A house burns on the stark Kansas horizon... Its flames make a New York businessman abandon the back road in hopes of helping, in hopes of being the hero instead of the villain for once... His nerve is immediately tested as he witnesses a man run into the inferno. As the New Yorker risks all to save the stranger, his life becomes forever embroiled in both a madman's deadly game of fire and revenge, and a soldier's fight not only to save his family but to save his own soul... The New Yorker is thirty-two-year-old Matthew Archer. He is a hard man to like, a harder man still to love. Few in the world make an effort at either. The soldier is twenty-six-year-old Cane Summerfield. He is a hero, a man who gave up his independence to defend his country. The men are two strong, fierce personalities, from backgrounds as different as heaven and hell. They should never have met, let alone fallen in love... but theirs is a story of Fate riding in on the coattails of sin. Theirs is a story borne of fire...

Welcome back to Hellesgate. Three years have passed since New York real estate mogul Matthew Archer met and fell in love with Iraqi war veteran Cane Summerfield. Having survived a deranged arsonist, a wispy, green-eyed stalker and a revenge-fueled brother, the men have settled down to small town life in Hellesgate, Kansas. Life is good. Every day, their love grows. Every day, their wedding nears. But when a love is borne of fire, the future is often shaped by hell. When two strangers arrive in town, the horrors of Cane's war-torn past return wearing fresh faces and harboring mysterious hate. Greed, envy and lust combine to form an enemy unseen until the very end. The battle is one for Cane's scarred peace of mind. The battle is one Matthew will risk everything to win. With the eccentric citizens of Hellesgate by their side, the men must fight a war that will leave one thing branded indelibly on all their hearts... While war is hell, love is forever its phoenix.

It’s Christmas night in Hellesgate, Kansas and all the world is bright. Former New York real estate mogul Matthew Archer and injured war hero Cane Summerfield are enjoying their first holiday season together with their adopted daughter, Sahara. While the men had endured many hardships on their paths to discovering one another, their lives had finally grown peaceful while their love had only grown more vibrant… But when you have everything, you have everything to lose. An estranged family member with a heart of ice, a buried past that lives in a murderer’s hungry gaze, memories born of sweet violence and delicious pain… all must be met and overcome for Matthew and Cane to keep the lives and the love for which they have fought so fiercely. However… when the path is darkest, it takes only the smallest shafts of light to lead a man home again.

A young man waits for his lover under the shade of an ancient sprawling tree as the sun rises over Brazil. It is the end of summer. The earth is baked. Heat rises from the burnt cane fields as dawn floods the land. Dimas Cabral and Alanyo Valermo are cane cutters in southern Brazil. Both in the mid-twenties, the men have spent their adult lives in "debt bondage" to a large sugarcane plantation located several hundred miles from Sao Paolo. The living conditions are despicable. The working conditions are worse. Their "wages" never reach their own hands. The money their long, taxing hours earn goes directly into the plantation boss' hands, a man who legally claims that the young workers' families owe him a large financial debt. The fact that this is a lie doesn't matter when there is no proof of the truth. Dimas and Alanyo's time is short and there are ears everywhere. Their love must be made silently and fast. As sweat soaks their bodies and orgasms rock their lost souls, the young men allow themselves one minute longer just to hold on to each other, to hold on to the only good thing in their lives... This is their story.