Vampire agents, SEALs, captives, and bodyguards fight their way into their women’s hearts.
Hope’s Kiss: When a police detective discovers a chamber of horrors in the basement of an old house, she’s horrified to find her ex-lover, Mark Wilder, locked in one of the cells. Naked and covered in bites and blood, he’s been changed into a vampire. And he’s insane with bloodlust. Unless Hope can reawaken Mark’s humanity, he’s doomed to remain the slave of a vicious predator. What’s worse, his vampire sire intends Hope to become Mark’s first victim.
Kissing the Hunter: Navy SEAL Logan McLean is on a quest for revenge against the monsters who murdered his wife. Virginia Hart is a sexy vampire searching for her lost soulmate, only to find him in a man determined to kill her. She must convince him all vampires aren’t psychotic murderers -- if he doesn’t get her first.
A Candidate for the Kiss: on the trail of a hot story, reporter Dana Ivory stumbles across a truly explosive scoop -- a handsome secret agent who happens to be a vampire. She wants her story, but Gabriel Archer has something much sexier in mind. He’s been looking for someone like Dana for a very long time: a candidate for the kiss.
Blood and Kisses: A murderous vampire assassin is hot on the trail of Beryl St. Cloud. Her only hope lies with yet another bloodsucker, James Decker. Broke and desperate, she offers herself as payment for the mercenary’s protection. But will the price end up being her very soul?
"Angela has compiled another hit in her 2nd volume of Forever Kisses. Vampire agents, SEALs, captives, and bodyguards fight their way into their women’s hearts. Just part of her variety of stories to heat your imagination. So sit back and enjoy."
-- 5 Stars from Ken Thompson, Amazon Review
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He was naked, covered in blood, and lying on the floor of a steel cage.
She’d still know Mark Wilder anywhere.
Detective Hope Barton scanned the room from the bottom step, eyes flicking from the cage to the bloody wooden table beside it, to the shackles that hung from blood-splattered cement walls.
The big, dimly lit basement reeked of murder: body fluids, rotting gore, and helpless suffering. Her stomach heaved, but Hope had been a violent crimes detective for two years, and she’d stood over her share of slaughter. Swallowing hard, she forced her dinner back where it belonged and did her job.
“Mark.” Hope strode toward the cage, ignoring the sticky puddles drying on the cement underfoot. She was too busy scanning the room for the key to his cell. There was no sign of one, dammit. “What the hell happened to you?” When he didn’t move, she raised her voice in a cop’s bark. “Mark!”
He stirred and lifted his head from the cage’s dirty floor. One dazed green eye met hers under a shock of matted blond hair. Blood and filth streaked his face, his lips were cut and bruised, and his left eye was swollen shut.
Somebody had beaten the crap out of him. And judging from his bloody knuckles, he’d fought back hard. Which was no surprise. Mark never took anything lying down.
Her gut twisted. How was she going to get him out of here? She grabbed the thick iron bars in both hands. “Mark… Mark, it’s Hope.”
For a suspended instant, he stared at her without any recognition at all.
“Arrrraaah!” With a tortured animal howl, he leaped at her in an impossible eight-foot bound. Pure reflex had her jolting back, barely dodging his hand as it shot through the bars.
How did he do that? Nobody could jump like that!
Mark’s lips peeled off snapping teeth, his powerful body straining to reach her with fingers curled into claws. His bare, bloody feet thudded on the bars as he kicked them savagely, trying to bend the steel. His one good eye glittered in frenzy.
He has fangs. She froze, staring at his sharply pointed canine teeth. Sweet God, Mark has fangs!
He sure as hell hadn’t had them in high school. She’d put her tongue in his mouth often enough to know.
As he bellowed and clawed, Hope damn near drew down on him. She managed to drag her hand away from the grip of her shoulder-holstered 9mm Glock, but it took an effort. I’m not going to shoot Mark Wilder. God, she ached to call for backup, but she no longer trusted anyone in the department.
Mark finally stopped howling. Clinging to the bars, he stared at her, his good eye feral and desperate, like a wolf with one leg in a bear trap.
“Mark, dammit, it’s me!” She all but screamed it, her voice raw with frustration and fear.
Recognition flickered in his gaze. “Hope?” His voice sounded broken, raspy, as if he’d been screaming. Screaming for a very long time.
Pity raked at her heart, along with a certain tense relief. At least he’d recognized her. “Yeah, it’s me.” She gave him a twisted smile. “Guess you were right. There is a vampire in Reede County.”
“Told you.” He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as if fighting some powerful urge. “I warned you… what he was.”
Yeah, but she’d thought he’d lost his mind. The story he’d told her last week had certainly sounded insane.
* * *
They’d been working their way through a pizza in his den as Blade: Trinity roared away on the big flat-screen television, Wesley Snipes killing vampires with a fanged snarl and flashing arcs of his sword.
It was a DVD choice Hope later realized was deliberate.
She’d folded a slice of the pizza and was about to take a healthy bite when Mark said, “I know who killed Joy.”
Hope dropped the slice back on her plate. He’d said he had something to tell her when he’d invited her over, but she’d had no idea he’d meant anything like this. He looked tense, as if he dreaded telling her whatever he had in mind, his green eyes narrow and wary. “I’m listening.”
“Patrick Stone came to my folks’ house the night after Joy died.”
“The tent revival preacher? You think he killed your sister?” She wished she could reject the idea, but she couldn’t. Sexual predators often assumed religious covers that gave them access to victims, and they moved around a lot to keep from getting caught.
“Yeah. We thought Stone was going to offer to pray with us or something, like my folks’ pastor had.” Mark braced his elbows on his knees. A muscle in his jaw flexed as he bit off the next words. “Instead, the fucker told us all to forget about her, that she was nothing but a little slut.”
“Oh, my God. He said that to your parents? So how hard did you kick his ass? And how many punches did your daddy get in?” She grinned, imagining Ted Wilder’s reaction to anybody saying something like that about his little girl. Preacher or no, Ted would have taken the guy apart.
“None. Dad believed the bastard. They both did.” Mark’s big hands flexed between his knees.
“What? That makes no sense. What did you do?”
“Invited Stone outside and tried to knock his teeth down his throat. He blocked every punch, tossed me on my ass…” Mark stopped and took a deep breath. “And then he told me he was a vampire. Showed me his fangs and told me exactly what he did to Joy. In sickening detail.”
“He actually had false teeth made to look like fangs?” That would explain the puncture marks in the victims’ bite wounds.
“No, Hope. He really is a vampire. He said that’s how he made my parents believe him -- he’s got psychic abilities no human can resist.”
A chill raced over her skin, and Hope had to work to keep her face expressionless. On the screen, Wesley showed his fangs in a flash of white against his dark skin. “Let me get this straight. You believe your sister was murdered by a vampire?”
He didn’t look away. “I know how crazy it sounds, but yeah, that’s exactly what I believe.”
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