How to Tame a Shameless Rake

The story

To Cora Aldridge, vengeance is arithmetic. The racing syndicate that destroyed her family will be dismantled piece by piece, and every move has been calculated in advance — except one. To walk into that world, she needs a mask society will fear and admire in equal measure. She finds it bleeding in a gutter: Gareth Lockwood, disgraced war hero, shameless rake, and exactly the kind of charming wildfire her icy strategy requires.

Their contract is precise. Gareth will be her proxy at the tracks and in the ballrooms, the public face of a private war, governed by three strict mandates: no gambling, no spirits, and no intimacy. He signs. She plans. And then the variables start to shift. From mist-shrouded racecourses to candlelit studies, Cora discovers that logic has no defence against the heat of Gareth's gaze — or against a hunger that keeps redrawing the lines of their agreement in the dark.

In a world of high-stakes wagers and lethal secrets, the syndicate is only half the danger. The real gamble is the one neither of them planned for: whether to stay shadows in a game of revenge, or to surrender to a passion that could take everything they have left. It is the collection's definitive rake romance — simmering, candlelit, and built on a contract begging to be broken.

Tropes in this book

Rake hero Contract arrangement Revenge plot Morally grey

A heroine who runs on cold logic, a hero who runs on charm and ruin, and three rules written to be broken.

Spice level

Steamy — around 3.5 out of 5. A slow-burn contract romance where the tension does most of the talking — until it very much doesn't.