Fen has been a slave of the city of Portras since he was orphaned as a boy. When Lyon, a mysterious soldier, buys him from the slave trader, Fen can’t help but fall in love with the master who inspires such passion in bed and enflames his every desire. Lyon is quick to take him in hand, and his discipline and punishment prove that he’s a master worthy of being obeyed. But soon Lyon’s business in Portras will be done and Fen will be sold again. Can Fen convince Lyon that they belong together as more than master and slave?

The man who approached the slave pen looked so much like the master of my dreams that at first I thought I must, in fact, be dreaming. Handsome, young, but old enough to make me squirm—he carried himself like a soldier, and though his clothes and boots were worn they were good quality. He didn’t have the hard eyes of a mercenary, so I guessed he was a soldier from some lesser noble’s house, if his easy confidence was any sign.

His eyes found me, looked me over with unhurried appraisal and perhaps a hint of appreciation, before he turned to the slave trader. “I want a boy, quick footed, who knows the city.”

I stood up straight. I was young and fit, and I’d lived in Portras all my life. I was perfect for him.

But the slave trader, ass that he was, took him to see one of the other boys first: the farm boy newly sold into the life to pay a debt, who’d cried for two hours on my shoulder the night before as if he were the only one who’d ever been taken from his home and made into property for some free man’s pleasure.

The farm boy was barely able to stammer out that this was his first time in the city. The next one the soldier dismissed out of hand—he was too old, fit only for kitchen duty or laundering at his age. The next was too young, and I realized with a shiver of anticipation that he didn’t want a boy, he wanted a boy.