I can still remember the moment I first heard Cyrus Holt's deep, commanding voice. I didn't know who he was or about the life he'd left behind. I was just a trembling orphan on the run from a monster, and he was the man offering me shelter and not giving me a choice about it. This boss of bosses didn't assign someone else to watch over me. He slept on the floor next to my bed when I woke up scared, then spanked me like a naughty little girl when I lied to him.

It was an innocent mistake; she knocked on the wrong door. It was mine. If I were a better man, I would've just let her go. But I'm not. I'm a cruel bastard. I ruthlessly claimed her virtue for my own. It should've been enough but it wasn't. I needed more...I craved it. She became my obsession. Her sweetness and purity taunted my dark soul. The need to possess her nearly drove me mad. A Russian arms dealer had no business pursuing a naive librarian student. She didn't belong in my world. I would bring her only pain. But it was too late...she was mine and I was keeping her.

Maximo Giovanni Santaro is a king. A real king, like in the old days. The kind I didn’t know still existed. The kind who commands obedience and punishes any hint of defiance from his subjects. His Majesty doesn’t take no for an answer, and refusing his royal command has earned me not just a spanking that will leave me sobbing, but a lesson so utterly shameful, that it will serve as an example for anyone else who might dare to disobey him. 

No man had taken a woman as his and his alone for centuries—and he hadn’t even asked. He’d just told her she was to be his bride, watched her blush at the shameful term, then fisted her hair and pulled her in for a brutal, possessive kiss the moment she opened her mouth to protest. A kiss that made clear this wasn’t up to her, and even if it were they both knew she would choose to wear his ring, share his bed, and one day bear his children. A kiss that said she was his already, and there was so much more to come as he taught her what that meant in every way.

I know how to handle men who won't take no for an answer, but Silas isn't a man. He's a beast who takes what he wants, as long and hard and savagely as he pleases, and tonight, he wants me. He's not even pretending he's going to be gentle. He's going to ravage me, and it's going to hurt.