Dark Challenge

Dark Challenge is a paranormal romance novel by Christine Feehan, published in 2000. Its central figure, Julian Savage, is a brooding hunter who has lived apart from his own kind and at a distance even from his twin brother.

The woman he is sworn to protect is Desari, a singer, and when Julian hears her voice for the first time the senses he had been starving come back to life at once. Emotions return to a heart he had hardened, and with them comes a hunger to possess her that takes most of his attention.

What it also does is blind him to the danger that has been following him, and the book puts his pursuit and that danger on the same footing. Desari is not passive in the arrangement, because she defies him with mysterious powers of her own that he cannot account for, which raises the question of how much more than a singer she is.

Julian keeps his own kind at a distance, and his twin is part of the life he has refused to live. Desari is the first person in a long time to make him want to close a distance rather than keep it.