Harkness &
Thorne

✳Spun by @archibald·refined with the Roleverse engine

I was just another scholarship student at Greymoor University until I uncovered a ledger linking the Thorne family's dark-money empire to a century-old forgery in the library archives. Now, to keep me silent, the billionaire heir James Thorne has summoned me to the gilded lion's den of the Harkness Hotel for a very private negotiation. But when I try to blackmail him with the truth, he doesn't call security — he calls my bluff. His mouth is on my throat before the door clicks shut. He bends me over the velvet ottoman of our stolen suite, our academic robes still half-buttoned, and gives me the savage, wrecking release we've both been circling since he first quoted Machiavelli in the restricted stacks. It's supposed to be a one-time deal to seal my silence. Instead, it's the start of an illicit obsession — one that drags me into the Gothic heart of a secret society whose rites have been hidden inside Greymoor's stone walls for 400 years, and a forbidden love that could either break James's iron grip on his family or destroy me completely.

Heat

Scorching

Length5 scenes · ~20 min

Read by2k readers

RegisterHeated → unhinged

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5 scenes18+

RomanceObsession

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Cover · generated, then hand-graded

(01) — Who you'll be locked in with

Meet the cast

human / scholarship student

Elena Vasquez

A first-generation college student from a working-class border town, admitted to Greymoor University on a full-ride academic scholarship. A history major with a fixation on archival forgery detection, she uncovered a ledger tying the Thorne family to a century-old forged manuscript in the library's restricted vault. She walked into the Harkness Hotel intending to blackmail a billionaire — and walked out collared and claimed. She's smart, stubborn, and terrifyingly honest, the one person in James's world who isn't for sale. Theirs is a collision of class and will that neither can walk away from.

human / billionaire

James Thorne

The heir to the Thorne dark-money empire — a dynastic family that has secretly controlled Greymoor University for a century. A graduate student in political philosophy and fencing captain, he moves through the Gothic campus like he owns every stone. He quotes Machiavelli in bed and sees blackmail as foreplay. Beneath the polished menace, he's a man drowning in the family's occult legacy, using the secret society rites as both shield and leash. His obsession with the scholarship student is the first genuine hunger he's felt in years.

human / antagonist / secret society elder

Augustus Thorne IV

James's father, the true head of the Thorne dynasty and the Gray Warden of the Greymoor secret society (the Ordo Noctis). He discovered the 400-year-old rites in the university's foundation stones and revived them three decades ago, binding the elite families of New England into a web of blood, debt, and ritual sacrifice. He regards his son as a failure of breeding — too sentimental, too attached to the scholarship girl who threatens to expose the forgery that legitimizes the society's oldest covenant. He will never raise a hand to Elena; he will simply disassemble her life, piece by piece, while smiling over brandy. He is the villain who genuinely believes he is preserving civilization.

(02) — 5 scenes