When you've been told your whole life that something is sinful, you have two options. Avoid it like the plague, like it has the power to destroy all that is good and pure. Or become as fixated upon it as Eve was upon that apple. I'm sick of the push-pull of terror and temptation. It's tearing me apart. I just want a bite of the apple. More than a bite. I want to devour it. Have its juices spill from my lips. And by apple, I, of course, mean sex.

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. He could have claimed me that night, ravaging me without mercy or remorse. But he didn't.

I wasn't in the market for a man. I definitely wasn't looking for a man like Clay Nichols, with a dirty mind and a mouth to match. But then he walked into my life one night, and he was everything I wanted. He's also exactly what I can't have. Because there's a price tag on my head. I'm a wanted woman, and I owe debts that were never mine. The dangerous men I owe have threatened to hurt anyone in my life if I don't pay up. So I work off my debts by playing cards in an underground poker ring. One so risky I shouldn't get involved with a soul.

Lieutenant Kiera Markov is a scout platoon leader for a peacekeeping force on the remote planet of Tanara, where little has happened for decades, and the only mission is to keep the lithium flowing up the space elevator to feed the galaxy’s incessant demand. But when an unprecedented attack kills the entirety of the brigade’s leadership, the untested lieutenant suddenly finds herself in command.

Lucia Roa needs a miracle to keep her fledgling event planning business from going under. When she gets word about the opportunity of a lifetime to do a Valentine's Day party for an elite club in Washington D.C. she jumps at the chance. It's not until afterward, that she learns the party isn't for just any club, it's for the premier private BDSM club, Wicked.