Stripped with the vampire.

In a world of dark spells and blood ties where no one is safe, love is the most powerful magic of all. Shy vampire Charlie never intended to see Vince again after the bad boy human broke his heart. But when Vince turns up beaten and marked for sacrifice to an Aztec God, Charlie will do anything keep him safe. Vince has never forgiven himself for the lie that ended things with Charlie. The spark between them is as hot as ever, and Vince would risk body and soul to make it a fire again. But as they hide deeper in Austin’s supernatural society—a world of lies, dark magic, and warring immortals—he finds the path to reconciliation more twisted than he’s ever imagined.

Charlie is an adorable 300 odd year old vampire, who you can’t help but love, and Vince is a macho lovable 24 year old human. Even though it should never work, they can’t get rid of their love for each other – no matter how much they try and stay out of the way of each other, they are always drawn to each other when times are tough.

I love anything vampire/paranormal related. I was expecting this book to be quite erotic, going by the cover of the book, however it is far from it, it is mostly about their fight to get the vampire world back under control after a with has run riot and is destroying everything.

Charlie is a very much closeted gay man, where as Vince is so far out and this causes a lot of tension between the two, with Vince wanting to show everyone the real them, but he can’t because Charlie always holds back. His reasons to hold back are very good, he comes from a time when they wasn’t very accepting, and he is worried about the reaction of the other vampires, however with Vince’s help, he slowly gets used to the idea of being out.

This is a very slow moving book (it’s quite a long book with around 325 pages). Which I don’t mind since it does make the story better to read, however at a point (at the very beginning) I did contemplate stopping reading, but I stuck with it and I am really happy I did, I loved everything about this book. The only thing that I wish it had more of was.. sex, I was gutted there was only 1 & a half sex scenes in it! However, it was still a very enjoyable read.

I needed more penis! LOL.

However, I did absolutely love this book, and I am really happy that I stuck with it.

Closing ranks.

Internal Affairs investigator Jeremy Ranklin is looking into corruption within the Reno Police Department when he’s ordered to examine the suspicious death of the Chief of Police. The assignment partners Jeremy with Detective Cristian Flesh. Though they spar at first, Jeremy earns Cristian’s trust, and they work well together. Deeply closeted, Jeremy fights an attraction to fellow cop Kipp Mosely. The investigation brings Jeremy and Kipp together, but lies and secrets prevent things from going any further. Jeremy will need both Kipp’s and Cristian’s help to discover how deep the corruption runs—and to stay alive when the danger hits close to home.

Closing ranks starts with us getting introduced to Jeremy Ranklin who is an internal affair officer. He has been trying to fight his feelings for fellow officer Kipp. He is not known to be gay, so he is trying to fight his urges as to not to be found out.

As soon as I started reading, I knew I would like this book, I loved the writing style of the author, and it gripped me as soon as as I started. I loved everything about this book, Kipp and Jeremy’s relationship was so deep and meaningful, I fell in love with both the characters. The blossoming relationship felt really real.

There was a great suspense in the book, wondering if the chief of police’s death was actually a suicide or a murder, I kept flitting between who I thought was responsible for the death and as to whether it was actually a suicide. I did find however that the police work took a bit of a back seat for the romance aspect of the book, but I didn’t mind this overall because I did love the book.

There is 3 other books before this one, which I have not actually read, however I didn’t feel like I really missed out much because there wasn’t any detail that I didn’t understand, so you can definitely read this by itself.

Overall, a very good read. I loved the romance, the mystery and the story.