Title: HOW TO BANG A BILLIONAIRE
Author: Alexis Hall
Series: Arden St. Ives, #1
On Sale: April 16, 2017
Publisher: Forever Yours
eBook: $4.99 USD
Author: Alexis Hall
Series: Arden St. Ives, #1
On Sale: April 16, 2017
Publisher: Forever Yours
eBook: $4.99 USD
The first book in an all-new m/m romance trilogy by RITA Award-winning author Alexis Hall!
Rules are made to be broken . . .
If England had yearbooks, I'd probably be "Arden St. Ives: Man Least Likely to Set the World on Fire." So far, I haven't. I've no idea what I'm doing at Oxford, no idea what I'm going to do next and, until a week ago, I had no idea who Caspian Hart was. Turns out, he's brilliant, beautiful . . . oh yeah, and a billionaire.
It's impossible not to be captivated by someone like that. But Caspian Hart makes his own rules. And he has a lot of them. About when I can be with him. What I can do with him. And when he'll be through with me.
I'm good at doing what I'm told in the bedroom. The rest of the time, not so much. And now that Caspian's shown me glimpses of the man behind the billionaire I know it's him I want. Not his wealth, not his status. Him. Except that might be the one thing he doesn't have the power to give me.
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Excerpt
If I’d been hoping to win another smile, I was disappointed because
all I got in response was, “Turn around.”
It was a phrase that had come my way often enough and I was pretty
fond of it. But the way he said it, oh God the way he said it, turned my
insides to honey. Not bossy or rough but implacable.
A command.
If he did it in a voice like that—all steel and velvet and the
promise of his approval—I would have done anything he told me.
No matter how slutty or degrading.
Actually.
Strike that.
Especially if it was
slutty or degrading.
I turned around, trying to shut down the porno in my brain. We were
in a public place, and I was fully dressed (in several layers of formal wear as
it happened), but it felt vulnerable. Giving this man, this stranger, my back.
My trust.
His arm came around me from behind. And the heat of it, the
pressure. The tightening muscles of his forearm made me a bit delirious. I
leaned back and his body was right there, all hard planes and angular curves
for me to nestle into. I tilted my hips, wriggling my arse until I was tucked
in against him, pinned and protected at the same time, at once safe and
overwhelmed.
I tried to breathe and an excited little moan happened instead.
Caspian tugged me in tighter still. No humiliatingly inappropriate
noises from him. But his heart was thudding hard and fast against my spine. He
pulled the bow tie out of my hand and straightened my collar. A finger touched
me lightly under the chin and I tipped my head back against his shoulder,
exposing my throat. That was when I heard him growl. Softly enough I almost
missed it, but there it was. This sound of deep, primitive pleasure that
shivered all the way down my back and headed off in a few other directions as
well.
As he leaned over me, his breath grazed the top of my ear and that
insubstantial caress felt so ridiculously intimate it made my knees go weak.
Like I was supposed to be on them. At his feet. His other arm came around me as
he did whatever you have to do to make a bow tie happen. He didn’t fumble at it
the way Nik had. His movements were swift and assured. And, just for a moment,
I felt a brush of warmth across my pulse point, like a touch that wasn’t.
I only noticed he was done when he gave me a little push. Too busy
swooning into his neck and shoving my bum into his crotch like the wanton hussy
I was. I turned, stumbling a little, discovering too late I was basically
jelly, and just about managed not to end up on the ground again.
“Um, thanks.” I lifted a hand instinctively, wanting to feel the
shape of the knot, but then stopped. I’d only wreck it.
He just nodded, his eyes slipping away from me again. I wished he’d
stop doing that. Was my face that boring? But his color was up, his breath a
little unsteady. And, y’know, there’d been movement back there. When I’d been
doing my thing. So maybe he was just…embarrassed?
“That’s some good tying,” I heard myself say. “Is it practice or
natural talent?”
THE ARDEN ST. IVES SERIES
HOW TO BANG A BILLIONAIRE, #1
HOW TO BLOW IT WITH A BILLIONAIRE, #2
Series Page on Goodreads
What I thought about How to Bang a Billionaire
Arden St. Ives has the misfortune to be calling for alumni financial donations when he meets Caspian Hart, the billionaire referenced in the title of this tale. Arden isn't very good at soliciting donations, but he manages to charm Caspian with one phone call. When Caspian shows up at the alumni dinner the following week, Arden becomes truly smitten, until he finds out the details of Caspian's donation to the university.
While Arden doesn't like Caspian's high-handedness, he is infatuated with the man, not his money. Caspian seems to like Arden too, but when he offers Arden a deal that he finds hard to refuse, it's a huge red flag regarding Caspian's ability to have a real relationship, but Arden goes along with it anyway. There's heartbreak in his future, for sure.
I liked this story, but I also found it to be a bit sad. Arden wants a relationship with Caspian more than his money, but Caspian is unwilling or unable. I'm not sure which one this is, although he does manage to act like less of a jerk when it becomes clear that Arden is not going to stay unless Caspian offers up some emotional content in this relationship, so I think he's capable. I was not a fan of Caspian's arms-length treatment of Arden for most of this book.
I loved Arden. It's easy to see why Caspian is enamored of him. He's sweet, kind, and he has feelings! He truly cares about Caspian the man, not the billionaire and I adored that about him. I have to be honest and say I really didn't care for Caspian at all, and at one point I was hoping that Arden would dump him and try to make a go of it with his roommate. I'm sorry to say I'm still hoping that Arden gets the emotional partner he needs, and I just don't see that being Caspian.
How to Bang a Billionaire is well-written and is told solely from Arden's point of view. The spotlight for most of the book is on Arden and Caspian, and I thought the book took on a new and more interesting dimension when other secondary characters, like Ellery, Caspian's sister had some page time too.
Overall, I thought it was a good start to the series. It did leave me wanting more and I'm eager to see how Arden will really handle Caspian's kink which is really only alluded to throughout the book.
ARC provided for review.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexis Hall was born in the early 1980s and still thinks the twenty-first century is the future. To this day, he feels cheated that he lived through a fin de siècle but inexplicably failed to drink a single glass of absinthe, dance with a single courtesan, or stay in a single garret.
He did the Oxbridge thing sometime in the 2000s and failed to learn anything of substance. He has had many jobs, including ice cream maker, fortune-teller, lab technician, and professional gambler. He was fired from most of them.
He can neither cook nor sing, but he can handle a seventeenth-century smallsword, punts from the proper end, and knows how to hot-wire a car.
He lives in southeast England, with no cats and no children, and fully intends to keep it that way.
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