BEAUTIFUL LIAR
Series: Dark Desires, #1
Author: Zara Cox
On Sale: April 11, 2017
Publisher: Forever
Trade Paperback: $14.99 USD
eBook: $4.99 USD
**NOW AVAILABLE IN TRADE PAPERBACK**
People call me many things: CEO, billionaire, bastard. Q.
I love women. I love sex. I love money. I love hot, wild nights with no promise of a future, because a future is one thing I don’t have. I’m twenty-eight years old. I won’t live to see thirty, and I don’t care. Or I didn’t, until her.
Nobody plans for a life like this. Some of us just end up here.
They call me Lucky, though luck has never been on my side. Before I met Q, my life was a big, twisted mess. Never enough money, never anyone to trust. No way out. With Q, the shame and fear disappear. Instead I feel pure pleasure, and that’s something I’ve never had before. But if what I’ve just learned is true, we’d better enjoy every second together while we can…before our time runs out.
BEAUTIFUL LIAR was previously published as Porn Star
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“So it’s true? It’s not a con? This job really pays a million dollars? For…sex?” she rasps.“You think I’d admit it if it was a con? What did the ad say?”
Her delicate jaw flexes for a second.
“One million uninhibited reasons to take a leap.
One million chances to earn a keep
One million to give in to the carnal
Are you brave enough to surrender,
For a payday to remember?”
It speaks even more to her desperate state of mind that she remembers the ad verbatim.
I remain silent and wait for her to speak.
“So…assuming it’s not a con, how will this work, then?”
“If you pass the next few tests, and I decide you’re a good fit, you get the gig. You’ll receive one hundred thousand dollars with each performance.”
“So…ten performances…over how long a period?”
“Depending on how many takes are needed, anywhere between three weeks and a month. But I should warn you, it’s hard work, Lucky. If you think you’re just going to lie back and recite the Star Spangled Banner in your head, think again.”
Her fingers drum on the table, the first sign of nerves she’s exhibited. “I…I won’t be doing anything…skanky, will I?”
“Define skanky.”
“This is going to be straight up sex. No other…bodily stuff? Because that would a firm no for me.”
My mouth attempts another twitch. “No water works, waste matter or bestiality will be involved in the performances.”
Her fingers stop drumming. “Okay.” She waits a beat, stares straight into the camera. “So when will I know?”
I hear the barely disguised urgency and I rub my finger over my lip again. “Soon. I’ll be in touch within the week.” I’m not sure exactly why I want to toy with her. But I sense that having her on edge would add another layer of excitement I badly need.
When she opens her mouth, I interrupt. “Goodbye, Lucky.”
A passing thought about the origin of her name is crushed into oblivion. I press the remote to summon the bodyguard to escort her out, and I leave the room.
In my study a few minutes later, I bring up the screen on my desk and activate the encrypted service I need. I open the application and within minutes, the members of my exclusive gentlemen’s club are logging in.
My email is short and succinct.
The next Q Production is scheduled for release on 20 May 2015.
Limited to ten members.
Bidding starts in fifteen minutes.
I start the countdown and rise to pour myself a neat bourbon. I swallow the first mouthful with two prescribed tablets, which are meant to keep me from going over the edge, apparently, and stroll to the floor to ceiling window. I look down at Midtown’s bumper-to-bumper traffic. This mid-level penthouse is one of many I own in this building and around New York City.
Technically, I don’t live here. I only use it when volatile pressures demand that I put some distance between the Upper West Side family mansion and myself. I would never stray far for long. For one thing, I’ve accepted that my family would never leave me alone.
I know what I know. So they’ve made it their business to keep me on a short leash. But with over three hundred properties in my personal portfolio, and a few thousand more under the family firm’s control, there are many places to disappear to when the demons howl.
Today, the Midtown penthouse is my temporary haven.
I turn when the timer beeps a one-minute warning.
I return to my desk and adjust the voice distorter. When the clock reaches zero, I click the mouse. “Gentlemen, start your bids.”
My words barely trail off before the first five bids appear on the screen. Sixty seconds later, the total bid is at a quarter of a million dollars. I steeple my fingers and wish I were more excited. The money means nothing. It never has. It’s the end game that excites me.
