Dark Deception (Vampire Royals of New York, #1)

by Sarah Piper

He didn’t feed on fresh humans for the same reason he didn’t fall in love—dalliances with both had made him weak and stupid. Mistakes he wouldn’t make again. Foul as it was, fresh demon blood offered the same nourishment as its human counterpart without the nasty side effects: arousal, euphoria, complete and utter obsession…

“Bloody hell, Mac,” he said. “You show up after fifty years… What did you think would happen? We’d pop over to the nearest pub, grab a few pints, and reminisce about the good times?”

“What is art, if not beauty? Art stirs our deepest passions, regardless of its origins. Is knowledge of its history a prerequisite to our pleasure?”

The last Redthorne witch hadn’t survived past her twenty-third birthday.

“Good answer, love. Because here’s my secret.” He hooked his fingers into the panties, and with a swift jerk of his wrist, tore them from her body like tissue paper. “You never really had a choice.”

There were only two areas he avoided—his father’s private quarters, and the dining room.

“And his daughter?” This, from Gabriel, who’d never trusted witches and always resented that vampires were so dependent upon them.

Doctors say the line between passion and madness is so thin, the chemical profile of the brain of a person experiencing the early euphoric stages of love is nearly identical to that of a person going insane.

“I’ve been alive for two hundred and fifty years, Charlotte. I hardly know anyone, and it’s hardly a prerequisite for a promise.” “What promise?” “That I won’t let anything happen to you. Ever.”

“I’ve bloody well fallen in love with you, Charlotte D’Amico. Now come back to me so I can prove it to you.”