Antagonists to Lovers | Forbidden Romance | Julie Stevens just wants a simple life, but the brooding, intensely handsome and mysterious fighter named Joey Ryder, turns her entire world upside down. It doesn't help that she's had a crush on him-through the TV screen-for years...but he doesn't know that. Yet.
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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 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. But Julie signed a contract with the gym's main coach stating that she'll never cross that line. They both know it, but they can't stop throwing looks as strong as his punches. Will Julie risk losing the gym that she holds up in her brother's honor? What will she think when secrets are dragged out of Ryder's shadows that he'd much rather keep hidden?
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Friendly for all readers who enjoy a steamy, tension filled romance with drops of humor. Knowledge and/or interest in MMA not required.
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AWARDS:
🥇1ST PLACE The Carnival Awards -- Romance 2020
🥇1ST PLACE in Boba Awards - Romance 2022
🥉3rd Place ROMANCE Besties Award 2020
🏆Best Cover for Carnival Awards 2020
A past tragedy has left Lily Holmes burdened with a devastating secret...
Since the death of her twin sister, Lily can't bear to be touched. Not accidentally, not casually...and certainly not intimately. This makes it impossible for her to confess to her best friend Adam Roberts that she's in love with him. She can't give him the sort of relationship he needs, so she watches in silence while he plans his wedding with someone else.
Enter Nikoli Kinkaid, the campus manwhore...
Nikoli is a self-proclaimed connoisseur of women, and he wants to add Lily to his list of conquests, but she wants nothing to do with him-until he makes her an offer she can't refuse. He'll teach her to enjoy human contact again, giving her a chance to win over Adam, while Nikoli uses all his considerable charm to seduce her.
But Lily raises the stakes...
Lily loves cars. Her late father was a racer, and she grew up under the hood of a car and on the racetrack. Nikoli has a limited edition car she covets, so she informs him the terms of their deal also require he not sleep with anyone for six months. If he does, she'll win the car. If she surrenders and ends up in his bed, his beloved 'Cuda is his to keep.
In an intricate dance of control and surrender, a reluctant friendship becomes something more. Lily begins to crave things she never believed she could, and Nikoli realizes there is more at stake than his reputation.
If Lily overcomes her phobia, will she crave Adam's touch as she's starting to crave Nikoli's? Or will she only find pleasure from the touch of a semi-reformed manwhore?