Book picks similar to
Dirty Ties by Pam Godwin


romance
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dark
contemporary-romance

Ricochet


Keri Lake - 2015
    I wish they had. Now I'm cursed by the memories of that night, and the words I whispered to my dying wife.A promise—to avenge the wrong and set it right.I’m no longer Nick Ryder. I’m a masked vigilante. Faceless. Loveless. Fearless. A man with nothing left to lose—one who's seen the dark and violent truth behind the city’s flawless veneer.Michael Culling doesn’t know who I am. Or what I want. All he knows is that I’ve kidnapped his beautiful wife.An eye for an eye—isn’t that how the saying goes? And Aubree Culling is the perfect pawn to destroy him.If she doesn’t destroy me first.

Blood to Dust


L.J. Shen - 2016
    Me.His name is Nate and I should hate him, but I don't.I'm not supposed to know his real name, even worse, I'm not supposed to care. He is nothing to me but means to an end. The plan is simple: break free, collect the pieces of my broken soul, kill the bastards and run away.His name is Nathaniel Thomas Vela, and I've never seen his face, though I hear that it's beautiful.Behind the rugged and handsome exterior, there's a quiet murderer, a killer who thinks guns are for pussies and ends people with his bare hands.His name doesn't matter, neither does his face, but what does matter is my heart. And right now, sadly, it's his. Blood to Dust is a standalone, full-length novel. It contains graphic violence and adult situations some may find offensive.

Six


K.I. Lynn - 2016
    It wasn’t my first, but it would be my last.A gun to the head.A trained killer.A deadly conspiracy.Kidnapped and on the run, my life and death is in the hands of a sadist captor who happens to be my one-night stand. Armed with countless weapons, money, and new identities, the man I call Six drags me around the world.The manhunt is on and Six is the next target. Can we find out who is killing off the Cleaners before they find us?Two down, seven to go.When it’s all over he’ll finish the job that dropped him into my life, and end it.Stockholm Syndrome meets bucket list, and the question of what would you do to live before you died. The questions aren’t always answered in black and white. Gray becomes the norm as my morals are tested.Death is a tragedy, and I’ll do anything to stay alive.Are you ready for the last ride of your life? Six has a gun to your head—what would you do?This isn’t a love story.It’s a death story.**Due to the dark and explicit nature of this book, it is recommended for mature audiences only as some scenes may be particularly disturbing.**

Dirty Angels


Karina Halle - 2014
    Please see the bottom of this description to see if this is the kind of book that you'll love or piss you off**For Luisa Chavez, a twenty-three year old former beauty queen, a better life has always been just out of her reach. Sure, she’s had men at her feet since she was a young teenager but she’s never had the one thing she’s craved – security. Having grown up in near poverty, her waitressing job in Cabo San Lucas can barely let her take care of herself, let alone her ailing parents. Every day is another unwanted advance, every day is a struggle to survive.When Salvador Reyes, the depraved leader of a major Mexican cartel, takes an interest in her, Luisa is presented with an opportunity she can’t afford to pass up. She’ll become Salvador’s wife and exchange her freedom and body for a life of riches – riches she can bestow upon her deserving parents. But Luisa quickly finds out that even the finest wines and jewels can’t undo the ugliness in her marriage, nor the never-ending violence that threatens her every move.Soon, Luisa is looking for an escape, a way out of the carefully controlled life she’s leading. She finally gets her wish in the worst way possible.As it is, being the wife of Salvador makes her an ideal target for rival cartels and there’s one particular man who needs Luisa as part of his cartel’s expansion. One particular man whose quest for power has destroyed lives, slit throats and gotten him out of an American prison. One particular man who will stop at nothing until he gets what he wants.That man is Javier Bernal. And he wants Luisa. He wants to take her, keep her, ruin her.Unless she ruins him first.***WARNING*** This book deals with drug cartels and as such it contains a lot of sex and violence and some violent sex. It can get pretty ugly, pretty dark and pretty crazy. There is drug use, abuse, a bit of torture and dubious consent. The hero is not a hero and the villains...well, they're even worse. If this sort of thing bothers you, PLEASE DO NOT READ IT. This ain't no cupcake farting unicorn kind of book. If you are even a bit squeamish about violence, brutality and rape, this is your warning to stay away from a book that you certainly will not like (and why read books that you know you won't like?)******While this is a spin-off of The Artists Trilogy, prior knowledge of the books is not needed. DIRTY ANGELS is the first in a trilogy, however each book can standalone and follows or introduces different characters***

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.

