Description

Decadence is the kind of club where the waitstaff know the rules as well as the members, and Ria has made the place work for her. Grouchy, blunt, and carrying ten pounds she’s stopped apologising for, she pulls the best tips in the building precisely because she refuses to be sweet. What nobody at the club knows is why she keeps her guard nailed up: somewhere out there is a man named Freddy, and Ria has arranged her whole life around not being found.

Enter Connor Jones, six-foot-two, quiet, and made a club Dom suspiciously fast for a newcomer. Night after night he sits in Ria’s section with his laptop and his restless eyes, and she runs through the possibilities like a woman who’s been hunted before: undercover cop, private investigator, someone Freddy sent. Her friend Sophie thinks he’s just shy. Ria knows better than to trust nice. The title is the arc: this is a book about a woman being coaxed, scene by scene, into revealing what she’s hiding, by a man who is hiding something himself.

Roberts closes out nine books of the Decadence world here, and the file’s own catalogue shows how the series slots into a much larger backlist. Within the genre this is the caretaking end of BDSM romance, heavy on aftercare, negotiated trust, and a heroine loved “just the way I am.” When both people at the table are lying about who they are, which secret breaks first?