In the summer heat of 1898 New York, desire becomes defiance—and love could cost them everything.

Tomas, a beautiful young man from a wealthy Milanese family, has learned the hard way that pleasure comes with a price. Cast out of respectability and dismissed from his job for indecency, he finds work at Antique Paper – Bought and Sold, where he becomes both assistant and plaything to its owners. Tomas tells himself he doesn’t mind—that giving pleasure is enough—but a part of him still aches for something real, something lasting.

Then Robert walks into his life: a gruff, soft-spoken deliveryman with muscled arms and gentle eyes. Older, unpolished, and utterly sincere, Robert stirs something in Tomas that neither luxury nor lust ever could. But their love is as dangerous as it is tender. When an unexpected visitor from Tomas’s past—his formidable mother arrives from Italy, her disapproval threatens to tear them apart and expose everything they’ve fought to keep secret.

Tomas and Robert is a Gilded Age gay historical romance of longing, redemption, and the quiet courage it takes to choose truth over fear—and passion over convention. Elli Jackson has created a fictional world full of heart, love, struggle, and steam. The world of the Hornet's Nest is a powder keg of erotic yearning fulfilled in each novel.