Mine to Teach

She turned down the golden billionaire in front of his entire entourage. His darker brother turned her refusal into an obsession.

Nova finishes the pour as her boyfriend climbs onto a booth table and dumps her for the woman on his arm, phones raised. She has built a life on bartender tips, her mother's debt, and the pride of going without rather than being owned. So when the golden billionaire offers to make her worst night better, she tells him he is a mirror men admire themselves in, and she walks.

His brother is waiting in the alley. Kai is the colder one, the one no one chooses, and the night Nova names him the other one, he opens her employee file. Then her life gets quietly easier. Rent letters reverse. Debts dissolve. Grabbing hands disappear. A guest room in his glass tower locks from the inside, and her job, her phone, and her money stay hers.

Kai does not want to rescue her or buy her. He wants to be first, permanent, the one thing her body learns to answer to, and he will not touch her until she asks. If she asks for the monster, how many of her rules survive his answer?

For readers of H.D. Carlton and RuNyx: fully open-door heat, ruthless obsession, and a dark HEA with an unreformed hero who never pretends to be safe.

The tower cannot take Nova's choices from her. Wanting Kai might.