My mind drifts back to Lucky. I turn the gem of her elusiveness this way and that and admit to myself she has potential.
I want to take a scalpel to all her secrets, bleed them and soil my hands with the viscera. I also want to fuck her until her body gives out. Right in this moment, I’m not sure what I want more.
So I concentrate on the numbers racing higher on the screen.
Half a million. One million. One point five.
My phone beeps twice. I pick it up and read the two appointment reminders on the screen.
7pm – Dr. Nathanson. My shrink.
9pm – Dinner with Maxwell.
I re-confirm the first and delete the second.
Cancelling dinner with Maxwell will bring a world of irritation to my doorstep. No one cancels dinner with Maxwell Blackwood. For a start he’s one of the most powerful men in the country.
He’s also my father.
Yeah, my name is Quinn Blackwood, heir to the Blackwood Estate, only child of Maxwell Blackwood and Adele Blackwood (deceased). My family owns a staggering amount of property across the eastern seaboard of the United States and a few in the west. According to the bean counters, I’m personally worth twenty-six billion dollars.
But tangling with my father in hell is what I live for. Have done since I was fifteen. So I ignore his summons and watch the stragglers fall away until I’m left with the top ten bidders. The bids wind down, and within the space of half an hour, I’m just under two million dollars richer.
I spot the familiar name of the top bidder and I sneer. Taking his money on top of everything else is darkly satisfying.
Once bidding ends, I close down the application and call up another list. Dozens of charity websites showing pictures of starving children flood my screen. Within minutes, fifty charities are the grateful recipients of two million dollars.
I may be Quinn Blackwood, occasional user of prescribed meds to keep the demons in check, who moonlights as Q, porn star to an exclusive few who pay millions for my work.
And I may be an unhinged asshole with serious daddy issues.
But no one said I wasn’t a giver.
AUTHOR Q & A
DGR: What was your favorite scene in Beautiful Liar?
ZC: It’s almost impossible to choose a favorite scene but one of my favorites has to be the first time Quinn & Elly meet “in real life”. He doesn’t look at or acknowledge her as she serves him his lunch, but she’s completely electrified by him. When he gets up to leave he sees this woman that he’s only seen through his camera lens and he’s in turn captivated, but only for a second because he can’t reveal who he is. Portraying their emotions during that scene was fantastic to write.
DGR: What was the most difficult scene to write in Beautiful Liar?
ZC: Hmm, maybe this should come with a spoiler alert, but it’s the heartbreaking moment when Quinn watches his mother take her own life. That was heartbreaking to write because he lost the only person who loved him, until Lucky came along.
The hate, the vengeance and sex are instruments that oil my existence and keep my compass true.
HOLY. SHIT.
I did NOT see this book coming. I’m so happy it got a title and cover change because the old one didn’t do it justice AT ALL. I’m serious. If you think this is yet another run of the mill smut filled romance read, think again. The writing. The story. It was hauntingly captivating. I’m absolutely blown away and got myself a new author to stalk.
Q is a man of wealth and power. He’s a man skirting the fine edge of revenge and depravity and he makes no excuses or apologies. Every single move is calculated to achieve his end goal. His revenge. To right a wrong of years past, to punish those responsible, even if he doesn’t survive to bask in the glory of the fallout. It’s not time to make his most calculated move yet. Everything he’s been doing has been leading up to this…his grand plan. And the key to it is a woman with haunted eyes and a closet full of skeletons who may be hiding more baggage then even him. Lucky.
The writing in this story is absolute perfection. It’s haunting and lyrical. The characters are so well developed, they practically have an energy that you can feel through the pages. The sheer power of Q’s presence is enough to captivate even the most cynical reader.
Every word has a purpose. Every description leading to a new revelation. It was dark and hypnotic. Erotic and captivating. I was glued to every single page, practically salivating for more.
While Q was an erotic enigma full of sex appeal and secrets, Lucky was an interesting blend of cracked glass about to shatter but with a hidden steel reinforcement. This is a woman that survived her own hell and will do anything to escape it…even sell her body and her dignity for a million dollars.
