Showing results by narrator "Zara Hampton Brown" in All Categories

There is no room for sweet or innocent in my world. No room for mistakes or weaknesses. My life was full of darkness, greed, and corruption. Blood was spilled as easily as water and life taken without much thought. I made a vow to my sister that the people who harmed her all those years ago would pay, and the only currency I would accept was their lives. Until she arrived.

My colleague Elodie thinks I despise her. In fact, she’s owned my heart since the first time I caught sight of her slim white neck. Monday to Friday, I’m the grumpy Head of History. Zero personality, except when I’m teaching. So passionate about my field that my pupils bought me a highly inappropriate t-shirt last year. I HAVE A HARD-ON FOR REVISIONIST HISTORY, if you must know. It’s only on Saturdays, when I play Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace for over-exuberant tourists, that I channel His Majesty’s swagger. Think with my codpiece, if you like.

Three reasons why rebound s-e-x with my hot neighbor is a very bad idea. My life is already complicated enough. He knows I wear Batman undies (please don’t ask). He’s older, sophisticated, and so hot he makes me weak at the knees.

In another lifetime, we might’ve been soul mates. The memories of our passion have warmed my bed since. I’m going to pretend I don’t see the way your eyes devour me and ignore how that makes me feel. You’re wealthy, charismatic, and sinfully sensual, and I burn every time you whisper my name.

Noelle Rutherford would do anything for her young son, Gil. A fiercely independent woman recently widowed, Noelle is determined to raise Gil alone. After all, her late husband Adam Rutherford married her for love, which infuriated his aristocratic family. Gil is Noelle’s whole world, and she will not have him wrested from her by haughty nobles.

In therapy, they tell you to use your senses. List the things you know: Sermons recited with malice. A blood-soaked ritual. The sting of tears and gasping sobs of the dying. Rotting flesh. I grew up in a cage, tortured by the Lord Almighty's most twisted servant. Death and despair became my close companions as I watched years of slaughter at Pastor Michaels’ hand. Eighteen girls. Dead. Eighteen lives. Ended. Eighteen futures. Stolen.

In Olympus, you either have the power to rule...or you are ruled. Achilles Kallis may have been born with nothing, but as a child he vowed he would claw his way into the poisonous city's inner circle. Now that a coveted role has opened to anyone with the strength to claim it, he and his partner, Patroclus Fotos, plan to compete and double their odds of winning. Neither expect infamous beauty Helen Kasios to be part of the prize...or for the complicated fire that burns the moment she looks their way.

I hoped for a second chance at Darkwood University, only to have my dream ripped away the first time I kissed one of the handsome bastards. They know who I am. And they're determined to make me pay. They should have thought twice about who they were playing with, because I am the Demon’s Daughter. And just because they have the power, the connections, the faces and bodies of gods…. Do they really think they’ll win?

Lady Amanda blackmailed her way into a prestigious London medical school… Not the preferred method of entrance, of course, but necessary, for it’s the only way to force Lord Thornton, a professor at the school, to help her perfect her invention: a clockwork spider capable of spinning artificial nerves. And Lord Thornton is interested… but is he interested in Amanda, or simply the invention that could cure his own debilitating injury?

Prescott Ellis - Pestilence They call us The Four Horsemen. Four friends forged in fire and blood. No one knows where we came from nor how we got our name. Drake, Francis, West and I rule the financial industry like kings. Gods in our own right. We grew up with a fifth. A girl. Scarlett. She was one of us until she was ripped away from her life. The only trace of her was dust in the wind.

Phoebe Atkinson is what society might call unconventional. Instead of marrying well like other women born to wealth, she chose to be a schoolteacher. Not to mention she lives in a leaky flat in an unfashionable part of town rather than stay in her parents’ mansion. But when her most promising pupil goes missing she has only one option: beg her sister’s best friend, the powerful Duke of Ellis, for help.

Surviving on a seamstress' income and a steady stream of fantasies, Prudence Bosworth has always longed for love and romance. Then, she inherits a fortune from the father she's never seen, with the stipulation that she wed in one year. Prudence is determined to marry for true love, and after seeing firsthand the splendid chivalry of a certain duke, only one man will do.... Rhys de Winter, the Duke of St. Cyres, hides his cynicism behind a quick wit and an even quicker smile. He must marry an heiress, and the pretty little seamstress-turned-heiress is exactly what he needs.

They say you can't tame a monster. That you can't love a villain. One of those things is true, the other is false. Hunter had always been the villain in my twisted fairy tale, he was never the white knight, and he only made that clearer the night he betrayed me. I was once good, but now they call me a savage. And he was to blame. I think it only fair to settle the score between us.

Maria Martingale was going to elope. But Phillip Hawthorne, Marquess of Kayne, put a stop to those plans when he learned his younger brother intended to marry a cook's daughter. Now, 12 years later, Maria discovers that the man who holds her fate in his hands is none other than the haughty gentleman who sent her packing - and he's as handsome and arrogant as ever.

Beatrice Sloane, the countess of Farris, is a free-spirited widow. After a stultifying marriage, she is now wealthy and independent and determined to stay so. Captain Duncan McCameron struggles to find a purpose for himself now that the war is over. Discovering his sweetheart had married another whilst he was at war means he’s kept himself closed off from love. Entrusted to escort Lady Farris to her friend’s estate, these two opposites start on a journey that ultimately involves carriage crashes, secret barn dances, robbers and an inn with only one bed!

He was dangerous, but the real sin was mine. Sinclair was my secret obsession. The one I dreamed of in a homelife filled with violence and pain. It was Sin's darkness that saved me, wrapping its way around my heart until it beat only for him. I helped him escape his island prison. He asked me to leave with him. But my mother is pregnant, and I won't let another child be raised in that house of horrors. The only way to free her is to betray the man I want and the family he's creating. Love is impossible when my only option is to sin.

It was the blood I noticed first. Running down the neck of the man on the ferry. Then his bruised knuckles, dark eyes, and arrogant smirk. The handcuffs came last. No one else paid him attention, but I couldn't look away. Or deny my instant lust. I had no idea he was being imprisoned on the remote, dark Scottish island I knew well. Or that he'd been kidnapped, not arrested. I went from that naïve girl on the boat, dreaming of stolen kisses, to the one who held the key to his prison cell. When heat turns to hate, all that's left is ruin.

Hanna Zaydan has fought to become London’s finest bonesetter, but her darkly appealing new patient threatens to destroy everything she’s worked so hard for. The daughter of Arab merchants is slowly seduced by the former soldier - even though she’s smart enough to know Griff is after more than he’ll reveal. Whatever it is, the bonesetter’s growing desire for the man just might tempt her to give it to him.

Finn Knowles–the rebel without a voice. That’s me. But just because I choose to keep quiet doesn’t mean there isn’t a raging fire burning inside. Still waters run deep, after all, and there’s a lot of secrets I’ve kept hidden from the world. Art has always been my escape from the evil that’s tried to drag me down. It was all I had. Until her. Effy Spencer is like nobody I’ve ever met, but everything I’ve ever wanted. In my dreams, I’m her whole world. In reality, I’m her worst nightmare.

In their twenties, Charlotte and Sam anticipated a bright future together. Just out of university, they had big plans. But fast-forward a decade, and things haven't gone as they intended. They've both put on weight, their income is paltry, and their relationship is fizzling out.