Dark Desires (Cox)

People call me many things: CEO, billionaire, bastard. Q. I love women. I love sex. I love money. I love hot, wild nights with no promise of a future, because a future is one thing I don't have. I'm twenty-eight years old. I won't live to see thirty, and I don't care. Or I didn't, until her. Nobody plans for a life like this. Some of us just end up here. They call me Lucky, though luck has never been on my side. Before I met Q, my life was a big, twisted mess. Never enough money, never anyone to trust. No way out. With Q, the shame and fear disappear. Instead, I feel pure pleasure, and that's something I've never had before. But if what I've just learned is true, we'd better enjoy every second together while we can...before our time runs out.

In a family of cold-hearted black sheep, I, Axel Rutherford, am the blackest. My father has hated me since the day I was born. The feeling was mutual. In the shady underworld that was my legacy, Cleo McCarthy became my light. She was beautiful, passionate, and my whole world. So naturally my father had to destroy us. First he sent me away. Next he claimed Cleo as his own. But now I've returned, and nothing will stop me from taking back everything that is rightfully mine. He was the love of my life - when my life was still my own. We were young enough to believe we would last forever, Axel and I. But neither of us realized how cruel life - and our families - could be. Now I'm trapped in a gilded cage: desired by Axel, who must never know the full truth, and controlled by his father, who would sooner see me dead than free. And I wouldn't even care, except that it's no longer only my life at stake.

I'm known as the Black Widow because the desires I hide inside are pure poison. I was a different person once. Faith, a young wife, hoping to become a mother. My life was pleasant. Stable. It was hell. Until Killian Knight opened my eyes to a world of espionage and intrigue. He saw something in me, something I was too afraid to acknowledge. I didn't want to be excited by the danger. Didn't want to crave the wicked passion only he could provide. But I did want, so now I run. And I pay. I never meant to corrupt her, but I'm not sorry. After all, I'm already damned. After four years of searching and longing, I've finally found her. Faith, the one person in the world I breathe for. She lives beneath my skin as surely as I wear proof of our transgressions inked on my body. And like the forbidden fruit that doomed us from the beginning, our end is inevitable. We lived with no regret. We loved without inhibition. We betrayed those closest to us. We killed for that love. Now...we will burn in hell together.