Dark Love Rising By Danita Minnis
Former MI6 agent Xavier Quinn
would say that you're daft if you think he will stop killing for a living. But
that is exactly what is about to happen. Very soon now, Quinn will
start killing to stay alive. On the run after taking out the wrong man, Quinn
would die a happy man if he could just live long enough to ruin the Parliament
member who set him up.
Layla, a 2,000 year old vampire
with a moral code, has other plans for the contract killer. When she awakens to
the sound of a dark rising, she enlists Quinn to join her on a mission to save
humanity from her twin sister Tamara.
But Quinn is just the kind of man
that a cold-blooded killer like Tamara needs in her world. A man like Quinn,
who never believed in humanity, has only one belief; self-preservation. Being a
vampire sounds much better than staying human in the game of kill or be killed.
Will he stay alive long enough to find out how Layla's love can change the
equation?
Excerpt:
Quinn tucked the gun into his belt
and stepped over Al-Sharif’s body.
He had spared the woman. There was
no reason to kill her; she was a harmless streetwalker who had just chosen the
wrong date tonight. He’d told her to go, and at first she had protested,
demanding payment from Al-Sharif. When she saw the gun, she ran.
Quinn started up the riverbank
towards the hotel strip, and stopped. A body fell to the ground in the
distance. It was too far to tell whether it was a man or woman, but he
suspected the blonde hadn’t run far enough.
There was no one else on the Nile
banks this time of night. The blonde had plenty of time to disappear, and now
he had no time to sweet-talk her. If she was thinking of blackmail, he’d get it
over with quickly. With one hand resting lightly on the gun, he made the trek
down the strip, brilliant lights on the left, a darkened Nile on the right.
He stopped before the fallen
woman, who was curled into a fetal position, naked and not blonde. The blackest
hair he’d ever seen covered most of her, but the shivering limbs he glimpsed
seemed luminous. There was no moon tonight, and yet her skin glowed, like the
alabaster figurines the locals sold at the bazaars on Sharia al-Lokanda.
Quinn knelt to help the woman up.
“Are you hurt?”
He took her by the shoulders as
she held her head and wavered unsteadily on her feet. Not rail-thin like the
drugged starlets who haunted the casinos. Her skin was porcelain covered in
gauze and cold as ice, but her curves were hotter than Hades. Her hips were
lush and her breasts would fill his hands. Her sickly pallor made her seem too
far-gone to be saved from death. He knew death; it was his business.
She was a beautiful cadaver. This
young woman was sick.
He let her go when she was able to
stand on her own. She pushed glossy sheets of midnight hair out of her eyes and
it fell to either side of her, covering her breasts like a silken shroud. He
was watching that hair shimmer against her hips in a lover’s embrace when he
felt her hands clamp around his neck.
He grabbed her wrists, but
couldn’t break the frosted beauty’s grip on his throat. For one
unbelievable moment, he could have sworn her feet didn’t touch the ground. Her
head was level with his.
She had seemed almost catatonic
before, but now, even as he struggled, this petite goddess pulled him down.
Her eyelids fluttered and he
thought she would pass out, but the grip on his neck was cutting off his air
supply.
Just as his own eyelids began to
close, she looked him directly in the eye.
“Aurelius.” Eyes, the shape and
color of almonds, widened in recognition and she loosened the chokehold on his
throat.
#BookHugs #DarkLoveRising
Born and raised
in the heart of New York City, Danita is a singer, writer and lover of romance.
Her fourth novel, Dark Love Rising is
her first vampire romance. She is the author of the ghostly love story Adderley’s Bride and the Cardiff novels,
Falcon’s Angel and Love Entwined.
Mystery, mayhem,
the fantastic and the fey are as intriguing as Siberian
Huskies - shout out to the Khan Man. One more
hour with her laptop and Danita is living the dream.
Connect with Danita:
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