Vanessa's Secret

"Don't look at me like that..."

Vanessa Hart has always been the good girl-quiet, studious, achingly innocent. At eighteen, her world is small and safe, defined by library books and the gentle, fading memory of her father. She's a untouched flower, never been plucked, never been kissed. But when her fragile, grieving mother brings home Carter Anderson, that small, safe world shatters.

Carter is everything Vanessa shouldn't want.
Older. Forbidden. Powerful.
Soon to be her stepfather.

A wealthy titan of industry with a gaze that feels like a physical touch, he moves through their modest home like a panther in a cage of glass. He is twice her age, all sharp suits, cold authority, and a dominance that makes the air crackle. And the way he watches her-dark, hungry, utterly possessive-sends shivers of something terrifying and thrilling down her spine.

He is a man who takes what he wants, and he wants *her*.

One sweltering night, trapped together in the oppressive silence of the study, he corners her. The scent of his expensive cologne and aged whiskey is an intoxicating fog. His finger, calloused and warm, tilts her chin up, forcing her to meet his burning gaze.

"You have no idea," he whispers, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrates deep within her, "how hard it is not to touch you. Not to claim what has been mine from the moment I saw you."

His mouth crashes down on hers, not asking, but *taking*. It's not a gentle first kiss; it's a conquest. It's a devouring of her innocence, a branding of his ownership. A weak protest dies in her throat, morphing into a gasp that he swallows whole. His hands are everywhere, mapping the territory of her body she's never shown to anyone, burning through the thin cotton of her dress.

"This is wrong," she breathes against his lips, even as her body arches into his.

"Wrong has never felt so right, little one," he growls, sweeping her into his arms and carrying her to the leather sofa.