Pulse And Pyre. Undertow Sins, #21

"The safest distance from a fire is the one where you can still feel the heat. I stopped being safe the night I chose to burn."Liora Voss knows exactly how to navigate data, municipal regulations, and the strict codes of a clean life. But behind her tightly buttoned long sleeves and corporate armor lies a horrific trauma. Thirteen months ago, she secretly loved Jonah Ashburn, witnessed his death in a catastrophic fireworks blast, and permanently burned her own flesh trying to drag him from the flames.
She has spent over a year hidden in cold, calculated silence-until a dangerous rogue contractor arrives on the waterfront. Kael Ashburn is a brilliant, obsessive pyrotechnician who moves with the terrifying composure of a man who has nothing left to lose. He knows his brother Jonah didn't make an error. Someone engineered a bomb inside that show, and Kael has spent thirteen months tracking the blood money and building a rogue operation to project the definitive proof across the sky on July Fourth.
He only needs twelve days to complete his trap. He never budgeted for a safety liaison with a clipboard and a mandate to shut him down. Inside the suffocating, sulfur-scented cage of Pier 9, a volatile battle of wills takes off. Kael treats the chemical compounds like scripture and Liora like a threat to his mission. But as an aggressive tropical storm batters the barrier island, the bridge to the mainland closes, trapping them together in the blind, stifling dark.
Side by side in the intense heat, moving explosive payloads to survive the storm, their professional borders completely collapse. When the wind tears the room open, Kael uncovers the raw, deep chemical scars Liora has been hiding. He discovers that the woman beside him didn't just know his brother-she took Jonah's fire onto her own skin. Shaken by a toxic cocktail of raw grief, immense gratitude, and betrayal, their relationship detonates into a primal, addictive alliance.
Together, they unravel a multi-million-dollar waterfront development conspiracy led by a corrupt fire marshal who priced a human life into his budget. Raw, fiercely atmospheric, and deeply emotional, Pulse and Pyre is a breathtaking dark romantic thriller about two broken souls who must choose between the comfortable lies of safety or letting the absolute truth burn them to ashes.