Three Fates. Three Sisters.
When a will from her dead father decrees Chloe into the protection of the renowned vampire commander, Tyrian en Kulev, she does what any woman would do—and casts a spell. Things get worse for Chloe when the spell she and her sisters perform summons an ancient demon from deep within the earth. Now she’s being hunted by a demon set on killing her and must live at the aptly named Castle Death with the king of cold, Tyrian. Surprisingly, Chloe finds that she doesn’t mind her new Protector so much. His cold, impassionate nature needs a firm push to show his true colors, and Chloe thinks she’s just the one to do it.
Tyrian en Kulev always pays his debts. When Francis Bellum dies and orders Tyrian to act as his eldest daughter’s Protector, Tyrian resigns himself to the position. What should have been a simple deal–keep her in the castle, protect her–has turned difficult. Chloe comes to him with a demon trying to kill her and a sexy attitude that keeps invading his thoughts everywhere he goes. The little succubus easily grabs hold of the heart he’d kept locked away for so long and makes him feel once again. But can they defeat the demon that haunts her and can Tyrian overcome his past and move on to a new future with Chloe?
It’s positively dreary outside and I don’t have any pending otome game titles, so what’s a girl to do? Get some smut to read, of course!
Though the story is about Chloe mainly, there are two smaller subplots going on concurrently with the rest of the plot — the fate of her twin sister, Willow, and Henry, one of Tyrian’s underlings. Both are, of course, steamy in nature.
So, a quick primer on the premise — Chloe, Willow, and Lily Bellum are sisters and succubi. On the first new moon after their 29th birthday, they become mature succubi and can only survive by having their sexual needs satisfied. A Protector is a man who is arranged to partner with the succubus and sate her needs as well as protect her from harm. The girls are not allowed to choose their protectors. Yet their father raised them to be independent and promised they could choose their Protectors. But when he dies, in his will he’s promised the three girls to three men. The vampire leader of a demon warrior clan, a powerful demon, and the alpha shifter of all shifters.
Cheesy? Yes. Eh, I can roll with this. It’s not the most ridiculous premise I’ve read, and at least by them being succubi there’s an excuse for the amount of smutty scenes we’re going to read.
What I can’t roll with is how the book commits one of my pet peeves — an “independent” woman crumbling the first moment the hero so much as breathes on her. I hate reading about how she doesn’t want a man but the moment she first meets the person in question she crumbles. It’s a pretty common occurrence in these types of stories. She’s all powerful until she sees a dick and it’s like she’s never seen a dick before.
Both of the twins fall victim to this.
You know, just because the lead is just oh so hot doesn’t mean she has to fall into his whims. Good looks are good looks, but personality is something else entirely. So it’s always off-putting and out of character to have this woman proud of her independence and intelligence fall prey to the first good looking man that glances at her, or in this case, the man she was promised to. Even in this type of smut (i.e. pretty much every chapter has a steamy love scene), there needs to be some sort of escalation. At least let us get to know the guys before letting them in, figuratively and literally.
Of course, it can be explained by the fact that the new moon came and with it, their “awakening” caused this sort of behavior. But seriously, it’s like they’re animals in heat. At one point Chloe was sprawled naked on the rug of the study in front of Tyrian and his men, yowling, writhing, and begging him to take her. That wasn’t sexy, that was second-hand embarrassment.
Meanwhile, Willow, who vowed not to marry at all, is on the run and is being chased by her arranged partner — some sort of alpha to end all alphas. That’s literally his title. He’s a shifter, and he’s the greatest alpha of all shifters. The notion is pretty ridiculous because shifters typically can only shift into one animal, rarely two or three. But whatever, I can also roll with this. Their first love scene bothered me. Like Chloe, it happened on the new moon, but Willow is a fiercely dominating personality. She fantasized about them being together to ease her desires, but only with her in control, a light version of a femdom scene. When it came to actually being in bed with him, he pretty much saw it fit to dominate over her and force her to succumb to his will, enjoying how he was going to break her down and mold her into his. He liked the chase she gave him, but now that he caught her he expected her to be subservient.
It’s in line with the rest of the story, but it would have been much more interesting to me if instead of the alpha being dominant over his woman, she was dominant over him. A role reversal. Something that may only be between them in the sheets. In the second love scene between those characters, after copulating with him, Willow smashes his nose in with her knee because she had regrets? I didn’t think it outlined her independence, I don’t think it outlined her strong-headedness, if anything, it makes her a gigantic jerk. But Mr. Alpha is also a pretty big jerk, so they’re kinda meant for each other in that aspect.
There’s no real difference between the men and the sisters when it comes to their scenes. It’s always a super dominating male with a subservient female. I am okay with stories like these. Just don’t define the girls as these strong women that don’t need a man, only to have them turn into balls of hormones the moment a man says hello. If they’re that independent, they’re going to need time to break down their walls.
The main plot (aside from the love scenes) is about a demon that’s after Chloe. When the book started, the girls chanted a spell that would keep their men away from them. They summoned a demon instead, and it wants Chloe. It just so happens Chloe’s Protector is head of a demon battling army. So it works out in the end.
It commits one of my other pet peeves, a character being near death but surviving, then having sex afterwards. However, Chloe literally needs to have sex to live. I’m annoyed, yes, but she also needs to eat. I don’t think I would dock a point off for that, but the fact that it happened is pretty 😐 for me.
The final conflict between the two characters (I was never worried about the demon tbh) is that Chloe tells Tyrian she loved him and he takes it stunningly well. That was sarcasm. He throws a tantrum like a child then leaves her for days. When she ends up nearly starved to death, she goes to another warrior in his army and begs him to kiss her. When he does, Tyrian punches the shit out of him and wants to know why she was kissing another man, of course, now he’s jealous.
Immature. Plain immature. For a guy that’s been alive for practically ever, he’s very immature. I like the sort of archetype he is — the strong, stubborn type — but there wasn’t anything at all about him that made me fall in love with him.
The steamy scenes are pretty good, a lot better than ones I’ve read. I laughed at how much “heat” is used, and sometimes it gets a little too flowery for my tastes, but overall they were pretty good. I guess if you just want to read smut and not care about anything else you’ll be satisfied. My search for the good steamy romance continues. 
Rating:
One heart for having multiple plotlines. One heart for having decent steamy scenes.
My heart scale is defined as follows – 5 hearts = a story everyone will fall in love with, regardless of preferences; 4 hearts = a well-done story that people who love the concept will adore, and people who don’t may end up liking it; 3 hearts = if you like this type of story or this type of hero, then you will enjoy this, but those who do not like either of those things will probably not; 2 hearts = it had potential, it squandered it; 1 heart = just a waste of time from the get-go; 0 hearts = why was this made?