Belonging to Ashbourne

Elizabeth came to Ashbourne University to survive.

Med school. Scholarships. Her family's future.

What no one tells you is that survival sometimes means scrubbing the floors of the legacy students who rule the place.

To make ends meet, she takes a quiet job in the Ashbourne estate-as a live-in maid for the university's most powerful family.

It's supposed to be simple.
And a secret.
No one can know a scholarship student is scrubbing floors for the Ashbournes just to survive.

But secrets unravel.
Walls thin.
And the longer she stays, the harder it is to tell who's watching her too closely-
and why.

John Ashbourne is the youngest son. Arrogant. Entitled. Wickedly cruel when he wants to be. He treats her like she's beneath him-until he doesn't. Until he starts looking at her like he's starving for something he can't name.

Matthew Ashbourne is everything John isn't-calm, brilliant, revered. The picture of discipline. But behind the polished veneer is something colder. Sharper. Watching her far too closely. Asking questions no employer should ask.

She cleans their rooms. Folds their shirts. Pretends not to notice the shift in their voices when they say her name.

But the longer she stays, the more the lines twist-between employer and employee, between hate and hunger, between who she was and who they want her to become.

They were never meant to want her.
And she was never supposed to want them back.

But the Ashbournes are not kind men.

And some temptations are better left untouched.