I ran from the men who shattered my world, an English gentlewoman with nothing left but the clothes on my back and a desperate ache for somewhere safe to breathe. The Highland mists swallowed me whole, promising oblivion. Instead, they delivered him.

A rugged warrior built like the cliffs themselves, all corded muscle and shadowed eyes that stripped me bare before his hands ever touched. He called me enemy spoil, dragged me into the dripping ruins of his tower, and took what he wanted with a savage fury that left me trembling on damp stone floors slick with sweat and my own broken gasps. I spat defiance, clawed at his chest, swore I'd never yield. But God help me, his brogue rumbling low against my throat unraveled every lie I told myself.

He bound my wounds in a shadowed cottage after, bloodied rags clinging to fevered skin where his mouth had marked me deepest. Clan oaths chained him, yet he shielded me from the wolves baying at our heels-my pursuers, closing in like death's own hounds. Night after wind-lashed night on jagged cliffs, his body pinned mine, forging cries from fractured trust into something addictive, intoxicating. Possession like a storm I crave even as it terrifies, his protective snarl whispering ruin into my ear.

I need this beast's mercy to survive, but yielding to him risks everything-my fragile freedom, the scrap of self-respect I cling to, the heart that might shatter loving the man who broke me first. How can the ravisher who claimed my body with brutal hunger become the salvation I dare not trust?