Lady Viola Fairchild has spent ten years fighting with Lord Elias Hawke, the king's coldest magistrate—and she intends to spend the next ten doing exactly the same. Then a forged love letter leaves her tangled in Elias's arms before the entire royal court. The king's solution is immediate: they will marry. Viola and Elias agree to act devoted in public and remain enemies in private. Whoever falls in love first loses. But their wedding carriage hides a runaway bride, a dead printer falls from Viola's bedroom window, and every clue forces the newlyweds closer. Sharing one bed is supposed to be temporary. Kissing without an audience is definitely a mistake. Returning to the same bed night after night is merely practical. As a conspiracy linking both their families closes around them, Viola must decide whether Elias is protecting his investigation—or the wife he secretly wanted long before the king's decree. Their marriage may have begun as an order, but desire has never obeyed the crown.

Seraphina Vale would rather poison Duke Cassian Thorne than marry him. Unfortunately, the king orders her to do both—save the feared commander from a mysterious poison and share his bed as his unwilling duchess. Cassian is cold, dangerous, and descended from the family Seraphina blames for destroying her own. Their marriage is supposed to be a political performance. No love. No trust. And absolutely no surrender. But forced proximity turns hatred into unbearable desire. Every argument ends with them standing too close, every attack makes Cassian more fiercely protective, and every night in his bed weakens another promise Seraphina made to herself. When a conspiracy of stolen identities and murdered heirs reveals that Cassian’s father may have killed Seraphina’s mother, she must decide whether the man beside her is still her enemy—or the only person she trusts with her body, her heart, and her life. Their marriage began with a royal command. Staying in his bed will be entirely her choice.