Read-Love-Blog is happy to be a part of Travis Luedke’s The Nightlife Series Blog Tour!
Below you will find information on each book in the series as well as excerpts and you can enter in the RaffleCopter below to win the SET OF 3 NIGHTLIFE BOOKS eBooks!
Also, Travis needs our help! Please help by voting on which gorgeous cover you like best for The Nightlife Paris! Tough decision since all the cover choices are kick ass!
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The Nightlife New York
Synopsis:Vampires, strippers, escorts, night clubs, gangs, pimps and corrupt cops, the Nightlife of New York is never boring.
Is she a beautiful blond guardian angel as he imagined, or something else entirely? When Michelle saves Aaron’s life she shares the benefits of her blood (after getting him shot accidentally). He awakes a changed man, living in a purgatory of eternal night, never to see the sunrise again.
Michelle drags Aaron through a hardcore learning curve of vampiric slavery. Forced to adapt to servitude, Aaron is subject to her authority of compulsion. She orders him around like a puppet on a string, a dog on a very short leash. First things first, he must learn to feed properly without creating bloodslaves (humans addicted to the powerful drug-like effect of their venomous bite).
And then she puts him to work-a male escort in the sex trade-same as Michelle. Aaron walks a tightrope of strictly controlled feeding regiments and intensely erotic sexual adventures while catering to the neurotic control-freak tendencies of his new master. It’s do or die, Michelle vows to eliminate him if he proves too difficult to control. The real kicker-amidst all these shocking and degrading adjustments, Aaron finds he’s falling in love.
Can he maintain and keep a sliver of his humanity intact? Innocence is a luxury few can afford in the decadent nightlife of New York. In a world where sex, blood, and power over women is so readily accessible, Aaron struggles against the predatory instincts deeply rooted in his new psyche. He must find his way quickly, practicing rigid self-control, or risk the consequences of Michelle’s wrath.
Excerpt from THE NIGHTLIFE NEW YORK:
Aaron burned, outraged at the audacity of the grotesque, fat, ugly bulldog of a man assaulting the blond goddess. An involuntary cry tore from his throat, “Hey! Leave her alone! Get your hands off her!” He couldn’t believe either of these crude creatures would dare lay hands on the beautiful blond vision of perfection who spoke in an intoxicating stream of French obscenities.
“T’as une tête à faire soutier les plaques d’égouts!” She blasted the bulldog. Aaron recalled just enough French to know she’d told him his face could blow off manhole covers. She continued with, “Voulez-vous cesser de me cracher dessus pendant que vous par lez”, further expressing her disgust by telling him to stop spitting on her while he spoke.
Never ceasing her tirade of lovely French filth, the blond struck at the bulldog in a blur. In one swift move, she broke his hold on her wrist and clawed his face, leaving a trail of bloody slash marks across his left cheek. Without pause she instantly pivoted and punched Barney Fife in the nose with a gratifying crunch sound, and a backward head snap. A splat of blood flew through the air. She pivoted a split-second later to face the bulldog with a Taser in hand, magically snatched from Barney Fife after breaking his nose. The combat unfolded before Aaron’s eyes like a scene from a martial arts film. The heroine had the appearance of moving with super human velocity. By comparison to her whip-like actions, the detectives seemed to be in slow motion.
Aaron’s jaw dropped. He stood in complete awe of the scene taking place before him. He had difficulty accepting these bizarre events for reality. As the shimmery cocktail dressed wonder woman fired her stolen Taser, Aaron recognized the bulldog was not truly as slow as he had seemed. He had a pistol drawn and moving upward in a sweeping arc.
Aaron’s dream state shattered along with his heretofore unremarkable and short life when the Taser struck the bulldog at precisely the point when his gun sights aligned with Aaron. The electric shock of the Taser began a domino effect. All muscles and tendons in the bulldog’s body clenched, including his trigger finger. The sharp crack of the gun resulted in a slug passing through Aaron’s chest and out his back, knocking him to the ground with the impact.
The pain came seconds later, delayed. When it hit it was all-consuming, overpowering. Nothing existed beyond the horrible agony of his body torn to shreds by the wicked projectile. He wasn’t brave or manly or noble like all these scenes of bullet wounds from Hollywood films. He screamed and howled like a baby, and promptly blacked out from the overwhelming agony.
* * * *
SMACK, SMACK, SMACK. Aaron felt someone smack him three times. He beheld an angel with a halo of light around her tousled blond curls like the corona encircling the sun. She had the most succulent puffy lips and a benevolent shine of concern and compassion.
