D'Artagnan Conti was born into poverty, raised to be a soldier in my father's savage regime. I grew up in luxury, longing to escape my family's cruel machinations, and the young man with sapphire eyes and the voice of an angel became not just my forbidden crush but my everything. Then he was taken from me, killed in a brutal attack by our enemies. Or so I was led to believe....

When he invited me to join him for a drink, I thought Alessandro was an ordinary guest at my family's hotel. I didn't know I belonged to him until he told me right there in the restaurant. I thought I had a say in the matter. But when I stood up to leave, it just earned me a sore bottom for the plane ride to New York, where our wedding was already planned for the next day. But I was soaking wet for him before he even walked me down the aisle.

In my world, a bride can be given...or she can be taken. When Winter O'Brien was given to me, she thought she had a say in the matter. She was wrong. She is my bride. Mine to claim, mine to punish, and mine to use as shamefully as I please. The sting of my belt on her bare bottom will teach her to obey, but obedience is just the beginning. I will demand so much more.

In the Marines they called me Big Rig. She'll just call me sir. Alexis Harding is used to telling men exactly what she thinks, but she's never had a roughneck like me as a boss before. On my rig, I make the rules and sassy little girls get stripped bare, bent over my desk, and taught their place, first with my belt and then in a much more shameful way. She'll be sore and sorry long before I'm done with her, but the arousal glistening on her thighs reveals the truth she would rather keep hidden. She needs it rough, and that's how she'll get it.

He's rough, he's dirty, and he's not going to be gentle. When I took a job on an oil rig to escape my scheming stepfather's efforts to set me up with one of his business cronies, I knew I'd be working with rugged men. What I didn't expect is to find myself bent over a desk, my cheeks soaked with tears and my bare thighs wet for a very different reason, as my well-punished bottom is thoroughly used by a stern, infuriatingly sexy roughneck.