Three, Two, One [321]


J.A. Huss - 2015
    After fifteen months of captivity, finally… she is free.TWO FRIENDSSelf-made millionaires JD and Ark are not out to save anyone when they stumble upon a wet and shivering girl one early Sunday morning. But when you sell sex for a living and salvation rings your bell… you answer the call.THREE SOULMATESAfter years of searching, love lifts the veil of darkness, and three people—with three very big secrets—find themselves bound together in a relationship that defies the odds.Or does it?Love. Lust. Sex. This trinity might be perfection… but not everything should come in 3’s.WARNING: This is a STANDALONE non-traditional M/F/M ROMANCE with a non-traditional ending.

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?

Tight


Alessandra Torre - 2015
    In my life as a single, thirty-two year old woman. I had a good job, wonderful friends, my independence.I also hadn't got laid in three years. Hadn't been on a date in two. Had stopped counting calories and wearing makeup... a while ago.Then Brett Jacobs waltzed in. Caressed my thigh, dug rough fingers into my hair, lowered his soft mouth to my skin, took sexual control of my mind and stirred it all around with what he packed in his pants. He flipped my quiet life upside down and crawled into a place in my heart I thought was dead.The issue is his secret.The issue is her.The issue is that I don't even know she exists, and he thinks she's dead.The issue is that shit is about to hit the fan and I can't hold on to him tight enough.

Dark Protector


Celia Aaron - 2017
    Charlie shone like a beacon in a world that had long since lost any light. But she was never meant for me, a man that killed without remorse and collected bounties drenched in blood.I thought staying away would keep her safe, would shield her from me. I was wrong. Danger followed in my wake like death at a slaughter house. I protected her from the threats that circled like black buzzards, kept her safe with kill after kill.But everything comes with a price, especially second chances for a man like me. Killing for her was easy. It was living for her that turned out to be the hard part.Author's Note: This is a full-length romance novel. It's not a super-dark read, no trigger warning. Explicit violence and hot sex included. HEA, no cheating.

Monster


Jessica Gadziala - 2015
    And all was going to plan until one night, a huge mammoth of a man breaks into her apartment and kidnaps her,holding her hostage for the very man she was bent on bringing down.Breaker has one rule: he doesn't deal in women. But when he's conned into a job for the city's most ruthlesscrime lord, he finds himself in charge of a fiery-temperedhacker who he can't seem to keep his hands off of. When passions ignite and feelings emerge, will Breaker beable to reconcile his loyalties before it is too late or will their shaky foundation of trust start crumbling beneaththeir feet?This is a stand alone with a HEA.* For possible triggers, go here: http://www.jessicagadziala.com/trigge... *

I Dare You


Shantel Tessier - 2018
     Austin Lowes is new to town. She's running from a mom who hates her to her dad who cares nothing about her. Only a few months and she will be free, or at least, that's what she hopes ... until she meets him. Cole Reynolds is the devil disguised as a man. He wants her fear, he wants her blood, and he wants her soul. Just a little game, he says, I dare you. Will Austin survive him, or will she lose herself and the game? Secrets are revealed and justice will be served, but at what cost? Who survives and who doesn't?

Deviant


Callie Hart - 2014
    She wants me to be her hero, But I'm not a good man.I am her damnation.

Cole


Tijan - 2017
    I didn't know his name. We never made eye contact. There was no connection between us at all.But I could feel him.The tingle down my spine. The command in his presence. The snap of tension in the air around him. That was the first time I saw him, and I was captivated.The second time was different.He was in the mysterious back elevator of my apartment building. Our eyes met for a fleeting second before the doors closed, and I was staggered. My breath was robbed. My senses on high alert. My body hummed.That was just the beginning.He was the leader of the mafia. I was about to fall in love with him, and his name…Cole Mauricio

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.

Deathless & Divided


Bethany-Kris - 2015
    This is how a war starts.A life for a life. That’s the mafia way. Damian Rossi owes his life to a man who is ready to collect. That payment comes in the form of an arranged marriage to the daughter of another leading family in the Chicago Outfit. He’s ready to follow through, even if that means making sure Lily knows she’s his.Lily DeLuca isn’t being given a choice. Forced home to marry a man she doesn’t know and back into a life she’d rather forget, her world is full of half-truths, buried pain, and uncertainty. But Damian is nothing like she expects. His motives aren’t clear. Her beliefs are being tested.When it comes to this world, no man can be trusted. Someone is ready to flip the Chicago Outfit on its side all for the promise of something better. But no one runs a clean game and these men play for keeps. When blood begins to paint Chicago red, four families will be divided by loyalty, hatred, and revenge. There is no hiding. There is no safety.No one is deathless.No one.