Title: Viper’s Bite
Author: Delilah Devlin
Series: Night Fall #6.2
In: The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance (Trisha Telep)
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Paranormal romance, Vampires
Pace: Medium
Format: Short story
Publisher: Robinson
Year: 2008
5th sentence, 74th page: Every part of him strained outwards.

One night of pleasure…

His name is Viper—a dark mysterious enigma who rules the seedy, dangerous vampiric underworld. For one night, he will escape his murky prison and tempt an innocent.

…can last a lifetime…

Beautiful Mariah haunts him. Lures him from his den with a glimpse of his past. One she doesn’t remember. This night, he’ll be her dream lover. He’ll seduce her, make her fall in love with him—then leave her. Again.

One night of pleasure is all they must know.

This was kind of a typical vampire romance. He was obsessive (I really don’t know why this is a recurrent theme in “romances”, but that’s another rant for another day). And she is completely oblivious until their very first meeting. Then she is drawn to him. And yada yada yada.

What surprised me about this was the previous relationship of the two leads. They have one night to rekindle an old flame and life and remember what once was. It was kind of bittersweet in this way. It lent a strong sense of borrowed time and love like it’s your last moment to a tale that would have otherwise just been too cliché.

<- Knowledge of Evil

Dreams ->

Image source: Goodreads