She lived behind a mask.
He watched from the shadows.
By night, Sasha is a dancer who controls the room without ever being touched. By day, she keeps her life quiet, guarded, and deliberately small. She doesn’t ask questions. She doesn’t dig into rumors. And she never lets herself want too much.
Owner of the city’s most exclusive clubs, Oliver is dangerous in ways Sasha doesn’t want to name. He offers protection without explanation, kindness without softness, and distance without absence. Whatever he is involved in, it’s not clean and she doesn’t want to know.
Until secrets stop being optional.
When Sasha is forced into a marriage she never chose, her carefully built distance collapses. Trust turns brittle. Desire turns bitter. And the man she let close becomes the man standing beside her at the altar, silent, complicit, and terrifyingly calm.
She doesn’t know what’s worse:
that he lied,
or that she would still burn the world for him.
Tender Poison is a slow burn dark romance featuring:
masked identity
morally gray MMC
forced marriage
betrayal without infidelity
slow-burn reconciliation
criminal underworld intrigue
love rebuilt through choice, not control
