Book Blurb:
“Are you his willingly?” Jackson demands, his blue eyes as dark as the clouds above our heads. “Tell me. Are you?”
Jackson Vale. My boss’s rival and the man I’ve thought far too much about since we were introduced last week.
Of all the— “I’m not his,” I sputter indignantly. “I’m just his employee. He doesn’t own me.”
And for some reason this sets off a flare of intensity and… satisfaction? in Jackson’s expression. That’s it, I officially give up trying to understand any of this.
But then Jackson leans over and speaks so softly in my ear I can barely hear it above the falling rain.
“If you belonged to me, Miss Cruise, you wouldn’t look so disgusted. True ownership goes both ways. I would own you, but you’d own me, too. A concept I’m sorry to say Bryce Gentry’s never understood.”
My breath hitches and I pull back from the intimacy of his voice on my ear, only to get lost in the dark blue of his eyes.
“Let me go,” I whisper.
He does, but before he turns to go, those brooding eyes pierce me one last time. “I’ll be seeing you again soon.”
And then he turns and is gone into the rain-soaked street, leaving me behind, breathless and confused.
My Review:
This is my first dark erotic novel and I was honestly gripped right from the beginning.
The book centres on Callie who is a young single mum who is wrapped up in a custody battle with her ex, who just happens to be her college professor and his wife. She was seduced by him as a young and vulnerable student and believes him when he declares his love for her and says he wants to leave his wife. However, all of that changes when she tells him that she is pregnant and he drops her like they never happened. Callie is rejected by her parents and the love of her life and she becomes a scared teenage girl who lashes out. This results in him getting a restraining order against Callie and it is at this point when she realises that she needs to get her life together and with the help of her sister who moves in with her and helps her to raise her son. But Callie is struggling to make ends meet and needs to earn more money than the waitressing jobs that she has worked before and is excited when she gets offered an interview as PA for Bryce Gentry who is the billionaire CEO of Gentry Information. This is where her life take a turn for the worse which is saying something.
I think the only way to describe Bryce would be an absolutely disgusting human being. At the first interview he realises that the girl sat in front of him is incredibly vulnerable and needs money for her son who is the most important person in her world and he takes advantage of that. He has a very unique ability to manipulate Callie into degrading herself for his own pleasure without even touching her. Bryce makes it clear to Callie that he will pay her more than she imagined but he will expect her to do whatever he wants. He manages to lure Callie into a false sense of security by not actually touching her and being overly charming but once he gets Callie to lose herself he verbally degrades her and it is so difficult to read. There are some scenes that have you gripped and you want to keep reading but at the same time it’s horrifying to see it unfolding.
Bryce takes his new PA to a business meeting with Jackson Vale who was his old business partner, ex-best friend and current arch enemy. From the minute that Callie meets Jackson there is an instant attraction to him and there is a sizzling chemistry between them that she has never felt before. But it becomes glaringly obvious that Bryce fully intended to use Callie as a pawn in his business rivalry with Jackson.
Jackson is dark and brooding but glaringly handsome and from the minute he meets Callie he knows that she is worth more than whatever Bryce is using her for. Jackson has experience of being used as a pawn in Bryce’s games and this has resulted in a self-hatred that he is struggling to get over.
There are twists and turns towards the end of the book and it ends on a heart-breaking cliff-hanger that had me literally on the edge of my seat and my fingers clicking quicker than humanly possible to download the second book to find out what will happen. If I thought Callie was at rock bottom at the beginning of the book it is nothing compared to how she ends up at the end of the book and that is what makes the books so difficult to read. My conscious wants to say that I did not enjoy the book because there are elements of the book that are beyond dark and difficult to read but I think that is a testament to how well this book has been written. Stasia makes you go on the rollercoaster with Callie and you feel every emotion that she feels and that makes the book so gripping. Jackson is gorgeous and caring with a bit of a hero complex and my word is he incredibly sexy. He is dark and dirty and it makes you love him even more but he is also broken from his past with Bryce and it becomes clear that while he wants to be the one to save Callie she also has the potential to save him as well. I fully recommend this book but want to make it clear that it is not for everyone and there are some awful trigger scenes that people may not enjoy. When they say it is a dark erotic romance that sum it up well because it is definitely dark and my word is it erotic. There are times when you don’t want it to be sizzling hot but is and when the sex is good it is oh so deliciously dirty. This book opened me up to a whole new world of dark erotica and I can honestly say it will not be my last and I know exactly what my next book will be. Bring on book 2!
Emma's Romantic Reviews 