The Vampire Haven

Newsletter Exclusives! 

Welcome, my beloved newsletter subscribers! Please enjoy these previews.

Read Past Exclusives From Book 1: Have You Ever Been Kissed?

Read all about the Vampire Haven series here

Book 2: No Secrets Left

In 1915, an anxious, psychic human and a heartbroken vampire find forbidden love aboard a doomed ocean liner.

Sean Quillen lives a life in hiding: his family would definitely disapprove of Sean being psychic and/or attracted to men. So when Sean foresees catastrophe on the family’s oversea journey to Liverpool, he finds his only ally in the fight to save the ship is a very handsome man who’s not a man at all, but some sort of monster. Only Will’s not very monstrous. And also, Sean’s had a psychic vision of them, well—you know. The problem is, Sean’s never foreseen anything that didn’t end in disaster.

Will Hammond did not intend to be a vampire. But when he was mortally injured, his friends at the Haven saved his life the only way they could. Will’s grateful, but he’s got a family in England he misses terribly, and he doesn’t know how to tell them he’s not human anymore. Will’s on his way for one last visit when an irritating, stupidly attractive man who can see all Will’s secrets tells him the ship they’re on is about to sink. And oh yes, at some point in the future, they’re apparently going to have absolutely fantastic sex.

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December 2025 exclusive: A poor sheltered psychic has the hottest vision of his life

Excerpt from Chapter 1

CW: mild period-typical homophobia

May, 1915

The first thing Sean Quillen saw on waking that morning was the flash of a man’s smile, sweet and fond. Sean quickly became aware it was no dream. But neither was it real—it was a vision of the future. A future far more intimate than Sean had ever foreseen before.

Sean could practically feel a pair of gorgeous hands, large and capable, sliding gently across his cheek and down over his bare shoulder.

“God, I’ve missed you like this,” the man said, and kissed him.

Sean had never actually been kissed. But in the vision, that was clearly no longer the case. The man’s mouth moved slowly against Sean’s, a sensual give and take during which Sean  apparently, knew how to kiss well enough that the man moaned right into Sean’s mouth.

They lay on some wide bed somewhere, with a thick but well-used mattress. It was dark outside, but there was some faint light beyond the curtained window. The bed squeaked gently as they moved.

They were mostly naked, Sean realized. The man was wearing only a pair of high-waisted trousers, and God, was he gorgeous, smooth skin and broad shoulders. His touch was intimate, but affectionate, which was the strangest part of the whole vision—as if Sean and this man were friends.

Sean didn’t have male friends. Not like this, anyway. Certainly not a man who’d gently undress him, press his mouth against Sean’s bare stomach, lower—

Fuck. 

Eventually, the vision vanished. And Sean, lying in his bed, heart racing, had immediately decided never to think about it ever again.

It had been a busy morning, which had helped distract him. Packing and transport and a quick bite to eat on the way.

Now Sean and his family—his mother, sister, and brother—were standing on the Cunard pier in New York City, waiting their turn to board the RMS Bithynia. 

A seagull soared overhead, disappearing behind the ship’s gigantic red funnels. Somewhere a sea lion barked, or perhaps a dog farther down the pier. The black hull of the Bithynia was imposing, rising above Sean like a floating city, white decks stacked atop one another. Sean had read that six of them were for passengers alone.

It seemed a deceptively pleasant way to sail into a war zone.

All around Sean were strangers clutching the handles of boxy suitcases, and the air was full of taxi horns and conversation elevated to shouting. 

But Sean just kept feeling those hands against the bare skin of his back. Sweet, hot, and in the vision, familiar.

Sean was 24. He had understood for some time that his attractions were unconventional. Regardless, he intended to marry and give his mother grandchildren, to do his patriotic part for the United States. He had absolutely no interest in finding a man of a similar disposition and living a life in hiding. Sean already lived a life in hiding, for God’s sake, because of those very visions.

And yes, fine, Sean had fantasized before. Obviously, shamefully, about a man in his bed, (or even several men), about following his attractions freely for once. About being kissed, just gently kissed, for one second, with no one to disapprove.

But this had not been a mere fantasy. It was a vision of Sean’s future, the same sort of psychic forewarning Sean had been given all his life. 

Always right before something horrible happened. 

