I swore I'd marry for duty alone.
An heir to save my crumbling legacy. Nothing more.
Then she stepped into my shadowed library, her family's ruin written in every defiant line of her body. Debts had stripped her world bare, but not her fire. I offered salvation. A contract. Cold terms for a warm bed.
What a fool I was.
One candlelit negotiation turned feral.
Papers scattered like fallen soldiers. We crashed to the woolen rug, sweaty limbs twisting in the dark. Her gasps against my neck, my hands greedy for the curves duty forbade. I took her there, raw and reckless, spilling seed meant for a wedding night. Breeding her before the vows. The thrill of it shattered every plan.
Now she's mine by paper and by sin.
Breathless confessions echo in my locked study, her husky voice unraveling my control. “It was just debts,” she whispers, but her fingers trace my scars in the rose-scented garden twilight, pulling truths from me I buried deep. I crave her surrender, not just her womb. Her heart. Her everything.
Yet scandal lurks. One whisper of our pre-marital frenzy, and her autonomy crumbles. My title falls. Our souls entwine too deep for escape.
This was convenience. Strategy.
Now it's obsession. Her guarded yearning mirrors my haunted hunger, bodies betraying us into vulnerability we can't afford. I planned detachment. She planned survival.
What if passion forges the heir we need… but destroys us both?
