Beyond Innocence
Review
Blurb:
For years, Jared has existed on the fringes of both Eden society and Dallas O’Kane’s Sector Four gang. He travels between these worlds, protected by his money and power–money he earned selling his body, and power that comes from knowing secrets. He’s untouchable—until he starts a new life gathering intelligence for the O’Kanes.
Lili Fleming walked out of Sector Five with a gun, the bloodstained clothes on her back, and an icy determination to survive. She finds herself in a world where people live hard and love harder, and nothing’s more terrifying than how much the O’Kanes wake her up, make her feel—especially Jared.
Emotion is a risk he can’t afford, and a complication she doesn’t need. But neither can resist the lust simmering between them, and the sparks that could either melt the ice around both their hearts…or get them killed.
Because the only thing more dangerous than loving an O’Kane is loving a spy.
EXCERPTS:
“So how long have you been spying for Dallas?”
Cruz’s casual words startled Jared enough to throw him off balance. He almost missed blocking the man’s next blow, and wood scraped over wood as their staffs collided.
Jared spun around and tried to recover his composure. As tactics went, this one was murderously lethal—throw out something shocking, as boldly as possible, then take advantage of your opponent’s distraction to strike your killing blow.
“You’re a good soldier,” he murmured, tightening his fingers around his weapon. The staff was solid red oak—deadly and perfectly balanced. “I bet you’re an even better interrogator.”
“Not really.” Cruz planted his staff on the floor and met Jared’s gaze squarely. “My psych evaluations were consistently disappointing. I’ve always been burdened with an overabundance of empathy. The Base has plenty of soldiers not operating with that particular handicap.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Wiping his face with his arm did fuck-all to clear Jared’s vision, because every inch of his bare skin was dripping with sweat. He could make it through a solid hour of forms, no problem, but sparring with Cruz was a far more intense workout. “What gave me away?”
“Nothing obvious.” Cruz shrugged one big shoulder. “I doubt anyone else will notice. But I know a lot of people inside Eden, so I hear the gossip. And I watch you.”
“Good to know.” He made a rush, swinging one end of his staff up toward Cruz’s unprotected side. Cruz pivoted smoothly, his block effortless, his movements lazy as he flipped into a counterattack that pushed Jared back.
His next words were just as casual, just as easy. “I haven’t talked to Dallas about it. I figured if he wanted me to know, he’d have told me. Unless something was stopping him.”
“Not letting it go? Fine.” Jared tossed his staff aside with a sigh, and it clattered to the floor. “Ace can’t find out. That needs to be a promise.”
Cruz hesitated only a moment before nodding. “The fewer who know, the safer you are. But I need to know. If something goes wrong, I’m the one most likely to be able to get you out.”
“Bren’s on it.”
“Bren doesn’t have my connections.”
“Really, now?” So, quiet Cruz was the one with the friends in high places. “I’m impressed.”
“I can’t use them for information, not the kind Dallas needs. But if you get in trouble…” Cruz’s expression stayed serious. “Don’t underestimate how far I’ll go to protect Ace’s heart.”
Not just a promise, but a warning. “You took the words right out of my mouth. Which is why you need to stay the fuck out of it.”
“I’m not going to trip you up at fancy parties—or your new club. But you need to check in with us regularly.” Cruz swept up Jared’s abandoned staff and tossed it to him. “And I need to make sure you can kill a man with whatever’s handy.”
“Your newest project, huh?”
“I don’t want to get too soft living in all that O’Kane luxury.”
It wasn’t the high living on Dallas’s compound that was bringing out all of Cruz’s latent protective instincts—and that was exactly what this was, no matter how he tried to spin it. No, it was all that time he’d spent curled up between Ace and Rachel.
Caring. Once you let go and let yourself do it, it got to be a habit.
Jared kept his mouth shut for a few minutes, focusing instead on the careful coordination of his breathing and his muscles and the weapon in his hands, all moving in concert. But the words spilled forth anyway.
“It’s not so different,” he panted. “In my bedroom, or in a bar. Half the time, all I do is wait for them to say things they already want to say.” That much he understood now—the compulsion born of secrecy, how silence was its own sort of prison. The relief that came with being able to tell someone, anyone, all those things you were supposed to keep locked up.
“People want to be heard.” Cruz wasn’t as breathless, but he wasn’t moving so smoothly now, either. He blocked Jared’s advance only inches from his ribs and broke away to regain space to maneuver. “The bar’s a good idea. Eden’s elite are getting bored and reckless.”
Bored was one of Jared’s longstanding clients tripling her number of monthly visits. Reckless was the time she brought two friends with her, both the wives of powerful, devout men. Of true believers.
Bored and reckless. Separately, they made people dangerous. But together? Bored and reckless had toppled empires.
