In Taste of Darkness (Darkness #2) by Katie Reus, Emerging from the depths of Hell into a completely changed world, dragon shifter Drake can only focus on one thing: following the scent of the woman he knows is meant to be his mate. Four months pass while he 
spends as much time with wolf shifter Victoria as he can. Drake is reluctant to make a move toward her until he ensures he can provide a good life for her. It’s bad enough that he will someday have to explain the horrible things he did to survive while in Hell and he hopes she won’t be repulsed by it. When members of his family step forward to make contact, Drake’s memories of his life before being sent to Hell start to return. He knows someone must have betrayed and sacrificed him to have ended up in the underworld. Now he must decipher who he can trust and who to exact revenge upon.
‘Making it through Hell to get to Victoria was worth every second he’d been locked up. Now every day with her would be his reward. He didn’t care if he ever made it to Heaven. Victoria was his Heaven.’
Victoria looks forward to the time she spends with Drake now that he’s been accepted as part of the Stavros pack. A dragon amongst wolves should seem weird, but his quiet nature works well there. She wants to admit her attraction to Drake but worries he might want to pursue other women now that he’s free to wander Earth if he so chooses. And with the sudden knowledge that there are other dragons out there, Victoria doesn’t want to keep him from being around others of his kind. But when Drake makes his intentions clear to take her as his future mate, threats are made against them both from an unknown source. It will take all their resources to stay safe, but Victoria is willing to do anything to save the man she loves.
‘After fifteen hundred years in Hell he shouldn’t be so sane, so loving. But he was.’
Taste of Darkness is a paranormal romance/fantasy that had me falling in love with the sweet, sexy hero–a dragon shifter who was exiled to Hell for over a millennia, and the fiercely loyal heroine–a wolf shifter who is also a healer with a loving soul.
I’ve been eager to read book two in the Darkness series after seeing in the blurb that the hero is a dragon shifter. For some reason they’ve always intrigued me. Well, all fantastical creatures do! I thought the combination of a dragon and a wolf would be quite a volatile combination for a romance, and I wasn’t disappointed. Watching Drake’s possessive, protective side take control was sometimes comical, but mostly it was super sexy. And Victoria’s wolf had a jealous side she hadn’t experienced yet. Of course, she’d never been in love before and neither had Drake, so they learned together. I really enjoyed that they were both new to romance and had that awkward, almost teenagerish quality to their time together. It was completely endearing and lovely.
The whodunnit part of the plot also kept me invested in this story as Drake and Victoria investigated who sacrificed him to open a Hell gate. We get to read from the killer’s POV several times throughout the novel and although I thought I knew who it was, I was surprised when the truth was revealed. I love it when I don’t guess the culprit right away, so kudos to author Katie Reus! The other part I enjoyed was the many potential love matches for future novels that happen here. I won’t say who…I don’t want to spoil it. There are a lot of characters to keep track of between the different dragon clans, and wolf packs to a lesser degree. But even if you haven’t read book one, Darkness Awakened, I think you’ll be able to follow along just fine.
If you have a thing for big bad alpha males who are really gentle giants and heroines who aren’t afraid to stand their ground, I highly suggest checking out Taste of Darkness.
Book Info:
Published July 26th 2014 by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform | (Darkness #2)
He spent more than a thousand years imprisoned in Hell…
Drake is an ancient dragon shifter, one of the most powerful beings in existence, but over a millennium trapped in utter darkness has left him ill-equipped for modern society. If it wasn’t for Victoria, the sweet female brave enough to befriend him, he’d be lost. She’s smart and gorgeous and everything he never dared dream of during his years of agonizing loneliness. He may not have anything to offer her, but one thing he knows for sure: he’d die to keep her safe.
Only to fall into the heaven of her touch.
Victoria is a wolf shifter, healer of the Stavros pack. She’s seen a lot, but she’s never met anybody quite like Drake, the fiery, fascinating shifter who can blaze through the skies unseen by mere mortals. He’s lost, dangerous, and the last male she should fall in love with, but the more time she spends helping him navigate modern life, the deeper—and hotter—their connection becomes. She’s thrilled when they finally locate his family, but reuniting with his people plunges them both into unimaginable danger. It’s a race against the clock trying to figure out who wants them dead and who they can trust, especially when the threat is closer than they ever imagined.
Length: Full novel
Author note: Can be read as a stand-alone novel.
