
Heartbitten
by Aubrey Rose
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Pub Date Mar 10 2014 | Archive Date Apr 18 2014
Description
From NYT Bestselling Author Aubrey Rose comes a pulse-pounding vampire romance novel with a bite of wit!
Billionaire
playboy Robert Chatham is as bloodthirsty as it gets. Snarky and
self-obsessed, he has a new girl every day of the week. What the London
tabloids don’t know is the reason Robb acts like a lady-killer: to avoid
having to kill them. A four-hundred year old vampire, he feeds and
moves on, never getting attached to any girl.
Until Liz.
A
shy American transplant in the heart of London, Liz is slaving away on
her grad school project: working to find a cure for the blood cancer
that her younger sister died from years ago. Dead focused on her
studies, she’s more interested in the chemistry of hemoglobin than in
the chemistry between her and any guy.
Until Robb.
After
an old vampire friend comes asking for a favor, Robb has to choose
between repaying a life debt and chasing after the one girl who’s broken
through his emotional walls. And when Liz stumbles upon evidence that
seems to solve the puzzle of his mysterious seclusion, she confronts him
in his lab. Only the dark secret she thought she had uncovered turns
out to be something even more terrifying.
With a dead body in the
trunk of his Porsche and a vial of cancerous blood in the pocket of her
lab coat, Robb and Liz are heading for a collision course that will
change both of their lives forever…
Excerpt:
"Liz pushed
herself away from the embrace. The connection between them snapped as
their lips broke apart, and Robb stood in front of her, his hands
outstretched, looking concerned.
“Wait one second,” Liz said. Her thoughts whipped through her brain in a hurricane of confusion.
“Of
course,” Robb said. He touched her elbow, letting his fingertips run
down her arm and to her wrist. She struggled to breathe normally. Pangs
of sheer lust threatened to overwhelm her body after that kiss. She
hadn’t wanted to stop—no, she should kiss him back—no, she mustn’t—
“Please,”
she said weakly. She didn’t even know what she was asking for. A moment
to breathe. A moment to regain her senses, to make the world clear
again. Robb’s cologne was so strong! The scent of it dizzied her.
“We
can go slowly,” Robb said. He put both of his hands up and rested them
gently on her shoulders. Liz instinctively leaned forward, then caught
herself.
“I don’t…I don’t think this is right,” she said. She was
trying to remember the reason that she didn’t want Robb to take her to
bed. All of her logical reasoning, however, seemed to be overtaken by
the warm flashes of desire that kept bringing her focus back to Robb’s
flushed face and full, eager lips.
“Liz, let’s not pretend either of
us doesn’t want this,” Robb said. His hand caressed her cheek and then
circled back around, his fingertips teasing the edge of her earlobe. The
skin there was so sensitive that she felt that at any second she would
faint with pleasure. “Give in. I’ll leave the project for now. I’ll—”
“No!”
Liz furrowed her brow, feeling conflicted with her body’s instinct.
“I
wanted to work at your lab because it’s the best in the world,” she
said. She heard her own voice rising, growing tense. She felt a million
miles away. “You can’t sacrifice the project for this!”
“No, no,” he
said, his tone reassuring. “Not at all. The project will continue, don’t
worry. I would only leave if you wanted me to. Or if you felt
uncomfortable….”
Liz did feel uncomfortable, but she didn’t know why.
There was something too slick about the way he was talking to her, as
though he was telling her what she wanted to hear, nothing else. His
desire seemed real enough. That kiss—oh! That kiss!—seemed real enough.
As she wavered, he wove her fingers into his and drew her close. She
could not help herself from leaning into his embrace. He reached up and
gently slid off the tie from her ponytail, letting her hair loose.
“Oh,
no, it’s a mess—” she said, but he had already plunged his hand into
the dark mass of hair. She felt his strong fingers cradle her head,
tilting her back as he pressed a kiss to her lips. This time he kissed
her lightly, and Liz ached for more pressure as his lips grazed hers,
his arms locking her tightly to his chest.
Then he dipped his head
and she lost her breath again, this time tumbling through the waves of
his kiss. The kiss seized her, sent her head to toes in somersaults of
uncertain desire, but oh, yes! Desire!
“God, you taste delicious,” Robb said. His fingers grasped her chin and tilted her head back. Robb locked his eyes on hers.
“Like
emeralds,” he whispered. Something happened then that Liz did not
understand. For a brief instant, the veil dropped away from his face and
Liz saw his eyes shine with tears. Then he blinked and the curtains
drew back over his emotions.
“I don’t know what you want,” Liz said.
Her body was rushing headlong into this, but her brain told her to put
on the brakes. “I don’t know what this is.”
“It can be anything you
want it to be,” Robb said. His head was bent and then he was kissing her
neck, his fingers running through her hair, and then—
“Ahhh!”
Liz
heard herself cry out as though from afar. She’d felt a piercing pain,
then a shock of pleasure so sharp that it drove all of her thoughts from
her mind. It was like an explosive had ignited, a blinding white flash
of sensation that lifted her into a different realm altogether.
She
closed her eyes and felt her body dissociate into its component parts.
She saw herself as though she was floating above her own body, made out
of cells and tissues and blood. Yes, blood. That was the thing that
pulsed through her and made her alive. She’d studied hematology for so
long that the change in her perception made her more curious than
frightened. She flexed her hand, thinking only of the veins and arteries
that stretched through and let her life force flow to the tips of her
fingers. Her heart beat and she tracked the blood plasma and cells that
rushed up through the pumping muscle. The point of perception shrank
down and she was carried along with the blood, watching the cells pass
through tunnels and canals, splitting up at forks in the arteries and
tumbling over one another. Tiny molecules of oxygen attached to the
blood cells and were carried along as well, sometimes breaking off and
drifting away of their own accord.
Pleasure, so much pleasure. The
enclosed river of blood, thick and warm, soothed her as it flowed. Her
lips parted and her cheeks flushed, the blood rushing into the tiny web
of capillaries just underneath the surface. There, too, she could see
the pulse of her heartbeat, albeit faintly. All of her body was a tangle
of veins stretching through her limbs, and they grew out like roots
pushing through fertile ground.
Then the sensation left her, and she
was drawn back into her own body, back into corporeal form, again
looking outward. Liz opened her eyes as Robb’s mouth moved over the skin
on her neck, licking and sucking gently, his breath hot, his tongue
even more so. Her skin tingled.
“My god,” she whispered.
He
paused for a brief moment, his lips hovering over hers before she
reached up and pulled him down again for another kiss. He caught her
lips with his and she let herself fall headlong into the embrace. The
laboratory was forgotten, the university forgotten. This was what she
had been trying not to admit to herself, what she had been looking for
unconsciously and denying herself for years with the same excuse. What
man would give her pleasure in the same measure as he took it?
This man."
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Available Editions
EDITION | Ebook |
ISBN | 9781496139788 |
PRICE | $3.99 (USD) |
Average rating from 45 members
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