Mr. Beautiful is the companion novel to R.K. Lilley's bestselling Up in the Air series and is told from James Cavendish's POV. We also get POV chapters from some of our favorite characters like Stephan and Frankie. PLUS, an epic James AND Tristan epilogue. A fabulous addition for any Up in the Air and Danika & Tristan series fans.
Excerpt from Mr. Beautiful
Full excerpt at R.K. Lilley's website
Bianca slept like a baby, like she never had before, like every worry she’d ever had had disappeared with the death of her father.
But not me. I was more restless than ever. A miracle had saved her, not me, and I felt helpless because of it.
It was not a feeling that fit me well.
In fact, it made my skin crawl in discomfort. In anger.
It had been months since the attack. She and Stephan were healed physically, and it seemed emotionally, but I felt the wounds as though they were fresh. What had almost happened haunted me. I was a man that needed control, and I’d been shown, in the starkest way possible, that I had none.
I sat scant feet away from our bed, watching Bianca sleep. She was nude, with not so much as a sheet covering her. I’d seen to that. I watched her lithe form shift on the bed, one long leg hitching up to give me a glimpse of the pink between her legs.
I felt like a fucking stalker.
In fact, I was one, watching her for hours on end, night after night.
I tensed when I realized she’d roused. It disturbed her that I couldn’t sleep, when she deserved peace more than anyone.
She sat up, and I watched her heavy breasts swaying with the movement. “James.” Her voice was the softest utterance.
“Love,” I answered, feeling the dark mood that had overtaken me lift in an instant. Just having her eyes on me could do that.
She crawled across the bed toward me. She’d always had an uncanny ability to do exactly the thing that would drive me the most wild, and she’d only gotten better at that over time. She didn’t hide her body from me as she moved. In fact, she posed for me, even the exposure of her body an act of submission. As though reading my thoughts, as though even those were a command, she paused on the edge of the bed, parting her legs to let me look my fill before she rose, approaching my chair.
I stood to meet her, my body drawn tight, my cock throbbing as though I hadn’t come, buried inside of her, just hours before.
I was a statue as she leaned up to my ear, my brows drawing together in a question. Her lips touched my ear as she spoke.
“Hurt me,” she whispered raggedly.
My eyes shut tight, my jaw went slack, and a shudder wracked my entire body.
I’d avoided all of the rough stuff since she’d been injured, but God had I missed it.
“We don’t have to, Bianca. It’s not necess-”
She gripped my hair, pulling my face down to her injured cheek. She dug her jaw into me so hard that I knew it must have been hurting her badly. It was healed now, but I knew it was still sore.
“I need it,” she rasped into my ear. “I’ll never stop needing it. Please.”
I pulled back, and my hands trembled as I cupped her face in my hands, my eyes searching hers desperately for what I wanted to see. Need. Yes. She needed this as much as I did. Perhaps more so.
“Get on the bed,” I told her thickly.
Synopsis and Purchase Link
She was my sin and my temple. I both worshipped and defiled there. Gloried and desecrated. Revered and debased.
I’ve been remade four times in my life.
It is a distinct feeling. Impossible to mistake. The very marked sensation of being unraveled and reknit into a new thing, a new person. It can be good or bad, helpful or harmful, but above all, it is unstoppable.
I was remade when my parents died, went from a happy childhood, into navigating a very dark world, with endless responsibilities, surrounded by enemies, and despairingly alone.
It happened again at the hands of a cowardly predator. I’d become angrier with that one, more cynical, and it undoubtedly turned me into the kinky f**k I was today.
The third happened swiftly. One day I looked up into a pair of pale blue eyes and saw the other half of my soul. Checkmate. I went from a completely controlled existence, a life where I made every decision with cold calculation, to a man overcome with feelings and emotions that were foreign but somehow wonderful.
And all too soon after that cataclysmic change was this fourth one, this one where I begged a God I’d never entertained to spare the life of a woman that I could not live without.
Mr. Beautiful is a continuation of the Up in the Air series, told from the male point of view, with POVs from James, Stephan, Tristan, Frankie, and Akira.
Up in the Air Reading Order & Purchase Links
In Flight ($2.99) | Mile High | Grounded | Mr. Beautiful |