Never Let Me Go

I was supposed to catalogue his family's estate for six weeks. Appraise the art, inventory the wine cellar, hand over a report, and disappear back into my ordinary life.

Then the will was read, and I found out the estate wasn't the job. I was.

My late employer — the only person who ever believed in me — left me one condition tucked into her final wishes: I live in the manor for a full year under the guardianship of her grandson, or the scholarship fund that's kept my mother's medical bills paid for three years disappears with me.

Julian Ashworth didn't ask for a ward. He definitely didn't ask for me — the girl cataloguing his dead grandmother's silverware, sleeping down the hall from a man built like a closed door and a locked jaw. He runs his family's empire the way he runs everything: with total control and zero patience for anything he can't own outright.

He watches me like I'm a variable he hasn't solved yet. He touches me like the answer was never in question.

I tell myself it's a year. I tell myself I can survive being wanted by a man who has never once said please.

But Julian doesn't do anything by half — not grief, not rage, not the terrifying, consuming way he's decided I belong to him. And the closer this year pulls us together, the more I realize the cage isn't the house.

It's him. And I don't want out anymore.

Never Let Me Go is a full-length, standalone dark romance with a guaranteed HEA — no cheating, no cliffhanger, high heat throughout.

Tropes: Forced Proximity • Possessive Alpha • Billionaire Guardian • Forbidden Want • Grief & Healing • One-Year Arrangement

18+ only. Contains mature themes, power-imbalance dynamics, and sensual content. All characters are consenting adults.