Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 980 short novels in Sweet Romance
I remember the winter light that morning—soft and polite, like someone who knows how to be kind without promising too much. I remember the airport noise, the small smells of coffee and cold leather, and the crowd that had decided I was worth their attention for reasons I did not understand. Mostly I remember the boy with the crescent eyes who smelled faintly of tea. "We're not standing in the VIP line, are we?" the rookie paparazzo whispered beside me, voice small and eager. "Imagine...
The sea pulled at me with a polite cruelty, like a hand that knew my name and ignored it. "Ellis, help me!" I shouted, salt in my throat, the words cutting like cold glass. "El—" The water stole the rest of what I meant to say. My left ankle stung; something was wrapped around it under the surface, tugging me deeper every second. I knew how to swim. I swam before I could walk. But the ocean had ways of turning skills into stories you told other people later. My legs were not listening....
I woke to clauses being read like a bad joke. "You admit you're the illegitimate daughter and hand over the title to Harper," someone said. "One year after marriage, you will 'donate' your heart to Harper without question," another voice recited. "You shall not appear publicly as the family's mistress, nor make the marriage a spectacle," a third voice added. I blinked at the ceiling and saw Laurent Donovan's eyes boring into me—cold, contemptuous, like he'd been carved out of...
I did not plan to be clever the first day Jaelyn Bridges arrived at our gate. I only wanted my marriage to Clayton Brantley to be simple and quiet. "Angelina," Clayton said the night he came home, "I'm sorry I left so soon." "You left the bed empty," I told him, "and the whole house kept whispering." He smiled like a soldier who had seen too many winters. "I won't let you be whispered about again," he said. Clayton is blunt and honest. He is not made for drawing secrets out of corners....
I remember the snow first. "It's like the night I stood outside and waited for you to look back at me," he says, and his voice is a ribbon of warmth. "We're not thirteen anymore," I answer, and he knocks my head lightly with the back of his hand. "Luca," I call him by the name I used when we were children. He is Emperor now; his proper title hangs in the air like a decree, but his palm on my shoulder is still the palm that steadied a crying girl who had slipped on cold stone. "You...
I woke to cold water and a raw sting behind my eyes. I fought the pull down, lungs burning, and spat until the taste of river mud filled the air. When my head cleared there was a pale rectangle floating just above the rocks, half translucent and blinking slow. "Loading..." it said in the middle, then a progress bar crawled. I touched the water from my skirt and the moonlight made the surface glassy. My name in that life felt thin as tissue—someone else's memory stitched poorly to mine....
I still remember his first sentence to me. "Love and marriage are two different things." Three seconds later I decided I would marry him. "Why tell me that on a first date?" I asked, and the tea shop was quiet enough that my voice felt overly loud. Ely Wolff smiled the way only dangerous men can: calm, measured, like a person sure of the map while everyone else was fumbling with directions. "Because," he said, "I want to marry you, Juliana. And I want you to know the terms." I...
"I can't believe this thing is the only thing I brought with me," I said to the quiet square of stone in my palm. "Kira, what did you expect? A castle and a crown?" The jade pendant was smaller than a phone and uglier than I remembered old costume stores being. It had a little raised square button and an odd, rough pattern on the edge. It did not feel like a magic relic, but a broken gadget that refused to die. It also refused to tell me anything friendly. "Please tell me you at least...
I woke up with a roaring headache and a mind that felt like an emptied room. The day before my wedding, everything should have been certain; instead, memory was a thief who had taken my past and left me a stranger to myself. The oddest thing arrived with the headache: other people’s unspoken words filled the air, clear as a bell. I could hear hearts like television channels switching without a remote. I sat up, reached for the wallet on the small table, and found my ID. My name—Nova...
"I won't marry him." "I won't," I said again, louder, and my voice bounced off the sun-washed courtyard walls. "You will," my buyer's wife snapped. "You belong where your price put you." "Not to that fat boy," I said. "Not ever." They laughed. The laughter slid through me like cold rain. I am Delilah Chan. I used to be a small ginseng spirit on the high green ridge. I am a root that learned how to breathe, a tiny sprout that grew thoughts. I am also very small and very human now,...
