Unholy King

CELESTE

Every Thursday night I take off everything but a mask.

In daylight I'm the city's perfect daughter. Pearls, white gloves, this year's Carnival queen. On a stage across town I'm a woman nobody owns, dancing in the dark for strangers who will never learn my name.

Then my father's debts come due.

The man who holds them doesn't want money. He wants me. A wedding by Saturday, a queen on his arm, and a way into the old families who have kept their doors locked against him his whole life.

So I marry the most dangerous man in New Orleans to keep my father breathing.

He's cold. He's ruthless. He never raises his voice, and a whole room goes quiet when he walks into it.

And he has been sitting in the dark, in the same seat, every Thursday night for months.

He has no idea the woman he can't stop watching is his wife.

I think.

BASTIEN

I crawled out of the floodwater with nothing. Now I own the river, the docks, and every man who ever looked down at me.

There is one thing in this city I never bought. A dancer in a black mask who has no idea I exist.

Then I take a debutante as payment for her father's sins. She's sharp. She's polite. She lies beautifully, and she sleeps with a chair pushed against her door.

On our wedding night, I find out exactly who she is.

I could tell her. I could tear that mask away and make her mine in every way that counts.

I don't.

I paid for her name. I'll wait as long as it takes for her to hand me the rest.

And God help anyone who touches her before she does.

This is the first book in The Unholy Sins Series. Reading order:

Unholy King.

Unholy Devil.

Unholy Saint.

324 pages. Kindle edition.