Sean’s life did have its share of happy moments, but blue skies and laughter came unannounced by visions. Sean had come to reason over the years that maybe to the universe, good times were just less important than bad.

The point was, Sean had been officially warned by the universe that the man with the beautiful hands was trouble, as if he wouldn’t have known anyway. The way the man’s eyelashes fell dark upon his cheek was trouble. The way his lips lifted into a handsome smile was trouble. The way heat built between them, a slow, sweet friction of skin against skin—

Fuck.

In any case, the handsome man would be easy enough to avoid. When Sean met this man sometime in the future, Sean would just do what he had always done around beautiful men: pretend he didn’t see them. There would be no erotic evening in a soft bed, no touching, definitely no kissing.

Sean had altered the future before, based on his visions. A dog or child kept from running into the street, a dropped cigarette snuffed before it could ignite a curtain. The visions weren’t always correctable: Sean had foreseen people dying of incurable illness, adults making mistakes that he as a child could not hope to correct. But occasionally, the visions’ purpose seemed to be to right some coming wrong.

Even if the vision this morning hadn’t felt wrong. Those hands on Sean’s chest, beautiful brown eyes full of amusement as the man’s lips worked down between Sean’s legs. It was a revelation, that wet heat, the open-mouthed kisses, a pleasure Sean had barely dared imagine. And worse, the man was being gentle, Sean could tell. Sean had never been to bed with anyone, but he knew there was not always such care between lovers. And this man, though Sean had never seen him before—it felt like maybe, somehow, he loved— 

Sean stomped on his own boot. The slight shock of pain brought him back to the pier and the ship. The crowd was shuffling forward, anxious to get aboard and settle in for the week’s trip to Liverpool. 

Sean did not want to go to Liverpool. Germany was at war with Britain and Liverpool was in Britain, so it seemed damned stupid to go to Liverpool. But Sean’s mother had family there, including some distant patriarch who’d just died, and as Americans, they were supposed to be safe on the open sea. Yes, the Bithynia (which everyone called Big Betty) was a British ship. But she was not carrying war materiel, just passengers, mostly from America. Surely the German U-boats would not sink a passenger liner of neutral citizens.

And anyway, if the universe was taking the time to warn Sean about a handsome man with a gorgeous c—well, the point was, the universe would no doubt mention a sinking ship.

As the crowd shifted, a woman’s dark blue coat brushed against Sean’s gray jacket. Even without skin-to-skin contact, the touch was enough to paint the woman’s inner emotions uninvited across Sean’s mind. She was anxious, excited, fatigued, and below it all, there was the sharp gold-colored feeling of something missing. No, someone.

In need of a distraction, Sean scanned the crowds on Betty’s decks, until a man two stories above them glowed gold, to Sean’s eyes alone.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” Sean said to the woman, “but I believe there’s a man on deck who’s trying to get your attention.”

The woman looked up and gasped happily, waving her arms at the man, who only then saw her and waved back. But the woman didn’t notice that part.

“Oh, that’s my brother,” the woman told Sean happily. “We were supposed to meet on the pier, but he must have been too far ahead. We’re going to visit our parents in England, you know.”

Sean did know, but he only smiled politely. Meanwhile, Sean’s mother had turned away when she heard her son speak, and now she wouldn’t even look in their direction. Sean certainly wasn’t the only one with practice ignoring what they didn’t want to see.

But that’s when the morning—already among Sean’s most uncomfortable in recent memory—took a truly awful turn.

As the woman chattered on about her travels, Sean watched the Bithynia give a sudden shudder. A fountain of seawater exploded from her side, up and over the deck, where it would have drenched the woman’s brother had it been real. The ship rapidly tilted, objects on deck sliding, floorboards splintering. The sky filled with dark smoke that didn’t come from the Bithynia’s funnels.

The rickety lifeboat davits shook, vibrating the small boats suspended from them. The ship’s quickly worsening list made the boats swing out of reach of those on deck, dangling empty five stories above the sea. Then came the deep roar of the sea rushing in through open portholes as they slipped under the water, until the beautiful white decks vanished into the sea.

The Bithynia was going to sink. One of the largest ships in the world was going to suffer some terrible accident on the open ocean. Hundreds of people were probably going to die. And Sean was the only one who knew.