The Wicked Orc

She armored her heart against brutality, not against kisses.

In a corner of the princess's mind, a little memory will not die…

On a dreamlike day, she kissed a dying orc boy in a sunlit garden.

Years later, when that boy's fate is only a terrible dream, a beautiful elf offers to help save the princess's unstable kingdom from her tyrannical father's hands.

But her father slays that hope, exiles her lover, and forces her into a nightmarish reality.

Refusing to yield, she flees to find her elven love—only to be imprisoned in the fortress of the orc who slew him… the same orc she once kissed in her castle garden.

Her captor cages her by day and ruthlessly barters for her surrender by night: first, he offers a trade for her kiss, and then, every night, he offers other trades for more.

She vows to defy him, survive him, escape him, yet he not only torments her, but challenges her, provokes her, and even as he steals her breath and her resistance, he gives her injured heart a desperately needed haven.

But she already escaped her father's caged haven; she will not make her bed in an orc's.

Excerpt:

Her jaw dropped. "You must be jesting," she began, but he continued as if she hadn't spoken.

"But food and drink cost you. Clothes cost you. Baths cost you. Every privilege you want here…costs you."

"You're toying with me now! You've taken everything I could have traded!"

His scrutiny traveled insolently over her body. "Not everything," he drawled.

Reviewer reactions:

"...really perversely compelling in some awful way... I love, love, love, love OMG love that he is all, "Pretend I'm him - your lover." So many feels! It's so f*cked up and so great."

CW: a fiercely emotional captive/captor romance, kissing/touching for trade ('do this for x')