Better When He's Bad


Jay Crownover - 2014
    . . meet Shane Baxter. Sexy, dark, and dangerous, Bax isn’t just from the wrong side of the tracks, he is the wrong side of the tracks. A criminal, a thug, and a brawler, he’s the master of bad choices, until one such choice landed him in prison for five years. Now Bax is out and looking for answers, and he doesn’t care what he has to do or who he has to hurt to get them. But there’s a new player in the game, and she’s much too innocent, much too soft…and standing directly in his way. Dovie Pryce knows all about living a hard life and the tough choices that come with it. She’s always tried to be good, tried to help others, and tried not to let the darkness pull her down. But the streets are fighting back, things have gone from bad to worse, and the only person who can help her is the scariest, sexiest, most complicated ex-con The Point has ever produced. Bax terrifies her, but it doesn’t take Dovie long to realize that some boys are just better when they’re bad.

Alpha


Jasinda Wilder - 2014
    Bills were piling up, adding up to more money than I could ever make. Mom's hospital bills. My baby brother's tuition. My tuition. Rent. Electricity. All of it on my shoulders. And I had just lost my job. There was no hope, no money in my account, no work to be found. And then, just when I thought all hope was lost, I found an envelope in the mail. No return address. My name on the front, my address. Inside was a check, made out to me, in the amount of ten thousand dollars. Enough to pay the bills and leave me some left over to live on until I found a job. Enough to let me focus on classes. There was no name on the check, just "VRI Inc.," and a post office box address for somewhere in the city. No hint of identity or reason for the check or anything. No mention of repayment, interest, nothing…except a single word, on the notes line: "You." Just those three letters.If you receive a mysterious check, for enough money to erase all your worries, would you cash it?I did.The next month, I received another check, again from VRI Incorporated. It too contained a single word: "belong."A third check, the next month. This time, two words. Four letters. "To me."The checks kept coming. The notes stopped. Ten thousand dollars, every month. A girl gets used to that, real quick. It let me pay the bills without going into debt. Let me keep my baby brother in school and Mom's hospice care paid for. How do you turn down what seems like free money, when you're desperate? You don't. I didn't.And then, after a year, there was a knock on my door. A sleek black limousine sat on the curb in front of my house. A driver stood in front of me, and he spoke six words: "It's time to pay your debt."Would you have gotten in?I did.It turns out $120,000 doesn't come free.

The Red


Tiffany Reisz - 2017
    James made a deathbed promise that she would do anything to save her mother's art gallery. Unfortunately, not only is The Red painted red, but it's in the red. Just as she realizes she has no choice but to sell it, a mysterious man comes in after closing time and makes her an offer: He will save The Red if she agrees to submit to him for the period of one year.The man is handsome, English, and terribly tempting...but surely her mother didn't mean for Mona to sell herself to a stranger. Then again, she did promise to do anything to save The Red...The Red is a standalone novel of erotic fantasy from Tiffany Reisz, international bestselling author of The Bourbon Thief and the Original Sinners series.

Reasonable Doubt: Full Series


Whitney G. - 2014
     A huge and very particular appetite: Blonde, curvy, and preferably not a fucking liar...(Although, that's a story for another day.) As a high profile lawyer, I don't have time to waste on relationships, so I fulfill my needs by anonymously chatting and sleeping with women I meet online. My rules are simple: One dinner. One night. No repeats. This is only casual sex. Nothing more. Nothing less. At least it was, until "Alyssa"...She was supposed to be a 27 year old lawyer, a book hoarder, and completely unattractive. She was supposed to be someone I shared law advice with late at night, someone I could trust with details of my weekly escapades. But then she came into my firm for an interview--a college-intern interview, and everything fucking changed...

