Ryder : Shadows and Desires

“I’d say I could show you what being choked out feels like, but not sure we’d be talking about the same thing,” he effortlessly adds.

Sports Romance
Grumpy/Sunshine
Enemies to Lovers
Forced Proximity
Forbidden Romance
Slowburn with immediate tension
Steamy enough to fog a phone

¤ ¤ ¤

Sports therapist Julie Stevens reconsiders her taste in men when a brooding, legendary MMA fighter walks into her small-town gym. The fighter needs a team to prepare him for the brutal, winner-takes-all Warlord tournament. Meeting him in person, she learns that he’s crass, difficult, and even hostile… but she can’t turn him away, as this is the break that the gym needs.

Not only does she have to deal with the fact that Ryder was her celebrity crush for many years, but she also can’t catch a break with the grumpy fighter. Every encounter seems to go wrong… and then, one day, it doesn’t. Ryder’s walls peel back, piece by piece, until the complicated warrior reveals a man who loves hard and unequivocally. Once he wants something, he’ll fight for it.

Including her.

But that may risk Julie losing the gym that she holds up in her brother’s honor. And what will she think when secrets are dragged out of Ryder’s shadows that he’d much rather keep hidden?