***********************************************
He didn’t say anything, just watched her for so long that the intensity would have terrified her if being the focus of his attention wasn’t thrilling in a different way. Finally, he sighed. “I don’t know what to do with you, Lili Fleming.”
Her heart lurched, and the words that spilled out were reckless—the most unguarded of her life. “What do you want to do with me?”
Again, the hesitation. “There are ways I could help you,” he admitted, rubbing his thumb over the bowl of his glass. “Ordinarily, I would have already offered. But somehow it seems complicated now.”
She watched his thumb make another slow sweep and couldn’t not imagine it smoothing over her skin. That was what he was talking about—he had to be. Touching her. Showing her the things her body wanted, even as her mind shrank away.
“That’s not why—” Her voice cracked, and she took a long sip of wine and wished it was whiskey. “I’m not asking you for that. I don’t know if I—if I could…” God, she couldn’t even say it, her tongue tangling around the mildest of euphemisms.
“I know you’re not asking.” He shrugged. “I guess that’s what makes it complicated.”
Because trades were simple. They never left you vulnerable. And he hadn’t really answered her question—he was so deft that she hadn’t noticed. “What do you want to do?” she repeated softly.
Jared held her riveted, so completely that she barely noticed when he moved. She couldn’t look away, even when he took the glass from her hand. Even when he laid his hands on her face, his fingers curled around her neck to hold her, and lowered his mouth to hers.
She’d imagined kissing. Mouths touching, lips brushing.
She’d imagined wrong, because Jared’s tongue was the first thing she felt, hot and shocking, as if he knew it would make her gasp. Because when she did, he went deeper, his tongue finding hers.
It was too much. Too fast, too intoxicating. Her entire body throbbed along with her racing pulse, and her knees felt unsteady. She clutched for the only steady thing she could find, grasping his upper arms to keep from melting through the floor.
Then his hands tightened, tilting her head back, urging her mouth open. His tongue swept over hers again, rough and rasping, and every tiny shiver of sensation built into an ache that settled between her legs. Not just an ache, a need, and she whimpered into his mouth.
Jared broke the kiss with a shudder and smoothed his thumb over her tingling lower lip. “See?” he whispered. “Complicated.”
She closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath. “Not sure that helped,” she said, an attempt to turn it into a joke. It had to be, or fear and longing would crash together and vaporize her. “I’m feeling all sorts of things now.”
“It doesn’t have to stop.” His hands trembled on her face. “But that’s your choice to make.”
An impossible choice—need or fear, pleasure or peace. And all of it shrouded in mystery, because she couldn’t reconcile the O’Kanes’ wild glee with her mother’s whispered warnings to lie still so it would be over faster.
“I don’t know.” She forced herself to look at him, to meet his patient, waiting eyes. “I don’t know anything. How can I make a choice when I don’t understand what you’re offering?”
“You’re right.” He smiled again and brushed her hair back from her forehead with a careful, gentle touch. “It’s not exactly fair, is it?”
She was still clinging to him. Slowly, shyly, she eased her grip until she was touching, instead. His arms were solid, muscle flexing as she rubbed her thumb against his sleeve and wondered if he felt the same spark of sensation. “When I was on the drugs, everything seemed so clear. I thought they were all pretending. I didn’t believe in pleasure.”
“And now?”
Now it would be like not believing in water while she was standing outside in the rain. This wasn’t some gentle mist, either. She was caught up in a storm, and she’d seen what heavy rain could do to the desert. The clay couldn’t absorb the water, and the riverbeds couldn’t contain it.
She wasn’t made for pleasure. Too much would sweep her away. “Now I’m scared.”
***********************************************
Lili’s world was on fire.
It was wrong. Watching Rachel and Ace and Cruz, imagining doing more than watching, and now this, her dress pushed up to her hips and her fingers pressed between her own thighs. Everything about this was wrong, start to finish.
And it felt so, so right.
This was the source of the ache that consumed her every time Jared touched her. His touch had always been too much, illicit and skilled and intimidating. Her own touch was clumsy by comparison, but even that had her shaking in moments.
Something was simmering inside her, something that made every brush of her fingers—their fingers—more dangerous and more necessary.
Jared’s breath blew over her ear. “You know this is what she wants, right?” He stroked his thumb over her cheek, guiding her gaze back to Rachel. “She gets off on being watched. And watching, I think.”
It explained so much. The warmth in Rachel’s eyes, the subtle tension in the store. Maybe Rachel hadn’t wanted to push, but the willingness was there. To let Lili watch, to help her understand the O’Kanes and their reckless pleasure.
Lili even understood gets off now—it was the culmination of pleasure, the moment this ache inside her boiled over. The only question was how hot she had to get before it happened.