Knight


Kristen Ashley - 2012
    She has no expectations, no dreams. Then she finds herself at a party where she doesn’t want to be and she meets Knight. Knight Sebring knows who he is, what he wants and what he likes. And he gets it. But he never expected something as sweet as Anya Gage to wander into his bedroom during a party he did not expect to be having to borrow his phone. Knight tries to leave Anya to the life she deserves of white picket fences and a man who watches football on Sundays – good, normal and clean. But when Anya comes to his nightclub and finds herself in a situation, he knows someone has to look after her, he can’t fight it anymore and he decides that man will be him. Knight teaches Anya that, just as with the bad, in life you should also expect the good. And he teaches her this by giving it to her. But Knight has a dark past and just as he desires Anya for exactly who she is, he fears when she finds out exactly the man he has become and always intends to be, she’ll leave him for good, normal and clean.

The Tutor


K. Larsen - 2017
    She accepts a summer long live-in tutoring job for a handsome man and his little sister at a secluded home deep in the mountains.There is no running water.No electricity.No internet or cell service.When her tutoring job ends she's hit with a brutal turn of events ... she's not permitted to leave. After months in captivity, she makes a harrowing escape with her student that ends in a car accident on a desolate road. When Nora comes to, her student is missing. In a desperate attempt to find the girl, Nora will have to recount her time held captive. The good and the bad. Can Nora and the authorities work together to find the man who took her? Will they rescue the girl Nora tried to save?Author’s Note: This is a dark romantic suspense. Trigger warning: all of them. This will not elicit warm fuzzy feelings

Corrupt


Penelope Douglas - 2015
    My nightmares, however, became my obsession. His name is Michael Crist. My boyfriend’s older brother is like that scary movie that you peek through your hand to watch. He is handsome, strong, and completely terrifying. The star of his college’s basketball team and now gone pro, he’s more concerned with the dirt on his shoe than me. But I noticed him.I saw him. I heard him. The things that he did, and the deeds that he hid…For years, I bit my nails, unable to look away. Now, I’ve graduated high school and moved on to college, but I haven’t stopped watching Michael. He’s bad, and the dirt I’ve seen isn’t content to stay in my head anymore. Because he’s finally noticed me. MichaelHer name is Erika Fane, but everyone calls her Rika.My brother’s girlfriend grew up hanging around my house and is always at our dinner table. She looks down when I enter a room and stills when I am close. I can always feel the fear rolling off of her, and while I haven’t had her body, I know that I have her mind. That’s all I really want anyway. Until my brother leaves for the military, and I find Rika alone at college. In my city. Unprotected. The opportunity is too good to be true as well as the timing. Because you see, three years ago she put a few of my high school friends in prison, and now they’re out. We’ve waited. We’ve been patient. And now every last one of her nightmares will come true. ***Corrupt can be read as a stand-alone. No cliffhanger.

Gentleman Sinner


Jodi Ellen Malpas - 2019
    After all, she escaped it long ago. Determined not to let her past beat her, Izzy has a secure, stable life with a job she loves in nursing. But one act of kindness will completely upend everything she's so carefully built-putting her right back in the crosshairs of danger she's been so desperate to avoid.When Theo Kane shows up like a knight in shining armor, Izzy can't help thinking she's been saved from one threat and exposed to another. His imposing physique, the harsh lines of his face, and the wariness of everyone who comes close are just a few clues to Theo Kane's notorious reputation. The man is positively terrifying. But with Izzy, he's tender and a complete gentleman, and her fascination with the mysterious beast of a man becomes too powerful for her to walk away.As Theo's demons come to light, running becomes even more impossible. And yet staying together could doom them both.

Asking for It


Lilah Pace - 2015
    This is what I want. Now I need a man dangerous enough to give it to me.” Graduate student Vivienne Charles is afraid of her own desires—ashamed to admit that she fantasizes about being taken by force, by a man who will claim her completely and without mercy. When the magnetic, mysterious Jonah Marks learns her secret, he makes an offer that stuns her: they will remain near-strangers to each other, and meet in secret so that he can fulfill her fantasy.Their arrangement is twisted. The sex is incredible. And—despite their attempts to stay apart—soon their emotions are bound together as tightly as the rope around Vivienne’s wrists. But the secrets in their pasts threaten to turn their affair even darker...Reader Advisory: Asking for It deals explicitly with fantasies of non-consensual sex. Readers sensitive to portrayals of non-consensual sex should be advised.

