Seven Nights with a Notorious Earl

The story

Gwendolyn Pierce is an artist one unpaid debt away from a debtor's cell when the impossible commission arrives: paint a man the world buried years ago. Spirited away to a subterranean fortress carved beneath the Dover cliffs, she descends into the domain of Lysander Croft — the "King of the Abyss," a fallen earl turned criminal sovereign who rules the underworld from the dark.

His terms are as lethal as his reputation. Gwendolyn has seven midnights to capture his soul on canvas. Fail, and she answers for it. But a portrait demands looking — really looking — and night by night her brush strips away the monstrous facade Lysander has spent a decade building. What begins as a cold transaction dissolves into something far more dangerous: a forbidden, claustrophobic siege of want between a woman who sees too much and a man who has never once been seen.

The Abyss, though, is built on secrets and blood, and its enemies are closing in. As the seventh midnight approaches, Gwendolyn must decide what she actually came here to be: a witness to Lysander's ruin — or the catalyst for his salvation, in a world where the light above is more treacherous than the dark below.

Tropes in this book

Forbidden love Morally grey hero Captive artist Criminal underworld

A hero the world calls a monster, a heroine paid to look him in the eye, and a deadline neither of them wants to reach.

Spice level

Steamy — around 4 out of 5. Intense, atmospheric, and high-tension, with the heat building midnight by midnight before it delivers.