You Know You Love M/M Romance When…

1. You see a print ad of a heterosexual couple kissing and blink, thinking for a second, “Wow, the guy on the left is really delicate.”

2. You understand the comic book expert next door is entitled to his opinion, but how does something called “back issues” negate the fact Thor and Loki are in love?

3. You understand more about the workings of the average dude’s prostate than your own g-spot.

4. You think Romeo and Juliet is fine, but as a love story, it can never hold a candle to Sherlock and Watson.

5. You have a collection of “Feel all the emotions!” and “Sobbing Uncontrollably” GIFs for future book reviews.

6. You have known the unending heartache of a beautiful cover hiding a “meh” book, and the incredulous triumph of an ugly duckling cover concealing a terrific story.

7. When friends who only read m/f romance lament there’s nothing good to read, you try not to gush about the joys of m/m romance for more than, say, 17 minutes.

8. You’ve learned so much about twinks, bears, cock rings, butt plugs and lube, you could function as a one-woman gay Welcome Wagon, should your community ever need you.

9. There are characters from m/m romances you read years ago that still seem more real to you than some of those so-called family members you’re required to mix with at Christmas.

10. No matter how many you read, you open the next m/m romance with a sense of anticipation, happiness, and homecoming.

SOULLESS

by T. Baggins

BLURB:

A Man of Science

Nicholas Robinson is a chemist decades ahead of his time. Crippled by a riding accident and embittered by his injuries, he shuns the world, focusing on his laboratory and experiments. But when the sale of his country estate, Grantley, leads to an encounter with a vampire, Nicholas realizes there is more in heaven and earth than he ever dreamed possible.

A Creature of Darkness

Although three hundred years old, Bancroft Ulwin is young by supernatural standards. Enslaved by his cruel, deformed maker, Ban is forbidden from relations with mortal men unless it ends in death. But his liaison with Nicholas, expressly against his master’s wishes, soon expands beyond mere lust to something more.

A Love Predestined

Long ago while still mortal, Ban met Serafino, the only true love of his life. When death separated them, Ban accepted his role as an enemy of human kind. But as he comes to suspect Nicholas is Serafino reincarnated, Ban begins to question everything he once believed. Including his own damnation.

EXCERPT

Ban’s laugh sounded incredulous. “Do you imagine you know what pain is?”

“Yes. And far better than you, I’ll warrant.” Nicholas couldn’t bite back the truth. “Whatever agony the fire dealt you, it was brief and swiftly healed. Only a memory.”

“Yet the pain of memory can be as devastating as the genuine article.” Ban held up an arm for Nicholas’s inspection. “Do you see that circular mark just below my wrist?”

Nicholas nodded.

“Notice how it goes all the way round? It’s a scar I acquired after death.” Releasing Nicholas, Ban pushed up his left sleeve. Below the wrist was the same perfect, circular scar. “And look, here is its mate.”

“From whence do they come?” Nicholas asked, leaning heavily on his cane to stay upright. 

Ban didn’t answer. Instead, he watched Nicholas struggle to stand with only the cane as support. Just as Nicholas, no longer able to bear the pain, overbalanced, Ban caught and effortlessly righted him again.

“My master often punishes me by taking my hands. If kept cold, they will not decay, and my body will accept their restoration.” Ban put his face close again, close enough for Nicholas to feel the vampire’s breath. It smelled foreign yet sweet, like an exotic herb he couldn’t quite name.

“Sometimes he takes them with a wire,” Ban continued. “Sometimes he takes them with a cleaver. But always in precisely the same place. In his youth, slaves were known by their bracelets. These marks are my slave bracelets, you see.”

Nicholas tried not to envision it. As a boy, he’d dreaded translating the death of Cicero from Latin to English. The orator’s hands and head were chopped off, a form of execution Nicholas found particularly disturbing.

“Remember,” Ban said. “If you piss yourself, it will only inflame me.”

Nicholas bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. “I have made my bargain, sir,” he said stiffly. “And I am quite content with our terms.”

“As am I, Nicholas.As am I.”

After that, silence prevailed until they entered Grantley, where Nicholas directed Ban toward the house’s main staircase.

“Surely you find such a task insurmountable,” Ban scoffed.

“I traverse those stairs twice a day, thank you.”

Ban released Nicholas. Stepping back, he sketched a bow so extravagant, his fingertips brushed the rug. “Breathless, I await the spectacle.”

Gripping the rail with his left hand and relying mostly on his cane, Nicholas managed to gain the first, second, and third steps in rapid succession before pain flared in his knee, intense enough to turn his stomach. If he insisted on such a pace, he’d vomit, or worse, faint. Convinced Ban’s stare was burning a spot between his shoulder blades, Nicholas paused for only a few seconds. Then with an involuntary groan he hauled himself up the fourth and fifth steps, lunging toward the sixth before a wave of dizziness overtook him.

