{Book Review} Begging For It (Asking For It #2) by Lilah Pace (@LilahPace @BerkleyRomance)

The provocative author of Asking for It once again explores the dark side of erotic obsession, and the secrets that make it as dangerous as it is irresistible.

Some secrets should only be shared in the dark.

Jonah and Vivienne’s erotic bond—living out raw scenarios of captivity and force—began as no-strings sex between strangers who shared the same desires. Now the intimacy between them is turning into love, but it’s a love built on fantasies so extreme that exploring them makes guilt inescapable. But the risks they're taking are far more dangerous than they'd imagined.

A stalker is terrorizing the city, and one of Jonah’s ex-lovers names him as a potential suspect to the police. Standing by a man under suspicion could cost Vivienne everything. But when Jonah’s stepfather takes advantage of the scandal to seize control of the Marks family fortune, Vivienne is drawn into her lover’s broken family and twisted past. Only then will she learn how dark the truth really is... 

Vivienne is struggling through life without Jonah. She longs for one more night when he commands both her body and her heart – but her past got in the way.  He’s an addiction that she doesn't want to shake and she’s determined to show him that they can balance both fantasy and reality.  

“Vivienne,” he says, leaning closer. Jonah folds my hand against his chest. He wants to kiss me, but he doesn’t. Neither of us moves. We are bound together and yet parted. Two halves that can’t be glued into a whole. Maybe that’s how it is when you find someone whose wounds are the same as your own.

But I’m not willing to give up on Jonah. Not the sex, not the emotions between us, not any of it. If I’m going to fight for this man, I’m going to fight for everything.”

Jonah couldn’t face becoming a monster.  Being with Vivienne, he actually felt normal for the very first time and walking away from their games seemed the only way to protect her.  He couldn't be more wrong.

Together, they’re stronger and they are going to need each other more than ever when Jonah is singled out as a suspect in a string of violent attacks and someone from his past is determined to use that to destroy their future. 

Everyone knows that underneath his cool exterior, Jonah burns with a barely controlled rage and once all of his demons are set free, will there be anyone left standing?

“The fantasy is the exact opposite of rape. When Anthony pushed me down on that couch, he controlled everything; I controlled nothing, not even my own body. But when I’m fantasizing inside my own mind, I have absolute control. By taking the scenario that frightened and hurt me the most, and owning it, I was reasserting my own power.

And with Jonah— even at his most brutal moments, he has always, always respected my boundaries. He has frightened me, dominated me, made me ache and weep. But I’ve always known beyond the tiniest sliver of doubt that all I had to do to stop one of our games was say the word silver. I control him as much as he controls me. With his help, and his love, I mastered my nightmares.

All these years, I’ve beaten myself up for my rape fantasies. Told myself I was sick or strange. I’ve carried around this tremendous weight of shame. No longer. Never again.”

Begging For It is another hard-hitting emotional masterpiece from Lilah Pace.  It’s equally as thought provoking as Asking For It, but this time she raises the stakes to seriously dangerous levels. 

It brings the characters of Vivienne and Jonah to a place where they no longer feel the shame that had them living in the shadows for so long. And Lilah delivers them into the light in the most flawless and heartbreakingly poetic way.

I couldn’t have imagined a more powerful conclusion to a series that is now the absolute definition of what edgy modern erotica should be…

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