Dirty Sexy Inked by Carly Phillips, Erika Wilde Series: Dirty Sexy #2
Series Rating:
Published by Amazon Digital on April 5th, 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 168
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
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Breaking hearts is what wild and rebellious Mason Kincaid does best. Hit it and quit it is his motto, and with his bad boy reputation and tattoos, he doesn't lack for female companionship. Until one hot night with the one woman he swore he'd never touch becomes an all consuming addiction he can't kick. Katrina Sands has been his best friend for years, but now that he knows what she feels like, and tastes like, there is no going back to being just friends. Hot, dirty sex has never felt so good...or so right.
After reading Dirty Sexy Saint, the first book in this series, I was really excited to get to this second one. Friends-to-lovers is one of my favorite tropes. Especially when both people are in love with each other and refusing to admit it. And I have to say, my wait for this book was well worth it. Mason and Katrina were such great characters. We got glimpses of them in the Saint, just enough to whet my appetite for them.
This book opened with Mason and Katrina and some of their friends on a plane to Vegas, which is coincidentally where I read it, on my way to RT. They’ve been best friends for most of their lives, but recently both of them have been having stronger feelings for each other, and neither of them are willing to admit it because they both think the other couldn’t possibly feel the same way. Katrina has had these feelings a lot longer than Mason, and she’s realized that she can’t keep torturing herself the way that she has been. Mason is just realizing he has feelings for Katrina, and he’s dealing with it by ignoring it and sleeping with every woman who crosses his path, and Katrina can’t stand to sit by and watch it happen anymore. She’s decided that she’s going to leave the tattoo shop where they both work, even though it’s going to break her heart.
Mason, for his part, can tell that something is bothering Katrina, but has no idea what, and is fed up with her hiding it from him. He’s decided that he’s going to get to the bottom of it while they’re in Vegas, no matter how much she tries to fight him on it. They’ve been in a bit of a holding pattern for months, and he has no idea why or where it’s come from. Because it never occurs to him that the problem could be Katrina has feelings for him and hasn’t expressed them yet. Nor does it occur to him that it could be bothering her that he’s sleeping with every woman he sees because of these feelings. Because he can’t imagine that she has feelings for him.
But then… Vegas. The feelings they have for each other come to a head, boil over, and any other metaphor you can think of for super hot sexy times. Then they try their best to do the whole “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” thing, but we all know how that’s going to go. Once those two let hooked up and realized just how hot they were together, there was no way the chemistry between them was going to stay under wraps no matter what city they were in.
There’s a lot more than just sizzling chemistry to these, too, though. Their shared past has a lot of traumas that they’ve gotten each other through. They’ve been there for each other when no one else was, including the parents that should have been. Katrina, especially, has been through a lot, even more than Mason knows about, and has the scars to show for it. Mason thought they had shared everything, and when he realizes there’s an entire chapter of Katrina’s life he doesn’t know about, it really throws him for a loop. He doesn’t know how to react, and that throws him, too. Mason is not a man who is used to not knowing what to do in any given situation. He’s also not a man who’s used to being in actual relationships, and I loved watching him navigate it and throw himself whole-heartedly into it. Mason is one of those people who just goes all in when he decides he wants something, and Katrina, who has wanted nothing but Mason for so long, is simultaneously thrilled by this development and terrified it’s going to go away. I could understand her fear. I don’t think Mason had ever had a relationship before, and he’s always been pretty open about not wanting one. Katrina had nothing but her belief in him and their history to make her think that this would be any different.
As much as I enjoyed the first book in the series, that one was definitely a lot lighter. Dirty Sexy Inked touched on some deeper, more emotional issues, and I really connected with the story. Katrina and Mason were explosive once they got together and I appreciated that Carly Phillips and Erika Wilde let the relationship between the two be the only real drama. There wasn’t a lot of external stuff going on, just their individual histories and Mason trying to convince Katrina that he was really ready to settle down and that she was it for him.
If you haven’t checked out this series yet, you absolutely should. This book can be read as a standalone, but you’ll have a deeper understanding of the characters and their journey if you read Dirty Sexy Saint first.
About Carly Phillips
After a successful fifteen year career with various New York publishing houses, and over 40 sexy contemporary romance novels published, N.Y. Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Carly Phillips is now an Indie author who writes to her own expectations and that of her readers. She continues the tradition of hot men and strong women and plans to publish many more sizzling stories. Carly lives in Purchase, NY with her family, two nearly adult daughters and two crazy dogs who star on her Facebook Fan Page and website. She’s a writer, a knitter of sorts, a wife, and a mom. In addition, she’s a Twitter and Internet junkie and is always around to interact with her readers.
