Ravaged (Burned, Inc 2) by Naima Simone-Review & Giveaway tour
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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date November 15, 2022
Miriam
It’s no coincidence that my family’s breakup service is called BURNED Inc. I know what it’s like to be dumped. I’ve been there.
Long story short, I’ve got a rule when it comes to my love life: no athletes. As it happens, my best friend, Jordan, is a professional basketball player. He also has a delicious body and sexy tattoos.
But rules are rules.
Jordan
Miriam is my best friend. She’s also the love of my life, the woman I’ve been dreaming about since we met. But she doesn’t do athletes.
I get it. I really do. And I just want Miriam to be happy. Which is why I set her up with a teammate to help her find the man she deserves—even though I can tell she’s into me from that one hot-as-hell night we shared months ago. Still, rules are rules.
But here’s the thing: I’m a competitor.
And sometimes you have to break the rules to win.
•••••
REVIEW: RAVAGED is the second instalment in Naima Simone’s contemporary, adult BURNED, INC erotic, romance series. This is twenty-seven year old, BURNED executive and graphic artist Miriam Nelson, and thirty year old, NBA star Jordan Ransom’s story line. RAVAGED can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty.Any important information from the previous story line is revealed where necessary.
Told from dual first person perspectives (Jordan and Miriam) RAVAGED follows the friends to lovers relationship between twenty-seven year old, BURNED executive and graphic artist Miriam Nelson, and thirty year old, NBA star Jordan Ransom. Miriam Nelson and her siblings Levi and Zora own BURNED, Inc, (Breaking Up, Reversing Nuptials, Evading Disasters), a professional break up service that does the ‘breaking up’ for their clients but Miriam is tired of the business, and wants to commit to working full-time on her secret career. Needless to say, no one knows about Miriam’s professional persona as a graphic designer, an anime artist with her own set of graphic comics but it is Miriam’s attraction to her best friend Jordan that fuels the fires of most of her stories, stories in which she and Jordan are the leading stars. Jordan Ransom is an all-star NBA player who has been sidelined with an injury, giving Jordan time to consider what and who he wants in his life. Having fallen in love with his best friend Miriam, Jordan knows Miriam doesn’t do relationships, and their one and only one-night stand left a small tear in Jordan’s heart. When Jordan’s teammate and widower Daniel Granger expresses an interest in Miriam Nelson, Jordan steps aside, only to realize he may have made the biggest mistake of his life. What ensues is the ongoing but struggling friendship between Miriam and Jordan, and the potential fall-out when both Miriam and Jordan refuse to admit they have feelings for one another.
The relationship between Miriam and Jordan is a best friends to lovers romance in which Jordan watches from the sidelines as his fellow teammate and NBA star Daniel Granger makes a play for our story line heroine. Miriam knows that hurting Daniel is the last thing she ever wanted to do but Miriam loves somebody else, somebody she knows better than anyone else. The $ex scenes are limited but intimate and seductive without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.
We are reintroduced to Miriam’s siblings: Levi, Zora, and Zora’s boyfriend / attorney Cyrus (Heated #1), as well as their parents Reginald and Monica Nelson; Jordan’s mother Grace , his estranged father Michael, and fellow NBA teammate/widower Daniel Granger.
RAVAGED is a story of family and friendships, honesty and heart break, acceptance and love. The premise is impassioned and engrossing but predictable ; the characters are animated, sassy and spirited; the romance is passionate.
Click HERE for Sandy’s review of book one HEATED
Copy supplied by Netgalley
Reviewed by Sandy
Stay.
A shudder ripples through me, and I don’t try to stifle it. Stay. I’ve been wanted for several reasons. My IQ. My talent. Sex.
But no one’s ever asked me to just be. And not with them.
For how long?
The question sits on my tongue like a five-hundred-pound anvil, but I don’t voice it, too afraid of the response. Besides, for once, I’m also content to just be.
Tilting my head back, I rest it on his shoulder. This up close and personal with him, I can catalog every detail on his face. The black pupil with the very thin ring of brown. The tiny scar on the edge of his right cheekbone. The deep dip above his top lip that lends it the bow shape. The almost-there-but-not-quite cleft in his chin.
I’ve drawn him countless times in the last few weeks. So many that his face is as familiar to me as my own. And yet, I could analyze him for hours and still find new elements that would fascinate me. Jordan Ransom could become a new field of study, and I would easily earn my doctorate in him.
“Tonight, I told Daniel I couldn’t see him any longer.”
His eyes narrow, but he doesn’t speak. Yet my heart pounds in my chest, and the beat grows louder, the volume so deafening I can barely hear my own voice.
“It wouldn’t have been fair,” I whisper.
“Why not?” he asks, and that dark, low timbre is midnight and sin. Temptation wrapped in sex.
“You know why.”
He bends his head the scant inches separating us and only stops when his mouth hovers a breath above mine. “Say it,” he orders, his lips so close they nearly brush mine.
“Because he isn’t you.”
Jordan doesn’t move, and I can taste his kiss, but he doesn’t eliminate the remaining space between us. Doesn’t take my mouth and give me what I can now admit I came here for. No, instead he stares at me, his expression inscrutable. Unease twists inside me, and for the first time since he placed me on his lap, I want to climb off, insert space between us.
“We’re going to f*ck,” he states, and while the word sends a lightning bolt of heat straight between my legs, it tightens the screw on my unease, deepens it. Because his tone is flat, almost disconnected.
“Yes.” We are. I need him tonight. And I won’t be able to stop at a kiss. I’m too empty, too hungry. I haven’t felt complete since the last time he filled me.
“And I’m going to be your mistake.” His fingers thread through my hair, sifting before fisting the curls and bringing them to his nose. He inhales, his eyes closing and, for a moment, freeing me from their hold. It’s in this instant that a flicker of emotion flashes across his face. Pleasure. Pain. Both. But when his lashes lift, his expression is back to being a mask of inscrutability. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m still going to f*ck you. I find I’m so goddam desperate to be inside you I’m willing to have you any way I can. But I just want to make sure I know where we stand.”
Oh God.
Regret pierces me in the chest, sliding between my ribs like the sharpest blade. I have a lot to answer for. The latest being from a couple of nights ago. I run the moments after our kiss through my head. I never called him a mistake, never said I regretted what happened on my couch. But viewing my actions, my silence, through his lens, I can see how he’d interpret them that way. And coupled with how I friend-zoned him after the first time we had sex, calling that a mistake . . . well, damn.
Briefly closing my eyes, I hate myself for causing this bold, beautiful man even a second of self-doubt. He’s no one’s mistake. No one’s regret. And I can tell him that. I could write him a fucking sonnet about that.
Or I could show him.
Published since 2009, USA Today Bestselling author Naima Simone loves writing sizzling romances with heart, a touch of humor and snark. Her books have been featured in The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly, and described as balancing “crackling, electric love scenes with exquisitely rendered characters caught in emotional turmoil.”
She is wife to Superman, or his non-Kryptonian, less bullet proof equivalent, and mother to the most awesome kids ever. They all live in perfect, sometimes domestically-challenged bliss in the southern United States.
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