After the Storm. Viola - Agnia Bourne

That night, there were three at the lighthouse: a girl running from death, a man trying to save her, and a predator who was simply waiting for the story to become interesting enough.

Viola had nothing left. No name that mattered. No future anyone would mourn. When she jumped from the roof of THE SURF into a storm-black ocean, she wasn't trying to escape - she was trying to disappear.

She washed up on the rocks of Solitude Cape instead.

Elai had spent a decade keeping the light burning for ships he'd never meet. He'd seen enough wreckage to know the difference between someone who wanted to be saved and someone who had simply run out of places to fall. He pulled her out of the cold and asked for nothing in return. For the first time in five years, Viola discovered what it felt like to be seen as a person rather than a price.

But the lighthouse had another visitor.

Nix doesn't experience the world the way other people do. He calculates. He observes. He possesses - and Elai had always been his, the way the lighthouse belonged to the rock it was built on. The girl breathing Elai's air and sleeping in his shirts was a variable he hadn't accounted for. An intrusion he had every intention of removing.

What he failed to calculate was what she would become.

A dark, slow-burn romance about survival, obsession, and the particular violence of being saved by exactly the wrong person.

Content Warning: This book contains depictions of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, graphic violence, and psychologically complex power dynamics. Intended for mature readers only.