The fifth patient dreamed of bells.
I stared at the monitor, eyes burning from twelve straight hours of analysis, and watched the brainwave patterns spike in perfect synchronization with the audio recording. Five patients. Five identical nightmares. Gothic architecture. Impossible geometry. Bells that should not exist outside a temporal lobe.
And then I smelled roses.
Not the sweet kind. Something darker. Heavier. Like flowers left to rot in a closed room.
On my desk, on top of my keyboard, sat three black roses tied with a white ribbon. The lab door was locked. The roses had simply appeared.
Someone, or something, wanted my attention.
Higher Chicago: Desire Is a Beautiful Thing to Fear is a dark, erotic eldritch romance with cosmic dread and a midlife, neurodivergent heroine who refuses to look away.
Dr. Thea Vaughn is a 38-year-old sleep researcher with an ADHD brain that does not let patterns go. When her clinical study subjects start describing the same cathedral in their nightmares, Thea does what she always does: she digs deeper.Ash Kieran is beautiful, cold-skinned, and wrong in ways Thea cannot chart on any scan. He knows things he should not know. He watches her as if she is the first anomaly he has ever wanted to keep. His attention is not safe, not human, and not something she can escape.
As sabotage tears through Thea’s study and the boundary between two Chicagos begins to thin, desire turns into a lifeline. Ash offers her structure, rules, and a consensual dominance dynamic that anchors her when the world starts to split.
But something ancient is moving above the city. The higher plane is waking. The cathedral is counting down.
To survive what is coming, Thea must choose what she is willing to become, and what she is willing to lose.
For readers who want
✔️Dark romance
✔️Eldritch cosmic dread
✔️Paranormal romance
✔️A neurodivergent heroine with ADHD
✔️Midlife heroine
✔️A confident plus-size FMC
✔️Consensual power exchange (light BDSM)
✔️Science-meets-supernatural
✔️Enemies to Lovers
✔️Medium heat romance
Content note: This is dark romance with horror elements, sexual content, and consensual power exchange. Expect morally complex choices, manipulation/obsession themes, and cosmic-level stakes.
