Samhain Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 1-59998-603-5
Fantasy Romance, 2008

Malin Cross, our FBI agent hero, spends his days and nights attempting to capture a killer. Our heroine, Olivia Sutcliff, is one of the damned souls in the Netherworld who has been commanded by the boss himself to seduce and encourage Malin onto a path of vengeance and all. She is to capitalize on Malin’s desire to have the perfect submissive under his control to do her job. If course, they will fall in love, et cetera, which naturally makes the Dark Prince unhappy.

Dark Chance is a problematic story for me in the sense that I find it hard to believe that these two characters are in love. Olivia reeks of desperation from every pore of her body so it makes Malin come off like a creep of some kind to find a woman like Olivia attractive.

Other than the hard-to-believe romance, I have no problems with this one. The pacing is fine and the story is entertaining enough to provide an hour or so of pleasantly enjoyable fun. If this short story is longer, maybe Olivia could have had the opportunity to become her own person. As it is, the poor woman rushes into a romance, trading a very cruel master for a much more benign one, and I’m not sure if that is what she needs at the end of the day.