I, Porn Star


Zara Cox - 2016
    Rich. Entitled. By night, I'm the exclusive porn star only known as Q. Why? Because I love women. If I believed in an almighty being, I'd thank him for creating them. They're by far his most perfect creation… especially when I'm fucking one of them. Oh, did I mention I'm an asshole? Fuck yeah. According to my shrink, I'm one twisted motherfucker. And that's just the way I like it. Until she walks into my life…My name is Elyse Gilbert, nicknamed ‘Lucky' because according to my dad, I'm the unluckiest person alive, and I'll die the same way I came into the world: naked, screaming, and dirt poor.Yeah, my life is a twisted, seething mess. But that life changed the day I met HIM. He made me forget the cameras. He made me forget I was doing this for the money. He made me forget my shame.He made me forget everything. I was consumed by him. Only him.But now my past has caught up with me.

Mercy


Debra Anastasia - 2017
    Murder is in my blood now. It runs through my veins and though I hide the monster I see in the mirror with ink, it doesn’t keep him from coming out. My street name is Mercy, but I never show any. Except for her. I watch Becca, though she doesn’t know. She saved me a long time ago; the day my father killed my mother. Her bravery turned her into a target.My father holds a grudge and knife with the same proficiency, and Becca is the focus of his hatred. And I’m the only monster who can save her.

Brutally Beautiful


Christine Zolendz - 2013
    With blood still on her hands, Samantha Matthews is on the run, running from dark secrets and a man she prays to God will never find her. Running and hiding, just to stay alive. She had no choice but to run, to leave, to hide and forget about her life before. When Samantha believes she's gained enough distance from her past and her demons, she stops running, hoping to find her future in the heavily wooded area of the Adirondack Mountains, a place she never expected to encounter a man with secrets as dark and as sordid as hers. Kade Grayson is hiding, not from the demons after him, but from himself and from the entire outside world, wishing every day he could have just died. Arrogant and domineering, he’s tormented and terrorized by his past, seeing nothing good for his future. With the ghosts of his past still haunting him, he has exiled himself to a life of solitude, only living for his words and through his stories.Until her.An undeniable attraction, turns into hate and then ultimately obsession, an obsession that grows into a powerful story of love and redemption.Will the bond they have begun to build between them grow stronger than the tragedies that have scarred both of their lives? Or will they allow their demons to consume them?

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.

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.

Royal Savage


Victoria Ashley - 2015
    Every time I do, all I see is blood, death, and pain. I can feel it - almost taste it, bringing me back to that night. It doesn't matter that I'm still breathing; I no longer need it, I no longer want it. I despise it along with everything else around me. The only thing I long for is to fucking fade away. I've given up. Until her at least… AVALON. She comes into my world, knocking me on my ass. It turns me on to have her around me. Makes me want to wrap my hand around her tight little throat and fuck her until she feels my pain, feels the monster in me, but also makes me want to protect her from the very thing that she should be afraid of... me. Once she sees the damage that I’m capable of; she’ll look at me like everyone else around me does: with fear. AVALON KNIGHT HIS EYES... THE DARKNESS IN them draws me to him, making me want to taste him, feel him… and save him. I shouldn't have gotten on the back of his motorcycle that day. I know that now. Colton warned me. I was told it was dangerous. I was told that nothing would be the same. He was right. ROYAL is dangerous, dark, and seductive; the very thing that keeps me hanging on, willing to give my last breath just to touch him… breathe him in. He’s savage, inked, and highly captivating. So different from his brother… He's hazardous to my health, mind, and body, yet the only thing that I crave. I want to free him. I want to change his mind, but I'm afraid that he’s already too faded…