Cherreads

future

I Transmigrated into a novel i called stupid: Cold CEO Contract Bride

"Stop." His voice is low and controlled and furious underneath both. "Whatever you're doing in there the books, the reading, the tucking in — stop." "They asked me to read to them," I say evenly. "I don't care what they asked." He takes a step toward me and I hold my ground, which seems to make it worse. "You've been here for just less than two weeks, and you're already in Dorian's room, touching his things, letting them climb all over you like you're" He stops, jaw tight. "You're not their mother. You're on a twelve-month contract." "I'm aware of what I am," I say. "Are you?" Something sharp enters his expression. "Because from where I'm standing it looks like a woman playing a very long game. Soften up the children, charm the staff, make yourself indispensable — and then what? You think I don't see it?" Something cold moves through my chest, but I keep my face neutral. "You think I'm doing this to get to you." "Aren't you?" He says it like it's obvious, like I'm naive for pretending otherwise, and the contempt in it is so clean and practiced that for one second I almost believe I deserve it. "You should wake up from that delusion. Whatever you think you're building here — it won't work, you will never have me." He moves before I register it, closing the distance between us in one smooth step, and then his hand is at my neck, warm and deliberate, his thumb pressing lightly against my pulse like he's checking whether I'm afraid, and the answer my body gives him is humiliating. His mouth drops to the curve of my neck and shoulder, not rough — slow, purposeful, his lips dragging against my skin like he has all the time in the world and knows exactly what he's doing with it, and I shudder despite everything I know about this man and this moment and exactly what he's trying to prove. "This," he murmurs against my skin, his voice low and terrible and close, "is all you'll ever get from me." ********* Sloane Carter had her work stolen, her body broken, and her heart shattered in pieces. Then a truck ran her off the road on a rainy night, and she woke up inside the worst romance novel she had ever read. Wrong century, wrong country. Wrong body. Twelve-month contract marriage to a man carved from ice, three feral six-year-olds, and a dead man's secret buried so deep the whole empire is rotting from the root. In the novel, the heroine smiles gently, loves quietly, and dies before anyone notices she was worth saving. Sloane has bruised ribs, a stolen career, years of swallowed rage and absolutely no intention of following the original script. The cold CEO didn't bargain for a woman who'd already survived the worst he could ever be. Neither did the man who put her in that car. He thought killing Sloane Carter would silence her. He had no idea it would set her free.
Ruby0 · 1k Views

Pixel Guard

He spent three years killing people for money. Now his job is making sure nobody kills the girl dressed as a cat goddess. In the near future, mega-corporations have discovered that cosplayers are worth more than celebrities. The top performers live like idols — private jets, penthouse suites, merchandise deals worth more than small nations' GDPs. They also attract obsessive fans, corporate espionage, and occasionally, people with guns. Kai Reuben, 21, is the most capable person in any room he walks into and the most uncomfortable. Three years as a mercenary left him fluent in threat assessment, efficient in a fight, and completely unequipped for civilian life. Peacetime is loud. People's emotions are data he doesn't know how to file. He has constructed a pleasant face for public use and it has been stuck there ever since. He retired eight months ago because the world got too peaceful and his reputation got too large — other mercenaries couldn't beat him, so they started targeting the people near him instead. He walked away before anyone else got hurt. He has been trying to figure out what to do with himself ever since. He does not figure this out at a cosplay convention on a Saturday afternoon. What he does instead is deflect a bullet with a combat knife in front of thirty thousand live viewers, neutralise three armed assailants, critique the venue's west walkway security to the responding officers, and retrieve his cold brew. The clip hits one million views before midnight. The cosplay internet decides he's the most committed method actor they've ever seen. NovaCorp's Director Chantal decides something more accurate and makes a call. By Sunday morning, Kai Reuben has a new job he didn't ask for, a contract he probably should have read more carefully, and a problem he has absolutely no protocol for. PIXEL GUARD is a light novel in the action romantic comedy tradition — overpowered protagonist, genuine emotional stakes, and a harem that operates less like a competition and more like a slowly assembling disaster that Kai is professionally equipped to survive and personally entirely unprepared for. The action is real. The comedy is real. The feelings, which Kai has filed under pending further classification and fully intends to address at a later date, are very real. He is going to have to stop moving toward the threat eventually. He is not there yet. [ Action · Romantic Comedy · Harem · Overpowered MC · Idol Industry · Found Family · Slow Burn · Comedy of Errors ]
AstorPendragon · 6.2k Views