Skin Deep

I came to the Institute to put my bare hands on four men who killed everything they touched.
They called me rare. They didn't tell me every Anchor before me was dead.

My mother died on a Tuesday. By the end of the week, I'd drained the electrical current from a light switch, absorbed the magical charge from a neighbor's corgi, and signed every form the Lachlan Institute slid across the table. They called me an Anchor - the rarest class of supernatural alive. Touch a dangerous power, and I could neutralize it. Absorb it. Keep it from killing anyone.

Then they sent me underground.

Sublevel Three. The Obsidian wing. Four men classified fatal on contact, sealed in containment suites designed to survive what they couldn't control. Years without a single touch. And my job - my purpose - was to put my hands on them and absorb the power that killed everyone else.

Maddox - two years isolated. A paramedic whose hands used to save lives and now drained them. He held my hand and cried for forty-three minutes.
Callum - three years of voltage he couldn't turn off. He ripped off his gloves and threw everything he had at me, just to watch me flinch. I didn't.
Jonas - four years of forced stillness. A sculptor who cracked the floor the first time I touched him because his heart rate spiked for the first time in months.
Flynn - five years behind a sealed fireproof door. He held my hand for eleven minutes without speaking. I counted every one of them.

I told myself I could handle it. That I was built for this - showing up for people who needed me, absorbing what hurt them, staying steady.

But every time I touched them, something changed. Echoes of their power humming under my skin. A bond building that the Institute's protocols never accounted for.

And the longer I stayed, the more the pieces stopped fitting. Equipment that was ready before I arrived. A suite built for me years ago. A surveillance program that had my name on it before my power ever manifested.

They didn't recruit me.

They were waiting for me.

Skin Deep is a spicy paranormal why choose romance featuring touch starvation, hurt and comfort, a badass caretaker FMC, lethal touch, forced proximity, enemies-to-lovers, morally gray heroes, found family, and a cliffhanger ending. This is Book 1 of the Shattered Bonds series. Happily-ever-after guaranteed for the series.

Perfect for readers who love:

• Touch starvation and skin hunger that aches on every page
• A badass FMC who walks into a room full of lethal men and refuses to flinch
• Four dangerously powerful heroes undone by a single touch
• Slow burn that ignites after years of deprivation
• Forced proximity in a locked-down underground institution facility
• Enemies-to-lovers tension that arcs like live voltage
• Found family forged in prison cell containment
• Morally gray heroes and the kind of devotion that scars the furniture
• Government conspiracies and institutional secrets bleeding through the walls
• Dark themes such as institutional captivity
• HEA guaranteed for the series