The Bourbon Kings #1
‘Now here’s a band of brothers who know how to show a girl a good time’
New York Times
bestselling author, Lisa Gardner
‘It’s not easy to find a new twist on the vampire myth, but Ward succeeds beautifully. This dark and compelling world is filled with enticing romance as well as perilous adventure’
Romantic Times
‘These vampires are
hot,
and the series only gets hotter … so hot it gave me shivers’
Vampire Genre
‘Ward wields a commanding voice perfect for the genre … Intriguing, adrenaline-pumping … Fans of L. A. Banks, Laurell K. Hamilton and Sherrilyn Kenyon will add Ward to their must-read list’
Booklist
‘These erotic paranormals are well worth it, and frighteningly addictive … It all works to great, page-turning effect … [and has] earned Ward an Anne Rice-style following, deservedly so’
Publishers Weekly
‘[A] midnight whirlwind of dangerous characters and mesmerizing erotic romance. The Black Dagger Brotherhood owns me now.
Dark fantasy lovers, you just got served’
Lynn Viehl,
USA Today
bestselling author of
Evermore
J.R. Ward
lives in the South with her incredibly supportive husband and her beloved golden retriever. After graduating from law school, she began working in health care in Boston and spent many years as chief of staff for one of the premier academic medical centres in the nation.
Visit J.R. Ward online:
The Black Dagger Brotherhood series:
Dark Lover
Lover Eternal
Lover Revealed
Lover Awakened
Lover Unbound
Lover Enshrined
Lover Avenged
Lover Mine
Lover Unleashed
Lover Reborn
Lover at Last
The King
The Shadows
The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider’s Guide
Fallen Angels series:
Covet
Crave
Envy
Rapture
Possession
Immortal
Published by Piatkus
ISBN: 978-0-349-40989-4
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Love Conquers All, Inc.,
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Piatkus
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
Praise for J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood Series
A Sneak Peek at What’s Next in the Bourbon Kings Saga
Dedicated to my beloved Southern Gentleman,
John Neville Blakemore III,
without whom this, and so much else, would not be possible.
You are cordially invited to
in celebration of the
One Hundred and Thirty-Ninth Running of
The Charlemont Derby
Saturday, May the Fourth
Ten o’clock
Easterly
RSVP:
[email protected]
M
ist hung over the Ohio’s sluggish waters like the breath of God, and the trees on the Charlemont shore side of River Road were so many shades of spring green, the color required a sixth sense to absorb them all. Overhead, the sky was a dim, milky blue, the kind of thing that you saw up north only in July, and at seven-thirty a.m., the temperature was already seventy-four degrees.
It was the first week of May. The most important seven days on the calendar, beating the birth of Christ, the American Independence, and New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
The One Hundred Thirty-ninth running of The Charlemont Derby was on Saturday.
Which meant the entire state of Kentucky was in a thoroughbred racing frenzy.
As Lizzie King approached the turn-off for her work, she was riding an adrenaline high that had been pumping for a good three weeks, and
she knew from past experience that this rush-rush mood of hers wasn’t going to deflate until after Saturday’s clean-up. At least she was, as always, going against the traffic heading into downtown and making good time: Her commute was forty minutes each way, but not in the NYC, Boston, or LA, densely packed, parking-lot version of rush hour—which in her current frame of mind would have caused her head to mushroom cloud. No, her trip into her job was twenty-eight minutes of Indiana farm country followed by six minutes of bridge and spaghetti junction delays, capped off with this six-to ten-minute, against-the-tide shot parallel to the river.
Sometimes she was convinced the only cars going in her direction were the rest of the staff that worked at Easterly with her.
Ah, yes, Easterly.
The Bradford Family Estate, or BFE, as its deliveries were marked, sat high up on the biggest hill in the Charlemont metro area and was comprised of a twenty-thousand-square-foot main house with three formal gardens, two pools, and a three-hundred-sixty degree view of Washington County. There was also twelve retainer’s cottages on the property, as well as ten outbuildings, a fully functioning farm of over a hundred acres, a twenty-horse stable that had been converted into a business center, and a nine-hole golf course.