What is dark romance?

The hero is the usual sign. He is a mafia heir, a villain, a captor or simply a man with no conscience outside the heroine. The plot puts her in his power and then asks how the power shifts.

The books carry content warnings, and readers use them. Knowing what is inside is part of the agreement between a dark romance and its audience.

Fiction is the safe place for unsafe feelings. A reader can enjoy being wanted to an unreasonable degree, or being overpowered by a man written to adore her, and close the book when she likes. She controls the pace, the lighting and the ending.

That is the difference from real life, and readers are clear about it. Liking a possessive hero on the page is not a wish for a possessive partner.

A few terms come up in almost every recommendation thread.

• Morally grey hero: his methods are bad, his devotion is total.
• Touch her and die: he is gentle with her alone.
• Enemies to lovers: the attraction starts as a fight.
• Forced proximity: they cannot leave, so they must talk.
• He falls first: the dangerous man is the one undone.

The dark hero is one of the most requested AI characters. Beau de Nuit has one of its own. Dante, the Dangerous One, is quiet and intense, and he is written with the same rule as the genre: the intensity stays inside the story, and she decides how far it goes.