When they touch me
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The Hockey Prince's Secret Ice Queen
All I wanted was to find a computer genius to process the non-linear dynamic equations for my ecological model. Instead, I found myself cornered by Julian Andrews, the university's hockey prince, trading a public, staged kiss for his academic support. To finalize our "deal," I was dragged to the campus ice rink. The cheerleaders and puck bunnies immediately swarmed him, mocking my plain clothes and treating me like a pathetic joke. Brooke, the head cheerleader, even set up a figure skating competition with a date with Julian as the grand prize. She performed a basic spin, blew him a kiss, and smugly waited for me to fall flat on my face and humiliate myself. His hockey teammates laughed from the sidelines, watching me try to support Julian as he stumbled around the ice like a newborn giraffe. But as I held his warm hand to keep him from falling, I couldn't help but feel something was terribly wrong. Why was a top-tier athlete faking such awful balance? And why did his ice-blue eyes stare at me with such knowing anticipation, as if he already knew about the professional figure skating past I had spent years trying to bury? "Just let go and skate." He whispered, slowly releasing my hand. I took a deep breath, glided to the center of the rink, and landed a flawless double Axel. As the entire rink fell into a dead, shocked silence, I realized I had just exposed not only my own hidden past, but also the biggest secret of the campus god.
Chapter 1 No.1
Sage POV:
"Let me kiss you."
The request was a low, hurried murmur—warm, quiet, and laced with the faintest edge of mortification.
Stunned, I snapped my head up toward the sound.
Julian Andrews filled my vision. He easily towered a head over me, his lean, athletic frame silhouetted against the bright morning glare, casting a long shadow across the cobblestones. Briar University's star forward. Team captain. The athletic department's untouchable golden boy.
Campus rumor had it that Julian was notoriously indifferent, never sparing anyone a second glance.
Behind him, a solid wall of navy-and-gold varsity jackets blocked the brick path. His teammates were whistling, shoving each other, and effectively cutting off my only exit.
The sudden commotion immediately bottlenecked the morning foot traffic. Whispers rippled through the crowd, and within seconds, a dozen students reached into their pockets out of sheer muscle memory, black camera lenses catching the light as they aimed squarely at us.
Julian's sharp eyes tracked the movement, his jaw tightening into a hard, irritated line.
Before I could take a single defensive step back, he closed the distance between us. Leaning down into my space, his broad shoulders shifted in a subtle, fluid maneuver—throwing up an impenetrable physical wall that completely shielded my face from the intrusive glare of the cameras.
His sharp, striking face hovered breathtakingly close. His deep baritone brushed against my ear, lost to the autumn wind, meant for me alone:
"Sorry to drop this on you," he whispered, his pale blue eyes disarmingly earnest, holding a quiet heat that sent a tremor straight down my spine. "The guys backed me into a locker-room dare... but I'm not here to use you as a joke. We can fake it. Angle it so it looks real—whatever you're comfortable with. Just help me get them off my back, and I owe you one."
It was only then that my brain finally rebooted.
What on earth? He's actually trying to kiss me?
A sharp flare of pure absurdity hit me, and my gaze dropped to my reflection in the dark glass door of the adjacent building: an oversized, faded gray hoodie that swallowed my frame whole, soft, thin jeans worn at the knees, bare-faced dark circles carved beneath my eyes from forty-eight hours of non-stop coding, my dark hair hastily twisted into a cheap plastic claw clip, and a pair of oversized, thick black-rimmed glasses sitting heavy on the bridge of my nose, completely hiding my face.
I looked like a refugee from an all-night disaster. How had Briar's golden prince ended up in front of me?
When I looked back up, my breath trapped in my throat anyway. He was too close, his clean scent of winter mint and cedar wrapping around my senses. Having those pale blue eyes staring straight down at me made my chest tighten in a way I really didn't want to acknowledge.
"Clock's ticking, Cap!" Landon howled from the sidelines, hands cupped around his mouth as the rest of the players lost their minds laughing. "Plant one on her, or enjoy the five-AM bag skate!"
A raucous chorus of barks and chest-thumping went up from the team.
A few yards away, two girls heading toward the dining hall froze in their tracks, pointing their phones.
"Wait, who the hell is that?" one of them laughed loudly, zooming her camera in on my face. "She looks like she just crawled out of a dumpster. There's no way Julian's actually kissing her. Post it on Sidechat right now—this is going straight to number one."
The cruel words hit like a splash of ice water, snapping me out of my daze and instantly killing the stupid flutter in my chest.
I hated the attention.
Four years ago, after my family and my former training partner framed me and destroyed my competitive skating career, I swore I would never be public entertainment again. I buried my name, switched majors, and hid behind oversized fleece and thick glasses just to live an invisible life. If I ended up on the campus forums with Julian Andrews, the internet vultures would dox me before noon—and drag up the toxic scandal I had bled to walk away from.
My research was already on the verge of falling apart. I didn't have time for this circus.
I locked my grip around my heavy binders, my knuckles straining white.
"Find someone else for your dare, Andrews," I said coldly, taking a step back to put distance between us, my voice tight with adrenaline. "I'm not interested in being part of your game. Move."
I kept my head down, attempting to brush past him.
"You're Sage Kelley, right?"
The sound of my name brought my boots to an immediate halt.
