Her needs are dark. His are dangerous. Charlie MacNiall has been bringing his beautiful king shepherd to the vet clinic where Ranay Killian works for the better part of a year. She doesn’t realize he’s been slowly wooing her. She certainly has no idea that he picked her deliberately—that she is to become his. A broken heart and a desperate desire to be dominated make her the perfect victim. His perfect victim. Charlie fixes Ranay, testing her emotional limits while pushing her sexual boundaries past anything she’d imagined possible. Pain is their shared pleasure…until Charlie disappears and Ranay is all but destroyed. The FBI says the man she loves is a serial killer. Ranay can’t deny there’s a darkness in Charlie, a monstrous hunger that drives him to the brink. She even believes he could kill. But Charlie's hunger is what bonds them—it's the foundation of their love. Would he actually kill her? (91,000 words)

The explosive follow-up to Joely Sue Burkhart's darkly erotic thriller One Cut Deeper Life on the run with an assassin hasn't been what Ranay thought it would be. In fact, parts of it more closely resemble a sex-fueled vacation—until duty calls. The FBI believe Charlie's brother is working for a human trafficking ring, and Charlie is the only one who can bring him down. Charlie fears Vincent has become a murderous monster like their father. He owes a mercy to the brother he remembers, the one who'd never want to be an uncontrollable killer. But Charlie has never had to kill someone he loves. Not even to save them from a dark, inherited curse. Killing his brother might be enough to push him over the edge. Enough to ruin everything he's built with Ranay. \* As a bodyguard for the Vlasenko bratva, the very cruelest arm of the Russian mob, Vincent Gyres has seen and survived the worst the world has to offer. Former Special Forces, ex-CIA and a past inmate at Russia's most brutal prison, he's earned his reputation. They call him Ghost because he's already dead inside. Madison "Mads" Archer's hatred for scumbags who traffic in human lives is personal—her sister was taken when the girls were just children. Now Madison's on a joint FBI task force, deep undercover as a sex slave. It's a small price to pay to see the Vlasenko bratva taken down. A violent criminal like Vincent Gyres doesn't make a trustworthy ally, regardless of his CIA background. But Mads will use anyone and anything to stop the taking of another innocent young girl's life. Vincent's invitation to her to play his submissive in order to get closer to the leader isn't the problem. Trusting him, wanting him…loving him is.