Imogen has spent years guarding the yielding core that once led to rejection, but Piers Mercer's commanding presence in the secluded manor strips those protections away with every glance. His dominance offers the absolute structure she secretly needs, yet it carries the ruin of loss he cannot bear to risk.

Beneath candlelight in the locked cellars, a tin of wax sits ready for the discipline that will mark her bare skin with thin white lines. Piers warms the first drop between his fingers, the faint birthmark on her collarbone drawing his eye as the threshold moment arrives, promising to claim what both fear exposing to the world.

How long before the hidden sessions shatter the last defenses around their most vulnerable selves?