They’re my first love, vampire books. And I have been wanting to feature Hunter from Lara Adrian’s Deeper Than Midnight for the last two weeks! My biggest hurdle was the fact that the model on the cover is exactly how I pictured Chase, one of the other characters. But I finally found someone who embodies the pure killing machine that is Hunter, former assassin and Gen One vampire of many tattoos.

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Just saw the host of this meme also chose Hunter. Well, he’s a good choice. But the model I picked is different. This is Matt Schiermeier and wow, isn’t he fantastic?

I’m picking the first scene in which I think Corrine, the Breedmate in his charge with all the upheaval going on in the Order, and he make a connection. Hunter was bred for one sole purpose: killing. He was not allowed to have emotions or hell, even really like things or have preferences. He never lived a normal life. He takes her to a restaurant and the band is playing an old song she knows well from her childhood.

Corrine’s smile widened, then she laughed out loud. “I know what the lyrics say, but that’s not what they mean. Not at all.” her eyes still dancing with amusement, she coked her head in question. Studying him now. “What kind of music do you like, Hunter?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer. He’d heard some of the stuff the other warriors played at the compound, but he had no particular affinity towards any of it. He’d never thought about music one way or another, never paused to consider if any of it appealed to him. What would be the point in that?

Now he looked at lovely Corrine Bishop, sitting just an arm’s length across, from him, bathed in candlelight and holding him in her beautiful smiling gaze.

“I like… this.” he replied, unable to drag his gaze away from her.

The tension! After discussing some of the harsh things they both encountered while under Dragos’s thumb, she must leave the table in a hurried mess but then after… she asked him to dance with her.

Desire was something foreign to her after all she’d been through. After what she’d endured, she thought she would never crave a man’s touch. But she did now. Unbelievably, perhaps stupidly, she craved the stony, lethal warrior’s touch more than anything else in that moment.

She forced herself to take another hitching step backward. “Thank you for the dance,” she murmured, confusion clashing with the warmth that was spiraling through her. “Thank you for this.  For bringing me here tonight. I thought I’d forgotten what it was like to feel… normal.” She glanced down, away from the searing heat of his eyes. “I didn’t think it as possible for me to feel… anything anymore.”

His answering touch was light but firm beneath her chin. He lifted her face on the edge of his fingertips, until their gazes were locked once more. He lowered his head towards hers.

And then he was kissing her.

Le sigh. I think I have a problem liking heroes who have little to no sexual experience but yet, know when to take the reigns.

Hunter was such a mystery when he first came to the Order, a turncoat assassin, but I ended up liking him so very much in this book.