Book picks similar to
Revenge (Revenge Series #1) by Christine Besze
dark
revenge
dark-romance
contemporary
Step Beast
Selena Kitt - 2015
Because he’s built like the tanks he rode in Afghanistan. Beneath Conrad "Beast" Beeston III’s fierce, intense gaze, his brooding temperament, his knuckles scarred from fighting, lurks a wild man, his strong, broad back darkly inked with his own hard truths.He only has one mode, and “Beast” is it. He ripped through Tilly's life, tearing it to shreds, and then he was gone, giving a stiff middle finger to a life of entitlement. He left her like he leaves them all—with little more than a broken heart. But for Tilly, there was one more thing. He left her with an unbearable secret she’s been forced to keep for years. Tilly’s privileged life, after her recent graduation from Mt. Holyoke, has come to a screeching halt under tragic circumstances. Had she really believed she’d never see her Devil Dog stepbrother again? Now he’s coming home—and she’s forced to face his cocky smirk and arrogant swagger, to look once again into the eyes of the monster who left her. Forced to confront him, what she sees is a raw, broken, tortured man who just might be the only person she knows keeping even bigger secrets than she is.
He Is Poison
K.A. Merikan - 2014
---Domenico Acerbi. The Villani Family’s best assassin. Ruthless. Vicious. With no patience for weakness.Seth Villani. The Don’s son. Clueless. Stubborn. In dire need of someone to keep him in line.Domenico Acerbi grew up ready to give his life for the Family. Ready to follow orders and exceed expectations. A proud man of honor.The last thing he wants to deal with is training the Don’s son for his future role within the organization. Lazy, annoying, spoiled, and as hot as a Sicilian summer, Seth Villani is no mafia material. But a man who could never become a threat might just be what Domenico needs. Seth Villani wants nothing to do with the mafia. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get a say when he’s pulled back into the fold. Thrown into a den of serpents otherwise known as the Villani Family, Seth has to find a way to navigate the maze of lies. But when Domenico Acerbi, the most vicious snake of them all, sinks his fangs into Seth, letting go becomes impossible. If Seth is doomed to follow in his father's footsteps, he might as well enjoy himself with the most intoxicating man he’s ever met. Maybe he can even fool himself into believing that Domenico isn’t a handsome sociopath who kills for a living. POSSIBLE SPOILERS:Themes: Enemies to lovers, mafia, homophobia, assassin, organized crime, forced proximityWARNING: Adult content. Sizzling hot scenes. If you are easily offended, this book is not for you. ‘Guns n’ Boys’ is a gritty story of extreme violence, offensive language, abuse, and morally ambiguous protagonists. Behind the morbid facade, there is a splash of inappropriate dark humor, and a love story that will crawl under your skin.
With Visions of Red
Trisha Wolfe - 2015
Dark and light battle. This explosive first installment of the Broken Bonds series sets the exhilarating pace for a cat and mouse game where no one knows who’s really pulling the strings.Criminal profiler Sadie Bonds knows blood. Her affair with the gruesome, dark world of killers began long before she started applying her analytical skills to investigate gory crime scenes. She gets inside the killers’ heads, breaks them down, relates to them on an arcane level. She prefers it this way—because it’s safer to ally herself with the villain than the victim. At least, that’s how she’s coped ever since she was abducted and tortured as a teen.She will never be a victim again.Now, she’s honed her skills in order to bring justice to these ritualistic offenders. Working alongside her colleagues, armed with sharp wit and a SIG, Sadie always catches her sadist. Until one ruthless serial killer gets inside Sadie’s head, turning the tables. He knows her secrets. Her obsessions. The darkest, most deviant part of her soul.When she meets Colton Reed, dangerous stakes are raised as he threatens to unravel her control and reveal her darkest fantasies. The sexy-as-sin bondage rigger at an exclusive BDSM club pushes her boundaries, forcing her to acknowledge that side of herself she fears. Plunged into a realm of torture and suffering, pain and pleasure, Sadie balances on the razor-sharp edge of two intersecting worlds threatening to swallow her.
