Playing with Passion. Players Club Sinners, #5

I came to The Players Club looking for an escape. Instead, I found a man willing to fight for my heart. Gorgeous, confident, and impossibly patient, Austin Noble doesn't just rescue me from a terrifying first experience at the club, he sees straight through every wall I've built around myself. Every heated touch, every whispered praise, leaves me craving more of the one thing I swore I'd never need again-someone else. While Austin pulls me deeper into his world of passion, my past comes back to destroy everything I've fought to build.
My gallery is vandalized, threats escalate, and now Austin is living in my tiny apartment, sleeping in my bed, providing the kind of protection I've never known how to ask for. Now, I'm forced to make a choice: keep hiding behind the fear that everyone eventually leaves, or stand and fight alongside the man who refuses to let me face this battle alone. Austin sees strength where I see damage. He offers me a family where I've only known abandonment.
And in his arms, surrender doesn't mean weakness-it means finally letting someone prove that I'm worth loving, protecting, and choosing-again and again. But with danger closing in and my past refusing to stay buried, trusting Austin might either save me. or break my heart completely.