The vampires Jared and Byron have been friends for a great part of their eternal life. Their taste in humans to have sex with and feed upon maybe different from each other, Jared only feeding upon women and Byron preferring males, but they are what you could call best buddies.

One day Byron encourages Jared to try feeding upon a male and offers to lead Jared through this unknown territory. Quite unexpectedly Jared enjoys the sexual encounters that follow and is eager to follow Byron further on this educational path. But where will this path take him and what will it mean for their friendship?

In order to truly enjoy a book the logical part of my brain has to be either satisfied by a well researched and composed story or lulled in by an action-packed sequence, a hot sex scene or by characters I start to care for.

While reading this story I couldn’t stop the logical part of my brain from barking at me. The constant complaint was the main character Jared. Early on in this story I became quite confused by the descriptions of his character. The author in the beginning describes him as a very old, blood-sucking vampire, good-looking and charming. Ok, that would be right up my alley.

When on page 14 I read that Jared never before has received a blowjob (Quote: “He always enjoyed being deep inside the love canal of the women he took to his bed, but it never occurred to him to have them pleasure him in this way.”), I was sympathetic. You know, poor guy. On page 20 the author mentions that Jared had not seen many cocks until now (Quote: “Jared had not seen many cocks besides his own, and just recently, he’d seen the shapes of a few other men.”). I became suspicious. On page 22 we learn that he has never masturbated (Quote: “He’d never stroked his dick to completion before, he’d never had to.”). The barking got louder. And on page 29 we learn that Jared must really be a friend of the missionary position, because he has never taken a woman from behind (Quote: “Jared had never taken a woman from this position.”). Huh? He is a centuries old vampire and has fed upon and had sex with women maybe every single day since becoming a vampire and he has never even tried new positions?

These contradictory descriptions of Jared resulted in his image constantly morphing from experienced, blood-sucking vampire to inexperienced, young school-boy and back in front of my inner eye.

Another complaint was the storyline itself. As this is a short story I can’t go into detail on this point without giving too much away of the story. Let’s just say that the author made it difficult for me to truly “feel” the romance in this story. I mean, Jared is described as quite the manwhore. He has to feed every day. Feeding is always combined with having sex with his victims and since becoming a vampire he has only fed upon women. And from the story we get the image that he looks for his victims mainly in strip clubs. Another quote:

“He’d never stroked his dick to completion before, he’d never had to. There was always a woman nearby to fall into whenever it was hard and ready.”

And after reading those descriptions of Jared it became hard for me to “believe” in the complete transformation of his character in regard to his sexual orientation and in the HEA ending of the story.

But maybe I’m just overanalyzing this short story. The sex scenes (two are mostly straight and the rest gay) are quite good and described in an erotic and sensual way. I also liked the way in which the two main characters interacted with each other. It added to the story. So, overall I would describe this story as good.

And a reader who may be more able to subdue the logical part of his or her brain might enjoy reading this story even more.

Review first posted at Rainbow Reviews.
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
PURCHASE LINK: E-BOOK ( )