Lord Ryderbourne has chosen a bride for himself. Wealthy, powerful and handsome as sin, he has no doubt that his future wife will accept him with giddy delight -- until she doesn't. Humiliated and rejected, Ryder gallops off for home in a fearful rage. With thoughts of his chosen's rejection still in his head, Ryder reins in his horse at the edge of the sea overlooking the bay. A chill spreads through him as he realizes the small object he's been watching is a dinghy floundering in the water. Ryder urges his horse through the waves and discovers a half-naked woman lying in the bottom of the boat. Semi-conscious and badly beaten, she's still one of the most handsome women he's ever encountered.

Ryder gets her safely to shore and demands to know who left her to die in such a heinous fashion. Despite her pronouncements that she doesn't need rescuing, he wraps her in his cloak and speeds off to an inn where she can be properly seen to. Once at the inn, warm and fed, the two begin a conversation, which Ryder believes will reveal her identity and the events that led to her being beaten and abandoned. Instead, what begins is a slow seduction of the honorable Lord Ryderbourne. Although he initially resists temptation, not wanting to take advantage of a traumatized woman, he eventually succumbs to her advances. What follows is a night of unabashed passion. While he assumes she's a wife, mistreated and cast off by her husband, she is, in fact, a renowned courtesan named Miracle Heather.

Miracle reveals nothing of herself to Ryder. No pertinent information, that is. She allows him to think what he will, knowing she'll be gone before he wakes the next morning. When Ryder awakens after their night together and finds she's disappeared and the only thing left behind is a white satin slipper, he vows he'll ride to the end of the earth to find her. Miracle knows full-well there can be no future for herself and a member of the nobility and rides on the back roads to avoid not only him, but the dangerous man who's pursuing her. Very soon Ryder catches up with Miracle and insists on accompanying her and assisting her escape. The two agree not to be lovers, but only to travel together as companions. But desire and the memory of one perfect night together continue to bedevil the runaways, and it may be that they can never run far or fast enough.

Delightfully erotic, GAMES OF PLEASURE is a must read for fall. Ross continues her winning streak with this original novel featuring an unconventional heroine and a hero who's tired of always being "the good brother/son."