Loving Damien by Brooke Adams

Andrea knows her time for Loving Damien is coming to an end. Best friends since grade school, she found out he was a vampire at college. But with his coming of age, soon he will have to go through the ritual to become immortal and she will loose him…

Andrea Blair and Damien King are childhood friends, although their destinies couldn’t be more different. Andrea is human, while Damien belongs to a breed of powerful vampires who are born to immortal parents and live seemingly ordinary lives until they turn thirty, when they are bound by the timeless moon ritual to find a mate among their own kind or risk losing their immortality.
Despite being an irresistibly attractive uptown executive, Damien is a ruthless predator with an insatiable craving for human blood. But his craving for Andrea is equally as strong and he will stop at nothing to make her his mate against all odds, even if it means breaking ancient rules or saving her from other vampires. However, Andrea fears the consequences of loving a bloodthirsty vampire and desperately fights her secret longing to give in to his increasingly sexual demands.
Now, with his thirtieth birthday just a month away, Damien is racing against time to consummate the ritual before the last phase of the lunar eclipse, when must convince Andrea to give herself willingly to him in flesh… and blood.
But humans are off-limits to vampires, except to feed on.
Warnings: This title contains some graphic language and explicit sex scenes (heterosexual).

Damien King is part of a special group of vampires who are able to mate and give birth to ‘normal’ seeming offspring until they reach thirty. While he is a vampire, he grew up mostly normal, going to school and college, joining the family business but being groomed for the moon ritual to become immortal when he turns thirty. As a born vampire, he must find a mate and join with her on the full moon at his thirtieth birthday to become immortal. However, he is in love with and drawn to his best friend from school and college, a human woman who now works for the family business.

Andrea Blair has known Damien most of her life. Best friends in primary school, they even went to the same college. When several unexplained women turned up dead, Damien let her in on the family secret, that they are vampires. Being close friends, and that he has always protected and cared for her, she was accepting of his ‘lifestyle.’ But with his birthday and the change approaching, she knows she will soon loose him to his new life. Once he is a ‘full’ vampire, she thinks he will no longer have a use for a ‘mere human.’

When his secretary, another vampire, tells Andrea that Damien has proposed for both the ritual and real marriage, she looses hope for both their mutual attraction and any remaining friendship. She doesn’t know that he is in love with her and has been looking for a way for them to be together. He has found that if she is his true mate, there is a small chance that they can perform the ritual and if successful both be immortal. But he only gets one shot at immortality and has to convince her to try willingly….

Loving Damien has some problems…It is too short, and in a bad way this time. Andrea alludes to Damien’s predator’s need for blood, to the vampire being a true predator. But she doesn’t really tell us that Damien is a killer. We get that impression/understanding, and she seems to be accepting of that. What?!? Sorry, but it’s not okay to accept someone who kills your fellow man (woman), especially innocent women (is it wrong of me to be upset about this but ok with vamps who kill ‘bad guys’?). This is not explained, and I have issue with that as well. And why does he need to kill when at other times he is okay with just drinking (i.e. not killing). This seems to say he is vicious & wasteful when he does not need to be. Again, it is also wrong that Andrea is accepting of this, that she doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. (That there were missing/dead women in and around college shows this in not something new. And that she has known about it for years.) That Loving Damien is too short is shown in that this is barely mentioned in passing and Andrea doesn’t give any details (her opinion, Damien’s explanation of feeding vs. killing, etc).

Loving Damien characters are also a little disappointing. As I said, Andrea’s accepting of Damien’s killing when he could just feed is wrong. She should have more care for his victims and even herself (as is proven when she is almost attacked). That she is around him for years and doesn’t learn enough to keep herself safe from other vamps proves these vamps are a real threat. Damien comes across more than just the dark vamps of old, but almost like a bad guy himself. He mesmerizes his victims to lure them to where he takes from them, so he could drink from them then wipe this from their memory if he wanted to. He also could have marked Andrea years ago to protect her, but held back claiming to “not want to loose her,” yet almost did when she is attacked…This is suppose to be him loving her and all but just comes across as weak and selfish. I guess I have issues with both these characters, yet maybe they deserve each other.

Loving Damien is an interesting play on the born, breeding vampire concept. I do like the idea that not all vampires are “transfers,” but could be ‘born.’ After all, enough interacting and blood/sex exchange with full humans over the years are bound to have interesting results. I like the idea of “human for childhood/young adult, then becoming vampire.” (But even that doesn’t seem to be fully done here; Damien is already drinking blood and killing by the time he is in college…).

Loving Damien takes a good twist on the breeding vampire, but falls short on the execution. I do like Brooke Adams vampire idea here, but she needs more room to explore the concept. Hopefully next time we will see more of where this goes…