He was never supposed to touch her. She was never supposed to want him. Clara Sterling has spent years dreaming of a man she can never have. Her father's best friend. The one man who is strictly off-limits. When a dangerous assignment forces her father overseas, Clara is sent to stay with Adrian Vance—the brooding, dangerously handsome billionaire who has haunted her dreams since she was fifteen. Adrian has spent years burying his desire for Clara. She is too young. Too innocent. Too forbidden. But when she arrives at his isolated estate, bold and defiant, the walls he built around himself begin to crumble. She looks at him like she knows his secrets. She moves through his house like she owns it. And every time she gets close, he feels himself losing control. He tries to push her away. He tries to be cruel. But Clara is relentless, and Adrian is breaking. In a house full of surveillance and secrets, a dangerous game begins. She wants to possess him. He wants to resist her. But some obsessions are worth burning for. And when her father returns, the truth will destroy everything.

Clara swore she'd never see Nathaniel Reed again. Then her sister's life depended on money she didn't have, and a stranger's surrogacy contract seemed like the easiest answer she'd ever signed. It wasn't anonymous for long. The client is her ex-husband. The billionaire who chose everything over her, once, when it mattered most. He offers her a way out. She doesn't take it. Nine months. One roof. A man who left before, trying to prove he won't again, and a woman who isn't sure she can survive believing him twice. Something happened between them once that neither of them has ever said out loud, and it's still deciding, quietly, whether this ends in a wedding or a goodbye