Game designer Emily Bartwell is in hiding. Fleeing online trolls that ruined her career, marriage, and life--pretty much in that exact order--she's made a new life on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, it's lonely, but she has her online community for company. And she has her work: Labyrinth, a wildly popular role-playing game, one she's created under the male alias, Phoenix.
When sexy writer, Fox Mullins, rents the beach house next door, however, he entices Emily out of her isolation. Flirting, teasing, igniting desires she'd forgotten she had, Fox tempts Emily into playing games of a very different sort--ones where he makes the rules.
Fox is delighted by his luck in discovering his gorgeous, single neighbor's simmeringly passionate nature under her oh-so-private exterior. Playing with her, pushing the lovely Emily's boundaries, gives him relief from the painstaking, frustrating task of tracking the brilliant gamer, Phoenix--and discovering his elusive prey's true identity. Exposing Phoenix will be the biggest scoop of his career as an undercover tech reporter.
As Fox and Emily push the limits of intimacy, they discover that their fling is leading to something much deeper. They're both keeping secrets that could devastate the other, but which of them will win the game in the end?