Obsessed by Books: 03/31/14

Monday, 31 March 2014

Heartbitten: A New Adult Vampire Romance Novel by Aubrey Rose

Heartbitten: A New Adult Vampire Romance Novel by Aubrey Rose
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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."

About this author

Aubrey Rose lives in sunny San Diego, where she likes to lay around in a hammock reading her favorite romances. When she’s not writing steamy stories, she can be found dancing naked in front of the mirror to Abba while her cat watches disdainfully.