Title: BEAUTIFUL LIAR
Author: Zara Cox
Series: Dark Desires, #1
On Sale: April 11, 2017
Publisher: Forever
Trade Paperback: $14.99 USD
eBook: $4.99 USD
**NOW AVAILABLE IN TRADE
PAPERBACK**
People call me many things: CEO,
billionaire, bastard. Q.
I love women. I love sex. I love
money. I love hot, wild nights with no promise of a future, because a future is
one thing I don't have. I'm twenty-eight years old. I won't live to see thirty,
and I don't care. Or I didn't, until her.
Nobody plans for a life like
this. Some of us just end up here.
They call me Lucky, though luck
has never been on my side. Before I met Q, my life was a big, twisted mess.
Never enough money, never anyone to trust. No way out. With Q, the shame and
fear disappear. Instead I feel pure pleasure, and that's something I've never
had before. But if what I've just learned is true, we'd better enjoy every
second together while we can...before our time runs out.
****TOP 5****
Top 5 favorite scenes you've written
from Beautiful Liar and why?
1. When Q first sees Lucky through
his camera lens and he feels that initial tug of emotion. He has no clue what’s
coming his way but even he knows something is happening to him. I loved writing
that.
2. When Quinn and Elly meet for the
first time “in real life”. If this is slightly confusing, you’ll have to read
the book to find out the whole story, haha. This time it’s Elly’s reaction to
Quinn that makes my heart beat faster every time I read it. Put simply, he
electrifies her and she’s can barely function. I loved writing that very much.
3. When Quinn manipulates Elly into
moving into his apartment. He’s so alpha about how he brings her into his world
that I can’t help but fall a little bit in love with him, even while I’m
utterly shocked by his behavior.
4. The first time they make love as
Q and Elly. It’s burn-the-sheets hot and everything they’d been promising would
happen for a lot of chapters beforehand. I wrote it and I’m still need a cold
shower when I read it!
5. When Elyse comforts Quinn after
he tells her about how much he misses his dead mother. It’s awesome to see them
both falling in love.
****** EXCERPT *****
“So it’s true? It’s not a
con? This job really pays a million dollars? For…sex?” she rasps.
“You think I’d admit it if
it was a con? What did the ad say?”
Her delicate jaw flexes
for a second.
“One
million uninhibited reasons to take a leap.
One
million chances to earn a keep
One
million to give in to the carnal
Are you
brave enough to surrender,
For a
payday to remember?”
It speaks even more to her
desperate state of mind that she remembers the ad verbatim.
I remain silent and wait
for her to speak.
“So…assuming it’s not a con, how will this work, then?”
“If you pass the next few
tests, and I decide you’re a good fit, you get the gig. You’ll receive one
hundred thousand dollars with each performance.”
“So…ten performances…over
how long a period?”
“Depending on how many
takes are needed, anywhere between three weeks and a month. But I should warn
you, it’s hard work, Lucky. If you think you’re just going to lie back and
recite the Star Spangled Banner in your head, think again.”
Her fingers drum on the
table, the first sign of nerves she’s exhibited. “I…I won’t be doing
anything…skanky, will I?”
“Define skanky.”
“This is going to be
straight up sex. No other…bodily stuff? Because that would a firm no for me.”
My mouth attempts another
twitch. “No water works, waste matter or bestiality will be involved in the
performances.”
Her fingers stop drumming.
“Okay.” She waits a beat, stares straight into the camera. “So when will I
know?”
I hear the barely
disguised urgency and I rub my finger over my lip again. “Soon. I’ll be in
touch within the week.” I’m not sure exactly why I want to toy with her. But I
sense that having her on edge would add another layer of excitement I badly
need.
When she opens her mouth,
I interrupt. “Goodbye, Lucky.”
A passing thought about
the origin of her name is crushed into oblivion. I press the remote to summon
the bodyguard to escort her out, and I leave the room.