Shiver
Suzanne Wright - 2018
Instead, she has a mother who lives in her head, a stepfather who’s on death row, and the stigma that comes with being the child of an extramarital affair. Writing has always been her escape. Knowing the reception her books receive will be tainted by her personal life, Kensey secretly writes under a penname when she’s not working part-time at her godmother’s bar. Her world might not be exciting, but she likes it exactly as it is. When she meets alarmingly compelling businessman Blake Mercier, the snap of attraction is instant. She doesn’t like it. Doesn’t want to be drawn to this man who is blatantly dangerous, carries dark secrets, and lives life by his own rules. Neither of them make a great first impression on the other, so she’s more than surprised when he begins to pursue her with a single-minded focus that is unsettling, thrilling, and infuriating. Her gut tells her to keep her distance, but Blake won’t let her run. Won’t give her space. There’s another person who won’t give her space. Someone who has discovered the secret of her penname and who seems intent on taunting her. And as Kensey struggles to identify her persecutor, Blake is by her side, determined to keep her safe … because Blake Mercier always holds tight to what’s his. Always.
Capture Me
Anna Zaires - 2015
Yulia Tzakova is no stranger to dangerous men. She grew up with them. She survived them. But when she meets Lucas Kent, she knows the hard ex-soldier may be the most dangerous of them all. One night—that’s all it should be. A chance to make up for a failed assignment and get information on Kent’s arms dealer boss. When his plane goes down, it should be the end. Instead, it's just the beginning. He wants her from the first moment he sees her. Lucas Kent has always liked leggy blondes, and Yulia Tzakova is as beautiful as they come. The Russian interpreter might’ve tried to seduce his boss, but she ends up in Lucas’s bed—and he has every intention of seeing her there again. Then his plane goes down, and he learns the truth. She betrayed him. Now she will pay.
Hunter
Eden Summers - 2018
I've been running for ten years - fleeing my past and clawing my way toward an inescapable act of vengeance. Until he walks into my life, sure and strong and full of secrets. He dilutes my thirst for retribution with his touch. He obliterates my need for solitude with his kiss. But it's his hidden agenda that makes the hair on the back of my neck prickle. He wants something. Something that doesn't revolve around sweaty skin and tangled silk sheets like he'd have me believe. I have to stop falling for him, otherwise the last ten years will all be for nothing. I need to keep running, keep fighting for vengeance, even though I know he will track me down. But trying to escape him is just another problem. Because now I crave the hunt.
Dark Needs
T.M. Frazier - 2015
With blood literally still on his hands, the only thing on Jake's mind is making up for lost time with the woman he loves.Dark Needs is a companion novella to The Dark Light of Day.
Bennett Mafia
Tijan - 2019
The wealthiest of the wealthy sent their kids to our boarding school, and Brooke Bennett had been at the top, though I never quite knew why. She was fun and outgoing, but she kept quiet about her family. The only things she showed me were photographs of her brothers. I became fascinated with her second-oldest brother. Kai Bennett. He was the most of them all. Smoldering. Hypnotic. Alluring. Kai had eyes that pulled me in and a face that haunted my dreams. Then I met him. He came to our school with their father, and that’s when I learned what kind of family Brooke came from. They were mafia, and Brooke’s oldest brother was dead. Her father said accident, but Brooke said murder. Three months later, her father died, and Kai became the head of the Bennett Family. Brooke left Hillcrest for good, and that was the last time I saw her. Fourteen years later, I’m staring at her face on the television. Brooke is missing. Two days later, Kai Bennett kidnaps me. ** This is a 120k complete standalone. ** There is a bonus chapter from another book at the end.
Wicked Favor
Sawyer Bennett - 2017
As the owner of The Wicked Horse, an elite sex club located along the Vegas Strip, I never spend the night alone. I don’t grant favors and will rarely give you the time of day—unless I want you in my bed. So when the sister of my sworn enemy shows up asking for help, saying “no” should be easy. But all I see is the opportunity to help this beautiful woman while exacting revenge on her brother, and I am not about to pass that up. Beaten and bruised, Trista Barnes is running out of options, and, unfortunately for her, I’m her last chance to get out of the mess she’s in. She doesn’t know why I despise her brother so much, but as long as I can help her, she doesn’t care. And while I am more than happy to keep her safe, I intend to do so while opening her up to a sinful world she never knew existed.As Trista falls into the wicked world of guilt free pleasure with no regrets, my feelings of possessiveness begin to grow. But when she finds out I used her as my pawn for revenge, my wicked favor may cost me everything.
