Read-Love-Blog

Hunter by Night releases June 3 

Synopsis:

She wants out

Party girl Alexia Blackburn is only hanging around the vampire compound until her best friend—the queen—has her baby. After that, nothing is going to stop Alexia from getting back to daylight, safety, and feeling like a normal human being. But leaving the vampire world has one big catch…

He needs her to stay

Head of vampire security Lee Goram has hated and distrusted humans for centuries. Feeding on vampire blood has kept him strong…but now it’s killing him—and he’s horrified to discover that Alexia may hold the key to his cure. He’d rather die defending his king than admit his weakness, but time is running out for the great vampire warrior…

My review:

Hunter by Night is the third book in author Elisabeth Staab’s Chronicles of Yavn Series and the book I have been most looking forward to in the series after falling in love with Lee form the very first book. Well, I was not disappointed. This book was everything I had hoped for and more.

Alexia Blackburn is slowly losing her mind. Being the only human stuck in a house full of vampires with the constant threat of war from their enemies, the wizards, is just a tad bit taxing. Especially to someone like Alexia. Someone who has been on her own for as long as she can remember. Her childhood kind of sucked and the minute she got free she had been in charge of herself. So to be stuck here was driving her crazy. If it weren’t for her best friend’s pregnancy and impending delivery, she’d so be outta here. But she would stay, for her best friend. She’d be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t also staying for a certain royal guard vampire named Lee. Sure, he’s made it clear that he could never be with a human, but she knows there’s some sort of connection there. And if she was wrong? Fine. She’d be gone before she could let his rejections sting any more than they already have.

As head of security for the king and their community, vampire Lee Goram had a lot on his plate. Every day there were new threats emerging and with the uncertainty with the wizards, you could say his plate runneth over. Making matters worse was that the queen was due to give birth any week. Talk about a security nightmare. So he’s been blaming his chest pains on all of that stress. Certainly vampires didn’t get sick and die from something like that so he’d put it on the back burner until all of this wizard nonsense went away. Also adding to his stress was Alexia. That human was always trying to plead her case as to why she should be allowed to go out into the day, without any protection. Didn’t she know as the queen’s best friend she had a huge target on her back? But he knew she didn’t care. She had a stubborn streak a mile wide and was beyond independent. She wasn’t going to listen to him. Of course, his annoyance with her isn’t helping squash his underlying attraction to her. But he just kept coming back to that fact that she was a human. Surely he could never be with a human. But Lee has been known to be wrong a time or two and this may just be one of those times….

Tensions are higher than high within the mansion and the sexual tension between Lee and Alexia is adding a deliciously tense layer to the situation. Will they ever put all their differences aside and take a chance on the pull they feel between themselves?

Oh man how I loved this book. Lee is the quintessential stubborn alpha vampire with a deep-rooted disgust for human/vampire relationships. Alexia is just as stubborn and is also stronger than anyone could guess. She’s got a sharp tongue and a beautifully smart assed wit that I adored about her. She wasn’t going to let Lee push her around.   She wasn’t going to let anyone push her around. The push and pull between them had started in the first book and reached a fevered pitch in the second book and left me dying for the ending to their story. Elisabeth gave them an ending they both needed and truly deserved. They pissed each other off at every turn, bantered constantly but the underlying level of care and concern for one another was so touching. Even if they didn’t want to admit what had developed between them as going from annoyance to one of love, I knew eventually they would. If for no other reason than even though they may be stubborn characters, they are also honest, and when the walls of defense crumble between them their honesty is amazing. Heartfelt and touching. I went from being pissed off to crying and then laughing with happy tears being shed. I love all the feels!

Also, there was a bit of closure for Siddoh and a few of the other members of the vampire clan we’ve met along the way. That was another gift to read.

Thank you, Elisabeth, for giving Lee and Alexia their happy ending. I loved every minute of it!

Four-and-a-Half Loves

And, as a special treat,  I was so lucky to have Lee stop by with his take on loving a human…. (oh, how I freaking LOVE Lee!) 

