🎄Romance Advent🎄 Day 13: Dark Needs at Night's Edge by Kresley Cole

One-sentence summary: Blood-maddened vampire assassin Conrad is taken to an old mansion to detox, only to realize that the beautiful dancer he sees (and can speak to) is not a hallucination, but a ghost.

Why read it: I mean, aside from that insane summary, this is a great entry point to Immortals After Dark, and has a hero who is, by IAD standards, baby? I mean, he can and will kill anyone who touches his woman and, again, is clinically insane, but Conrad is allso so wounded and so sweet at his core, and also, much to his eternal embarrassment, a vIRGIN (something his brother loudly points out in front of his ghost girlfriend). And Neomi, our heroine, makes it even better. She's funny, she's angry, she's flirty, and Conrad's brokenness calls to her own in a way that's just gorgeous.

Lives in my brain rent-free: Conrad is in the shower, really determined to ignore the Sexy Ghost Lady because SURELY she's in his head, right? And Neomi, rather determined to get him to break and a former burlesque performer, begins doing an elaborate striptease with lines like "Does Conrad want to see my panties?" (He does. As previously mentioned, Conrad is a 300-year old-virgin.) GOLD. QUEEN SHIT.