“Enough of this. It’s too much for you,” Ban snapped.

Nicholas bristled at his touch.“I tell you, I can do it!”

“Not before the sun comes up.” Ban lifted Nicholas in his arms as easily as a kitten.

 “God damn you, I am a man!” Nicholas blinked back tears of loathing. Perhaps it wasn’t literally true, not anymore, but he didn’t care. He wanted Ban to erupt, toss him down, tear his throat out. Instead, the vampire seemed not to hear, taking the stairs effortlessly, two at a time.

 “Here we are,” Ban announced as they gained the landing, giving Nicholas an insufferable smile. “Now. As you’re bought and paid for, I find myself anxious. Where is your bed?”

Review by Katinka C.

Marketing lessons: when choosing a business name, or an author pseudonym for that matter, make sure it’s memorable and fits with what you are trying to achieve. Well, Ms. T. Baggins certainly got 1 out of 2 right, didn’t she? 😀
If I can give my not so humble opinion though, I think it’s a bit unfortunate that an author who writes books that demand to be taken seriously, opted for a name that I associate with penis pranks. That, in combination with the 2 hastily thrown together  ‘fried chicken’ style torsos on the cover, made me anything but eager to give Soulless a shot. Luckily there’s always the power of Goodreads and gushing friends… so here I am.

Talk about not judging a book by its cover! Soulless is very much a historical vampire story in the tradition of Anne Rice’s work. Not that I’ve read anything else by Rice than Interview with the Vampire (and I did so a long time ago). But I do recall its gloomy atmosphere, sense of impending doom and thick plot. In Soulless too, these elements are present and preserved throughout the story. AND….its vampires are merciless, thirsty creatures who violently kill innocents and greedily drain them of their blood. The RELIEF, FOLKS! The relief after all those Maybelline lipstick abusing weaklings living on a diet of mice.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For Soulless had me at..*cough*…’castration’. You see, Nicholas Robinson, the lord of the manor Grantley, was trampled by a horse several years ago. The accident has turned the charismatic man into a bitter, divorced and limping eunuch. He hardly leaves his estate anymore.. so this is where the handsome Bancroft Ulwin visits him to make him an offer: not only does he wants Nicholas to sign over Grantley, he tries to seduce him in the process. Almost succeeds too, until he is being outed as a vampire and chased away.

Alas! To save an innocent girl’s life, Nicholas is forced into making a deal with the undead creature after all… and finds that Ban wants all of him.

It meant nothing to Ban that the man was a eunuch. Nicholas was a simmering beauty, all the hotter because of his rage and bitterness. Neither illness nor blade nor mischance could erase masculinity.

As if the fact that we have a MC who is also a eunuch isn’t interesting enough, this book is like one of those epic saga’s. In pleasantly formal British, the author takes you on an occultism filled adventure that – although there’s a whopping 280 pages – hardly loses steam. Even the flashbacks (often a dreadful affair) were manageable. Something else I really appreciated was that the romance wasn’t the only ingredient or spiraled into sappiness. And yet  love is not only an integral part of Soulless, it’s the sole reason for the wheel of time to keep on turning and for throwing Nicholas and Ban together, life after life. So if Ban will be able to control his violent vampire urges…it will ultimately come down to this question: do these two men have a chance when fighting their enemy or will torture and death rip them apart once again?

I did have a few minor issues that I will mention anyway. I felt that there was a little too much chatter-boxing going on between characters at times.. Instead, I would have preferred more fleshed-out MC’s. Taking the grandness of the overall storyline into account, the love scenes should have gotten more attention too. They weren’t intense and descriptive enough for me. I guess I had expected an erotic cocktail of lust, blood, scents, danger and emotions. But I almost forgot there was a vampire involved in the sexing – not good! Finally, poor Martha: that was such an unfortunate spin to her story.

Like I said though, I’m just nitpicking on an otherwise bloody good story that you definitely want to take a closer look at. These vampires may not have fangs, Soulless definitely has bite!

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Amazon  ::  Barnes & Nobel  ::  All Romance  ::  Smashwords

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Orphaned at birth, T. Baggins was raised by wolves until age fourteen, when the pack moved on one night without a forwarding address. Returning to human society, Ms. Baggins taught herself to read and write by studying fan fiction. Cutting her teeth on Kirk/Spock (Star Trek: The Original Series, baby!) she soon began slashing rock stars and X-Men. Despite a lifetime spent in the southern U.S., T. Baggins considers herself a citizen of the cosmos and a freethinker, which is good, because no one has offered so much as a penny for her thoughts. In her spare time she enjoys blogging at Shades of Gay, emptying gin bottles and tweeting into the void as @therealtbaggins.

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