RELEASE TOUR: Claim by C.F. White (Excerpt)

RELEASE TOUR: CLAIM by CF White

Release Date: April 24
Length: 92,000
Series: Pretty Poison, book 3
Prior Reading: required

Designer: Kelly Martin
Genre: Contemporary, Dark, Mystery/Thriller
Tropes: Forbidden prison romance, barrister/client tension, corrupt system, us-against-the-world, second chance, possessive/claiming love, morally grey men, legal thriller stakes, final hard fought HEA
Trigger/Content Warnings:

• Violence
• Prison environment & threats
• Organised crime & drug supply
• Corruption (legal/political)
• Sexual threat
• Psychological trauma
• Power imbalance (lawyer/client)
• Death references
• Cancer treatment

When privilege claims poison, desire turns fatal

https://getbook.at/PrettyPoison3

Razor Slade was never meant to survive this long.

Now he’s inside, where power shifts fast, loyalty means nothing, and weakness could get him killed. His reputation might keep men at bay, but it won’t save him from the enemies closing in. Especially not the ones who know exactly how to use his biggest vulnerability against him.

Tristan Hale-Fitzroy.

The barrister who should have been his escape.

The man who became his undoing.

Newly qualified and finally standing on his own, Tristan has everything he’s worked for within reach. Until Razor’s case lands back in his orbit. What should be simple isn’t. The deeper he digs, the more the cracks begin to show. And the more dangerous it becomes to keep looking.

Because someone powerful wants Razor buried.

Taking the case could cost Tristan his career. His future. Everything.

But walking away would cost him Richie.

As the pressure builds inside and outside the prison walls, lines blur between justice and control, loyalty and survival. And when the truth finally surfaces, it won’t just be Razor’s fate on the line…

It’ll be whether either of them are brave enough to claim the other.

Claim is the final book in the Pretty Poison Trilogy—a dark MM romance packed with obsession, dangerous devotion, prison tension, courtroom warfare, rich/poor conflict, morally grey men, and a fiercely earned happily ever after.

EXCERPT:

Dent unlocked the cuffs and tipped his head towards the door beside us. “In there.”

I followed his gaze.

The conference room.

Not seg. Not medical. The usual legal room with the beige door, narrow window, and paint scuffed where fists and foreheads had met it over the years. The place where men in suits sat across from me and decided whether I was worth the time to say my name. Where I’d been told, more than once, that I wasn’t.

Dent stepped back. “Go on.”

Better than a box.

Or so I thought.

I opened the door.

Two men were in there. The one nearest stood immediately. Mid-forties. Neat. Neutral. A folder lay open on the table in front of him. He looked like every man who’d ever delivered bad news in a careful voice.

“Mr Slade.” The bloke held out a hand. “I’m Andrew Mercer. Criminal defence solicitor.”

I took the handshake on instinct, knuckles still swollen, skin split, a massive contrast to this man’s smooth fingers. Then, as he leant forward, his shoulder shifted, bringing into view the man behind him. 

My world punched sideways. As if Ghost had had another go at me. 

Tristan.

My fucking Tricky.

For a second, I genuinely thought I’d imagined him. That the crack to my skull when I’d butted Ghost had knocked something loose. That this was some sick hallucination I’d conjured through pain and lack of sleep.

Except I hadn’t, had I?

He was there. Right fucking there. 

Maybe not the wild, frantic man drenched in sweat and heat, begging me to let him lose control. The one I replayed in my head at night, trying not to wake hard on a bunk inches from another man’s. Nor even the one who swam in glistening lakes. Or who’d curled up beside me on a sun lounger. No, that Tristan lived in memory only. This one in front of me right then was polished. Out of reach. 

In a suit I recognised, though.

The one he’d worn that night. When I’d pulled him out of my club and made him stay with me til Sunday. The one I’d peeled off him, folded neatly, and kept it that way so he could put it back on when the world called him to order again.

Had he chosen it on purpose?

To throw me. Remind me. Fuck with my head.

“Please, sit, Mr Slade.” Mercer gestured to the chair opposite them. 

I sat.

They sat.

My eyes stayed on Tristan.

“Before we go any further,” Mercer smoothed his tie, “I want to be clear about what this meeting is and what it isn’t. This is a legal conference. Anything discussed here is confidential and legally privileged.”

I barely heard him. All I kept doing was staring at Tricky. 

He stared right back. 

And even though his stare was subtle, done with discipline and control, I saw him take me in. My split lip. The bruise darkening under my eye. The jumper that wasn’t clean anymore. The grey joggers. The full, ugly state of me.

His chest lifted.

I saw it because I couldn’t stop looking at him.

“We’re not here to question you,” Mercer continued. “We’re here to stabilise your position.”

I dragged my gaze away from Tristan to the man speaking. “Stabilise?”

What? Like I was leaking.

“That’s right.” Mercer gestured at Tricky. “Mr Tristan Hale-Fitzroy is here as junior counsel.”

My eyes snapped back to him.

There was the smallest shift in Tristan’s mouth. Not a smile as such. Not quite. But the whisper of one that might have been familiar.

Then Mercer opened the file.

“You’ve met previously.” He motioned between us, neat and meaningless, as if he were talking about a networking event. “But for the purposes of this conference, he’s here in a professional capacity only.”

Wow. Met. 

Down a dark alley, sure. With him on his knees, looking up at me as if he wanted to ruin himself. In the back room of a club with the bass shaking the walls, my name breaking out of him as if it didn’t belong to anyone else. Across weekends where we’d begged, shaken, cried, laughed, came apart in each other’s arms and blurred every line I thought I had.

But yeah…

Met. 

about the author:

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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