The Eighth Clause

He built an empire on control. She crossed an ocean to build her own.

Ethan Hughes runs Amethyst Software the way he runs everything: with precision, authority, and zero tolerance for variables he hasn't accounted for. Anoona Zhou is the variable he didn't account for. Smart, relentless, and completely immune to intimidation, she dismantles his boardroom strategies with three weeks of corroborating data and his composure with considerably less effort.

He tells himself it's a distraction problem. She tells herself it's a power dynamic. They're both wrong, and somewhere between a locked office door and a contract Ethan drafted to contain something he couldn't name, wrong becomes the most interesting place either of them has ever been.

But the boardroom isn't the only place they're playing for keeps. When Anoona uncovers evidence of fraud running through the company's most vulnerable markets, the battle of wills becomes something higher-stakes than either of them planned, and the man at the centre of it knows exactly how to use what they've built against them.

Locked in Desire is a sharp, sexy slow-burn romance about two people who are perfectly matched, completely stubborn, and entirely unprepared for what happens when the frameworks run out.