Jenny Steve-James

I got pregnant from a one-night stand. I wasn’t going to tell the father...until I walked into the office and found out he’s my new boss. Here’s some advice: Don’t sleep with your boss. Here’s some more: Don’t sleep with your married boss. And while I’m at it: Don’t sleep with your married, dangerous, billionaire, completely incapable-of-feeling boss because all he’s going to do is break your heart and your body and leave you to cry in the ashes. But I’ve never been good at taking my own advice.

Birdie wants nothing more than to escape the clutches of her cruel and wicked stepmother, and to be with the only person she’s ever truly loved—her stepsister, Violet. When her stepmother threatens to auction off Birdie’s hand in marriage to the highest bidder, Birdie sees it as her only way out. Her stepsister has a plan… Enlist the help her rich and powerful ex, Alaric Stone, to bid on their behalf. But when things go awry at the auction, and Birdie is forced give away far more than she expected, Alaric decides he’s playing for keeps.

I should have known everything was going to change when she walked into my tattoo shop... Timid as hell and gorgeous to the extreme. I knew better than even thinking about touching a woman like that. My life is dangerous. My calling wicked. Willing to cross any line to protect the innocent. I thought I’d never see her again until my little boy tumbled and busted his lip, and I found her working at the doctor’s office. The woman who’d taken possession of my thoughts. When it becomes clear she’s in trouble, I offer up a deal.

I didn’t know true desire until the first time I laid eyes on him. Tall, dark, beautiful as a god—completely forbidden. He was the penniless son of the help born in the Lousiana bayou, and I was a pretty southern princess, cultivated like a hothouse flower to become the trophy on some well-pedigreed man’s arm.

I was born a few moments after midnight on January 1st. On my 21st birthday, my father throws me the most lavish New Year's Eve birthday party Baton Rouge has ever seen—then he tells me I'm a woman now, and that means I belong to a man he owes a blood debt.

Every server at the roadhouse I work at knows that Vengeance is a package deal. The three enforcers for the Ruthless Reapers don’t just share a job; they share you for one night if you dare to go to one of the rooms upstairs with them. Whenever they come into the roadhouse, they stare at me. Hard pass. It doesn’t matter if they make my stomach flutter and my seriously neglected nether regions stir with some very bad thoughts. But then my aunt’s boyfriend attacks me. One moment I’m calling Vengeance as a last resort. And the next I’m waking up in their bed.

Seriously, my name is Bernice. But then came that one month when I pretended to be somebody else entirely while working at a roadhouse biker bar. Who knew one month pretending to be an interesting bad girl could ruin a boring good girl's life? When I saw her, I knew she'd be mine. My old biker crew told me she was untouchable—that I'd never be able to land her without my fame and last name. So I did what any rock star with a big, ahem, ego would under the circumstances—wagered five figures on me seducing the untouchable girl behind the bar.

Since aging out of the foster care system and becoming a nurse, all I dreamed of was marrying a nice doctor and moving to a two-story house in the suburbs. So how did a dangerous biker gang criminal end up handcuffed to my bed? And why did I agree to let that animal teach me how to...ahem...do things. Wicked things. In the very same bed he’s been handcuffed to in order to keep me safe? Long story. And I’m truly scared to find out how it will end.

Since aging out of the foster-care system and becoming a nurse, all I dreamed of was marrying a nice doctor and moving to a yellow two-story house in the suburbs. So how did a dangerous biker-gang criminal end up handcuffed to my bed? And why did I agree to let that animal teach me how to...ahem...do things? Wicked things. In the very same bed he’s been handcuffed to in order to keep me safe? Long story. And it didn’t end well. Now it’s time to marry my doctor fiancé and make all my former foster kid dreams come true.

The first letter arrived the day my husband was buried. It was postmarked from the state penitentiary, and contained a single sentence: I’ll wait forever if I have to. It was signed by Dante, a man I didn’t know. Out of simple curiosity, I wrote back to ask him what exactly he was waiting for. His reply? You.