“Are you an angel?” His beautiful seraph began swearing in a stream of melodic French.
“Le réalité’ et toi vous ne vous entendez pas, n’est-ce pas?” She remarked on his disconnect with reality. He didn’t know what to say. How do you greet the angel of death?
She resumed her obscenities, “C’est vraiment des conneries!” The words seeped in slowly, sparking a memory from French class––this was bullshit. Are angels supposed to curse?
He was so tired, cold, numb. Is this what it feels like to die? He drifted back into unconsciousness content in the belief that heavenly hosts carried him off to a better place
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The Nightlife Las Vegas (Book #2 in The Nightlife Series)
Synopsis :
Vampires, Aaron Pilan and his master Michelle, live by one rule — no bloodslaves. EVER. Aaron breaks that rule when he meets Anastasia. All Anastasia wants is to be loved and cherished, but the predatory men she’s attracted to bring her only pain and abuse. Escaping one train-wreck relationship for another, she finds happiness with Aaron and Michelle as a bloodslave, a ‘pet’. When Aaron uses his telepathy to win thousands at the gambling tables, he attracts the deadly attention of the Colombian Cartel and Aaron and Michelle are ‘disappeared’. Addicted to the bite of her vampire lovers, Ana is desperate to find them. But, Las Vegas isn’t ready for vampires mixing heroin, sex and vengeance. Ana is trapped in the spiraling chaos.Find out what happens in the second novel of the Nightlife Series.
Excerpt from THE NIGHTLIFE LAS VEGAS:
They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what the hell do they know? Twenty-two year old Aaron Pilan could testify from experience that significant gambling losses––or winnings––definitely follow you home.
After three weeks of hitting the gaming tables, he was practiced at the fine art of gambling. He knew the truth behind the veil of glamour. As P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a fool born every minute.” Many a fool arrived in Vegas with a wad of hard earned cash fantasizing about winning big and coming home to boast of the thousands they reeled in during their brief stint as a high roller.
He joined the foolish masses in their desire to hit it big. He fully intended to beat the odds and walk away from the gaming tables, winnings intact. It looked damn good for him at the moment. Of course, being an exceptionally gifted telepath afforded him a decidedly unfair advantage –– definitely contributed to his good luck.
Another caveat to the Vegas rule would be murder. An untimely death by strangulation definitely puts a kink in the high roller status. Aaron read his opponent Alexander Demarco’s mind as the man contemplated this very thing. Poor Demarco had been suffering the systematic and thorough fleecing of his poker chips. He was a very unhappy man.
* * * *
Demarco envisioned a number of ways to kill Aaron Pilan, starting with the quick and dirty double-tap bullet to the back of the head. Upon further consideration, that seemed almost too merciful, too quick and easy. He graduated to fantasies of Aaron begging and pleading for his life out in the Vegas desert. He imagined Aaron hog-tied at the bottom of a six-foot pit as the dirt hit his face while being buried alive. Demarco had personal experience with both methods of murder.
He finally settled on a slightly more violent alternative. Strangulation would be the most satisfying method of killing the punk. He imagined the strength of his own hands wrapped solidly around Aaron’s throat, squeezing out his life as he flailed about feebly. God I wish I could do it right now. He had always preferred the ‘hands on’ approach.
I know that son-of-a-bitch is cheating somehow. His gut instincts were rarely wrong in these matters. The punk always knows exactly when to fold and when to call, he’s impossible to bluff. He could smell a con from the end of the room. No way could Aaron clean him out so consistently by pure chance.
His intuition was sharply honed from the years he spent hustling on the streets of west Humble Park Chicago, between Grand and Arlington, smack dab in the center of Latin Kings territory. He bore his gangland battlefield scars proudly, a soldier displaying badges of merit. The dog-eat-dog survival-of-the-fittest lifestyle was second nature. He couldn’t enter a building without staring down every person in sight and watching all the exits.
This punk can’t weigh more than a hundred sixty pounds. I could take him any day of the week. He sized up Aaron, measuring him against his own two hundred ten pounds of lean muscle and six foot frame of a professional athlete. Why am I lettin this white devil bitch run the show? I wonder if he’s a Fed? Maybe this is a setup. He had an overwhelming feeling he was being taken for a ride. He much preferred being the one doing the taking.
