ashleyb_reads

I've been faithful long enough. I never claimed to be a good man, but I've always done what was expected of me. Find a nice girl. Get married. Have children. That was my duty as a good Christian man. And everything was going as planned when I met Briar. Beautiful. Charismatic. Sexy. But marriage is hard, and after seven years, I feel like I'm failing. Then, a figure from my past enters the picture.

As the eldest son of Austin’s most prominent preacher, I’ve lived my life on the virtuous side. No scandals. Flawless image. Clean reputation. That’s the way it must be if I’m going to take his place someday. But everything changes when I find out my father is a VIP member of a local kink club.

Gabriel Wolfe, the fallen dark angel and club president of the Hounds of Hell MC. His life has been infused with darkness and trauma since the day he was born, forcing more than just desensitization to violence and chaos. Forcing him to crave it to feel stable. Secure. Whole.

Once upon a time… there lived a man with a vengeance-filled heart that held too many secrets and a woman, pure of soul, intent on uncovering them. What they failed to realize is that through the storm their love would create, a legacy would be born.

I cultivated my shamelessness. I wore it as a badge of honor at my convent school, and I've been turning it into an art form at Alchemy, the club whose social media I manage. My boss, though? He's the most proper person I've ever met. No one would peg him as the finance director of a sex club. (I mean, no one's pegging him at all, which is probably his problem. #justsayin) I get it. He's a widower, single-parenting two little girls while holding down a massive job. He needs an outlet, something just for him.

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've been pretending for so long it's become normal. To the average person, I have it all… a multi-million-dollar contract to play baseball, four homes, and—if I choose—my pick of any gorgeous woman on my arm. The only problem? The one woman I want—no, need—in my life completely erased me from her memory when we were only teens.

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College – Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is – unless she betrays the man she loves.

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College–Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success.