his wife, Kendal—the woman everyone believed had burned to death eight years ago.
But there was no tearful reunion. Kendal looked at him, and her eyes froze into impenetrable ice. She treated him like a biohazard, strictly referring to him as the family member.
Worse, she didn't recognize Buddy. She comforted their crying son with the same gentle warmth she used to reserve for Elmore, completely unaware she was soothing the baby she thought had died.
Days later, Elmore watched from the shadows as she picked up another boy outside a prep school, her left hand flashing a massive diamond engagement ring.
When his butler accidentally recognized her, Kendal shielded her new stepson with pure disgust in her eyes.
"Tell that psychopath to sign the divorce papers immediately. I have a new family now."
The words 'new family' echoed in Elmore's skull, tearing him apart. For eight years, he had lived in a hell of guilt and madness, raising their son in the shadow of her ghost. How could she just erase their past? How could she give her tender smiles to a stranger and look at him with absolute revulsion?
Standing in a luxury ballroom, Elmore squeezed his hand until his crystal champagne flute shattered, thick blood dripping onto the rug. The murderous obsession in his dark eyes returned as he called his lawyer.
"Freeze her divorce application. Use every dirty trick in the book. She isn't leaving."
8.5
In His World
8.5
When Elena's parents die, leaving her drowning in debt, a contract marriage to billionaire Adrian Blackwell seems like salvation.
But Adrian's world holds dark secrets.
His first wife, Sophia, looked exactly like Elena. So did his father's first love, Grace. But both women died under mysterious circumstances.
And now Elena is living in Sophia's penthouse. Wearing Sophia's face. Playing Sophia's role.
As Elena uncovers twisted family obsessions, buried murders, and a decades-old genetic conspiracy, she realizes the truth: she wasn't chosen randomly. She was designed for this.
And the last woman who wore her face didn't survive.
Will Elena break the pattern-or become another ghost in Adrian's world?
9.3
Elliana sat on the cold marble floor, staring at the two pink lines on the pregnancy test. Overjoyed, she went to her husband Garrett’s study to surprise him.
But the room was empty. On his iPad, she accidentally opened a muted security video from the night before. As a graphic novelist trained in facial anatomy, she easily read Garrett’s lips as he spoke to their housekeeper.
"Increase the hallucinogens and the birth control. Let her become a complete lunatic."
The truth shattered her reality. Her three years of inexplicable exhaustion and mental collapses were orchestrated to keep her away from her ex-fiancé, who was now married to Garrett’s sister, Cristina. The nightmare worsened during a horrific highway crash. As their SUV flipped and caught fire, Garrett ruthlessly abandoned a pregnant Elliana in the crushed backseat. He dragged Cristina to safety, leaving Elliana to burn. She survived, but her right hand—her drawing hand—was permanently destroyed.
Lying in the hospital with her career ruined and her intellectual property stolen by the husband who forged her signature while she was drugged, a freezing void of hatred consumed her. She was nothing but a sedated decoy to hide Garrett's twisted, incestuous obsession with his own sister.
When Garrett knelt by her hospital bed with fake tears, Elliana didn't scream or expose him. Instead, she forced a pathetic, dependent smile, playing the perfect broken wife. She was going back to his penthouse to steal his encrypted files, ready to feed him to Manhattan's most cutthroat divorce lawyer and watch his empire burn.
7.7
Alondra spent three hours making soup for her husband, only to find him at the hospital tenderly holding another woman's hand.
"I'm four weeks pregnant, Gerard," the woman said softly.
Gerard coldly handed Alondra a divorce agreement, claiming their three-year marriage was just a placeholder because this woman had once saved his life.
Heartbroken, Alondra fled in her car, only to realize her brakes had been completely disabled.
She spun out of control and crashed head-on into a massive delivery truck.
As she lay trapped in the mangled wreckage with her ribs crushed and blood filling her mouth, Gerard's black Maybach pulled up to the curb.
He stared at her dying body through the window with a completely blank expression.
He didn't call an ambulance or even open his door.
He simply rolled up his tinted window and drove away into the rain.
A raw, suffocating hatred burned in her chest, hotter than the pain in her shattered bones.
She couldn't understand how the man she had loved and served so devotedly could just coldly watch her die like a piece of trash.
Opening her eyes again, Alondra gasped for air.
She had returned to the exact morning two years ago, right before she was supposed to deliver that pathetic soup.
When Gerard walked in and threatened her with divorce, she didn't cry or beg.
"I agree. Let's divorce," she said calmly, packing her bags to reclaim her true identity as a billionaire heiress.
7.6
Aurelia Vale thought it was just an interview.
Until the most powerful Alpha in the city looked at her like she belonged to him...
-and then rejected her like she meant nothing.
Lucien Blackthorne doesn't make mistakes.
He doesn't follow fate.
And he definitely doesn't accept a weak, ordinary girl as his mate.
So he humiliates her. Publicly. Cruelly.
Aurelia leaves with nothing but a broken heart...
and a secret that will shake his empire.
She's pregnant.
With the Alpha's heir.
But this isn't just any child.
It's a child tied to an ancient prophecy-one powerful enough to destroy packs... or rule them all.
Now enemies are hunting her.
The bond she tried to forget is pulling her back.
And the man who rejected her is starting to realize the truth-
He didn't just reject his mate.
He rejected the only woman who could save him.
But Aurelia is no longer the girl he cast aside.
And this time...
she might be the one to reject him.