Review: The Deeper He Hurts by Lynda Aicher

The Deeper He Hurts by Lynda Aicher
Series: Kick, Book 2
Publisher: Loveswept
Genre: Male/Male Erotic Contemporary BDSM Romance

ISBN: 9780425285138
Release Date: September 6, 2016
Source: Publisher
Buy it here: Amazon | B&N

Asher Ruggiero, a partner at Adrenaline Kick Adventures, is living a lie. As a control freak whose big Italian family thinks he’s straight, Asher likes his encounters concise, dirty, and discreet—until his company’s new rafting guide walks into work, dripping with brooding, intense sexuality. Sawyer Stevens is a mystery man with secrets and rough edges, and he makes Asher want to get to know him inside and out.

Ever since the tragic death of his parents, Sawyer has dedicated himself to the rush of adrenaline that comes from pleasure and pain. Moving from one guy to another, hiding when life gets too complicated—that’s all he can handle. So why does Asher make him long for something lasting and honest, when the gorgeous geek can’t even be true to himself? Sawyer wants to give Asher his heart, but he just doesn’t know how. After all, a life without integrity is a life without passion—and that’s the one thing Sawyer craves.

The Deeper He Hurts is a dark, emotional romance that captivated me from start to finish. There’s no sophomore slump to Lynda Aicher’s Kick series – Ash and Sawyer’s rocky road to a satisfyingly kinky happily ever after is completely addictive.

One of the things I liked best about the first Kick book, The Harder He Falls, was that the heroes weren’t perfect. Ms. Aicher delivers up two more fantastic, flawed heroes in Ash and Sawyer. Ash is an incredibly intelligent, confident man who comes across as almost icy, but actually has a warm and loving heart. Yet for all that Ash is comfortable with who he is, he’s terrified of coming out to his deeply religious family and has to live with the torment of not being himself around those he loves the most. Asher is also a sadist, one who is becoming less and less enamored with play partners who don’t satisfy or match his needs. Sawyer, in turn, is a man who can’t escape the ghosts of his past. He suffered a tragedy that marked him at an impressionable age and he’s never fully coped. He’s reckless with himself, a self-described “pain slut” who plays without limits. He and Ash click immediately, but even though Ash demands that their encounters have rules, Sawyer’s lack of concern for his own safety scares him.

What starts as a temporary arrangement where pain can be doled out and taken turns into something much more very quickly. Sawyer’s need for pain isn’t sexual, but the unexpected attraction between he and Ash makes him actively want something from a sadist other than pain for the first time. I absolutely loved the intensity mixed with the quiet moments as Ash and Sawyer grow close. Sawyer is quick to smirk and even quicker to run, so it’s not easy for he and Ash to fall in love. The angst of their internal battles was fantastic, and this is coming from a reader who can generally take or leave angst in her romance. It’s no simple matter for either man to find peace or to open themselves up to the possibility of the future they could have. That being said, there was a wealth of quiet, intimate moments and even a few spots of levity that balanced out the heavy emotion and kept The Deeper He Hurts from ever feeling weighed down.

The Deeper He Hurts isn’t for the faint of heart. Ash and Sawyer aren’t Dom and sub, but they are sadist and pain slut. There’s heavy, graphic pain play in this book that won’t appeal to everyone. As a trigger warning, there are also references to self-harm. All of this is part of Ash and Sawyer’s characters and I appreciated that Ms. Aicher showed sensitivity to the subjects and didn’t pay lip service to safety.

I highly recommend The Deeper He Hurts. It’s not an easy read by any means, but Sawyer and Ash’s love story is compelling, emotional, and memorable. I loved it and I can’t wait to read the next Kick book, The Farther He Runs.


FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

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Review: The Harder He Falls by Lynda Aicher

The Harder He Falls by Lynda Aicher
Series: Kick, Book 1
Publisher: Loveswept
Genre: Male/Male Erotic Contemporary Romance with Light D/s

ISBN: 9780425285121
Release Date: June 7, 2016
Source: Publisher
Buy it here: Amazon | B&N

Expert whitewater-rafting guide Grady Kelley lives for that rush of adrenaline: at work, as the newest employee of a Portland-based outdoor-adventure sports company, and off the river, where liaisons with anonymous men keep him satisfied. Grady prefers no drama and no strings attached, but when tragedy strikes, fate leads him to Micah Swaine. He’s hot, masculine, distracting—and offers the kind of deeper connection Grady has sworn off, no matter how badly he craves it.

Working at a leather bar, Micah meets a lot of guys, but Grady’s different—and he seems to feel the same way. The trouble is, anything beyond casual sex is too risky for Micah. He’s got secrets he doesn’t know how to share, secrets that would make any relationship a battlefield. No man, even one as compassionate as Grady, would stick around for that kind of trouble. And yet, as physical desire melts the walls they’ve put up, Micah and Grady discover that trusting each other is the most exhilarating adventure of all.

The Harder He Falls is sexy, angsty, and features two wonderfully flawed heroes. Grady is a whitewater rafting guide who is floundering after an accident on the river lands his cousin in a coma. While visiting his cousin in the hospital, Grady meets Micah, a bartender who gets under his skin from the moment they meet. Their attraction is red-hot, but both men carry baggage that could crush any hope of a relationship before it even starts. It’ll take courage, trust, and patience on both their parts if they ever want to move beyond casual sex.

Micah is easy to love. He’s strong, protective, and patient, but he’s also a bit vulnerable. He was in a coma himself years ago, and though he has mostly recovered, he suffers from permanent side effects that he feels would be a burden to others. Micah likes to stick to brief encounters, but something about Grady calls to him, and he wants to help the other man just as much as he’d like to go to bed with him. As for Grady, his torment over what happened to his cousin is only the beginning of his problems. Grady’s formative years were shaped by abusers, he’s never had a support system, the only person he could possibly ask for advice (his cousin) is in the hospital, and Grady has a negative view of the submissive side of his sexuality. Grady isn’t a sub in the traditional BDSM sense, but he does like to submit in bed, which makes him a great match for Micah, who is a strong top. But it’s been ground into Grady that submitting in any sense of the word makes him weak, and that makes him fearful of what he gives to Micah. There’s a lot of push-pull in The Harder He Falls, but for me it was understandable given what Grady has been through.

When Grady and Micah aren’t battling their demons, they can be hot as hell. Lynda Aicher cranks up the heat in sex scenes that blur the line between kink and light BDSM. And while Micah and Grady’s erotic encounters sizzle, what really grabbed me about the story was the heart. Grady is troubled and gets wrapped up in his problems, but he’s also incredibly caring toward Micah. He never treats Micah differently because of his medical condition and he never makes it a defining characteristic of the man either (which I loved). Instead, Grady adapts and helps Micah when and how he needs it, and he creates a safe space for Micah to push his boundaries. The two of them are a great match and both have a lot of love to give, which makes every obstacle they have to overcome worth it.

The Harder He Falls is the first book in the Kick series, which is about an outdoor adventure company and the sexy gay Doms who run it. We don’t see much of the company in this story, but I can’t wait to learn more about it and the men who work there. I finished Grady and Micah’s story a well-satisfied reader and I can’t wait to read the next Kick book, The Deeper He Hurts.


FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

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