Page 66 of Love Me in the Dark

Then, just like that, the tension shifts. His hand cups my jaw, his thumb tracing the curve of my cheek. “You were never something to be bought, Alina.” His voice is quiet, reverent. “You’ve always been something to be worshipped.”

I exhale sharply, my resolve wavering, my body betraying me as I lean into his touch. This man, this dangerous, possessive, infuriating man, owns me in ways I never agreed to. At least not at first.

The logical thing would be to walk away. To tell Rafe that love built on deception isn’t love at all. That I should be angry, that I should fight harder against the way he consumes me. But my heart doesn’t care about logic. My heart has already made its choice.

And sometimes, against all odds, against all logic, we still hope.

Stretching, I wrap my arms around his neck and pull until he bends. Our lips are only a breath apart, and it feels like we’re sharing oxygen.

“I love you too?—”

He cuts me off with a growl, fusing our lips together. His tongue slides into my mouth, snaking around mine. Within seconds, I’m panting and moaning into his mouth.

Pulling back, I tug at the hair at his neck until he hisses. “Don’t ever fucking lie to me again, Rafe.” His shock strokes the righteousness inside me. “If you do, I’ll make you regret it in ways you never even imagined.”

“Mhmm,” he groans. “Consider me warned, baby.”

I nod. “Take me upstairs and make me come on my bed before we go home.”

AUTHOR BIO

Bibi is a caffeine-fueled creator of swoon-worthy antiheroes and the women who bring them to their knees (sometimes with stilettos, sometimes with sarcasm).

She loves talking about herself in third person as it makes her feel special. She lives in a tiny mysterious town in Northeast England that’s so secret even Google Maps shrugs when you search for it.

Her household is ruled by a cat with a Tortitude™ license to sass.

You can find Bibi all over the internet... probably procrastinating.

https://blybaekauthor.com/

SHATTERING HOPE

CC GEDLING

Sisters Rada and Angelina dream of escaping their bleak existence for a better life abroad. But their hopes are shattered when they are trafficked and brutally separated.

While Rada finds herself imprisoned in a squalid compound with other victims, Angelina disappears into the clutches of a man as dangerous as he is magnetic. Against all reason, an unthinkable attraction forms between captor and captive, blurring the lines between fear and desire.

As Angelina falls deeper under her captor's spell, Rada fights desperately for their freedom. But when an opportunity for escape presents itself, Angelina must make an impossible choice that will forever alter her fate.

Some bonds can never be broken. Some choices can never be undone.

1

Rada

The screechof the packing tape across the final box drowned out my sister’s sniffling from the front room. A sense of anticipation bubbled in my chest as I stared around at the blank room. This was it. We’d packed our lives up and we were going to make a fresh start in the UK.

I picked the box up and hauled it into the entranceway, stacking it on top of two others. A friend would keep them until we had a permanent place to send them. We’d sold most of our parents’ possessions, and the furniture was part of the flat sale. I entered the main room and found my sister Angelina—Lina—still sitting by the window in her painting chair. She stared at the empty armchair where our father used to sit day and night until recently. She startled as she realised I was here, leaping to her feet, her long dark hair tangled about her face.

“I’m sorry. I got distracted,” she said in English.

We hadn’t spoken Bulgarian since Father passed, opting to use English to prepare for moving to the UK. Luckily, we wereboth good at languages, plus we’d been practising for years as the long-term plan had always been for us to move to Britain.

“It’s okay to miss them.” I opened my arms, and she strode into my chest.

Lina was a sensitive soul and felt the loss of our parents keenly. She’d cared for our mother, who died last year, and then I’d returned from my nursing job in the UK to help her care for our father, who never recovered from the loss of his wife.