Rachel had one arm wrapped around Ace’s neck, her eyes drifting shut only to snap open again. She moved faster, her chest heaving, and she clutched at Cruz with her other hand, her fingers wound through his hair as he reached between her and Ace.
With a jolt, Lili realized what he was doing. Touching Rachel, the same way Jared was guiding her to touch herself. But not tentative and easy—even in faint light, the shifting pattern of his tattoos highlighted the flex of muscle. Rachel’s response was immediate, her body arching as if the pleasure was so intense, she might fly out of her skin.
Blood pounding in her ears, Lili shifted her fingers, pressing more firmly. Sensation jolted through her, and she barely dug her teeth into her lower lip in time to hold back a moan.
The sharp sound of a zipper broke through her haze. “Do you do this when you’re alone, Lili?”
Shaking her head, she sagged back in the booth. The vinyl was smooth and cool against all the skin bared by her dress, but her own nakedness was inconsequential. The table shielded Jared’s movements from everyone else in the room—
But not from her.
He had freed his erection from his tailored pants. It jutted up into his hand, long and thick and impossibly big. It looked rough and delicate all at once, veined and throbbing but also soft, and she watched as he ran his thumb around the flared head.
Hazy nights spent at O’Kane parties had left her with a patchwork of blurry memories, of body parts and the ways they touched and came together. But she’d never wanted to look before. Now she couldn’t look away. She watched his elegant fingers slide along his length, and felt an answer throb beneath her own fingertips, as if he was somehow touching her, too.
So wrong. And so good.
“Harder, sweetheart.” He obeyed his own words, tightening his hand until his erection—his cock—jumped in his grip.
Her body was buzzing. Her nipples were tight, sensitive to the rasp of her dress, but she couldn’t touch them without the whole room seeing. It was a game, the kind she’d always been so good at. Control her expression, project calm. Smile, like she wasn’t brazenly touching herself beneath the table.
The thrill of it twisted her up. She let her thighs ease wider, until her knee bumped Jared’s, knowing he’d be the only witness as she slipped her fingers beneath the thin fabric of her panties and sought out slickness and heat.
He froze and shook his head. “Take them off.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Miss Lili.” His voice was low, steady—and wrapped in unmistakable command. “Take off your fucking panties.”
BLP REVIEW ~ Tracy
Sector 4 and the Beyond world is one of my favourite places ever… so I couldn’t wait to journey back to read Jared and Lili’s story.
Beyond Innocence, from the start, was a wild ride and then some (in more ways than one!!!! lol)
Secrets, lies and lovers that spy!!! Who would have thought that our Sector gigolo would be a secret agent – but then again, who better to find out lots of dirty secrets through pillow talk I suppose!!
This time round, the story was played out less in the O’Kane compound and more in the Sector and in Eden. It was very interesting indeed to see just how some things worked in the supposed Utopia on the other side of the wall. For me, this gave the book a slightly different feel from some of the others, but in a good way.
Gods, the book was still packed full of heat, passion, desire, down & dirty filthy sex and risqué shenanigans – and some of the scenes were so hot I swear to the gods that my kindle was beginning to melt…..fuck, if these books get ANY hotter they are gonna have to come with a safety warning and a free fire blanket – but the atmosphere in this book was also ramped up by the action, adventure and suspense that currently surrounds the O’Kane world and the sectors in general.
I really loved Lili, she was a stronger character than I expected but then, to survive the life she did in S5, she would have to be fairly tough.
Jared was fabulous – I always thought he’d be such a confident, quietly arrogant guy but we saw another side to him too throughout their story.
This wasn’t one of those times where the main characters fought their attraction ~ they didn’t rush it but they didn’t try to ignore it either.
Innocence was like a voyage of discovery for both our main characters.
They each saw something in the other that made them want…. want to feel, to fight, to love…… but seeing it, grabbing it and keeping it are all very different things, aren’t they?!
We caught up with some of the other O’Kanes – a few of who we saw more that a little of…. Remember, when Ace, Rach and Cruz are around, hold on to your hats!!
We got a little insight into the next book and the lead characters that we’ll read about.. and there were some interesting people introduced to us in this book that I’m sure we are gonna meet again in the future!
Another FANBLOODYTASTIC read – as ever. The girls have excelled themselves again!!!!!
For me, this is a thoroughly recommended book! **********
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kit Rocha is the pseudonym for co-writing team Donna Herren and Bree Bridges. After penning dozens of paranormal novels, novellas and stories as Moira Rogers, they branched out into gritty, sexy dystopian romance.
The series has appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists, and was honored with a 2013 RT Reviewer’s Choice award. Find out more at their website or sign up to be notified of their next release.
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