Some say love can be an addiction. Others say it’s the thing that makes life worth living. Let me tell you everything I know about love…Love isn’t patient, love isn’t kind. Love is a game, a chase. A thrill. Love is wild and war-like, and every man and woman must fight for themselves. At least that’s how it was for me. A high-priced virgin call girl by the time I started college, I was addicted to love and to sex. Even though I’ve never had either. I controlled love, played it, and held the world in the palm of my hands. Then I fell down from those highs, and I’m being blackmailed for all my mistakes, forced to keep secrets from everyone, except the only guy I don’t regret.

Trey…

With all the other women, I knew what they were. They were temporary. They were pills, they were bottles, they took away all the pain, and numbed the awful memories that wore down my ragged, wasted heart. Until I met Harley. She’s the only girl I ever missed when she walked away. But now she’s back in my life, every day, and there are no guarantees for us, especially since I don’t know how to tell her my secrets. What happened to my family. All I know is she’s the closest I’ve ever come to something real, and I want to feel every second of it.

How can you love with no regrets when regret is all you know?

Excerpt

She parts her lips as if she’s about to say something, then stops herself. She looks down, breathes out hard, then takes a sip.

“What is it?” I ask softly.

“Is it because they were easy or you were so good?”

I bite my lip for a second, trying not to let her question make me all crazy inside for her. But I am that way. Even more so because she’s blushing now. Red is rushing to her cheeks in splotches.

“You think I’m good?”

“Yes,” she says in a breathy voice that sends a buzz through my whole body.

“But you knew that.”

I shake my head. I did know that. But I don’t know that either. I don’t know anything with her. I don’t know what’s real and what’s a game.

“I didn’t know that,”

I say, and maybe I’m lying, but I can’t help it.

I want to hear her say it, even though this is the riskiest thing to do in the world. To tread on this territory of us, of the almost-sex we had. I’m already burning up, I am hot all over.

She raises her eyes, meets my gaze.

“You know what I told you that night. I mean, I don’t have anything to compare it to –“

I cut her off. “–Good.”

“But I’ve never let anyone do that to me before.”

She said that the night we were together. It made me feel electric all over hearing it from a hot girl I wanted to have a one-night stand with, a last fling before I went on the wagon. Hearing it now, knowing her, understanding her, being privy to all her deep, dark secrets is the biggest fucking turn-on of my life. I’m dying for her to touch me right now, even though I know we won’t go there, but I want it so badly. I want to feel her hands on me, I want her to unzip my jeans and do something about how fucking uncomfortable I am right now with my dick straining hard against the fly.

“Yeah?”

I say in a hoarse voice because I can’t manage sentences, much less coherent thought. I can’t move either, because if I shift an inch, I will lunge at her, pull her under me, and fumble at all our zippers to get our clothes off. And I can’t, can’t, can’t do that to her. She’s a virgin, and she’s messed in the head, and if I take her virginity because she winds me up with a few words then I am more of an ass than those pathetic men who hired her.

“I told you that, Trey,”

she says softly, and there’s something about this moment that feels like a confessional, like she needs to tell me these things, like she has to say them.

“No one has ever made me come. I’ve never let anyone touch me. I never wanted to be touched. I never even knew what it would feel like to have someone do that,”

she says and licks her lips, and I am dying. Completely dying right now. My hands are twitching, and I grip hard on the beer bottle, so hard I could break it, but I have to hold onto something, because all I want right now is to touch her. The whole living room is burning, the space between us is hot and humming and full of all this hazy desire I feel, and it’s taking over my body, my brain, my heart, and the air between us. If I weren’t already sitting down, I might collapse. Because this feeling is knocking breath out of me. It is staggering.

“Harley,” I say in a low voice.

“Trey, what happened last night?

 My Review

5 Hearts

The Thrill of It is a sinfully dark and heart wrenching love story unlike anything I have ever read before. I am still feeling the aftereffects of the roller coaster of emotions I felt while reading this story. The Thrill of It pierced my soul and left me shaking. This is unlike any of Lauren’s other books. 

From the very beginning my heart breaks for Harley. She is beautiful on the inside as well as the outside even though she doesn’t believe it. I kept asking myself how she got herself in such a horrible situation. This book is written to where the events that led to the current situation are not revealed until the end. This kept me on edge and gripped my heartstrings. I did not want to believe what I was reading. This could not be happening. How could it?

Trey was a mystery to me. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Why is he drawn to Harley? She is so young and he is into older women, not 19 year old virgins.  It frightens me to the core that he is going to break her heart. Trey is seriously damaged and is broadcasting his pain through the tattoos inked on his body. He is holding on to horrible memories that are tearing him up inside and he will not let anyone in.

Then there is Cam. He is like a slime ball used car salesman that you want to hate, but at the same time you feel sorry for him. How could he stoop so low?

The chemistry between Trey and Harley is scorching hot. Harley experiences pleasure like she has never known before. Trey’s dirty thoughts get my heart racing and my panties wet. Look out ladies you may need to break out B.O.B. when you read what is going through Trey’s dirty mind. Lauren hits a home run in seduction once again.

In the end, can true love survive between Trey and Harley when they are so irrevocably damaged? I sure hope so. We will just have to wait and see…

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18457861-the-thrill-of-it?ac=1