By sheer luck and opportunity he’d been one of the select few who escaped the Federal Racketeering indictment leveled against the Chicago Latin Kings when he moved to Vegas in 2004, a year before the indictment was issued. Everything changed when he setup operations in Vegas. He graduated from small time movements of heroin and cocaine by the gram to major deliveries measured in kilos. His buddies back in Chicago became the end consumer. Long gone were the days of pushing dime baggies out on the street. Now he sold wholesale, fat transactions with sweet profit margins and far less risk of being snitched out by a punk ass junky popped off for banging a gram in a public bathroom.
And here he was a high roller, a shot caller, a badass, punked-out for thousands of dollars by a pinche gringo white devil with a smug smile. He scowled at the pair of fives in his hand and continued fantasizing about murdering Aaron.
* * * *
Aaron was well aware of Demarco’s malicious intents. He read all the sordid details in his mind as he raised the pot, smiling at Demarco all the while. He knew his pair of kings would win the hand unless the last card pulled a surprise. Not having learned his lesson yet, Demarco foolishly called his bet and slid another stack of chips forward on the table.
When the dealer laid out a queen, Demarco’s losses tallied up to $26,000. More than enough to justify murder. Demarco had once beaten a man to death over a thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine on the streets of Chicago. He now had twenty-six reasons to kill Aaron.
When his hand won again, Aaron knew it was time to leave the table. He bid everyone a good night, collected his winnings, and winked at Demarco. It was the wink that finally did it. Demarco literally saw red. The color of everything around him turned a violent shade of pinkish red as his blood pressure skyrocketed, hitting his temples in a pounding throb. The white devil had given him a migraine. He folded his hand and sat there fuming.
Aaron walked away tens of thousands richer. Worse, a drop dead gorgeous blond wrapped herself around the white devil as if she would bang him right there.
“You left them with their pants?”
“Yes love. Shirts. The phrase is ‘lose your shirt’. I feel merciful tonight. They’re still fully dressed.” Aaron caressed Michelle’s face as she cuddled with him, aligning her curves to all his sharp angles.
Demarco’s mind broadcast clearly as he watched Michelle holding Aaron intimately. Demarco seethed with a rare combination of envy and hatred. In his opinion, a woman like that deserved a real man, not some arrogant young prick. Back in the ghettos of Chicago, Aaron was what they called soft.
He glanced over his shoulder at Demarco with a look. It was not a soft look. In this one instance Demarco’s instincts were dead wrong. He was young, but not soft. Not by anyone’s definition of the word.
He scanned Demarco’s mind one last time before walking away. Green-eyed jealousy consumed his every thought. They always want what they can’t have. Aaron had become accustomed to this reaction. He and Michelle were a strikingly attractive pair. He knew onlookers considered his dark haired, dark eyed, five foot eleven frame of model caliber, but Michelle was a whole different level of attractive. If not for her petite five-foot two, she could have been a world famous runway model. Her lazy golden curls framed flawless pale skin and vibrant green eyes. Her shapely hourglass curves could win international beauty and swimsuit contests.
All who crossed paths with the couple felt the effect of the magnetic attraction they exuded. They had a phenomenal stage presence drawing the eye of any observer. As several sets of eyes tracked the couple, Aaron remembered his first night spent with Michelle. Just five weeks ago, he awoke to her angelic face and adorably incomprehensible French accent explaining, “This is the magnétisme animal of the vampires.”
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Blood Slave
Synopsis: Her mother named her Esperanza de Salvador – Hope for Salvation. But when a girl works as an escort for Colombian cartel in the ghettos of Spanish Harlem, there wasn’t much hope, or salvation.Hope’s telepathic ability keeps her a step ahead of ruin, but her unusual gift attracts the attention of a psychotic vampire bitch. Trapped in a Manhattan penthouse with the psycho, she thought she was dead meat.
Her survival lies in the hands of Vampire Master Enrique. He seems to respect her, perhaps even care. As a measure of protection, he makes her his personal Bloodslave. Helplessly addicted to his bite, Enrique rules her every moment. As always, Hope must adapt to survive.
Swept into the decadent nightlife of Manhattan’s elite, she falls in love with Enrique and prays someday he may grow to love her, too. But is it simply a relationship of convenience? Is she nothing more than a concubine desperate to satisfy his nightly demands for blood and sex?
And forever in the background is the fear that one day the cartel boss she abandoned will hunt her down to collect on old debts.
Excerpt from BLOOD SLAVE:
I awoke in the afternoon alone in bed. I could still smell him on the sheets. Like the fool I am, I thought he’d be there. Wake up sex can be awesome, but I rarely if ever have someone there when I wake up. And it usually isn’t someone I really want there.
