She hates him from the first moment his eyes rake over her, slow and knowing, like he already owns every secret she tries to hide. The man her father sold her to. The Russian with inked hands and a voice that turns commands into something that crawls under her skin. She should want his death. Instead she lies awake, thighs pressed together, remembering how his fingers trapped her jaw and forced her to meet his gaze when she tried to look away.

Their wedding night she spits in his face. He laughs, low and dangerous, and takes his time. Every rough grip, every bruising kiss, every moment she swears she will not respond, her body makes her a liar. He does not ask. He does not apologize. He learns exactly where she breaks and keeps her suspended there, trembling, begging things she cannot voice aloud.

The hatred does not fade. It twists. It feeds what happens when he pushes through her door at midnight, when his belt hits the floor, when she sinks her nails into his back and tells herself she is fighting even as she opens wider. Their bed becomes a battlefield where she loses repeatedly, spectacularly, screaming into his shoulder while he whispers filthy Russian promises she is beginning to understand.

Her father's empire crumbles. Her name means nothing. The only power left is what she finds when she kneels for him willingly, when she learns to take what she needs from his brutal affection, when she realizes the cage he built has no lock she wants to find.

A full-length dark erotic romance.