Stories that illuminate what desire really looks like—after the shame burns away.
Nora Voss's life was carefully, quietly locked—the right job, the right fiancé, a version of herself trimmed to fit. Then one house, one night, and a door that was never locked at all.
What comes through it isn't rescue. It's Vael—an old, hungry thing that doesn't create desire, only finds what's already there and turns up the heat until it can't be managed away anymore.
Nora didn't know she wanted Daniel to stop holding everything together for both of them. She didn't know she wanted Callie at all.
Polyamorous. Not a triangle. Daniel holds. Callie sees. And Nora, for the first time in her life, is seen—the wanting that's always been hers stops being something she has to hide.
But desire this loud has a cost, and Vael intends to collect it—from all three of them, and from Nora's mother, and from everyone Nora has ever loved quietly enough to think it was safe.
What's unlocked was never installed from outside. It was always there. The only question is what it costs to let it out—and what it costs to keep it shut.
A spicy, gothic-tinged contemporary romance with a bisexual heroine, a devoted fiancé, and the woman she never let herself want—for readers who like their heat high, their poly geometry honest, and their locked doors more dangerous than they look.
