Blood Mate
Kitty Thomas
Publication date: October 25th 2023
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Blood Mate, a dark fairy tale…
Nicole has been happily married to big shot attorney, Dominic Rose for ten years, but soon after their anniversary he grows cold–as if she doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, another man has been pursuing her far too intently for comfort.
August Corinth is a six-hundred-year-old vampire, cursed to kill and suffer the pain of his victims each night until he can find the one woman who can resist his thrall, his blood mate. Once he’s found her, there are no lines he won’t cross to claim the promised salvation even if it means taking away everything and everyone she loves.
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EXCERPT:
He rose in a preternaturally fluid way and strode across the cellar floor. Nicole cowered, as if she had any hope of escaping him when she’d seen the futility of a powerful man’s attempt. She had nothing like the strength of that man, and now he was so much meat, waiting to be returned to the earth to fertilize something else.
August took her hand more gently than she’d expected after what he’d done. She couldn’t stop shaking.
“Please… please not me,” she whispered, her eyes focused on the ground. She couldn’t meet that terrifying, glowing gaze. Although a man had died, her thoughts and fears were for her own fate.
His hand trailed through her hair. “Not you,” he agreed. “And not any of the rest of them if you’ll consent to what I propose. Their lives are in your hands, Nicolette.”
She turned to the cages with four people still alive. They looked like prisoners of war. Shell-shocked. Almost like animals instead of people.
“W-what do you mean their lives are in my hands?”
Was this because she wouldn’t date him? He’d terrorize people until she did? Did he think she could ever love him amidst such conditions? What was wrong with him that he would become so fixated on her? Why her? Why not move on to someone else who returned his affection? Now that his looks were back, it was impossible to see how he couldn’t find someone to share his bed willingly. As long as they didn’t know the gory details. Those light hazel eyes glowing against the backdrop of warm, brown skin and jet-black hair. That tall, sleek athletic frame. Man-candy was the phrase her friends at work would have used.
“Vampirism is a curse,” he said quietly. “It’s not like in the movies. I am made to suffer. If I don’t feed, I suffer until I do. Inevitably I must feed. When I feed, I can’t stop until my meal is dead. I must take one each night or what you saw happening to my body starts. At first I just age, but after about three days it turns into what you saw.
I don’t want to kill. I don’t want to hurt anybody, but I have no choice. Do you know the heavy weight that is on my soul? All those human lives?”
“Why don’t you end your life, then? Is survival of such great value that you would kill every night to keep it going? Am I supposed to feel bad for you when you could greet the sun?”
She ignored the fact that she’d first met him in the daylight.
He smiled sadly. “Would that it were so simple and easily remedied. Do you think I haven’t tried? I’ve tried everything to end my life. Nothing works. I’m only allowed death if I should pass this curse to another. I wouldn’t die automatically, but I would be capable of it, at least. If I passed the cup to someone else and died, what new torments would await me on the other side for such a heinous sin against another soul? After what I’ve suffered, do you think I could bring myself to give it to another to carry? If I did, I truly am a monster with no further excuses.”
Nicole’s gaze shifted to the cages. “I don’t understand how I can save them.”
“By giving yourself to me.”
Author Bio:
KITTY THOMAS writes dark stories that play with power and have unconventional HEAs. She began publishing in early 2010 with her bestselling COMFORT FOOD and is considered one of the original authors of the dark romance subgenre.
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