[The Acolyte 01] • Martinique

In Book One of The Acolyte, Lady Létice de Saint-Juste is awakening from her halcyon childhood as the daughter of a wealthy planter on the island of Martinique. It is the turbulent age of Napoleon, and in this raw land founded by pirates and freewheeling adventurers, the rules of genteel society are routinely abandoned. Even her strict father can’t keep her from being exposed to the licentious sexual freedom born in the jungle heat. Létice is opening to womanhood like one of the rich blooms of the Indies, reaching out to brush her fingers along the glittering edge of the passion inside her, and the need she doesn’t fully understand. Highly-charged events force her father’s hand, and to protect his increasingly willful daughter from the island’s influence, he sends her away to finish her education behind the high, protected walls of a convent in Paris.

But Saint-Juste has delivered his daughter into the maelstrom; the merchant vessel carrying her to France is captured by the most dangerous corsairs of the Mediterranean, the Salé pirates of Morocco, an independent city of mercenaries and privateers. Létice is a prize of war, no more or less than the ship and its cargo. Her determination to survive delivers her up to a man unlike any she’s ever known, sensuous and ruthless, dominant and impudently provocative, the violent overlord of violent men. Layer by layer he uncovers the core of his remarkable captive, while she finds herself drawn to this man who compels her to face the truth of her own nature. With this beguiling guide, Létice finds that submission and defeat are not one and the same. As the contest between them unfolds, she discovers that a woman on her knees, or even turned over one, may well win everything the game has to offer.

Yet Létice is unaware that the journey of her life hasn’t ended, but only begun. As the tide of war turns, she will need every lesson she’s learned when fate carries her into the alien world of the harem of the Sublime Porte, the heart of the fabulous empire of the Ottoman Turks.

Publisher's Note: This story is an erotic novel that contains graphic sexuality, including multiple partners, anal play, and elements of dominance and submission. If such material offends you, please do not purchase this book.