Collector's Debt

This time it's him.Julian Vale has spent fifteen years buying and selling objects whose provenance is better left unexamined. Then an obsidian tablet summons the impossible owner of seventeen artifacts he moved through the grey market. The Collector retrieves what belongs to it-and takes Julian as payment for the inconvenience.The Collection is an endless gallery outside human space, and its curator is ancient, tentacled, and absolute. Julian cannot escape. So he negotiates. A book for an answer. A walk for a lesson. Privacy for honesty. Each bargain teaches the Collector how humans think-and teaches Julian that an alien being can pay closer attention than anyone he has ever loved.Then curiosity becomes hunger. The Collector wants to learn Julian's body as meticulously as it catalogues worlds, but Julian refuses to become another object on a shelf. If desire is going to mean anything, his captor must understand the difference between keeping and choosing. And Julian must decide whether the first being to see him completely is also the one he can trust with his freedom.Dark, cerebral, and intensely erotic, The Collector's Debt is a standalone queer eldritch monster romance about captivity, consent, and choosing the impossible without surrendering the self. It contains a complete romantic ending.