Review: “Beyond Innocence,” Kit Rocha

Pros: Love the newer characters
Cons: A minor series quibble
Rating: 5 out of 5

Yes, I really did buy the full bundled set of Kit Rocha’s “Beyond” series, so here’s my review of Beyond Innocence (Beyond, Book 6). Jared is a high-class escort–high-society ladies from Eden pay him to make their fantasies come true, and he’s become very good at presenting that fantasy. Lili is the daughter of the former head of Sector Five, and she was trained to lock everything of herself away and present a different fantasy–one of the perfect hostess and wife. Her husband didn’t even care to have sex with her until he decided he wanted children; she was little more than a status symbol. Because of these backgrounds, both Jared and Lili have difficulty letting themselves go when Dallas throws one of his orgiastic parties. Then Finn, who had to watch as his boss in Sector Five abused Lili, asks Jared to help keep an eye on her. Lili has just run out of all the nice, numbing drugs she brought with her out of Five, and while they weren’t physically addictive, having to feel again is going to be hard on her. Before long Jared and Lili discover they have a lot in common. It’s true that where Jared is eminently experienced, Lili isn’t at all. But both of them need to learn to lay aside their masks and discover who they really are underneath. Muddling it all is the fact that Jared has just bought an illegal club inside of Eden so that he can better collect information for Dallas–a very dangerous new line of work for him.

I was hoping we’d get to see Lili again. Last we saw her, she’d put a bullet in her own bodyguard and made her way across two sectors to reach the O’Kanes. She helped O’Kane convince the other sector heads that he’d been right to blow away her husband (who took over Sector Five after Lili’s father was killed), and in return the O’Kanes have kept her safe. Now she wants more than just to be safe, but where to start? Jared makes her realize she can have more than just an existence, but those things she always thought of as her skills–hostessing and playing the perfect wife–aren’t of much use in O’Kane territory. She’s also still having a lot of trouble fitting in. She can’t bring herself to believe that the women actually enjoy all the sexual activity going on. She particularly can’t understand how Rachel is with two men at once. Jared is more than happy to introduce her to the idea that sex can bring pleasure, and it makes for hot reading. There’s even a fantastic bedroom scene with Jared, Lili, Rachel, Cruz, and Ace.

The plot is definitely heating up. Ashwin, one of Eden’s super-soldiers, seems to be even further on the O’Kane side of things, but no one knows why, and they can’t look past the fact that he’s extremely dangerous. He definitely has an agenda of his own. There’s also a councilman who might be reachable–it’s someone who isn’t corrupt, wonder of wonders. Unfortunately he also doesn’t particularly like the O’Kanes. You’ll just need to read this volume to find out how Jared manages his spying, and how much danger he and Lili end up in!

While I love the bisexual orgies, I would still like to see at least one coupling end up same-sex (other than the Cruz-Ace-Rachel triad). Otherwise it’s kind of starting to feel like the characters are only bisexual with respect to sex, and not so much emotions. As usual, there’s a lot of hot sex in here, including one of Dallas’s infamous parties!

She didn’t know if she wanted to do any of those things…
But now she knew she could.