A voice cleverly disguised by state of the art technology and a face hidden behind a steel mask is all she sees of Q. The rest is a veil of blindfolds, mind games, and sex so mind-blowing that she struggles to hold on to the fact that none of it is real…and it doesn’t take long for the lines to begin to blur… for both of them.
This story is so much more than a romance. It’s a story of survival and revenge. It’s a sizzling romance wrapped around a captivating mystery. It’s a splash of dark and suspense. And while the book is long, the pacing was perfect.
If you’re looking for a new author to check out and a read that’s totally different from the norm, this is the one book I can’t recommend enough. Zara Cox now has a forever fan in this girl. I will gleefully pick up anything this woman writes. No questions asked. She’s a talent that I wish I discovered sooner and am kicking myself for not reading this book when it first hit my radar. But better late then never, if you ask me.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to immediately dive into book 2!
THE DARK DESIRES SERIES
BEAUTIFUL LIAR, #1
BLACK SHEEP, #2
WICKED S.O.B, #2.5 (August 8, 2017)
ARROGANT BASTARD, #3 (September 12, 2017)
Zara Cox has been writing for almost twenty-five years but it wasn’t until nine years ago that she decided to share her love of writing sexy, gritty stories with anyone outside her close family (the over 18s anyway!).
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HOT FOR THE FIREMAN
I feel like this book needs to come with a warning label. It’s a damn fire hazard is what it is…to your ovaries. Luckily Lieutenant Erik Grady comes equipped with a big fire hose to take care of any…um…sudden combustions. *waggles brows*
Even though these two hopped into bed together less than 15% into the book, the sexual tension between them never diminished. I typically like my books with a good sexual sizzle and burn, and I was surprised on how much of it was delivered here. I adored Erik and Olivia together. Erik went after her with single minded intent and I loved watching him break down all her walls. I also loved the way that Olivia was there for him and helped him with the demons of his past. Erik’s PTSD was no laughing matter, and it wasn’t brushed under the rug. You really get to see him struggle and deal with it. I seriously adored Olivia’s silent strength in helping him though it.
TWIST
It’s official. Kylie Scott has another winning series. And here I thought nothing will ever beat her Stage Dive series. Well, move over Mal, because I have another blonde beast that I’m crushing on. He’s big, he’s bearded, he’s broody, and he makes my ovaries sing. Joe. *Happy sigh*
HARD LIMITS
WARNING If you haven’t yet read 
Dirty Filthy Rich Men
Sweet. Baby. Jesus.
USA Today and New York Times Bestselling Author Laurelin Paige is a sucker for a good romance and gets giddy anytime there’s kissing, much to the embarrassment of her three daughters. Her husband doesn’t seem to complain, however. When she isn’t reading or writing sexy stories, she’s probably singing, watching Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead, or dreaming of Michael Fassbender. She’s also a proud member of Mensa International though she doesn’t do anything with the organization except use it as material for her bio. She is represented by Rebecca Friedman.
INCENTIVE
FALLING FOR THE BAD GIRL
I love a refreshing change of pace, and this book certainly delivered. I have plenty of bad boys in my reading repertoire, so the blurb to this book immediately hooked because what’s that? No bad boy but a bad girl instead? Bring it on, I say!
DIRTY DOCTOR
When I’m in the mood for a short, sexy but entirely satisfying read; Whitney G has become my go-to. She never fails to disappoint with witty banter, a fun enemies to lovers vibe, plenty of development to connect you to the characters in a few short pages, and enough sizzle to set your kindle on fire.
I also loved that we got an epilogue with this book to tie things up perfectly. That’s the only thing I thought was missing for me with the previous installment 
BLACK SHEEP
If I said that I was an insta-fan of this author after I finished 
Black Sheep delivers on another twisty story full of betrayal and revenge. Zara Cox is truly a master of her craft and I’m absolutely captivated by her writing style and the characters she creates. I couldn’t put this book down for even a second. I walked the edge between hating and loving Axel. But between all the secrets and twists that kept unearthing, my mind was too busy spinning to focus on any singular emotion.
Each book in the Dark Desires series is a standalone in an interconnecting world. So if you’ve read the first book, you’ll appreciate Quinn’s cameo in this one 🙂
