RELEASE TOUR incl Exclusive Excerpt: Crave by CF White
Length: 85k words Series: Pretty Poison 1 Prior Reading: n/a, first in series Genre: Contemporary Dark Gritty Romance Tropes: Opposites Attract/Class Divide, Forbidden Romance, Instalust/Obsession, Morally grey antihero, good boy drawn to the dark Trigger/Content Warnings: drug use, gang violence, criminal activity, power imbalance, class-based prejudice, emotional manipulation, obsession, and a non-HEA ending in Book One. (This is book one of three – there IS an HEA coming, don’t worry!) Designer: Kelly Martin
“He was everything I didn’t want. Danger dressed in leather. Salvation wrapped in smoke. And once I tasted him, I couldn’t stop. He was in my blood. My sweetest poison.”
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Razor
I control the drugs in East London for a man with a soul darker than the devil’s. Violence kept me breathing. Loyalty kept my sister and her baby fed. Control was the only thing I’d ever owned.
Then he walked into my world and tore it apart.
Tristan Hale-Fitzroy.
Rich. Beautiful. Irresistible. A bloke who should’ve run when he saw me coming. Instead, he stood his ground with lies on his lips and defiance in his eyes. And I was hooked on something far stronger than anything I’d ever peddled on the streets.
I knew he didn’t belong.
I knew he’d ruin me.
I let him anyway.
Tristan
I was born into privilege and raised inside suffocating expectation. Performing perfection on demand kept me obedient. My status kept me in lavish luxury. Until betrayal showed me the truth—I had everything except control.
So I went looking for something real and found him.
Razor Slade.
Rough. Raw. Untouchable. A man carved hard by the streets. He thought I was simply another transaction in his violent world. I let him believe it, because the truth was far more dangerous.
He wasn’t my escape.
He was my addiction.
I was desperate for another taste.
Crave is the first book in the Pretty Poison Trilogy—a dark, addictive MM romance set in London’s criminal underworld, about forbidden desire, class collision, moral corruption, and choosing love in a world designed to punish it.
Fear crawled my spine, but beneath it something hotter uncoiled, low and shameful. That man terrified me in a way nothing else ever had. Wrapped in gold foil my entire life, I wasn’t used to the gutter. Despite what Ollie had said earlier. I was a typical trust-fund kid. Boarding school at five. Mayfair mansions. Oxford — BA Jurisprudence, top of my cohort. Called to the Bar, then back in a post-grad shared townhouse in the city, paid for by Daddy, because I’d chosen to step sideways instead of forward. A world where danger came dressed in tailored suits and polite smiles. I didn’t know men like this. Men carved hard by life, brutal without apology. My rebellion had always been curated. Safe. Tidy. A dream I could fold away when the lights came on. But when he looked right at me, it wasn’t fear for my safety that had me frozen.
It was fear for my sanity.
Because he looked at me as if he wanted to eat me.
And I wanted to lie down and let him.
The bloke took a drag from his cigarette, smoke curling lazily from his lips, eyes never leaving mine. Then he flicked the butt to the kerb, crushed it under his trainer, and glanced both ways. Not for traffic. No, it was too subtle for that. Checking the coast was clear, perhaps? Then he stepped off the pavement and crossed the street with a slow, unhurried swagger as if the world bent around him.
And suddenly he was there.
Right in front of me. Towering. All menace and masculinity.
Fuck.
Up close, he was brutal beauty. Older than me, though not by decades. Twenty-something, but weathered by a life I’d never touch. I was twenty-three; I’d stake my trust fund he hadn’t yet hit thirty. He wore the years harder, though. Lines cut deep, scarred edges, a face carved for intimidation. Fierce. A man I’d usually gaze at from a safe distance, admire in secret, knowing full well getting close would wreck me.
“You’re new.” His voice was cut from Hackney asphalt, rough-edged, grating against my polished ear.
“Uh…yeah?” My throat worked. It was true. I was new.
New here, new to this.
New to anything smelling of danger instead of champagne.
He gave a small nod, angled his head, then moved past me, sauntering down the alley, cutting into the shadows, not even glancing back as if he knew I’d follow.
I did. Of course, I fucking did.
CF White writes gritty British based stories about imperfect men falling in love against the odds and has been accused of sprinkling a bit of humour into them from time to time too. Because what’s life without sprinkles?
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