Beautiful Dark Temptation
by 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.
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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 f*ck 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 d*'ck 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 d*ck against his thigh. And the f*cker 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 f*cker 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 f*cking 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 sh*t.
“What the f*ck?”
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?”
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.
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