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Playing Rough, Episode 2 of Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy
will be released on FRIDAY, MAY 23!
(previously, The Devilhouse Books: Lizzy)
Synopsis
Be careful whom you submit to.
Lizzy is trapped. Her new Dom Mannix Bonfils and Theo Valencia have bought The Devilhouse. Her estranged parents keep calling, wanting her to quit college to coach Olympic-level gymnastics, the life she escaped at sixteen. Mannix demands that she give up more and more control, and he becomes rougher, more frightening, with her. Her job is gone. Sports reporters stalk her college dorm, looking for the feel-good homecoming story she dreads. Mannix’s sexual power games grow more disturbing every day, and someone tries to shoot them at The Devilhouse, narrowly missing Lizzy. Even though she wants to stay with Mannix, to grow stronger, to be loved, and to fulfill her commitment, everyone is telling her to get out, but they all seem to want something from her. When Theo offers to help her leave, should she stay with Mannix or go back to the prescribed life she thought she had escaped?
Sneak Peek
Playing Rough, Episode 1 of: Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy #2
On Sunday around noon, less than a day since she had left The Devilhouse with Mannix, Lizzy had just gotten back from getting her clothes from the dorm, not that she would need them around Mannix’s house. He liked her naked or wearing something see-through and slutty. All Lizzy’s clothes and stuff fit in a laundry basket and some shopping bags, even after seven years of being on her own. You never knew when you were going to have to carry everything you owned.
She left her books and her computer. Carrying the heavy textbooks would take too long, and if this sub relationship with Mannix was going to work, Lizzy needed to focus on it exclusively for at least a week. Now, Lizzy kneeled at Mannix’s feet, eyes down. At least they were in the living room, where the plush carpeting cushioned her knees. That kitchen tile had made her bones creak.
The living room was decorated in Man Cave Modern, which was a three-sided leather sectional with beer holders in the several arms, an enormous HD projection television the size of an artsy movie theater screen that took up almost the whole two-story wall, surround sound, and colors chosen from the palette of a muddy forest. Dead animal heads on the walls completed the manliness.
Since breakfast, they had watched television, sort of, for a few hours. Mannix had hundreds of DVDs of football that he ran through, watched a few minutes, took a few notes, and then popped in the next one. After a dozen DVDs, Lizzy shifted a little on her heels.
Mannix glanced down at her. “Would you like an hour of equality?”
She still didn't know the vocabulary of all this sub stuff, but that sounded like she wouldn't be sitting on the floor. “Okay.”
He extended one hand toward her and helped her up, which was good because her feet were full of pins and needles. She asked, “So what else is on the TV?”
He shrugged. “You don't seem to be interested in the football films.”
“Not much plot. I like rom-coms.”
“I don't watch many of those.” He scowled. Mr. Smolder did scowl really well, and she felt a tug toward him, like she might use her hour of equality to do some seducing.
He put in another football scouting DVD.
She asked, “Did you kill all those poor little deer on the walls?”
Mannix didn't even glance at them. “No. They're just decor. The decorator said that they would butch up the place.”
“Because the Sasquatch color scheme and beer-cooler couch were just too girlie for you, huh?”
“That’s what I told him.”
Lizzy did not want to tell Mannix what his designer had done to him, so she didn’t. It was probably kinder that way, but it was time to change the subject yet again. “Where'd you grow up?”
“New York.”
Uh, crud. “You don't have much of an accent. Where in New York?” Please say upstate.
“Manhattan.”
Yeah, crap. “You go down the shore much?”
“We have a summer place in Rhode Island, where we belong to The Misquamicut Club. We never went to Jersey.”
So, technically, Mannix wasn't a Benny because he didn’t clutter up her shore with his lily white New Yorker ass, but he still kind of was. Damn. “You don't have a New England accent, either.”
“I went to college in Indiana and lost my accent while I was there.”
“Indiana, huh? You get lost in flyover country?”
His hard glare cut her, and he rested one burly arm on the back of the couch. “I went to Notre Dame to play football. Do you follow football?”
“I don't follow any fucking sports.” Ever.
“Don't swear. Profanity is unbecoming in a sub.”
Don’t swear? Lizzy wasn't sure she could talk without cursing. It gave her speech Jersey color.