I woke up because someone called me "Empress" and because a warm, heavy tail was pressed against my side. "Why would the Empress sleep like a stone?" a soft voice asked. "It is morning." Another voice said, bored. "You always sleep more than twenty times a day." I opened my eyes. The ceiling was a tent of faded cloth. Beside me, a young man—no human, really, his ears tipped like a fox's—was pretending to be a king. He had a long black tail, big and warm. He blinked at me like a...
Half an hour ago, for the sake of face, I sent my ex a photo of my boss with five words: "My husband." I never thought the photo would be projected onto the meeting room screen. I never thought my chat with Enzo would open in front of fifty senior staff members. I never thought everyone would go silent and look at me like I was a new kind of animal on display. "I—" I tried to speak, but the room closed in. The CEO's face on the screen was handsome and cold. The real Lincoln Falk sat...
I have nine memories stitched under my ribs like old stitches that never quite healed. "I will wait for you in every life," he said once when the world still fit inside our palms. "He swore it," my maid Sophie Bolton used to whisper, "till the moon forgot its name." But vows wear thin. I am Juliet Finley, daughter of Chancellor Cason Dean, and this is the ninth lifetime I remember. I have lived him in soldier's mud, in palace gold, in a common woman's rag — and always he is Alejandro...
I always thought I knew the shape of my life, like a map drawn in ink. "Dimitri," I said once when I was small and believeable, "stay with me." He smiled and ruffled my hair. "I will, Anna." He kept his promise for years. When my father was dying, he put me in Dimitri Price's care. "Take her," he said, and left like he had left everything else—quiet and decisive. I grew up with that kindness stitched into my days. He was eight years older than me. He was careful, polite, perfect...
I woke to the sun warming my face, soft and wrong. I should have been in a hospital, or under gray clouds, remembering the last bright, loud crash. Instead I was on my old bed, my stuffed bear—torn years ago—still at my pillow. My mouth tasted like sleep, not antiseptic. I hugged the bear like a proof. "Get up, Ami, you're going to be late," my mother called from the kitchen. The voice floated in like an ordinary day. I sat up so fast my head hit the headboard. "What—? I'm—" My brain...
I remember the first day I stepped out of the mountain cave. I was small, fourteen by human counting, and full of the kind of confidence that only a cat born to unusual blood can have. "I can do whatever I want," I told the wind as I padded down the path. "You're reckless," my mother had said before she left for the lowlands. "Don't get yourself killed. Wait for us." "Don't worry." I flicked my tail and took the road anyway. I had a map in my head of my parents' laughter, the smell...
I woke up on a bed that wasn't mine, sunlight like a hot coin pressed into my face. The room breathed wealth: a crystal chandelier, European curtains, a garden beyond the window that looked staged. I blinked and the world slid into place like a movie reel. I wasn't in my dorm. I wasn't in my life anymore. "Where am I?" I whispered. I touched my face. My fingers met soft skin and hair that fell in neat waves. I found a phone on the bedside table, unlocked it with a face I didn't recognize,...
I woke up in someone else's skin and found a man bleeding on a stone like a broken statue. "Who are you?" he rasped when I first opened my eyes. His voice was silk and steel, and it landed on me like a verdict. "I—" I swallowed dust and the taste of someone else's fear. "My name is Jessalyn." He spat, a thin ribbon of blood, and pushed my hand away. "Roll away from me." "I didn't do anything," I said, and I meant it. My head still hummed with the echo of another life—metal birds and...
I never expected a wedding to be a bank transfer and a signature. "I'll sign the papers," my father said, "and you'll marry into that family. Three million—it's enough to save the company." "I know." I tried to make my voice steady. "It's only business." "Remember," my mother whispered in the kitchen as I packed, "be the good wife. If you play your part, everything will be fine." I held my bag and thought of the months of bills, the empty company account numbers, the calls from...
I slipped in the mud and watched the hem of my new skirt tear. The road had betrayed me after the storm; the world was gray, and my patience thin. "Caitlin Vorobyov," I told myself, "do not act like a fool and fall again." Then I blinked and saw his back. He was all angles in black—lean, straight, moving like someone who belonged to wind and rope. I tried to stand properly. The skirt betrayed me again and I plopped on the wet ground. "Keep running, Miss Caitlin," he said without turning...
