The Gilded Wolves

“Did you hear who she took as a lover?”

All her “lovers” were either made up or spoken of as favors for male friends who had no interest in taking women to bed. It was a rule she’d kept since she arrived in France.

Only once had she broken it.

With Séverin.

He’d had girls in his bed before, but nothing like that night. Nothing that made him, for a moment, forget who he was. Who he was supposed to be.

No fancy was worth his future.

He looked down to where her fingers still touched his wrist. Neither of them moved. He could hear her breath, shallow and fast, from across the table. Not once since they had agreed to work together three years ago had she read his objects. At her touch, he felt dangerously exposed. He had to leave. Now.