Mannix picked up his big tablet and tapped the browser, and flicked his finger over the screen. When he handed her the screen—which she hadn't realized was over-sized until she saw her own little squirrel paws holding the very edges of it—his name, Mannix Bonfils, was typed in the search engine, and thousands of results spilled down the page under it.
The images at the top were of bright sunny days and Mannix playing football.
In close-ups, his light blue eyes fringed with a double row of thick, black eyelashes peered through the visor in a football helmet, instantly recognizable. Longer shots showed him grabbing loose footballs or running lights-out with no one able to catch him. Over the years, the pictures captured the progression of black ink crawling down his massive, pale forearms.
Even Lizzy, out-of-it little Lizzy who had not watched television for a decade between the ages of six and sixteen, recognized the team logos. “You played professional football?”
“Five years, until I was injured. College ball, before that.”
“You must have been really good at it.”
“I was. I was great at it. Winning requires not just strength and speed, but intimidation, brutality, violence, and an ongoing, eager willingness to hurt people. The goal is to hurt the other team, to injure or incapacitate their most important players. We use war metaphors when we talk about football, like throwing bombs, running blitzes, and the areas between the ten-yard lines are called the trenches, because we would kill each other if we could.”
Mannix had made it. He had rolled the dice, taken the shot, and made it to the big leagues, most literally. His enormous house loomed around them, the spoils of victory.
“Why’d you quit?” Lizzy’s hands crept up, nearing her ears.
“Hard tackle. I landed on another guy,” he grunted.
As always, his dream had broken him. “Jesus Christ. I’m sorry, Mannix.”
“No swearing, or you'll earn a spanking. If this were not equality time, I would have you over my knee right now.” His blue eyes, so startling because they were fringed by black eyelashes, glittered. “I’m lucky that I'm not quadriplegic. What happened to you?”
“I beg your pardon,” she stalled. She steeled herself to not crawl under the couch or sprint down the hall to the guest bedroom.
“You've got ‘scope scars and other surgical scars all over your body. You look like you played football, too.”
Lizzy looked straight at him. “Car accident when I was a kid.”
His skeptical look stiffened her spine, but his light blue eyes didn't hold a knowing look that would have stripped bare her lie.
Looked like The Dom had kept his word to not tell Mannix, thank God.
Mannix blinked hard, three times, and touched his own shoulder. He stretched his neck, and his movement looked stiff, like it hurt him. He said,“Equality time is over. Take off your clothes.”
Copyright © 2014 Malachite Publishing/Hot Rocks Publishing, All rights reserved.
Have you read Falling Hard (Lizzy #1) yet? If not, it's FREE!
My review of Falling Hard by Blair Babylon
A spark that grows into an inferno!
Initially the timeline started out a little confusing for me; I'll just come straight out and say that the introduction flatout threw me off. Add in that this series is connected to character from the previous series, Billionaires in Disguise: Rae, and that the timeline is essentially the same, it took me a little while to adjust from the Lizzy I remembered from the previous series and connect with her character in the setting of having her own story. Once I got over that little hiccup the book really started to take off for me!
I loved getting to know Lizzy better and connecting with her character. There is so much more depth to her than was anticipating; I underestimated her because of my previous experience with her being a supporting character. I always thought of Lizzy as pleasant and caring, but to see her inner struggles, insecurities and emotions coming through was an eye opening experience for me. By a quarter of the way in I was 100% hooked.
Lizzy is a female powerhouse. Emotionally abused, physically damaged, mentally conflicted and sexually unsatisfied; she views herself as broken but at the same time uses her strength and outward beauty to her advantage every day. Her over the top Jersey girl attitude that's packed into such a pint sized body is a winning combination every time.
Her will to survive and stand on her own two feet is admirable and at the same time she has this soft and vulnerable side that I just couldn't help falling in love with.
I found Falling Hard to be an erotic adventure, it IS still the Devilhouse after all! Once again pushing the limits as it delves into the heat of subspace bliss and explores dominant settings that are both terrifying and tantalizing. A fast paced, engaging and emotional rollercoaster; Falling Hard overcame its initial challenges and left me satisfied while at the same time yearning for more. It's what the Devilhouse is known for, after all!
A copy of Falling Hard was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
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