A dining cart awaited me with pizza, bottled water, a couple cans of Ensure protein shakes, and a note. The pungent aroma of the chicken pesto pizza had me ravenous. I inhaled two pieces as I read Enrique’s little love note:
Dear Hope:
Please eat and drink as much as you can. You will be anemic constantly. You must take very good care of your health. The Ensure supplement will help. There will be plasma and blood transfusions available soon, you will probably need them. Take the sublingual strip Suboxone to hold off withdrawals until we meet again after sunset around 7:15 p.m. The Suboxone goes under your tongue.
I apologize for your situation. I hope we can find a way to work through this and become friends.
Love
Enrique
Okay … Suboxone. Some of the guys at the Towers mentioned it once. It helps fight off heroin withdrawals. One guy said it gave a slight buzz, but nothing like heroin. I have never and will never try heroin. I’ve seen what addicts look like, it’s really fucked up.
So why would he give me Suboxone?
And why wait till seven? Three hours from now. I didn’t want to wait for him. I wanted him here now. Right now! I wanted him to bite me again right now!
“Son of a bitch! He got me with that fucking bite. That’s what he’s been talking about. He’s got me hyped on his bite! Fucking vampires!”
I had a craving, a need, an unscratchable itch for Enrique. Three more hours to go.
* * * *
I was bouncing off the walls by 5:30 p.m.. The Suboxone helped get rid of my headache, and I had a decent buzz going. None of that solved the craving I had for Enrique, or more specifically his bite. A warm bath didn’t help, the three cans of Ensure didn’t help, nor did the half bottle of chardonnay, although it kicked up my buzz nicely.
By 7:16 p.m., I was ready to strip the floral print wallpaper off with my nails. Every part of my body ached for Enrique. I don’t mean pain, I mean need, desire, angst. By 7:17 p.m. I kicked at the locked door, front kicks and sidekicks. I took a few steps back to do a jumping side kick when he opened the door with the most infuriatingly calm comment on his lips.
“Did you miss me?”
I screamed and launched forward. “You son of a bitch!”
He caught me right out of the air in a graceful embrace, absorbing all my impact in his iron hard arms. Before I could react, he bit me fast and hard, right in the neck, robbing me of all sense and reason. Anger, hatred, need, frustration, all obliterated in the blast of sweet, sweet euphoria so intense it brought tears to my eyes. He carried me to the bed as I convulsed with orgasms, still held in the leech’s embrace as if he cared for me. It’s a good thing I didn’t have any underwear on beneath my bathrobe, I would’ve had to change them. My inner thighs were soaked by the time he let up.
I hated and loved him. I wanted to kill him, fuck him, and kiss him, all at the same time. What a mess. Hate won the toss up as the strongest sentiment of the moment.
“I hate you.” I spoke in a quiver, breathless from his bite.
“I expected as much. It’s regrettable, but under the circumstances you left me no choice.” He sighed.
“That’s all you have to say? What did you do to me?”
“I know this seems bad. I understand you’re upset, and rightfully so. I apologize, but it was necessary.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had to assure your loyalty. I had to bind you to me. There was no other way.”
“What do you mean bind? How am I bound? I can’t read your mind! You have to tell me what you’ve done to me. Why do I want to be with you all the time? Why do I need you to bite me?”
“I understand. It must be upsetting you can’t get in here.” He tapped his finger on his skull. “The only name for your condition I have ever known is an archaic terminology I learned from my master over a century ago. He called them ‘Bloodslaves’. I think it’s an inappropriate title. I have no intention of making you a slave.”
“If I’m not a slave then why don’t you let me go home?” I whined.
“Querida, you know too much. It was bad enough you knew of our existence. Then Lia brought you here. She is a constant strain on my patience. If she had let you be, the situation would’ve diffused itself. I imagine you considered her an eccentric. As it stands now, I can’t let you go. To be truthful, your particular talents are intriguing. I’m beginning to like the idea of having you around.”
He had me crying by then. I couldn’t go home, ever. He’d never let me go. Hating him for my captivity, I still felt this inexplicable desire to touch him, coerce him into biting me again. The bastard had me hooked like a damn heroin junky! As I stood there with tears streaming down my face, the son of a bitch hugged me.
It didn’t seem real. Like a bad dream I couldn’t wake up from. He had to let me go home.
“What if I promised I would never say a word to anyone? Who would believe me? This is all so crazy! I can’t hurt you or expose you in any way! I’m an illegal immigrant! I can’t call the police or any other government agency! Your secret’s safe with me! I don’t care who or what you are, or where you live. I just want to go home!” I begged him shamelessly. “I don’t want to be a bloodslave! And I can’t stand it here. Your mind is locked up solid. You could be lying to me! I don’t know anything about you!”
