(Super Sexy Standalone)
Genre: Contemporary Romantic Comedy
~Blurb~
F*&k Prince Charming. Sometimes, you need a Magnificent Bastard.
Face it, ladies: love sucks and then you cry…while your ex rides off into the sunset banging your best friend.
But why let a break-up end in tears when it can end with sweet revenge? Enter Magnificent Bastard Consulting and me, chief executive bastard. I’ve got it all—looks, brains, a heart of gold, and the killer instinct guaran-damn-teed to make your ex regret the day he said goodbye.
With the help of my virtual assistant, I’ve built an empire giving broken-hearted women the vengeance they deserve, while keeping myself far from the front lines of the heart. Life is a bowl of f*&king cherries, until my virtual assistant shows up on my real doorstep for the first time, begging for a Magnificent Bastard intervention of her own.
F*&king hell. She’s a bona fide sex kitten.
I pride myself on being a true pro, but pretending to be her lover soon leads to giving it to her good, hard, fast, and up against the wall. And somewhere between getting balls deep in my sweet and sexy assistant and watching her ex beg for a second chance, I break every last one of my damn rules—professional and personal.
So what’s my next move? Fight for the girl who makes me want to get up on a white horse and ride to her rescue, or stay a Magnificent Bastard to the end?
Warning: MAGNIFICENT BASTARD is a stand-alone erotic romance told from the hero’s point of view. No cliffhanger. Lots of dirty talk.
~Book Review~
3 Stars
Sebastian “Bash” Prince, 32, is the public face of Magnificent Bastard, his vengeance company for jilted lovers that he abandoned Wall Street to launch. Penny Pickett, 25, is the behind the scenes face of Magnificent Bastard that Bash has never seen.
Till he does.
And then he can’t unsee it. So it turns out that a romantically jaded Bash is more than smitten than he knew possible, which causes the lines of their employer-employee relationship to become blurred.
“I’m not sure what this is anymore, a declaration of love or an announcement that she plans to sue me for sexual harassment but I’m certainly hanging on her every word.”
Faced with the ultimate douchbag ex-boyfriend, Penny needs the services of the very company she works for, and Bash takes on his new role like he’s never helped a client before.
The romantic aspect of the story had a lot of potential and was really cute in the beginning. Though they had a burning attraction that on the surface would seem like insta-lust, as the background evolved you could also feel a deeper, more solid, level to their relationship.
“After all the things I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure romantic love is the stuff of fairy tales and bad porn, but friendship is real.”
Sadly though the closer the story got to the climax the more it fell into tired cliché and predictable plot turns. Really most readers should be able to see it coming and have already read it before. Overall, this was a solid 4 star read for me till the ending, and then I deducted a major point for how it all plays out with a gaggle of silly OM/OW drama that certainly didn’t deliver the romance and made the heroine look immature. (See their ages above. There really was no excuse for that.)
I also had one picky complaint—the number of times that Bash references/adores Penny’s “curvy” body. (We get it already!) The description was highly over used and distracting.
Told via Bash’s (with one chapter by Penny) first person point of view, there’s sufficient dirty details and steamy scenes and the writing/prose is engaging, but the last part didn’t live up and the resolution just wasn’t enough (or maybe too little, too late) for me.
~Playlist~
~Excerpt~
~Excerpt~
Picture this: it’s a rainy spring day in the city. The streets are covered in a fine layer of mud and soggy garbage, the sun is a distant memory from another, brighter time, when you were still stupid enough to believe in happy endings, and you’ve just been dumped so hard your heart looks like it’s gone three rounds with Mike Tyson. You’re ugly crying in a corner with a box of wine and a chocolate bar the size of your forearm, wishing Prince Charming would come scoop you up on his white horse and carry you far away from all those nasty memories of Mr. Wrong, but I’m here to tell you, ladies—
You need to stop that shit.
Stop it. Right now.
Why? Because Prince Charming is a crock of shit. He doesn’t exist and even if he did, he’s a fucking wimp.
When you’re down and out and your heart has been ripped to shreds by an asshole with a dickish-side a mile wide, you don’t need Prince Charming. You need a man who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty, a man who can teach Mr. Wrong a thing or two about what it feels like to be deceived, betrayed, and laid low by the one person in the world you thought you could trust. What you need is a Magnificent Bastard, your very own one-man vengeance machine.
Love isn’t a fairy tale, sweetheart; it’s war, and now you’ve got a soldier with an anti-asshole missile on your side.
Want to ruin your ex’s reputation? No problem. Every true asshole has a few skeletons in his closet and I specialize in making skeletons dance out of the darkness and into the light. Want to send that fucker to jail? A little harder, but often still possible. I only accept cases involving the very worst examples of mankind, the most miserable liars and cheats and scoundrels. Those types tend to be good at covering their tracks, but I’ve delivered exes locked in police cuffs before.
Want to make your former lover green with envy? Make him wish he’d never kicked you off the love wagon, spat in your face, and walked away? Well, that, cupcake…that’s what I’m best at.
I’ve been blessed with a face that turns heads, worked hard for a body that inspires shudders of lust at twenty paces, and honed my envy-inspiring skills into a razor sharp weapon I wield with ruthless efficiency. I will make you feel like a queen and ensure your ex doesn’t miss a minute of it. You’ll be treated like an irreplaceable treasure, pampered like a princess, and kissed like a slut who can’t get enough of my magnificent dick.
In reality, of course, things between us will never go further than a kiss, but your ex won’t know that. He’ll see your flushed cheeks, lust-glazed eyes, and wobbly legs and think I’m giving it to you hard every night.
He’ll imagine my hands on your ass, my fingers slipping between your legs, and your pussy slick and dripping just for me. He’ll imagine you screaming my name while you ride my cock and remember all the times he was lucky enough to be balls deep in your incomparable snatch. Before long, he’ll have a jealousy hard-on so bad he’ll come crawling back to you on his belly, begging for a second chance.
But you won’t give it to him.
Did you hear that? Even so, it bears repeating—
You. Will not. Give that fucking loser a second chance.
By the time I’m through with you, you will know deep down in the marrow of your bones that you’re better than that. You’ll understand that you deserve a man whose eyes won’t wander, whose hands won’t hurt, and whose heart belongs to you and only you. By the end of our time together, you will be able to look down at the sniveling, pathetic, limp-dicked excuse for a man you used to love and tell him that he has no power over you.
Not anymore. You will be free to move on with your life without any of the ugly, bad breakup, psychic baggage.
And that, gorgeous, is the most important of the services I deliver. I give you back to you, the only person who can be trusted to steer your course as you ride off into the sunset.
But if for some reason, you break this all-important rule. If you sour the gift you’ve been given by going back to Major Dickweed, don’t bother contacting me again. No amount of money will convince me to pick up the phone.
A Magnificent Bastard intervention is a once in a lifetime opportunity. One and done, no exceptions.
None.
Not even for her, the woman who made me break all my other rules, the woman who made me think—for one amazing week—that even magnificent bastards can live happily ever after.
U.S.A. Today Bestselling author Lili Valente has slept under the stars in Greece, eaten dinner at midnight with French men who couldn’t be trusted to keep their mouths on their food, and walked alone through Munich’s red light district after dark and lived to tell the tale.
These days you can find her writing in a tent beside the sea, drinking coconut water and thinking delightfully dirty thoughts.
These days you can find her writing in a tent beside the sea, drinking coconut water and thinking delightfully dirty thoughts.
~Giveaway~
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