Okay, listen up…. people: I may not be old by the standards of my kind, but seven hundred years sure ain’t child’s play. I’ve trudged through a whole hell of a lot of history, fuck you very much. I’ve kicked my way through plagues, wars, and what have you, and I’ve seen the best and worst of humanity can do to itself. What it can do to my kind. So I hope you’ll understand if I don’t jump on the warm and fuzzy bandwagon about getting up close and personal with you folks. I drink the blood of vampires, I live among vampires, and if I have to brush up against the occasional person at the gas station once in awhile, I try not to get any of ‘em on me.

You know what I mean.

Shoulda known one day the gods or karma or whatthefuckever would nail me right between the eyes with that shit. No humans? How about living with one right down the hall. One small, stubborn, intensely aggravating and completely feminine human, who sways her hips when she’s stomping away from you. Yeah. Perfect. Damn me straight to hell.

Shoulda known, right? For all my love and loyalty to my kind, I mated first with a succubus hybrid, so that was my own damn fault. See, that one didn’t work out though, and I told myself I’d never get attached again. Not to someone of impure blood, maybe never to anyone.

Never say never.

Still, Alexia, she’s something. And being with a human, it’s forced me to learn some things I never expected I’d have to learn. Never wanted to. Never wanted to learn to use a blender, either, but I guess you roll with the times—and those protein shakes come in handy.

So today—because Jillian here is such a sweet gal, I’m sharing what I, Lee Goram, learned about loving a human. Buckle up, assholes.

• They’re stronger than they look. With all of her five-foot-nothing and her barely a hundred pounds, I swear I could break Alexia if I so much as bump into her. Still, she’s more passionate than any female I’ve known, and get your mind out of the gutter, people. She holds her own, ‘s all I’m saying.
• They’re not like vampires. All right. Don’t give me the “no shit,” and the eye rolling. Some things you take for granted after centuries of knowing it, okay? Their fertility cycles don’t run with the moon, so you can’t bank on that shit. And that “birth control” stuff? I’m not convinced that’s all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t even get me started on condoms. I don’t wanna put my dick in some kind of weird-assed rubber wrapper.
• What is up with their undergarments? I’ll cop to it, I haven’t got this one figured. All I know is Alexia’s underwear barely passes as an eye patch and her brassieres could double as body armor. God help the man who rips it in half, is all I know. Been there, done that, got the lecture.
• Sometimes they just don’t stay where you put ‘em. I mean, vampire females? I guess it’s not hard and fast, but centuries of tradition says you defer to your mate and your elders. Alexia, she doesn’t defer to anybody. I don’t know if that’s all human females, or only her, but it’s damned aggravating. She has a mind of her own, and she decides she’s gonna do what she’s gonna do, fuck what I say. Nobody has the brass ones not to heed my command. Most of the time, even our king listens to me. Still, it’s a sexy mind, full of wicked thoughts and sharp-tongued jabs, that hurt in an oddly pleasant way when they land. I can’t help it… I love them. Her. Maybe tradition’s not all it’s cracked-up to be.
• That fucking sunlight thing. No getting around that problem. Not much of one, anyway. I found out there’s a thing you can do, but it ain’t worth doing unless you’re sure your woman is worth the pain. Alexia’s worth the pain. Alexia is worth everything. She loves the night, too, which kind of cuts both ways. Goes back to the problem of staying where I tell her to.
• Fuck biology, after all. See, I got all up in my head about her humanity. Wanting to sleep with the woman was one thing. Living a life together, that’s an animal I didn’t have the magic powers to take down bare-handed. Why try to wrestle with the idea that I’ll only have to say goodbye again in a handful of years? Well, screw that selfish nonsense. For starters, anything worth having is worth having for any time at all. A lot, a little, whatever you can damn well get. And for finishers, it turns out if we look back at my first point, humans aren’t so wimpy as I thought. There’s a way around this biology BS after all. We’re gonna make it work. That human, she’s mine. Besides…
• In the end, you love who you love. So fuck off, all of you.

(….I mean, really, how freaking great is he?!) Thanks, Lee, for stopping by!  XO

Buy links:

Amazon   |  Barnes & Noble

About the author:

Elisabeth Staab digs coffee, saucy stories, and sexy things that go bump in the night. Once, she ate dinner in a jail and liked it. She lives in the Washington DC area with her incredible family and does her best to juggle life while ignoring the laundry.

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