Wow, talk about an unexpected 5 star book! I grabbed it for a quick read and it caught me up almost immediately. In fact, the book blurb doesn’t really do it justice.
Theron is a descendant of Hercules, not immortal but long-lived…about 500-700 years or so. He bumps into Casey in a strip club. Literally. He bumps her while she’s serving some jerk frat-boys drinks. She feels a tingly feeling, he looks at her as if he knows her, but can’t quite place her, then he walks away. To a gorgeous petite blonde. He scoops the blonde up and carries her out. I loved the description. “He pulled her close as if she were made of glass and seconds later swept her up into his arms and whisked her out the back door of the club, straight out of a scene from An Officer and a Gentleman. Only this guy was ten times bigger and a million times hotter than Richard Gere ever was.”
Casey (Acacia Simopolous) is running her late grandmother’s bookstore and working nights as a waitress at a strip club while trying to figure out what to do with her life. She takes off early after watching Theron leave with the blonde (Isadora). On her way out, she sees him being mauled by…things…and tries to help.
Theron uses his Jedi-mind tricks to convince Casey he was hit by a car, and to take him home to heal him. He’d sent his fiancee Isadora home and used up his powers, so he can’t self-heal. The daemons had taken one look at Casey and poofed back to Tartarus. He thinks she’s just a human, and is annoyed at his reaction to her. He has her help mend his gashes and he sleeps at her house. The next night, they are all over each other until he sees a mark on her lower back. it’s a birthmark according to Casey…but to Theron it (he hopes) is a tattoo. If it’s a birthmark, she’d be an Argolean…he’s an Argonaut, a guardian of the Argoleans. So he freaks and leaves her.
Turns out Casey is King Leonides’ daughter…half-human, half-Argolean. And Isadora is her sister. Oh, and she might be Theron’s soul-mate. Oh and she has to die to heal Isadora. Oh by dying she saves the whole Aroglean race. No pressure or anything. But none of the Argoleans know that there are half-breeds out there. Turns out there are thousands of them, who are fighting the daemons, struggling to live, and all without help from the Argonauts. Theron swears to help them, but still has to take Casey,his soul-mate, back to the king to save Isadora, his fiancee. Neither Isadora nor Theron are in love with each other, so I didn’t have to feel guilty about liking Isadora but still wanting Theron to get with Casey.
Isadora goes to Hades and Persephone (talk about a kinky relationship) and tries to bargain for her and her sister’s lives. Hades and Persephone do something to Isadora, we don’t know what-but I think naughty kinky kind of stuff- and she is never the same. Then Hades convinces Casey to die for her people and lets her know that Theron is engaged to the woman she has to die for. Oops. I won’t spoil the cool ending, but it was definitely a quick fun read. Imagine Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunters meets Shannon K. Butcher’s Sentinels.
My only advice on this book, is to read the glossary at the back of the book first…since it was at the back, I didn’t see it til I finished the book. It wouldn’t been nice to recognize some of the Greek words.