Dead Man Walking, an all-new “hauntingly beautiful” and dark MC romance from Wall Street Journal bestselling author Giana Darling, is available now!
A killer. A criminal.
A psychopath.
The Irish enforcer for The Fallen Men MC is everything good girls are taught to stay away from.
Only, I found myself inexorably drawn into his dark gravitational pull. I wanted to know what it would be like to walk beside the human personification of Death and hold his hand, feel his kiss, and maybe even earn his undying love.
But Priest McKenna is older, cold as ice, and notoriously unfeeling.
So what are the odds that a dead man walking would come to life for little, insignificant me?
When a serial killer begins to target the women of Entrance, BC, and The Fallen suffers another terrible blow, Priest resolves to hunt down the killer himself.
And when the murderer sets his eyes on me?
My very own psychopath steps between me and certain death, thrusting us into an intimacy I prayed we would never recover from.
***5 ‘Yin and Yang’ Stars***
I’ve loved all of the books in the series so far, but this may just be my fav of the bunch.
It hit all the right romance buttons for me and gave me a little more that kept me turning the pages until the very end.
I ADORED Bea and Priest. ADORED. Bea is complex. She is goodness and light and truly owns everything that she is. But in that light, she has a keen understanding of darkness and isn’t afraid of it. Priest is a killer, but he’s a loyal one who will protect those he calls his own, no matter the cost. While on the surface these two may appear to be opposites in every way, they are more alike where it counts...in their hearts and souls. I thoroughly enjoyed their journey to their HEA. Yes, it was dark and chaotic and crazy, but their connection was undeniable. They simply got who the other was and only became stronger for it.
This was a great read. Yes, there are a ton of triggers and things get all kinds of cray cray, but considering who both Bea and Priest are, it was all necessary for them to grow as a couple as well as individuals. And as for the Fallen Men family, Zeus is still my fav (though he is now sharing that spot with Priest) but I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with everyone and getting to know them a little bit better especially Wrath, who I’m crossing my toes will get his own HEA, and the ladies of the MC, who are all kinds of crazy and strong in their own unique ways and keep me coming back for more.
~ Copy provided by SBPR & voluntarily reviewed ~
Add Dead Man Walking to Goodreads: https://bit.ly/2TZQE9P
It wasn’t exactly the first time I’d been occupied with thoughts of the girl with the pink ribbon in her hair. In fact, I calculated—because I was bored and, admittedly, obsessive—the first time had been two years, three months, and twenty-seven days ago.
It happened one day when she was eating a peach. It was such an innocent, innocuous thing and she, such an innocent, relatively innocuous girl. Nothing about the situation called for my attention. We were celebrating some birthday. The women brought the cake, and we brought the booze. Everyone was happy, talking and laughing as classic rock pumped through the speakers of Z’s oceanside home. I was even enjoying myself, talking to Smoke and Bat about the new advances in gun technology.
But then, something about the way she endeavoured to eat that piece of fruit drew my gaze from across the crowded kitchen of the Garro’s house. There was a knife in one hand, a sharp-edged paring knife with an ivory handle, and the swollen fruit in the other. Lower lip between her small, square teeth, Bea methodically cut into the fragile flesh and segmented it into clean sections that fell from the stone center into her palm. It was a shade too ripe, the seam of the skin splitting easily, juice splashing across her fingers to run down the slim, pale underside of her forearm. I watched raptly as she finished decimating the peach, then brought the blade to her full mouth, a small pink tongue flashing out dangerously close to the edge to gather the sweet liquid into her mouth. Greedy for the taste of it, she held her sticky hand bearing the fruit aloft and carefully dragged the knife up her arm, collecting the juice so she could once more lick it, kittenish, from the steel.
I wanted to be the knife.
It was, without a doubt, the single sexiest act I had ever witnessed. I felt like a voyeur standing in the kitchen of a family home lusting after the seventeen-year-old girl with a cloud of white gold hair as bright as a halo around her face as she sweetly ate a piece of fruit.
Then she did something very few people have ever successfully done.
She surprised me.
I watched with my head slightly cocked, alert like a bird braced for flight, as she sauntered across the tile on light, dancing feet with toes tipped in pink. She didn’t make eye contact with me, and it was carefully done. The way someone avoided the eyes of a potentially dangerous animal even as they were drawn closer.
She used that knife, now licked clean, to pierce a piece of fruit and casually, just a lazy rotation of elbow and wrist, extend it my way.
I stared at the peach, the glisten of it mimicked on Bea’s pale mouth. If there had ever before been a moment that felt more like a crossroads, one of those intensely crucial decisions in life when sound and time slow to a molasses crawl, I couldn’t remember it.
The peach had become some forbidden fruit, like Eve’s lusted after apple.
I did not believe in signs, omens, or myths, religious or otherwise. I believed in the power of action and base desire.
And even though I knew it was an idiotic idea, I wanted to taste the same fruit that glossed Beatrice Lafayette’s bowed lips.
So I folded my large, cold hand over her wrist, prompting her to flinch slightly with fright or anticipation. Her eyes flashed to mine, fleeting and silvered like a fish caught in a net, struggling to escape. I let her look into my own gaze, let her see the echoing dark there, and then I leaned forward to pry the peach off the blade with my teeth.
She sucked in a barely perceptible breath and watched as I tipped my head back to release the morsel into my mouth.
Without chewing, I gently took the knife from her and punctured the soft belly of another piece before relinquishing the blade back to her control. To feed her would have been too much, but at that moment, to watch as she ate the same thing at the same time as I did felt excruciatingly intimate.
The feeling scoured through me, fraying my nerves until I felt exposed.
I was not a man who chose to emote.
This was not me.
But I stood there for another moment as I chewed and swallowed in tandem with Bea, and when I turned abruptly on my heel and left the house without another word, I did it with an elevated heart rate.
So, that was it.
The moment I finally saw Beatrice Lafayette and the obsession officially began.
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