His Destined Cure, Her Assertive Husband

Meadow's wedding day was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. Instead, she walked into the hotel room to find her fiancé Tyler with her twin sister Juniper straddling him. Juniper didn't even have the decency to look ashamed. "Tyler never loved you," she said. "He was always mine from the very beginning." Meadow ran. She found a club, sat down, and started drinking.

That's where Alaric Ashford found her. He summoned her to the VIP lounge, dismissed a woman on her knees between his legs without a glance, and called Meadow by her full name. She was drunk and furious, convinced he was just another predator. Then she stumbled into his chest, her hands landing on his bare skin, and his entire body went rigid. Alaric had spent his whole life unable to feel anyone's touch. But Meadow's hands on him—he felt every second of it, and the sensation didn't fade. Before the night was over, he asked her to marry him. She woke up the next morning with a custom-made diamond ring on her finger and Alaric emerging from the bathroom in a towel. He'd been planning it for six months, ever since the first time she touched him.

What started as a whirlwind marriage quickly became something sharper. Juniper lured Meadow back to the old apartment, ambushed her, slammed her head into a wall, and told Tyler to rape her. Alaric kicked the door in. He pulled Tyler off her, knocked Juniper unconscious, and carried Meadow to the hospital. Then he had Juniper committed to a psychiatric facility—the evaluation was tailored for her to fail. He gave Tyler a promotion, not out of mercy, but because he wanted to watch him fall from higher ground. Meadow wanted revenge but felt sick about it; Juniper was still her sister, the only family she had left.

The complications didn't stop with Juniper. Alaric's brother Nolan crashed into the mansion drunk and demanded to know if Meadow was the one Alaric could feel, muttering something about "that hasn't happened since..." before Alaric silenced him with a fist. Then there was the locked room in Alaric's bedroom—Meadow found it while snooping, and Alaric caught her. He wasn't angry, just guarded. "Things you're not ready to see yet," he said. Whatever was behind that door, it was personal enough to keep locked away even from his wife.

Then Tyler called. Juniper had disappeared from the facility. Alaric wanted him dead on the spot, but Meadow stopped him cold. She told him to punish her instead. Bent over his desk, counting the strokes of his belt, she felt the lines between vengeance and desire collapse. The marriage had started as a transaction. What it was becoming was something neither of them had planned for—and neither wanted to name out loud.