Born for love, she was an emperor's favorite. A tyrant's concubine. And a prisoner of her own brazen desires . . .

Julia Dupre was the proud belle of New Orleans when she first fell under the mocking gaze of Captain Rudyard Thorpe. His self-assurance angered her, his insolence enraged her, yet he was the one man who could help her carry out her desperate plan. Caught up in a dangerous scheme of international revenge, she found herself orphaned...penniless...forced to become Rudyard Thorpe's bride.

Against her will, the marriage became an affair of passion, only to be shattered by the treacherous tides of fate...Tides that would sentence Julia to a life of exotic decadence...Tides of lust and violence that would rise again and again before she would learn to embrace the love that had branded her heart....