“Shush, Shush, Shush. It does no good to lament. What’s done is done. Querida … you are bound to me. The bond cannot be broken. Surely you’ve noticed the connection between us, the way you need me?”
“OH MY GOD! You did this to me on purpose!”
“Though I’m not proud of it, I’ll not lie. Yes … I did this.”
“Oh God, I’m a slave!”
“That’s not really correct. I’ve no need to stoop to such degradation. I respect you. Enough drama – let’s look at some of the positives here.”
“What’s positive?”
“I know this seems bad, and it is, but there are some benefits to this life. Come with me.”
I followed him reluctantly into the luxurious bathroom attached to my bedroom prison cell. The nicest bed/bath combo I’d ever stayed in. If I could come and go at will it would be perfect.
We stood before the mirror. “Do you notice anything different about yourself?”
I looked in my eyes. I had a post orgasm flush, anger and frustration evident on my face. My eyes were wet from crying. Nothing seemed different from the person in the mirror an hour ago when I’d taken a bath.
“What’s supposed to be different?”
I took him seriously, a new sense of fear bloomed in my gut. What had he done to me? Was I changed? Was I like him now? I opened my mouth to inspect my teeth, looking for the tell-tale fangs. Nada. Nothing changed that I could see.
Enrique snorted laughter. I elbowed him in the ribs. My temper flared up. This was my life he laughed at! The asshole felt so damn solid, like hitting a piece of wood.
He had a twinkle in his eye. “Look at your face. Do you see any bruises or black eyes?”
The bastard hadn’t even flinched when I hit him, he was impervious. He stared at me expectantly with a faintly amused expression. I looked in the mirror again. I scowled, not a very attractive look for me overall. No bruises, no black eyes, not a mark on me from yesterday’s scuffle. My elbows didn’t have any raw spots from when I’d hit the floor. The bite marks that should have been on my neck were nowhere to be found.
I again asked the question, “What did you do to me?” My voice filled with fear and awe.
“There are some pleasant advantages of repeated exposure to our bite. With each bite a small amount of venom is released into your system. This causes the euphoria. Our venom is quite beneficial over time. You’ll heal much more quickly. Your immune system will improve, a higher resistance to communicable diseases. And you’ll age more slowly than the average person. You could live to be well over a hundred. How old are you? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?”
In shock from his words, it took me a few seconds to answer. “Twenty-two”
“Oh … well you seemed a bit older. So very young to have lived through so much. It’s to your advantage. You’ll look as you do for many years to come. A good situation for someone so young, to enjoy youth for a few extra years.
“How old are you?”
“Very old.”
“You don’t look a day over thirty five.”
“Why thank you.”
The bastard had calmed me down. I chatted with him like old friends. He was so damn easy to talk to. Attractive, intelligent, kind, beautiful hazel eyes staring at me without blinking. Damn. I was falling under his spell. And why tell me all this? The more he revealed the more dangerous I became to him. He’d never let me go now, I knew too much. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! And still he stared at me with those beautiful unblinking eyes.
“I thought vampires were immortal, what’s all this hundred years shit? I could live that long just by being careful.”
“We live very long lives indeed, several hundred years or more. But you’re not a vampire.”
“Oh I get it. I’m just here for you to bite and fuck. I’m just food – a bloodslave.”
“Calmate querida. Vulgarity is so unattractive coming from such a beautiful woman. Listen to me carefully. You are not a slave. You’re my guest, permanently. That’s how you’ll be treated, that’s how it is.”
“A guest who can never leave the bedroom. That’s the same thing as a slave.”
“No more strife. Let’s get you some clothing, a few amenities. Lia has provided clothes temporarily. Get ready and I’ll return for you shortly.”
“We’re leaving? I actually get to leave the bedroom? Where are we going?”
“Yes, with me of course. I’m not letting you out of my sight. I’m taking you shopping as a gesture of goodwill. Isn’t that what all women want to do in Manhattan?”
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About the Author:
Travis Luedke is a husband, father, and author of Urban Fantasy thriller, Paranormal Romance, Contemporary Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction, and Sci-fi. He is currently catching a 3rd degree sunburn in San Antonio, Texas, and loving every minute of it. His recent works include “The Nightlife New York”, “The Nightlife Las Vegas” and “BLOOD SLAVE” the first novels in the Nightlife Series.
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