Part of Lyonesse
First published 2023
The first time she meets Mark Trevena, he already knows her name. The second time, she learns why. Her father has arranged her marriage to him, effective the moment she collects her diploma. Trevena is older, unapologetic, and the owner of a private club where powerful people indulge appetites they keep off the books. She has no say in any of it. Trevena sets one condition before the wedding: they will perform a courtship. He will teach her to act like his, to move and respond under his hands as though she chose this. Pain and pleasure both, he tells her, all of it pretend. But the lessons do not stay pretend. She watches him watch her, and what she sees there is not performance. Mark Trevena wants her. The want is real and it runs deep, and no amount of staging can cover it. She could keep fighting. She could hold the line between what was arranged and what she actually feels. The emotional core of the book lives right there, in that shrinking distance between a woman who did not choose this man and a woman who cannot stop thinking about what it would mean if she had.
Genres: fiction, adult, adult-fiction, erotica, dark-romance, contemporary-romance
Vibes: dark, emotionally-complex, intense, intimate, psychological, sensual
Tropes: arranged-marriage, fake-courtship, forced-proximity, power-imbalance, slow-burn
Period: contemporary
159 pages · Paperback · No Bird Press
Content warnings: explicit-sexual-content