She was beautiful - and notorious. But beneath the silks and diamonds, within the supple body so many men had embraced, was the heart of a girl who yearned still for love. At fifteen she had learned her beauty was both a charm and a curse. It had sent her fleeing from Kansas, had been her downfall in Baltimore and Georgia, yet had kept her alive in the Klondike and the South Seas.Now on this fateful night in 1906, here in San Francisco's most glittering atmosphere, will she at last be able to reveal her secret longing? Will she be able to call love by name - and claim it?

    Adam Tremain, the captain of the Black Swan will deny his loyalty to the South to become a blockade runner, transporting fugitive slaves to freedom. Dulcie Moran is the beautiful, defiant daughter of Savannah's most prosperous slave-breeder. Despite and treachery, jealousy, deceit and passion weave and interweave through their epic love story, played out against the backdrop of a land at war.

    Who dared to love Elena Lopez? Who was willing to risk reputation and wealth to win the Spanish dancer who was the scandal of Europe? Kings, princes, great composers and writers...the famous and wealthy men of the 19th. century vied for her affection, fought duels for her. She was the queen of desire and the slave of passion, traveling the world - London, Paris, San Francisco - and taking love where she found it. Elena Lopez - the tantalizing, beautiful moth - dancing out of the shadows, warmed, lured and consumed by the heart's devouring flame.

    Caught in a web of twisted destinies, she journeys from the luxury of a French chateau to the horrors of a West Indies slave ship...from the exotic existence as pirate Jean Lafitte's mistress to unspeakable degradation at the hands of brutal men.Woven throughout the sultry landscape of her saga is Garth McClelland...mysterious, secretive Garth, a man whose worldly power is surpassed only by his insatiable lust for the ravishing Elise. Their romance soars to the peak of unquenchable passion, plumbs the depths as they fight treachery, intrigue...and their need for each other, until finally they unite in an inferno of rapturous love!

    She's one thing by day, something else altogether by night...After escaping the slaughter of her clan at a young age, Scottish noblewoman Sabrina Verrick provides for her siblings by living a double life, until the night she encounters the Duke, and her secret and all she holds dear is threatened...He's so disillusioned, he's completely vulnerable...With his inheritance at stake, Lucien, Duke of Camareigh, sets a trap for the Scottish beauty with the piercing violet eyes, never imagining what will happen when the trap is sprung...As their lives become irreversibly entangled, Lucien and Sabrina become each other's biggest threat, as well as their only salvation...

    She has tasted a sweet morsel of ecstasy and now she can never return to a prim and proper life. Rolfe is savage with his kisses and brutal in his caresses, but for Angline his exquisite punishment is a heaven she never imagined. But how long will the passion last before Rolfe tires of his plaything and moves on to new conquests, leaving Angline a broken and shamed woman? Can Angline's flaming hair and bewitching eyes capture the heart of the arrogant prince?

    Now she must marry the magnificent blackguard to bring peace to the land.Young, innocent, and possessing a rare and exquisite beauty, Leonie would be a prize for any man - yet Rolfe seeks the match solely for revenge. But her sensuous kiss ignites within him the fiery need to claim her - and an irresistible desire to unite their warring hearts in glorious love.

    Though famine holds her beloved Ireland in its deadly grip, young, innocent Kitty Rooney is a survivor.  An exotic gypsy lass with cascading curls of ebony silk and eyes of brown velvet, Kitty vows that someday, somehow, the riches of the earth will be laid at her feet.  Then Patrick O'Reilly walks into her life, his eyes burning hungrily over her body, his lips promising her the world, making a woman of her in one sweet, scorching night.

    But to flame-haired Jessalyn Letty, wild, captivating child of the storm-tossed Cornish moors, McCady Trelawny was the most fascinating man she had ever met. Few knew of the dream that burned in McCady's secret soul - a dream destined to change the world. But Jessalyn knew and shared his passion. Only she believed in his miraculous vision...and in the love he awoke in her hungry, yearning heart...

    . . five years since her world had collapsed in devastating ruin around her. Now, penniless and desperate, she finds herself at the mercy of a cruel, ruthless stranger—a man who vows to possess her, whose hot searing caresses fan the flames of her darkest desires. Tramore had returned home in triumph—the unwanted bastard was now Lord Ivan, eleventh Marquis of Powerscourt—the most powerful man in London. Yet one woman had sworn to defy him . . . the proud beauty whose touch had branded him forever. But when at last he holds Lissa trembling in his merciless embrace, his lust for vengeance suddenly explodes in a frenzied fever of passion, and now no power on heaven or earth can tear him from the innocent arms that hold him captive, or protect her from the rapturous moment when angels fall.

    Men fight duels to spend an hour in her company. And only he comes close to taming her. Flying in the face of society, he decides to make her his bride; then, she vanishes, seemingly into thin air.Dire circumstances have forced Verity Ashton to barter her innocence and change her name for the sake of her family. But Kylemore destroys her plans for a respectable life when he discovers her safe haven. He kidnaps her, sweeping her away to his hunting lodge in Scotland, where he vows to bend her to his will.There he seduces her anew. Verity spends night after night with him in his bed ... and though she still dreams of escape and independence, she knows she can never flee the unexpected, unwelcome love for the proud, powerful lover who claims her both body and soul.

    But Gabriel plans an exquisite revenge on his cold-hearted parent: wedding the sultry, low-born Yankee wench who tried to steal his watch. Ragged and beautiful Cassie McClellan is desperate to escape her life of poverty — and, therefore, willingly accepts the handsome, arrogant aristocrat's offer of marriage in name only. But neither is prepared for the awakening passions that will bind their fragile, damaged hearts — or the blistering, sensual need that compels them both to surrender body and soul.

    But when Loralee arrived at Fort Apache as the new schoolmarm, she had some hard realities to learn...and a harsh taskmaster to teach her.Shad Zuniga was fiercely proud, aloof, a renegade Apache who wanted no part of the white man's world, not even its women. Yet Loralee was driven to seek him out, compelled to join him in a forbidden union, forced to become an outcast for one slim chance at Love Forevermore.

    But when she first see the muscular, handsome warrior Adam, she is even more afraid of the turbulent passions he arouses in her.When the proud Cherokee warrior Adam finds himself falling love with a white woman, he vows their clash of cultures will not keep him from her. Andrea Sanders wins his heart, but their utter devotion to each other is tested beyond endurance when the betrayal of a Nation tears apart the Cherokee and forces them into a march to a new land.

    She'd married young, hoping to put down roots in a safe haven, but her husband had shattered her naiveté, and made her fear for her beloved daughter's safety until the day he died.When she first met her new neighbor, Zachariah McGovern, all she saw was danger. But Zach saw much more. He saw beauty, he saw tenderness. He knew he could rescue Kate Blakely from her past - if only she would let him. What Zach couldn't know, however, was the price that had to be paid to save the woman he loved.