Description

I do not crave.
I do not want.
I take what I need—and leave before it can touch me.

That was the rule.
My only rule.

Then came the widow.

Ann Taylor should have been perfect for a temporary arrangement—quiet, discreet, untouched by anything resembling desire. Something to sate the darker urges no respectable Duke should possess.

But she is not temporary.

From the first moment our bodies met, she lodged beneath my skin like a splinter. Fragile where I am forged from steel, yet she takes everything I give her and looks at me as though she wants more.

She should fear the man duty turned me into. She should run.

Instead, she endures. She tempts. She finds me in the shadows I retreat to, unraveling a control I've spent a lifetime perfecting.

I was never meant to want. Never meant to keep anyone.

But the widow with trembling courage and a ruined past is becoming the one thing I cannot let go.

And if I am not careful, I will do what men like me should never do:

Let her stay.