Rating: 4.5 Stars

Publisher: Rina Saint

Genre: Gay Dark Erotic Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Age Gap (5 Years), Dark Erotica – See Below Trigger Warnings, First Time, Kink, Opposites Attract, Romance, Series

Length: 224 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

TW from from author/front of book: Dubcon/cnc, abduction, drugging, bondage, control, breath play, knife play, forced orgasm, overstimulation/extreme edging, toys (vibrator, anal plug, dildo), forced feminization (underwear only), somnophilia, homophobic slurs, past sexual abuse (mentioned)

Blurb –

Dante
My moral compass is broken. That’s why I need rules. They keep me from killing people I shouldn’t. They keep me from crossing certain lines. I’m possessive. Obsessive. Deviant. And I like to fight.

That’s what I see in Tristan when I spot him working in the swanky nightclub. His cool detachment is a mask. He’s angry, he’s lost, and he’s totally new to what he’s feeling.

I want to feel that anger. I want it to burn me. I want him to fight me—then I want to feel him submit. He won’t have any choice, not in my play room. He would look perfect there on the black sheets … with red blooming across his creamy skin.

Tristan
Okay, so I’m not as straight as I thought. I can deal with that, but I don’t know if I can deal with him. I could tell Dante was dangerous even before I saw him talking to a mobster connected to my brother’s death. I mean, Dante cornered me and bit me. I don’t even know him! He’s a thousand red flags. And yet … my body has never responded to anyone like it responds to him. That’s why I sit down with him one night after work.

Is this real? Are we actually about to discuss a sex contract? It looks so normal at first. He can’t hit me in the face. He can’t maim me. Why do we need rules for this?

“I don’t think you’re understanding this,” Dante tells me in his dark, sexy voice. “These are hard limits. Everything else—everything else—is fair game.”

He won’t tell me what that means. Half the fun, he says, is finding out.

*Books in the Dangerous Games series can be read as standalones, though some events are connected and characters may cross over. Please note that these dark MM romances have HEAs but contain potentially triggering content. Each book’s content list (which will contain spoilers) can be found in its ebook sample.

Review –

Tristan, 26, somehow manages to get a job as a bartender at an exclusive sex club. He’s done his homework, dresses the part, and has practiced how to act around the rich people he’ll be serving. He knows how to play the game. The swanky bar is upstairs, with the sex stuff happening downstairs. Throughout the book, I don’t think Tristan ever walked downstairs. He doesn’t apply for the job simply for a paycheck. He’s trying to find out what happened to his brother.

In my stolen clothes, using mannerisms copied from movies, no one knows I’m the kind of trash that has no business setting foot in this place.

Dante, 31, is… well, I’m not sure exactly what Dante is other than he’s powerful and quite intimidating. He’s in the club one night and he sets his sights on Tristan. Tristan doesn’t understand the pull with Dante. He’s never been with a man before, but he’s never really known what the big deal was about sex either. Let’s just say that this is his sexual awakening, though I wouldn’t say he’s bisexual. I think maybe he did what was expected with women, though his experience is limited even there. He’d cared so little about sex that he’d never even been kissed before. Now he’s more aroused than he’s ever been in his life.

Dante is dangerous, though the reader doesn’t see how dangerous until long into the book. He’s also very mysterious, never giving anything away about his life. That, I admit, bugged me quite a bit. He knew a lot about Tristan, but he never shared anything personal. The why of that is explained later, but it still irked me a little because it took so long for anything to be revealed.

The first time Dante meets Tristan he makes it clear that he wants to have sex with him. This continues over other visits at the club. When it finally gets to the point where Tristan is willing to agree, Dante tells him that in order to go further, he has to sign a contract. The things listed on the contract – including how Tristan can’t touch Dante in certain places – are considered hard limits. Anything beyond what’s written is fair game, something that Dante takes advantage of once it’s signed.

And here’s where I have to mention the trigger warnings above. A lot of what’s listed occurs before and during their first sexual encounter. Dante… takes. Tristan can stop everything by saying one word – red. If he uses the safeword, Dante stops what he’s doing, and Tristan will never see or hear from him again. Saying red also will have Dante giving him $40-something thousand dollars as a severance, Dante’s words.

