Beauty and the Earl — Jess Michaels

Desire as essential as breath...deception as fragile as sanity.

The Pleasure Wars, Book 3

Liam, the Earl of Windbury, had everything when he held his secret lover in his arms. Until a feud between their families left her dead, his body broken, and his sister married to his bitterest enemy. Racked with guilt, simmering with rage, he's spent a year in seclusion, seeing no one except a few servants as he does his best to forget the past and patently refuses to think about any kind of future. When courtesan Violet Milford enters Liam's lair, she's on a secret mission to gather information for Liam's desperate sister, who fears for his sanity, even his life. What she finds is a man scarred inside and out, whose dark, controlling sensuality hides the kind, wounded man within. Violet awakens a sexual desire more powerful than Liam has ever known, and her stories weave a spell that begins to work its way past his defenses. But when the truth inevitably comes out, it could well destroy the love that is saving them both.

Warning: This book features a sexually experienced woman who will use every trick in her book to save a man from himself.

Includes Beautiful Distraction, a free companion story that overlaps with Beauty and the Earl, so some passages may seem familiar. The distraction in question is a courtesan lying for a good cause--resulting in a steamy affair that will change her forever.