Why Does The Ballad Of Footrot Flats Have Such A Cult Following?

I'd been lonely lately. Having accrued enough wealth to no longer need to go on the raids I was well off. Now I just needed a little slave girl to warm my bed. I'd considered a docile thing with a warm spot for me. But instead, I was intrigued by the spitfire commanding she'd not be touched. I saw her body and thought her too tiny but when I touched her, I wanted her. And what I want. I get. Afterall, I'm a wolf at heart. And a full moon is coming. She'll learn the way of things. One way or another.

I always thought my husband, Ryder, was forced to marry me. For six months, he wouldn't touch me. I tried everything. I wore my sexiest lingerie. I guided his hands over my burning skin. I could feel how hard he was, completely out of control. But at the last second, he'd always push me away, gasping. He'd finish me with his fingers instead. My hope died. I decided to leave him. I was ready to accept a top dog trainer position in Europe. The night before I planned to hand him the divorce papers, I heard voices from his study. Ryder, talking to his best friends. "Ryder, you're dying for her, man. So why won't you touch her? Another man's going to snatch her up!" "But she's so fragile..." Ryder's deep voice was filled with pain. "You know... I'm a monster. If she sees what I really am... it will terrify her." His voice dropped to a raw whisper. "If she really needs... comfort... from another man... I can take it. As long as she comes home to me in the end." His friend growled. "Stop! Then maybe stop posting on that encrypted dark web forum, asking for help!" Monster? What did that mean? Late that night, I used his computer. I found a hidden forum called "The Den." A pinned post at the top. Thousands of replies. User ID: Midnight_Howler. One sentence. Dripping with desperation and frantic obsession: "I finally married the girl I've loved for years, but I'm terrified to touch her. How can I survive my rut without hurting her, without her discovering my secret?"

I was born into a line of vampire hunters, but I was hopeless at it. I couldn't pass a single trial, couldn't make a single kill, so my family dumped me in the countryside and left me to rot. When they brought me back at eighteen, they packaged me up and handed me to the vampire noble Lucian von Karstein as his lowest blood-slave. I had already made my peace with being drained dry and tortured to death. He turned out to be nothing like what I expected. He built me a villa with good light. Every morning before dawn he went out to the garden and picked flowers still wet with dew, and left them by my pillow. When his family ordered him to kill me, he gave up five hundred years of glory for my sake. He surrendered his power, his title, his castle. He traded everything he had to keep me safe, and in the end he ran with me, away from the whole vampire world. But there was a curse in my blood. Every time I let myself feel something for him, it punished me, gnawing my heart to pieces one inch at a time. So all I could do was call him useless, force him to buy me jewelry, drive him away from my bed, and humiliate him every way I knew how. He ended up living in the garage, hauling cargo to survive, supporting a spoiled, vicious wife who treated him like dirt. One night I crept into his little partition and pulled back his collar. There was a burn the length of my hand, gotten from hauling freight day and night just to buy me a gift. I hid in the bathroom and ran the tap to cover the sound of crying. Dabbing ointment on the wound, sniffling, I asked the thing in my blood: "Curse. When is he finally going to hate me and leave?" The curse looked at the back of his hand, wet where my tears had fallen, then at the faint tremor of his lashes, and sighed. He's going to love you for the rest of his life.

Louise looks like the perfect flawless woman. She has been in a relationship for a few years with Paul but feels their love is going down the drain after her meeting with Agnès. Louise struggles with her emotions that she would like to keep quiet. Paul proposes her, and on the other side, Agnès puts pressure on her. What voice will she listen to?

Eight years ago, my cousin Wendy Cooper was involved in a drunk driving hit-and-run. Yet, my parents made sure all the evidence pointed toward me. The victim's family waited outside my school every day with gasoline, threatening to die with me. Because of that, the school took away my guaranteed admission to university. That day, my parents and brother all tried to persuade me. "Wendy's terrified. Just give her your spot to make her feel better." I refused, fought back, and even tried to talk them out of it. But the next day, they handed me over to the police themselves. Lance Stewart, my fiance and a powerful business tycoon, had orchestrated it all. As he was afraid I'd run or cause trouble, he personally pinned several charges on me and sent me to an isolated island prison. He left me with no way out. When my sentence began, he made me a promise. "Esme, just endure it for a few years. I'll get you out once Wendy graduates, and then we'll get married."

Ruthless mafia heir and billionaire CEO Jett Luciano rules with blood, power, and unyielding dominance. When a brutal ambush leaves his father dead and a bullet in his chest, the only thing that pulls him back from hell is her — the curvy stranger whose face haunts his every dark desire. Now his obsession consumes him. On her birthday, Jett takes what he wants. He kidnaps Laura and locks her in his opulent world with a dangerous ultimatum: Fall in love with him in one year… or he’ll release her. But Jett doesn’t wait passively. With every commanding touch, every filthy promise whispered against her skin, and every dominant stroke that sets her weak heart racing, he awakens the raw passion she’s been starved for. In his realm of velvet sin and velvet chains, Laura’s resistance begins to shatter. Her neglected body craves the very man who stole her freedom. Surrender has never felt so addictive. Obsession has never burned so hot. In a deadly game of power and pleasure, can Laura survive falling for the dangerous devil who owns her… or will his dark love consume them both?