Rating: 3 Stars

Publisher: Hayden Saint

Genre: Gay Paranormal Romance

Tags: Fated Mates/Blood Bond, Insta-Love/Lust, Romance, Series, Short Story, Vamps

Length: 59 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Consider this review one big spoiler.

Blurb –

Graveyard Shift : A Vampire Romance

The rain never stops in Ashford. While the town sleeps the rivers and creeks overflow, and the graveyard shift at the diner feels endless for Nate. That is until a black car pulls into the drive through at 3AM every night.

The man behind the wheel is all wrong. Pale skin, and green eyes that shine in the darkness. He only orders coffee. He never drinks it. And he always asks the same thing-

“Let me in.”

For Nate, it should have been easy to say no.
He’s broke, exhausted, and desperate to help his mother. But something about Edward, the stranger with a predators smile, pulls him in. To Edward Nate tastes like the memory of the Sun, and their bond is fated.

A dark M/M paranormal romance about loneliness, obsession, and the hunger that feels like love.

Heat Level: Spicy
Ending: HFN
Series: Ashford After Dark Book #2

Review –

The is the second book in the Ashford After Dark series. You can find my review of Blood Work here. As I’m typing this, I’m still debating in my head on how I feel about it. It started off really good. Nate is working at a diner that’s drive-thru only during his overnight shifts. He needs the job desperately so he can pay his dying mother’s medical bills.

No one else is allowed inside the diner during those hours for safety reasons.

At 3AM every morning a creepy yet hot man goes through the drive-thru and orders nothing more than a cup of coffee. The customer is gorgeous, but there’s something different, a little odd, about him.

Edward is the customer. At first, he says, “You should invite me in,” to Nate, or something to that effect. Then it turns into, “Let me in.” Of course, Nate can’t because he’ll get fired if the powers-that-be find out.

One night everything changes when they have a mutual jerk-off session, with Nate inside the diner, and Edward in the rain on the other side of the window.

So far, so good, right?

And it was.

Until it wasn’t.

Eventually, Nate makes the mistake, at least to the company, of letting Edward inside the building after-hours. This starts their actual relationship, but it causes him serious issues with his boss.

It takes almost no time at all for Nate to discover that Edward is a vampire. There’s no real fear or anything. He allows Edward to take him to his home, they have sex, and Nate begs Edward for his bite. This, of course, is when the blood bond occurs, and they’re able to feel each other’s feelings. Not a bad thing if Edward didn’t still have to be fed by somebody other than Nate because Nate needs time to recover after the first go ’round.

This is where the story took a nosedive for me. There’s Nate picturing what Edward was doing as he was feeding from somebody else, even tasting the blood in his mouth, but then there’s him feeling the pleasure Edward gained from it. You know, from someone other than his so-called mate. Whether Edward had sex with the woman or not wasn’t mentioned, but Edward still got off on it, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just the feeling of being fed her blood.

Nate, for obvious reasons, takes off. He knows the bond will eventually fade if they stay away from each other, and that’s what he’s hoping will happen. He’s miserable. He knows Edward is miserable because he’s feeling his actual feelings. Something happens that brings them back together, and they get their HEA.

Edward using another human as a donor wouldn’t have mattered to me had the author not stressed the pleasure Edward was receiving from the woman he fed from. It was a slap in the face to Nate. He didn’t just know about it, he felt it. Also, I feel that Edward put way too much pressure on Nate, and he didn’t explain his ways or his need to feed like he should have until it was too late. There was the stalker stuff from the beginning, them masturbating together, and then bam!, sex and the blood bond, with next to zero discussion about it and what it entailed. I get that it’s a short story, but it wouldn’t have hurt to add a few more pages to elaborate on a few things.

The story was okay, but I’m not a fan of how certain things played out.

3 stars.