I love… no wait, I adore naughty and slightly clueless, always randy, doing right by doing wrong, self-absorbed (no, I am not looking in a mirror!) characters in monk’s robes with a sterling collection of erotica as the sum total of a life’s work…

In short, I adore Dreu, my cleric with a family tree that makes him heir apparent, for what he’s not sure, but it has a lot to do with a man in Armani and a few poor choices. Well, make that a lot of poor choices.

In book 2 of The Strigoi Chronicles: Fane, our lovable monk is on the run… And he’s more than happy to bring you up-to-speed on his shenanigans.

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When it came to relationships, I sucked. I’d had nine hundred years to hone that suckiness into a fine-toothed weapon of sensory pleasure for me, leaving everything and everyone else defiled or corrupted or dead.

I’d gone through life, and most of the continent, treating my encounters like midnight raids on 7-11 snack food buffets. Not that I’d ever really been to one of those legendary pit stops for uncontrollable late night cravings. The modern world and a global entertainment perspective had educated me far beyond my simple scrolls and studious ways.

From the elegance of Cîteaux Abbey in my formative years, I’d traipsed the highways and byways of my native land, and after wearing out my welcome I’d meandered through the Austro-Hungarian splotch of despots and Teutonic pervs, finally ending up ensconced in a cave overlooking the Black Sea.

Me and my sterling collection of erotica and Cold War era Soviet arms. Good times.

Until a rat pack of arms smugglers discovered my sorry ass in stasis as I hid from dear old dad. There be pirates in that tale, though for me it was more hearsay than anything, stasis being what it was. What played out next set me on my present course.

And to misquote a favorite line:

Weres. Why’d it hafta be weres?

Very dangerous, Dreu.

You go first.

Except … I’d gone first in a direction I’d never once considered. Ass over teacups. In a raging hard-on, can’t-keep-it-in-my-tunic lust-of-my-life fixation on tall, dark and furry.

Yes, I was in love, smitten; and the objet de désir was none other than young master Stefan. Or Fane, in the diminutive. A Romanian-bred hunka burning love, with puppy dog eyes and assets that, quite simply, exceeded expectations.

He was also a dominant and a budding alpha.

To misquote another movie line: he had me at the manacles.