The first night is pretty intense, with each subsequent encounter being more so. In the middle of it all, Dante never gives anything away about himself, though he completely controls Tristan’s life and body. Tristan does fight back in his own way. There’s some knife play that isn’t necessarily part of sex play.

“You undressed me,” I accuse.

“Yes.”

“You drugged me.”

“Mmm, yes.”

~~~

“You fucking prick,” he grits out.

“You can stab me later.”

“Count on it.”

There are other characters who make up the story. Some good, most not.

There’s Rafael, Tristan’s boss at the bar. Rafael and Dante have a complicated past. While Dante claimed otherwise, I have every reason to believe – as Tristan did – that Rafael is in love with Dante.

There are Dante’s parents who are horrible human beings. The reader doesn’t know exactly how horrible until Dante’s past comes out long into the book. I absolutely hated them both.

There’s Noah, who is not in the book much, but he’s very important. I’m hoping the author gives Noah his own story.

Then there’s Dominic, who does have his own book with Rafael next. I hated Dominic for a couple of reasons, so much so that I stopped reading long enough to see if he would have his own story, which as we see, he does. Something is said toward the end that has me almost sympathizing with him, though how I’ll feel about him later remains to be seen. He does a couple of things that looked like they were done for one reason, but they were possibly done for another, better, reason. I know that doesn’t make sense, but I don’t want to give anything away. I’ll just say that maybe he did a bad thing to ensure another bad thing/person was dealt with. I guess I’ll know after I read his story. I wasn’t a fan of Rafael either, so we’ll see how that goes.

With every book I review, I type notes while I’m reading it. For Dominic, I wrote, after something he’d said, “Why would I want to read that bastard’s story?”

So, yeah. Not a likable guy.

The entire book is centered around Dante’s secret past and why he’s the way he is, including why he required a contract with Tristan. It’s not to protect him so much as it is to protect Tristan from things that Dante might do without it. The reader just doesn’t know why until later.

I enjoyed watching Dante come out of his mysterious shell little by little. It scared the hell out of him, and with good reason, but it was nice to see. There are a few moments where he either lost control or almost did, but thankfully, he was able to fix things before it was too late. There’s a major misunderstanding that almost has him losing Tristan for good (in more ways than one) when he just realized how he truly felt about him. I’m glad that was cleared up fairly quickly. It wasn’t one of those ‘big misunderstandings’ that’s often thrown into books for a little drama. It was much more than that.

As for Tristan, it took me a minute to warm up to him. I knew enough about his childhood to understand certain things, but not a whole lot of detail. He did, however, get the information about his missing brother.

Overall, this is a really good book, but it’s not for everybody. There’s quite a bit of violence, but not as much as I expected on page. There’s more violence in the sex than anything else. It’s more what’s disclosed about Dante’s past that truly got to me.

The sex is intense, and there’s nothing sweet about any of it. I do think my favorite part of the book was when Dante allowed himself to kiss Tristan for the first time. The thought of kissing anyone before now repulsed him. With Tristan, it’s natural, as well as a couple of other things that were previously considered hard limits in the contract. There was A LOT of sex in this book, seriously A LOT. And, as I said, if you’re looking for sweet, you might want to skip this book. I did like Dante and Tristan together. I just wish certain things would’ve started happening a little earlier, so I could get a better feel for them as a couple, and not just in the bedroom, or against a wall, or on the bathroom floor, or… you get the picture. 😉

There were a few things left unanswered, but nothing that affects Tristan and Dante’s relationship. This ended with them solid.

I need to step away from Dominic and Rafael for a bit before jumping into their world. If I were to read their story now, I’d be going in already despising both main characters before even starting it. I’ll read a few other books before coming back to it.

This is my first by this author.

“Are you going to fuck me in your murder basement?”

He draws back from kissing my neck. He smiles at the term. “Yes.”

“With Rafael torturing someone fifteen feet away?”

His smile turns into a grin. “Yes.”

“Without even asking me?”