I’m not ready to lose it all for a beautiful dark temptation. Beautiful Dark Temptation (Arcadia U Book 1) Dark MM Romance by Roxas Winters Release Blitz & Giveaway
NEW RELEASE
Book Title: Beautiful Dark Temptation
Author: Roxas Winters
Publisher: Evernight Publishing
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Release Date: September 27, 2024
Pairing: MM
Tense/POV: First person/ Past tense/Alternating POV
Genres: Contemporary MM Romance, dark, mafia, college,
Tropes: Mafia romance, enemies to lovers, forbidden romance, morally grey MCs, possessive MC
Themes: Bisexual awakening, in the closet, trauma
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 226 pages/ 76 000 words
It is a standalone story with a HFN ending.
This is book 1 of the Arcadia U series. Book two is in edits.
Buy Links
I’m not ready to lose it all for a beautiful dark temptation
Blurb
Tomás
I’ve lost everything.
Forced into a prison masking as a school, I find myself in the crosshairs of more than one killer. My savior? The arrogant prick who wants to control me. Kieran is a nightmare wrapped in a seductive package and when he sets his sights on me I don’t know whether to fight him or kiss him.
Kieran
I am the eldest bastard of one of the four founders of Arcadia University, and I will do anything to see my family fall.
The secrets I’ve kept hidden behind my heart now threaten to bury me alive with the arrival of Tomás. He consumes my space, my thoughts, my nightmares. I hate him for how he makes me feel. This toxic attraction between us forces me to question what matters most—vengeance, power, love. But Tomas doesn’t fit into my world of lies and violence and I’m not ready to lose it all for a beautiful dark temptation.
Excerpt
Kieran
The front door opened and closed as I put my dish away. Getting under Tomás’s skin made me feel alive. I couldn’t kill him yet, but I could fuck with him.
He straightened when he caught sight of me. A hint of pain crossed his features, but he quickly schooled it before he grabbed a glass of water. Without paying me any attention, he downed the water. I couldn’t help but take in his profile. The soft line of his jaw, the smooth suntanned skin, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. I had the urge to cup his throat, feel his pulse. He lowered the cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Why my dick chose that moment to twitch made no sense. I wasn’t attracted to him. No way. My erection in the field had to do with the adrenaline rush, not him.
He rinsed the cup and put it away. “What?” he finally said. “You want to finish what we started?”
The image of him stretched out on top of me was what came to mind. My dick against his thigh. And the fucker had grinded against me. I’d felt his erection too before he jumped off me as if his ass were on fire. Then he ran.
If I expected Fox to let go of Dasher, then I had to stop reacting to this prick like I wanted to shove him out a window. I still didn’t know Tomás’s true bloodline. Murdering him would cause attention and right now, that would be more dangerous than letting him live.
“I think we got off to a rocky start,” I said.
He snorted. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Cocky fucker almost made me smile. “You’re a part of the four whether we like it or not. Means that we might be family.” Bile rose in the back of my throat. I already knew we weren’t blood related, but he had to belong to one of the four.
That made him snap his mouth shut. I could see the want of his comeback. He vibrated with it. It took several seconds of silence for him to finally speak.
“I’m not your family,” he said in a tone that seemed absolute. As if he knew without a doubt that he had no blood ties to any of us. “My family is dead.”
My brain buzzed with all the questions I wanted to ask him. Why was he here? Who sent him here? What was his background? Who are you?
He lifted his hand to wipe his face and winced. Dropping his hand to his side he scowled at me. “You’re fucking psycho. It was just a game.” He made a hasty retreat to his room, holding on to his ribs.
A game?
The asshole needed to learn the rules of this place.
I heard his door close but not the chair. I breathed in a moment, just letting myself calm down.
Not happening.
Reaching his door, I pushed it open without knocking. It almost slammed against the wall. Everything I’d meant to say drained away at the picture of Tomás bare chested in front of me. His pants were unbuttoned and hanging low on his hips. Every bit of him exposed awakened something feral inside of me. A desire so deep, I feared releasing it. I suddenly forgot how to breathe, to talk, to make sense of shit.
“What the fuck?”
The angry sound of his voice snapped me out of my stupidity, and I remembered why I entered in the first place. “You think this is a game? Where the hell do you think you are? Who the hell do you think goes to school here? Because they aren’t friends, they aren’t life-long partners. They’re sons and daughters of assassins, drug dealers, mafia, cartel, and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” I should’ve shut up. But I couldn’t. For some reason, I needed him to understand. “Nothing in this place is a game. It’s a test to measure your strength, and out there,” I pointed at the window, “beyond the campus, they’ll rip you apart. So if I were you, I’d really start thinking about alliances. Consider who has your back before someone drives a knife right through it.”
His eyes widened, his mouth opened and closed, and I felt that stirring inside of me that burned all my nerve endings. Then he had to make it worse. “Why do you hate me so much?”
Our Thoughts
I can not rave enough about what an absolutely ducked-up relationship these two have.
Even at the end, though I am pretty sure it is also the beginning,
these two were so toxic for each other
They were a tailor-made couple - Dark meet Light
A lot is going on with the different characters, at times we just get teasers or glimpses.
We know very little about them for the first half of the story.
As the storyline progresses more is revealed about who they are and how they are connected
There are a couple of scenes that just threw me a curve from nowhere - major plot twists
"We were the throwaways"
Some families just didnt want them acknowledged
Some had defects, but nothing serious, they just weren't perfect enough
Others were there for their safety, so their sponsors said
Tomás stole my heart. Despite the abuse from his mother and the loss of certain family members, he was still so innocent, so honest, and so damn trusting
The sacrifice thing made me so mad!
And then for them to turn around and act that way toward him...
He was a lot more forgiving than I would have been
"The stains of all those suffering bleed on the walls, the floor the ceiling. They scream and nobody listens"
Falls in the morally grey area
However, at the same time, he doesn't
A lot of the things he does and how he responds are his way of protecting the people he cares about as well as responses that have been ingrained into his psyche (I'm trying not to ruin it)
His youth was as bad as Tomás' but in a different way
"It's not that I want you. It's that you are mine."
Holy Hades...
Tantalizingly Toxic
I am so torn with rating this one. I did devour it in one sitting but there were a lot of scenes that brought me out of the storyline and had me looking for answers. A me thing, as I am sure the author left unknowns, and actions to be questioned for a reason and to be answered at a later date. I do wish she had maybe split this into two books or just had more information on things. There are some surprises, some pretty gnarly twists, and some characters that left me with questions
About the Author
Roxas writes dark, forbidden MM Romance with morally gray characters you will love to hate. Beautiful Dark Temptation is her first novel in a planned series.
Author/Social Media Links
Blog/Website | Facebook | Twitter
Instagram | Newsletter Sign-up
Giveaway
Enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway for a chance to win
a $10 Amazon gift card
Comments
Post a Comment