Showing results by narrator "Shirl Rae" in All Categories

Mirror, mirror, who's the fairest of them all? I still cringe when I hear that line. A fairy tale that had girls pretending they were the fairest, the most beautiful, and the most entitled. A fairy tale most couldn't grow out of turned my haunted childhood memories into a living nightmare. Girls who grew up believing that pile of garbage became the meanest of all mean girls. And those mean girls were right. It was a line meant for all the beautiful people in the world, and I knew the answer would never be me.

On the eve of her 18th birthday, Nora Leston meets Julian Esguerra, and her life changes forever. Stolen away to a private island, she finds herself at the mercy of a powerful, dangerous man whose touch makes her burn...a man whose obsession with her knows no bounds.

"You can either choose love or you can choose hate, because where one lives, the other will die." Kidnapped a day short of her twenty-fourth birthday, Skye Sedgewick struggles to uncover her captor's motives. Damian Caballero is not only impossible to read, but also dark, troubled, and unflinchingly brutal. For twenty-one days, Skye holds on. But on Day Twenty-Two, she yearns for the sweet slumber of death. Because on Day Twenty-Two, Skye realizes that her only way out means certain death for one of the two men she loves.

Once upon a cold, dark night, a Russian killer stole me from an alley. I’m dangerous, but he is lethal. I escaped once. He won’t let me do it twice. The revenge is his. The betrayal is mine. But so are the lies to protect the ones I love. We’re cut from the same twisted cloth. Both merciless. Both damaged. In his embrace, I find hell and heaven, his cruelly tender touch destroying and uplifting me at once. They say a cat has nine lives, but an assassin has just one. And Yan Ivanov now owns mine.

Layton Morris and his brother Mike grew up not knowing what it would be like to live in a normal home. With no running water or electricity in their home and no parents around to protect them, they quickly learned how to survive and depend only on each other. When a tragic accident took Mike away from Layton and the only other person that he ever let into his heart walked away from him, leaving his heart shattered, Layton focused all of his time and energy into the ranch he and his brother dreamed of.

She writes me back. I didn't expect that. She tells me she's a lover of chicken pizza and video games, a hot sorority girl with the nickname Sloth. She wants to know something about me in return. She says I owe her. This is how she saves my life. She doesn't even know it.

Pain. Hurt. Regret. All of these are results of broken promises. Love. Joy. Happiness. All of these are results of finding someone's way. Love has two paths: happiness and heartbreak. Sometimes those paths intertwine. Sometimes we choose the wrong path. And sometimes we're given the second chance to pick the right path. Which path will Walker and Taylor go down? Only time will tell.

One drunken night turned a joke into a life-changing moment. He warned me not to fall for him, and I should've listened. He intoxicated me. He made me crave him. He ruined me. In the end, I'll never be the same.

My biological clock just exploded. Eighteen months. That's how long I have to make a baby happen before it becomes one more broken dream. Fate has a sick sense of humor, though. Its name is Hayden Shaw. Yes, the Hayden Shaw. Billionaire developer, scandalously gorgeous, his hard-headed ego only eclipsed by his enormous...reputation. He needs a bride to fool the world. I need a baby. It's simple business. Strictly professional.

Forced to join a secret intelligence agency at a young age, Russian interpreter/spy Yulia Tzakova is no stranger to dangerous men. But she's never known one as ruthless and compelling as Lucas Kent. The hard-edged mercenary frightens her, yet she's drawn to him - a man she has no choice but to betray.

Courtney Will always dreamed of finding her Prince Charming and living happily ever after. However, her dreams were shattered one fateful night when her prince turned out to be her worst nightmare. Reed Moore's past filled his world with guilt and anger. Then, a mistake in college deepened these feelings. Fearing he will one day repeat his father's mistakes with the woman he loves, Reed has vowed to never give his heart to anyone.

Fifteen years ago, Celeste was eighteen, in love, and on the honor roll. Then she got pregnant. Now, a widow and a single mom, she does her best to give her daughter, Sabrina, a good life. But something is missing in her world. Or someone. Back when he taught her math, Celeste didn't have a crush on Mr. Travis, but that doesn't mean she's not hot for teacher now or able to ignore her rampant fantasies.

I loved once. I gave everything that I had to that love, blindly believing that nothing could ever take that feeling away from me. Away from us. And when my little world of happiness was ripped from my fingers, I felt a loss that still haunts me to this day. Now I use that lingering grief as a shield to keep my heart from loving again. It's that fear that keeps me from letting anyone, except my daughter, get close enough to make it hurt. To make my heart bleed when I inevitably lose again.

If you're lucky, you'll fall in love-truly, madly, and deeply in love. Maddy and Reid had that kind of love-the all-encompassing, Earth-shattering, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. Then life happened. Old wounds that were thought to be long healed and scabbed over are ripped opened, and they are forced to face the possibility that maybe they are not strong enough to fight their demons and embrace the light.

Abducted at 18. Held captive for 15 months. It reads like one of those headlines. And yes, I did it. I stole her. Nora, with her long dark hair and silky skin. She's my weakness, my obsession. I'm not a good man. I never pretended to be one. She can love me, but she can't change me. I can, however, change her. My name is Julian Esguerra, and Nora is mine to keep.

Nate: It's nearly impossible to be surrounded by love but not understand it. My parents, my sister, and just about everyone around us has no trouble accepting that love. To give your trust to someone else and believe they would die before hurting you. I've witnessed it - I've seen the power of it - but I've also seen the pain. Because for me, I've only loved someone I could never have, and my biggest fear is that by giving her my love, all I would do is ruin her.

I survived my depraved master, Maksim. Now, I belong to Charlie Decena, by nature and by nurture. He broke everything I believed in. My life still lingers in the gray zone - dark and light, love and hate, betrayal and murder. I’m battling Maksim’s brutal conditioning to uncover who Blaire is, for Charlie. I adhere to his counsel, indulge in his debauched desires, and pacify his dominance - until he pushes me too far.

I never thought this could happen to me. I never imagined one chance meeting on the eve of my eighteenth birthday could change my life so completely. Now I belong to him. To Julian. To a man who is as ruthless as he is beautiful - a man whose touch makes me burn. A man whose tenderness I find more devastating than his cruelty.

BLAIRE: Part 1 in The Dark Romance Series - Bought. Conditioned. My name is Blaire. I'm head of security to a man who controls the Russian underworld in Europe. His name is Maksim and he's my master. He bought me 10 years ago and conditioned me with brutality to worship and protect him. And I have protected him. BLAI2E: Part 2 in The Dark Romance Series - Don’t take what isn’t yours. Unless you’re willing to fight for it. I survived my depraved master, Maksim. Now, I belong to Charlie Decena, by nature and by nurture.

He was just a hookup. I wasn't supposed to see him again. He wasn't supposed to be my boss. Or Dad's new business partner. We weren't supposed to keep doing this, night after sheet-clenching, heart-pounding, lip-biting night.