review || RETRIBUTION { blog tour } by Natasha Knight

Self-Published | January 12, 2016 | Dark Romance
★★★★★

SOURCE: INDIESAGE PR

Adam

Payback’s a bitch — or it would be for Elle.

Fifteen years ago, my sister was kidnapped. For months, she’d endured hell. Somehow, she’d survived it. Someway, she’d escaped her captors. But it hadn’t mattered. In fact, it had been like losing her twice, because six weeks after she came home, she was dead, and the man responsible was alive and well, oblivious to her fate, ignorant to what he had coming.

Fifteen years I’d been waiting for this moment, all that time, planning, preparing, readying to put things into motion. To finally make the SOB pay for what he’d done.

Killing him was too easy. Too quick. No. There was a much better way to exact revenge.

Take what he loved best.

Break it.

Break her.

I just didn’t realize that in the process of destroying the girl, I’d destroy myself.

Elle

“I only want your pain.”

I hadn’t understood what those words meant, not really. Not until he made me understand.

I noticed Adam the very first day he moved into my building. He was a badass on a bike in a thousand-dollar suit. When he looked at me, it was with a hunger just this side of obscene.

Our meetings were strange, accidental. Too coincidental. There was something about Adam. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.

Something I couldn’t resist.

He told me I didn’t know him. He warned me to run as far from him as I could. He was moody. Dark. I’d found it romantic. I didn’t know and wouldn’t realize until it was too late that he’d meant for me to heed his warnings. That some part of him had hoped I would run, that I would escape him.

For too many years, vengeance had fueled him. It had taught him hate. The object of that hate? My father. And me? I was the means to my father’s end. Adam would destroy my father by destroying me.

I accused him of being a monster, of being no different than those who took his sister, but even in the harshest moments, all I could see in his eyes was pain. And like a fool, all I wanted was to touch that darkness.

To make it light.

Retribution is a full-length, stand-alone Dark Romantic Suspense novel. NO Cliffhanger. Intended for mature readers.

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon AU | iBooks | Nook

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{ about natasha knight } .

Natasha Knight is the author of several BDSM and spanking erotic romances all of which explore the mind of the Dominant male and the submissive female, discovering just beneath the surface of each story that key element of love. Her characters are as human as she: powerful but vulnerable, flawed, perhaps damaged but with an incredible capacity to love.

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{ excerpt } .

“Bathroom, Elle, I don’t want you pissing yourself during your whipping.”

She shoved away from me, sobbing loudly, beating her fists into my chest. “Why? I didn’t do anything to you. To anyone!”

I caught her wrists, her too-thin, too-fragile wrists, tears still spilling from her eyes.

“I didn’t do anything to her,” she said, her voice breaking as she hung her head to weep.

Fuck.

Shoving her away, I rubbed my hand across my face. “Two minutes. Get your shit together.”

I turned to walk out, but she followed, standing in the way of my closing the door.

“Once you do this, is it over?” Her hand shook when she gripped my arm. “Will it be finished then?”

I looked at it, at the hand coiled around my arm, desperately trying to hold on.

“No, Elle. It won’t.” She wouldn’t let this go. She waited for me to “finish.” She had no idea what that would mean for her, though.

She raged then, howling, trying to fight me but too weak, managing only to piss me off because all her fear did, all her pain did, was scream at me the fact I was a monster. Like him, like them. No better than the men who had stolen so much. I couldn’t deny the truth of it. I was breaking Elle as surely as they’d broken Alessandra.

“Fuck!” I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t listen to this. Couldn’t feel pity for this woman. I would not allow it. Gripping both wrists in one hand, I hauled her back toward the cell while she kicked and screamed, the sound fueling a rage stomping out any tenderness someone else would have felt. Someone not a monster.

In the cell, I shackled her to the chains hanging from the center of the room, high enough she had to stand on tiptoe. She screamed all along, and I wished I had a gag to stuff into her mouth because I couldn’t take any more. Her anguish made my heart bleed, yet if I didn’t do this, if I stopped, called an end to things, wouldn’t I be forsaking Alessandra? Wouldn’t I be betraying her? Choosing the daughter of the monster over my defenseless, dead sister?

Alessandra is gone. Elle is here. She’s alive.

No. No, I wouldn’t entertain anything more.

Wiping the back of my hand across my eyes, I went quickly to the duffel bag I’d brought in yesterday. It contained the whip, a long, thin horsewhip with a single knot at the end. She quieted when she saw it and her lip trembled, her entire body shaking at my approach.

She shook her head. “Please don’t.”

“Half!”

“Adam, please —”

“They gave her thirty-six strokes. I’m giving you half that number. Mercy, Elle,” I said, drawing my arm back as she fisted the chains and begged again for me not to do it.

Didn’t she know yet, didn’t she understand that I couldn’t not do it?

{ review } .

I often have a very hard time believing in HEA with dark romances. Surely there's some Stockholm syndrome in there, right? But regardless, this book was fantastically written -- and watching the cycle of emotions Adam goes through... That alone was the key driver in this story and honestly the reason for the 5-star rating.

Wanting to avenge his sister's suicide, he goes after the one person who will hurt the perpetrator the worst -- his daughter. Watching as Adam infiltrates himself into Elle's life, befriend her, was written extremely well. His mindset throughout is extremely dark.

Elle's forgiving attitude was one that bothered me at times, but she saw something in Adam that he didn't see in himself.

For a dark romance, the psychology, the darkness, the fear, the emotion, the chemistry, the need for revenge and forgiveness and grieving... it was all written extremely well. And to top it all off, the epilogue definitely put a nice little bow on everything, in my personal opinion. 

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