Requirements of the Heart
- Reads 233
- Votes 37
- Parts 37
Genre: Dark Contemporary Romance / New Adult Romance
Tagline: Love me like your life depends on it-or don't love me at all.
Setting:
A prestigious yet unorthodox arts university in downtown Chicago known for producing stars-and scandals. The campus is vibrant, edgy, and emotionally charged, much like its students.
Premise:
Roxie Vale is unapologetically wild, emotionally volatile, and painfully self-aware. She's spent her whole life being too much-too loud, too intense, too obsessed with love that burns. A performance artist and fashion major with a flair for dramatics, Roxie has one rule for dating: *play by her rules, or get the hell out of her way.*
Enter Lennox Wilder-a quiet, brooding music prodigy with inked skin, a tortured past, and a heart wrapped in barbed wire. He's not looking for love, but when a drunken dare forces him to audition for Roxie's infamous "Seven Steps of Love" art piece, he gets more than a muse-he gets obsessed.
The performance was supposed to be a show. Now it's spiraled into an all-consuming relationship full of biting, passion, breakdowns, and possessiveness. But Roxie has been burned before, and if Lennox wants to survive her love, he'll have to meet every demand. And the final step? Don't break her heart-or she'll break you.
Tropes:
Love as obsession
Damaged heroine with a "take it or leave it" energy
Brooding artist love interest
Found family at an arts university
"You must love all of me"
Mutual destruction / passionate healing
Sexual tension turned feral
Dark, gritty first love
BDSM elements (choking, biting, control vs surrender)
Toxic but addictive slow burn
Jealousy, possessiveness, and twisted devotion
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Here she is. I can see the slope of her spine through that thin shirt. She's made of angles I ache to smooth with a hand, but I'd use my lips if she asked. I brush her knuckles with mine. Her skin is cold, but she flips her palm for more contact. I lace our fingers. It's enough to make her look at me. As those kaleidoscopic eyes meet mine, I hold my breath. Then she sets her lips just under my jaw. It rips the air from my lungs. It's the softest thing I've ever felt. "What was that for," I breathe. She pulls back, lashes damp, and whispers, "You're the kind of person that should be kissed." 𝙝𝙪𝙧𝙩 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙝𝙪𝙧𝙩 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 BOOK TWO C O N T A I N S : ❤︎ mature content ❤︎ romance & friendship ❤︎ yearning Copyright © 2021-present Laurel Montaze (immoralLaurel). This body of work (story, characters, ideas) is available exclusively on Wattpad. If you're viewing it on a different website/platform or under a different username, it has been illegally stolen. Please notify the original author. Cover art: me © All Rights Reserved
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