In my study a few minutes
later, I bring up the screen on my desk and activate the encrypted service I
need. I open the application and within minutes, the members of my exclusive
gentlemen’s club are logging in.
My email is short and
succinct.
The next Q
Production is scheduled for release on 20 May 2015.
Limited to ten
members.
Bidding starts
in fifteen minutes.
I start the countdown and
rise to pour myself a neat bourbon. I swallow the first mouthful with two
prescribed tablets, which are meant to keep me from going over the edge,
apparently, and stroll to the floor to ceiling window. I look down at Midtown’s
bumper-to-bumper traffic. This mid-level penthouse is one of many I own in this
building and around New York City.
Technically, I don’t live
here. I only use it when volatile pressures demand that I put some distance
between the Upper West Side family mansion and myself. I would never stray far
for long. For one thing, I’ve accepted that my family would never leave me
alone.
I know what I know. So
they’ve made it their business to keep me on a short leash. But with over three
hundred properties in my personal portfolio, and a few thousand more under the
family firm’s control, there are many places to disappear to when the demons
howl.
Today, the Midtown
penthouse is my temporary haven.
I turn when the timer
beeps a one-minute warning.
I return to my desk and
adjust the voice distorter. When the clock reaches zero, I click the mouse.
“Gentlemen, start your bids.”
My words barely trail off
before the first five bids appear on the screen. Sixty seconds later, the total
bid is at a quarter of a million dollars. I steeple my fingers and wish I were
more excited. The money means nothing. It never has. It’s the end game that
excites me.
My mind drifts back to
Lucky. I turn the gem of her elusiveness this way and that and admit to myself
she has potential.
I want to take a scalpel
to all her secrets, bleed them and soil my hands with the viscera. I also want
to fuck her until her body gives out. Right in this moment, I’m not sure what I
want more.
So I concentrate on the
numbers racing higher on the screen.
Half a million. One
million. One point five.
My phone beeps twice. I
pick it up and read the two appointment reminders on the screen.
7pm – Dr. Nathanson. My shrink.
9pm - Dinner
with Maxwell.
I re-confirm the first and
delete the second.
Cancelling dinner with
Maxwell will bring a world of irritation to my doorstep. No one cancels dinner
with Maxwell Blackwood. For a start he’s one of the most powerful men in the
country.
He’s also my father.
Yeah, my name is Quinn
Blackwood, heir to the Blackwood Estate, only child of Maxwell Blackwood and
Adele Blackwood (deceased). My family owns a staggering amount of property
across the eastern seaboard of the United States and a few in the west.
According to the bean counters, I’m personally worth twenty-six billion
dollars.
But tangling with my
father in hell is what I live for. Have done since I was fifteen. So I ignore
his summons and watch the stragglers fall away until I’m left with the top ten
bidders. The bids wind down, and within the space of half an hour, I’m just
under two million dollars richer.
I spot the familiar name
of the top bidder and I sneer. Taking his money on top of everything else is
darkly satisfying.
Once bidding ends, I close
down the application and call up another list. Dozens of charity websites
showing pictures of starving children flood my screen. Within minutes, fifty
charities are the grateful recipients of two million dollars.
I may be Quinn Blackwood,
occasional user of prescribed meds to keep the demons in check, who moonlights
as Q, porn star to an exclusive
few who pay millions for my work.
And I may be an unhinged
asshole with serious daddy issues.
But no one said I wasn’t a giver.
BEAUTIFUL LIAR was previously
published as Porn Star
BUY THE BOOK HERE
THE DARK DESIRES SERIES
BEAUTIFUL LIAR, #1
BLACK SHEEP, #2
WICKED S.O.B, #2.5 (August 8,
2017)
ARROGANT BASTARD, #3 (September
12, 2017)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zara Cox has been writing for
almost twenty-five years but it wasn't until nine years ago that she decided to
share her love of writing sexy, gritty stories with anyone outside her close
family (the over 18s anyway!).
FOLLOW FOREVER ONLINE
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