Guest Post & Giveaway: "Trust In Me" by Skye Warren

Today we have Skye Warren stopping here on her book tour for her new book "Trust In Me". Lets welcome  Skye to Romance Book Junkies.

Anti-Heroes and the Heroines Who Love And Fear Them

by Skye Warren

Thanks for having me! I’m here to talk about my dark erotica release, Trust In Me, and my everlasting love of anti-heroes. An anti-hero is defined as a hero who acts contrarily to a traditional hero. Or as I like to say: he’s really a villain but he gets to end up the heroine *grins*

In traditional romance, we’re talking about Anne Stuart heroes (also sometimes referred to as gamma heroes) and in erotica context, that means Kitty Thomas’s heroes or Annabel Joseph’s darker Doms.

Why are these anti-heroes so damn appealing? Well, for one thing, they are tough and driven. They don’t take crap from anyone…even the heroine, sometimes. They often do follow their own code of honor, it just doesn’t necessarily match everyone else’s. But I think it’s something more elemental than that. A man who takes what he wants, damn the rules? Well…it’s plain sexy.

It has happened before (more than once) where I have started writing a character as a straight up villain. They are just evil. Of course, I still want to round them out and make them a fully fleshed out character, versus a cardboard cut-out. But I have no intention of redeeming them. And then, as I’m writing them, I actually fall for them.

That’s going to impact how I write him. It’s going to affect how the other characters react to him. So writing anti-heroes is inevitable for me, because I write characters who perform dark, violent and immoral acts…and then I redeem them.

It takes a special kind of heroine to wind up with an anti-hero. On the one hand, she has to bend, a lot. A heroine can’t run the show with a guy like this. And on the other hand, she needs to have a backbone stronger than steel. Our anti-hero is used to getting his way, and using whatever means at his disposal, whether that by intimidation or underhanded doings, in order to get it, so she needs to be almost fearless.

Here’s a short excerpt scene from Trust In Me where our heroine, Mia, is confronted by Tyler. Mia is in danger, under the control of a crime lord. Tyler claims to want her, to want to protect her, but she can’t trust him yet.

“How much to get you to leave?” he asked. “Permanently. Go far away.”

It was my turn to suck in a breath. His disgust of me went deeper than I’d thought. Pain rattled around in my chest like a pin ball before finally dropping down into the pit of my stomach. Men had hated me before him, but at least they’d wanted me, even if it was only for sex and the occasional punching bag. Despite the erection poking my stomach, he didn’t want me. He wanted to get rid of me.

Who was I kidding? I couldn’t blame him. If I could get rid of me, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I stared at the pulse that beat in the hollow of his throat, so steady.

I had no fight left, no hope. “Carlos would find me. He’d kill me.”

He must have recognized that I didn’t pose a threat, because he let me go. But he didn’t back up. He stood, broad chest to heaving breasts, breath to breath.

“I’d protect you,” he said.

My laugh rang out like the rattle of an empty tin cup. “You and what army?”

“Not the army,” he said evenly.

My eyes snapped to his. And the final chink fell, like a deadbolt locking into place. Witness protection…the holy grail that had been dangled in front of my by another man just recently. That man had been with the FBI, and I realized that Tyler was one of them, undercover. Of course. A laugh burbled to the surface. Inappropriate, this entire situation was inappropriate. “You’re faking it, aren’t you? You’re the fucking cops.”

He frowned and glanced around, adorably peeved.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it myself. The golden boy of the neighborhood, the soldier, Mr. Perfect. He could never have been a bad guy, the lighting was all wrong.

Skye Warren is giving away a copy of Trust in Me to a commenter from each stop in the blog tour. In addition, every comment along the way enters you in the drawing for a $20 Amazon gift certificate. 

Do you have a favorite anti-hero? What do you think is so darn appealing about those very bad boys? How bad is too bad?

TRUST IN ME by Skye Warren

Can love be found between a whore and a knight in tarnished armor?

Mia longs for the daily torture to end, but one last task keeps her holding on. In a betrayal of the crime lord who pulled her from the gutter, she’ll free the shipment of human cargo, and if she’s lucky, die in the process. The alternative is unfathomable, even to a woman well-versed in erotic torture. But luck abandons her yet again when she meets the security expert in charge of the shipment and finds herself face to face with her childhood crush. The man she once begged for help. The man who failed her.

Tyler Martinez is an undercover FBI agent with one chance to right the wrongs of his past. Thrust deep into the seedy world of human trafficking, he must put aside his guilt over abandoning Mia all those years ago in order to save her now.

Someone’s pulling the strings in this sadistic play on trust, but Tyler and Mia may not live long enough to see the curtain fall. Trust in Me is a story of erotic pain and incipient romance, spiraling ever faster toward betrayal or redemption.

WARNING:
This book contains explicit scenes of dubious consent, graphic violence and sex. It also depicts abuse and captivity situations. Not appropriate for anyone uncomfortable with these situations or anyone under the age of eighteen. This is a work of fiction.

Buy it now: http://skyewarren.com/books/trust-in-me/