He’s willing to die for vengeance, until she gives him a reason to live…The fighter…
Giovanni Costas is the newest hotshot fighter in New York City’s underground MMA scene. From the outside, he’s on top of the world. Winning all his matches, getting all the women he could ever want. The truth isn’t nearly so bright. Isolated and alone, far from his family in Vegas, he’s struggling with inner demons that threaten to swallow him whole.
The stakes…
The more Giovanni fights, the closer he gets to the people who ripped away the most precious thing in his life. Eradicating them is his only focus…until he meets his reason for turning his back on the seedy world that has consumed him for two years.
The biggest battle he’s ever faced…
Carly Anderson is living a double life. A culinary student by day and a dancer by dark, Carly spends her nights in a cage of her own choosing. Flirting with danger is the only thing that dulls the pain from her past. When she catches the eye of the wrong men, it’ll take the right one to save her. If Giovanni doesn’t break her—and himself—in the process…
Warning: please be advised this book contains content some may find triggering (sexual trauma) and also contains graphic sex, language and violence that may not be suitable for underage readers.
He’d have me on my back in a minute and be inside me in twice that. And I’d let him…hell, I’d beg him. Because he was the only one who’d ever made me feel this way, like my skin and bones weren’t strong enough to hold my heart inside. He was everything.
Too much.
It’s been one year, a month, 3 days, 2 hrs and 58 minutes since I read Shadowboxer and been hounding Cari for a book for Giovanni and Carly. But who’s counting, eh? Tapped Out is a series that reads like it was custom written just for me. It’s everything I love in romance; gritty, sexy, action-packed, with a dash of suspense, and fantastic characters. Now if you know me, then you know there’s nothing I love more than a good alphahole. When Gio was first introduced as a secondary character in Shadowboxer, between his bad boy vibes and the barely restrained violence about him drew me in like a moth to a flame. Add in him being a successful MMA fighter with manwhoring tendencies and I. Was. Sold. But there was also something incredibly broken about him too. It’s clear that Gio was hiding some dark secret and pain and I was practically salivating to finally find out what it was.
Carly Anderson was first introduced as the younger sister of fighter, Mia Anderson. While on the surface she seems to be a good girl, underneath is a bad girl just itching to get out. Carly has also been crushing hard on Giovanni since she first bumped into him at the same gym where Mia trains. Even though Gio fairly successfully killed her school girl crush when he walked away with another woman in front of her, there’s still something there. But now, it’s not something that Carly is willing to chase anymore. She’s focusing on her school and training to be a chef, and leading her double life as a topless dancer at a high end club that no one knows she works at.
Carly may only be 18 years old, but this is no blushing ingenue. The girl is tough as nails and doesn’t exactly shy away from male attention. She craves the men’s lusty looks like a drug. But one night, she allows her flirtation to temp the wrong man and gets thrown head first into something she has no hope of escaping…not without Gio’s protection.
Gio has been making a diligent effort to stay away from the young beauty that tempts him like no other. She’s too young, too innocent, too good for the likes of him and the danger that constantly surrounds himself. He sold his soul to the devil for a chance at revenge, and there’s no turning back the hands of time now that it’s all been set in motion. He’s too deep in to see a way out. He may not be able to give Carly what she wants, but he can be her protector…and because he can no longer deny the pull between them, her lover.
Carly and Gio together were absolutely magnetic. But there’s so much more going on in this book than just the budding romance between them. There’s the mob, there’s Gio’s revenge for what he lost, there’s the lingering effects of what happened with Mia in Sneak Attack. All of it culminates together for one quick paced and entertaining as hell read.
Gio is the son of one of the biggest mob families in the city and turning away from that to the side of the enemy has put a price on his head. Can he keep Carly safe long enough to exact his revenge without succumbing fully to the dark side himself? Guess you’ll just have to read to find out.
On The Ropes was everything I’ve come to love about Cari’s writing. It’s gritty, emotion, and lawd but the woman can write a sex scene like no one’s business. There’s plenty of secondary characters thrown in the mix that made the story unfold like a movie behind my eyes. As much as my interest is piqued by Slater, I’m absolutely dying for a book for Dante. Dante is Gio’s older brother that has been in the “family business” that Gio turned his back on. After the events that unfold in this book, I’m even more curious for his story. Hell, who am I kidding? I’ll be stalking Cari incessantly for it.
As much as I loved Fox and Mia from Shadowboxer, I think I liked Carly and Gio together even more. They were so different and yet together…they fit. Their chemistry was absolutely sizzling.
Carly was everything I love about a great heroine. She took no shit from anyone and gave as good as she got.
If this series hasn’t hit your radar yet, you may have been living under a rock. If you enjoy your romances with a dash of dark and grit, it’s a must read. Tapped Out is definitely in my top 5 list of favorite fighter series and you can be assured that each upcoming book will be going straight to my auto-buy list. I love the absolute fuck out of it. While each book may be read as a standalone, I highly recommend reading the series in order to truly enjoy it. You would have a much better understanding and appreciation for the characters having that backstory on them.
READ THE SERIES IN ORDER
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