I’m going way back in my library this week, all the way to Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series. In Night Pleasures, Kyrian of Thrace is a Dark Hunter (i.e. vampire) facing off against one of his oldest foes, a very powerful Daimon named Desiderius. He finds himself chained in a room with Amanda Devereaux, who takes in his appearance:

A long black leather coat, black jeans, and a black crew-neck shirt combined to give him and extremely dangerous appearance even while lying on the floor. His feet were covered by a pair of black biker boots with strange inlays in the heals.

And again…

He was gorgeous. His jaw strong and defined, his cheekbones high. His face was aristocratically boned, and he had just the tiniest hint of a cleft in his chin.

Better still, he had the best looking lips she’d ever seen. Full and expressive, that mouth had been made for long, hot kisses.

Kyrian, as described on Kenyon’s blog:

As a legendary Macedonian General, he cut a trail of slaughter through the Mediterranean during the 4th Macedonian War. Chroniclers wrote that he would break the Roman stranglehold on the known world and claim Rome for his own.

He would have succeeded had he not been betrayed by his wife into the hands of his enemies. He was tortured for weeks and then executed by Valerius’s grandfather.

Amanda also hunts Daimons by night and by being thrust together, becomes a part of his world finding out how he became a DH and how she can help save him.

Here’s the cover:

The  Dark Hunters have a few Achille’s heels. For one, their powers are drained when in the presence of each other, to keep them from ganging up and/or dying all at once.  Secondly, they can be drained of powers if they, uh, expend too much energy in the bedroom, which Kyrian managed to do and it was killing him:

Kyrian looked up at her and the pain she saw in his green eyes tore through her. “I only wanted to make it better. I never meant to hurt you.”

He took her hand in his and held it gently. “I know.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her close, but still she could feel the rigidness of his body. “You made it better, Amanda.” he breathed in her ear. “Don’t take away what you gave me by feeling guilty.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Just let me hold you for a while.” His words tugged at her heart. She lay cradled in his arms and felt his warm breath fall on her throat.

I chose model Jeff Tomsik if for nothing else than his lips. If he had a little bit of scruff going on, he’d be perfect.

And one more, for good measure. 😉

Head on over to the Unread Reader and partake or check out other peoples’ choice for this week.