NIGHT’S KISS
by Mary Hughes
Publication Date: November 18, 2019
Genres: Adult, Entangled: Amara, Paranormal, Romance, Vampires
SYNOPSIS
As a human who hunts vampires, I risk death each night I take to the streets. Bloodsuckers are stupidly fast. I have only my wits, my practice, and my weapons.
Oh yeah, and my rage.
Vampires killed my parents before my eyes when I was young. My revenge? I’ll destroy every last one of the evil bastards, starting with their king.
But only one man can help me locate the king. Achingly tall, dark, and too-sexy-for-his-own-good, Ryker is gorgeous enough to be the vamp king himself. But the devilish arch to his black eyebrow, his white, unfangy grin, and rocking the daytime are good clues that he’s human.
We’ll have to work together as uneasy allies if I hope to get my final revenge on the king—only now it seems evil monsters are also after our prey, and they’ll stop at nothing to see us all dead. And why are they having so much trouble finding the king?
Each book in the Ancients series is STANDALONE:
* Night’s Caress
* Night’s Kiss
EXCERPT
Ryker slashed at the vamp the same moment I’d stabbed. We hit blades with a force that made my teeth jar together.
“Don’t get in my way!” We yelled it at each other.
The gold-bar monster grabbed my throat. I froze, breath rasping in my trachea. His hand clamped my neck armor, so I wasn’t immediately dead, but once he peeled it away, my tasty carotid was his for the taking.
Before he could, Ryker slashed the vamp’s forearm, severing everything the monster needed to hold me. Clawed fingers fell from my neck. Ryker was already attacking another monster with precise, sweeping cuts of my talwar.
Graceful, deadly. His skill a thing of beauty. My breath stopped the barest instant.
“You may know vampires,” he said between slashes. “I know the king. If we work together…”
Together. I got an unwanted burst of pleasure at that.
“I lead,” he finished.
“You?” Pleasure exploded into annoyance. I slapped my sword Joyce into her sheath, freeing up my hands for the test tube of ruby vamp-dissolving serum. I popped out the cork. “How much vampire tracking have you done?”
Cut arm dangling, Mr. Gold-Bar gave up subtle and lunged at me fangs first. Feinting back, I tossed a couple drops of serum into his terrifying maw. They splashed in.
Gold-bar swallowed in surprise. Ryker raised a questioning brow an instant before he got distracted by a beefy vampire’s attack. I capped the tube, hoping the stuff did its thing even if the vampire wasn’t “mostly dead.”
The gold-bar sucker swallowed again—and clapped his good arm over his midsection. Alexis’s serum was evidently going to give him a good case of indigestion.
“The king isn’t your average vampire.” Ryker wrenched on the talwar, which he’d managed to get stuck in the beefy sucker’s throat. “A little help here?” Mr. I-Lead do-si-doed with the vamp, the blade not moving an inch. With a roar, the vampire raised claws to strike.
“Oh, now you need me.” I was already in motion to help him, drawing Joyce.
A pair of vampires lunged for me—or where I’d been. They smacked behind me like a couple of Stooges.
“I don’t need anyone.” Ryker snaked a long arm out the moment I was within reach—and snatched a stake from my fringe. “But I could use this.”
I jerked back. “That won’t do you any good!” Again, the sudden change twisted up the attacking pair, who bonked heads and reeled around for a moment. “Not without a sledgehammer to pound it through supernaturally hard bone.”
“Preternatural.” Ryker reared back then rammed the stake into the beefy monster’s breast, nearly to the hilt.
“What…?”
The vamp’s eyes went wide. I’m sure mine were as round. Ryker wasn’t simply bench-press strong, he was warhead strong. My lips parted as a delicious heat plumed inside me.
Doused when he said, “Their strength is preternatural. Not supernatural.”
“Do you have to work hard to be this annoying?”
He twinkled a smile at me. “Just naturally talented.”
Despite myself, a laugh bubbled up. I turned away before he could see it.
ABOUT MARY HUGHES
I write wickedly fun romantic adventures and steamy paranormal romances, stories that crackle with action and love. Challenging, alpha men–and women not afraid of a challenge. Oh, do the sparks fly when he meets THE woman guaranteed to infuriate and inflame him most. In real life I’m an author, a spouse and mother, a flutist, a computer geek, and a binge-TV-watcher of The Flash, Elementary, NCIS, and Wynonna Earp.
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