When a mysterious letter promised me an inheritance courtesy of a long-lost family in Italy, I probably should have asked more questions. Bur all I had in the California desert was an institutionalized mother and a load of bad memories. I couldn’t run away from that dead-end life fast enough.

Instead, I danced straight into the bloody arms of Carmine Montefiore. He’s the monster mothers warn their children about. The capo other families kneel to. A vampire in danger of losing his immortality and his throne. He needs three things to reclaim his power.

The knife that will cut and heal him.
The bride who will restore his authority.
The blood of a Strega that will renew  his immortality.

Apparently, I’m the answer to all three…except for one thing.

He can’t enter me without an invitation. 

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This is the WOW hardcover everybody (in my head) is talking about.

The hole leads to the hole in Carmine's heart, and when reversed, it's a picture of Luna holding up his very existence while controlling his heart on the sprayed edges.

Defines the meaning of "must-have."

I'm going to put in some bonus art, so gird your loins for that as well.

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I slide out of bed, pad toward the glass doors on bare feet, and freeze before I get there.
In the slit where the drapes don’t kiss, I see the slice of a man—haunches and heels, shoulders thrust forward—crouching on the top of the wall around the balcony.
I should be frightened, but I am only curious. That can’t be comfortable.
Shifting, I see his face. 
Corvo.
This time, he isn’t pale. He’s a golden-skinned bird of prey. A gargoyle with his elbows on his knees and an orange caged by his fingers. A man with breeze-flicking hair across his cheeks, staring at me with unnatural intensity.
“What do you want?” I ask in a normal voice he shouldn’t be able to hear through the glass.
He smirks, hair stroking his jawline, and presses his thumb into the tender flesh of the orange peel. It breaks, and I gasp, bending at the waist, because I feel that thumb as if it’s pushing into me.
“Invite me in.” 
It is not a request.
He doesn’t move, but his voice is earbud-close. 
He pushes into the crease, pulling off a patch in the shape of California, and again I feel his hands on me, peeling away any distance between us. When he jams two fingers between fruit and skin again, they slowly slide into me.
“It’s not my house.” I’m hot. I can barely breathe air this old. 
“You are wet.” He rips off a large swath of rind and an explosive bolt of energy shoots down my spine and lands between my legs. 
I groan, putting my hand against the glass door. “What are you doing to me?”
He turns the fruit in his hands. The inside of the orange is blood red, fleshy, undulating. The thrum in my chest matches its rhythm. The glass door rattles with it. I am suffocating under its pressure.
“Invite me in.” With four fingers, he grips the edge of the peel and tears it off. 
I cry out as if he just touched me with those fingers and ripped away the barrier between me and a full, standing orgasm.
“No.” I don’t trust him. It’s not my house. 
Corvo does not move from his crouch. He is utterly still except for his hands grinding away at the orange and me. The meat of the fruit pulsates twice quickly, once softly. It is marbled with fatty white lines.
He smiles. The last bit of rind drops. The bloody pulp inside is a beating heart.
My hips move to the heartbeat rhythm. I have no control over it.
He slides off the short wall and stands before me in the narrow crack between curtains. 
“This is you.” Digging his thumbs into its crest of wedges in the heart, he spreads the fruit open.
I put my hand on the door, against the drapes. I have no will of my own. My impending orgasm is calling the shots, and it’s pushing against me, screaming let me in let me in.
He takes two wedges at once, swallows, then separates another wedge from the heart and eats it. Soft, wet, I am pulp, and blood, and pith crushed between tongue and teeth.
“Oh, God,” I murmur too low for God to hear. 
Corvo eats the wedge and breaks off another, eating the beating heart between my legs slice by slice. A drop of juice falls from his lips, thick as blood. Casually, he rubs it away with his thumb.
“Invite me in.” The command in his voice is strong enough to reach into my body and shake my core. 
My mind threshes the possibilities. A kiss from those lips. A touch from those hands. His hair swaying over his cheeks when he fucks me.
“I can’t.”
“It’s not your house. I heard you. I just don’t care.”
I do. I care a lot.
Pensively, he slides the last of the fruit onto his tongue, closes his mouth, and chews, staring at me as if the knees of my naked soul are spread apart for his pleasure. 
He could have my body if he’d ask for it. I ache for that mouth. The orgasm is one lick away. I want it. I want it from him. 
But that’s not what he asked for.
He puckers his lips around the pad of his thumb, sucking off the juice.
It’s over, and it’s too much. I shut my eyes for the explosion that’s so close I can almost taste the copper of a bitten lip.