I blinked up at him, caught completely off guard.
"Professor Beaumont's senior research student," Julian straightened up slightly, his cadence measured and even, carrying an intellectual sharpness that seemed impossible beneath a varsity jacket. "I saw your Havenwood Creek senior capstone proposal sitting on his desk over Sunday dinner."
My heart gave a hard, hollow thud. Professor Beaumont was my academic advisor—and the guardian of the final research endowment my late father had left behind.
Julian leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a near-whisper against the whistle of the wind. "I spent an hour going over your codebase."
My lips parted. "You... read my proposal?"
"Your simulation keeps crashing because your core fluid algorithm strategy is flawed," Julian murmured, his pale blue eyes deadly sharp. "And Uncle Des mentioned that if you don't deliver a working version by this Friday, the department is pulling your grant—which means you don't clear your senior thesis, and you don't graduate in May."
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Friday was the deadline. If the funding was pulled, the project died, my senior capstone failed, and I would be forced to stay another semester without my degree. Worse, my father's final ecological legacy would be reduced to scrap paper.
I had been panicking over that exact deadline for two days straight, and Julian had just laid it out like it was nothing.
Worse, I couldn't even brush him off. I had heard the rumors about Beaumont's nephew—the CS prodigy everyone in the department talked about. I just had never realized it was him.
"I know how to fix your algorithm," Julian stated plainly, laying his cards on the table, his gaze locking onto mine with an unshakeable, quiet certainty. "Help me get through this bet. In return, I'll rewrite your boundary calculations tonight. Deal?"
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When they touch me
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FATED MATES: When They Touch Me
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When They Met
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Touch me or Destroy me
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Touch me now
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Touch Me Dear Husband
Gavin Hugh is the son of George and Samantha Hugh. He practically runs his father's company. In other to become the CEO of the company, he agrees to marry Arianna, a model whose marriage has been arranged with him. He hates her and shares no intimacy with her. Five years later, years of loneliness,
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Touch Me, Daddy
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They Broke Me, Now They Beg
For ten years, Eleonora devoted herself to Julian Sterling, waiting for the day she would finally become his wife. But at the grand ball, just three months before their wedding, Julian walked in with her cousin Isabella on his arm. In front of the entire high society, he publicly broke their engag
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They broke me first
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Touch me, Sandoval
Will you imagine that a high-class lady, Intelligent and glamorous woman will be a mistress? She loathes a cheater and a prevaricator but there's barely one man who captured her attention. A man that she encountered when she's employing a secretary, She's biting her lip while glimpsing at the man.
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Touch Me, Daddies
Keep your legs open, baby. That's it... eyes on me." One had his hand around my throat. Another had his mouth between my thighs. The third... God help me, he was the one who whispered the filth that made me forget my name. Three of them. All at once. Tearing me apart like I belonged to them. And
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They Never Saw Me
Ethan Miller always felt like a ghost, invisible in his own home. He yearned for his biological parents' love, but their affection, their very sight, was reserved for his adopted brother, Kyle – the golden boy who perfectly filled the void Ethan had left. Then, terror struck. He was kidnapped, brut
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Forbidden Love: Touch Me Honey
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They Both Wanted Me
My name is Lena, and until last week, my biggest worry was the late return fees at the library where I work. I was ordinary, invisible, and I liked it that way. Then a pack of rogue werewolves attacked me in a dark alley, and two monsters saved my life-or so I thought. The first was Caspian, a vampi
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Touch me, Ruin me: Daddy's pet
"Lock the door." Isla hesitated, her pulse racing. "Alaric-" "Now." His voice was pure dominance. Her fingers fumbled with the lock just as he spun her around, pressing her back against the cold mahogany desk. His hands skimmed her thighs, pushing up her skirt, his eyes dark with hunger. "You'
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When Love Erased Me!
I stood outside our bedroom door, the cool wood pressed to my forehead. My wife, Victoria, was inside, her voice low and urgent. "Liam, stop it. He could be home any minute." Liam. My paralegal. I froze when I heard his next words: "He needs to know you're not some broodmare, Vicky. That pregnancy s
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Touch me gently, break me slow
Eva had never imagined attending a blind date in place of her rich friend Jasmine. Jasmine, ambitious and wary of the man she was supposed to meet, refused to go-convinced he would be far too old. So Eva went in her place-and found herself staring at Alexander Thorne, London's youngest billionaire,
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The Monster They Made Me
My life was perfect. I was Sarah, a loving mom, taking my sweet six-year-old Lily to Kids' Kraft Korner, all smiles and glitter castles. In an instant, my world shattered. A bloodcurdling scream. I raced back inside to find Lily' s lifeless body, her head gone, crafting shears beside her. My heart
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The Witch They Made Me
I sacrificed everything for love, my very essence, my Nahualtse, rebuilding his family' s empire and bearing him nine children-then I fell into a year-long coma. I awoke expecting to hold my babies, to be reunited with the man who had promised to protect us all. Instead, I found myself in a crumbl
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When He Found Me
Haunted by the shadows of love and the twists of destiny, Olivia found herself at the heart of New York City, determined to embark on a new chapter. Embracing a fresh start, she stepped into the role of Lucas Adams's assistant, a man whose tall stature, youth, and brooding demeanor captured attentio