Melting Steel
C.M. Seabrook - 2017
Stuck up. Arrogant. The kind of guy who hasn't had to work for a damn thing his entire life. Even his name, Henry Caldwell III, reeks of privilege.And me? Well, let's just say I come with more baggage than a 747 and enough bullsh*t to fuel it.The problem is I want him. Crave him. It's the kind of pure, all-consuming, panty-soaking lust that can make a girl forget why she swore off men to begin with.He thinks I need saving. But this isn't a Cinderella story, and he's no Prince Charming. At least not mine. I learned long ago that trusting any man with my heart isn't just dangerous - it can be deadly.HENRYEmotionally crippled, smart-mouthed, and sexy as sin, the woman is nothing I need and everything I want.Despite her hard edges, tattoos, and reckless spirit, I know she craves more. More from life, more from love, more from me.She thinks I'm just a trust fund brat and maybe she's right. But I've got secrets of my own. I know what darkness is. I've lived it - faced the pit of hell and barely survived.The question is, am I strong enough to face it again? Because if I'm ever going to break through the steel wall she's placed around her heart, it'll mean facing demons we both thought were long dead and buried.
Bloodstained Beauty
Ella Fields - 2018
Fresh out of college and headed straight for my dream job, I didn’t think things could get any better.
Then I met my dream man.
In an instant, my happy ever after had begun.
The life I’d stumbled into was beautiful, and the man I loved was perfect.
But perfection comes at a cost, and I’d slumbered through all the alarms.
Then I met my nightmare.
The man whose bright eyes held untamed darkness.
The man who disarmed me with his peculiar behavior.
The man whose cold, merciless hands shook me awake.
In an instant, questions started to dismantle my happy ever after.
But whoever said the truth would set you free was wrong.
It wasn’t going to repair the cracks in my naive heart.
It wasn’t going to caress my face with comforting hands and reassure me it was all just a dream.
No, the truth shoved me down a rabbit hole, and I landed in the lair of a real-life monster.
Nanny and the Beast
Georgia Le Carre - 2018
Two months ago she completely stopped speaking. Her psychiatrist thought a gentler presence around the house might be good for her. She suggested a nanny for the child. Naturally, I would do anything that would help her regain her happy childhood.But I didn't expect the woman who stepped into my office. Yeah, she's got my attention, all right, but for all the wrong reasons. I sure as hell don't need this ripe fruit to distract me day and night in my own home.I tell her she hasn't got the job, and watch her leave my study, but Fate has other plans. Resistance is futile.AprilHe lives in a white mansion in London's Knightsbridge, a magnet for playboys and Russian billionaires. Big, burly bodyguards look at me as if I've not come for a job interview, but to steal the family silver. Whatever. I maintain my professionalism, I'm determined to get this intriguing job of caring for the girl who refuses to speak. A prim woman leads me to his study. She knocks, and a deep, smooth voice beckons us to enter. The door opens and I set eyes on Yuri Volkov.OMG.His eyes are like a wolf's. Pitiless. Mesmerizing Dangerous. Obviously he Is drop dead wrong but, I can't stop imagining his big, tanned hands caressing every inch of me. After the briefest interview in the history of interviews he informs me I haven't got the job. As I walk away, humiliated, from his study, it happens. The unthinkable.And I'm suddenly back in the game.
King of Lies
Whitney G. - 2020
That I'm a mere pawn in his twisted game of chess.Despite the fact that my heart is still tethered to his, or the fact that he's still the most gorgeous and beautiful man I've ever met in my life (he can still make me wet with a single sentence), I have to focus on getting away from him.I have to accept that he's no longer the man I fell in love with.He's the king of lies...
Sicko
Amo Jones - 2020
He swore to protect me.He failed.They all failed.I’m an open box of passé photographs, snapped in chaste daylight, but filtered in sepia. I’m the past that he tried to forget, and he was the future I needed. When he left six years ago, I screamed for him every night. But then it all stopped. My screams were suddenly muffled by cruelty, and further coaxed by pain.But he has come back. He’s not the cute big brother I had a furtive crush on, or the bad boy, rich brat that I hated to love.He’s the ruthless vice president of Wolf Pack MC, and he doesn’t answer to Royce Kane anymore.He answers to Sicko.
Flock
Kate Stewart - 2020
I gave into temptation and fed the beating beast, which grew thirstier with every slash, every strike, every blow.Triple Falls wasn’t at all what it seemed, nor were the men that swept me under their wing. But in order to keep them, I had to be in on their secrets.Secrets that cost us everything to keep.That’s the novelty of fiction versus reality. You can’t re-live your own love story, because by the time you’ve realized you’re living it, it’s over. At least that was the case for me and the men I trusted my foolish heart to.Looking back, I’m convinced I willed my story into existence due to my illness.And all were punished.