NocC 021 - Jessa Slade - Dark Hunter's Touch - Harlequin 2012-08

by Nocturne

  She sighed and corkscrewed into his embrace, entwining arms and wingtips around him. She felt him all right, his heat and the friction of his skin. This was a physical enchantment not even the most powerful phae could conjure.

  With the halter top undone, she easily shimmied the dress down to her knees and kicked the crumpled fabric aside.

  “No panties,” he noted with an approving leer.

  “Bras get in the way of wings, underwear gets in the way of—” he smiled slowly “flying.”

  He stilled, and his arm behind her tightened. “You think I can make you fly?”

  “I know you can.” While he was distracted, she tucked one hand between them and eased the zipper on his jeans all the way down.

  With each tick of zipper teeth, he pushed harder toward her. “Imogene…” On the last tug, he hissed out a breath as she took the hard length of his erection in a gentle grip. He bucked against her hand. “Imogene, wait. I didn’t think…”

  “Then I won’t think either.” She stroked him once, delighting in the velvety slide of his erection, holding him fast though his body trembled over hers. “Don’t worry. Human and phae might share common ancestry long ago, but this encounter won’t have any consequences, for either of us unless I wish it.” And even if she might wish it otherwise, their time together would be as fleeting as the moon’s path across the sky.

  “But…”

  She captured his mouth with her own, tangled tongue to tongue to draw him back to her own earthly spell. He came willingly.

  With fumbling hands, he shucked the denim. Each awkward bump of his hips against her center sent another crest of excitement through her. The cool skin of his flanks, the hot press of his erection left her senses reeling.

  But when his hands settled on either side of her, pressing the mattress down, she had to open her eyes, to see him naked.

  All that running had given him a Hunter’s body, lean and strong. She could spend hours—the kind of enchanted hours that passed as centuries—tracing each line of muscle, each ridge where his pulse throbbed. But she didn’t have that kind of time.

  Only the wisps against the window lighted the side of his face. Their dreamy illumination caught and refracted in his eyes and gleamed back at her like a promise. His skin held darker shadows that lured her closer.

  When she reached for him though, he caught both her wrists in one hand to still her. “Let me see you,” he murmured.

  She squirmed a little under his intense regard. “There’s not that much to see. The phae may be physically more diverse than humans, but we were all drawn from essentially the same well.”

  “I want to see you,” he emphasized. “To be sure…”

  “This is what I want.” She spread her wings to either side, making a lure of her own, an irresistible soft landing. “I want you.”

  Supporting himself on one arm, he cupped her jaw and leaned in for a long, lingering kiss.

  “I want that,” she whispered against his mouth. “And more.”

  With a sudden flex of her wings, she rolled them.

  He caught the edge of the mattress before they fell. “There’s more where that came from. Much more.” With both his hands free, he roamed her body, reshaping her flesh with each stroke of his fingers, each lap of his tongue.

  And somehow, through her skin, he loosened her spirit too, made her soar where her wings had never taken her, urging her toward an elemental release unlike any of the magics she’d known.

  She gasped, her whole body flush with sensation. Her breasts plumped for his caress, and her nipples drew almost painfully erect. The tingling that rang like silent bells through her depths echoed the ache until her hidden folds wept for his attention.

  But when she looked down, his face was as severe and remote as that brief moment on the beach when he had frightened her. He was holding something back. But why?

  She touched the chiseled edge of his cheekbone. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “No consequences, remember? The perfect one-night stand.”

  “What if I wanted more?”

  When she tried to draw back, he tangled his fist in the pendant. The chain tightened at the back of her neck, not biting—not yet—but a tightening snare. “I don’t have anything more. I am nothing more. Just a dream, gone with the morning light.”

  His jaw clenched, the muscle flexing against her palm. “That sounds like something a fairy would say as a tease.”

  “It is not a tease. It’s only the truth. See? I’m touching you.” She eased down against his chest, loosening the pendant’s restriction. The brush of her thighs over his didn’t smooth his expression, though. If anything, he clenched harder, all over.

  She brushed her cleft down that most rigid of muscles at his center. The jerk of his hips was a truth too, despite the furious set of his mouth. She dipped her head and nibbled at his lower lip. “We have to take what we can, while we can.”

  “Definitely spoken like a fairy. La bella dame sans merci.”

  A cold draft of disquiet swept through her. From the chill of his words, he seemed almost too familiar with the transgressions of her kin, and the haunting words of Keats’s poem felt uncomfortably close to the truth. “I didn’t mean—”

  “You did mean it. You were touching me, remember?” In one powerful heave, he flipped them again so he was on top, pinning her with his knees between her thighs. “Take it then. Take what you want.”

  “Vaile…” Despite her weak protest, she wound her legs behind him. The nudge of his erection made the trailing edges of her wings curl inward as every part of her body made a welcoming nest for him.

  His hand worked between them to part her folds, slick with wanting him. The play of his touch made her arch and gasp, and still he held back, making her want and want and want until she thought she would unravel.

  She clutched at his biceps, her knees drawn high, while he slid first one finger then two inside her. She writhed against him, a cry caught between her teeth. This is what it must be to come Undone.

  He tilted his head back, the pulse of anger in his throat lost beneath the maddening acceleration of his heartbeat. She felt the tidal pull of his blood, his desire, and still he held himself apart while the whirlpool in her belly and thighs circled ever closer to the verge. Unwilling to go alone—not tonight—she pulled herself up with her hands anchored on the bunched muscles in his shoulders and ducked to bite his nipple. The thud of his heart almost deafened her, and he gasped out her name as he buried himself in one thrust.

  Chapter Four

  Vaile froze as all breath left him, as if he had just fallen off a cliff after a heart-shredding run.

  Oh wait, he had done that. This was definitely better.

  Imogene gazed at him. He stared back, dazzled. The illusion that had hidden her wings earlier in the evening had dampened her otherworldly beauty. Not that she’d been hideous in her human camouflage but since she’d dropped her disguising veil, the pale glow of her skin and the dark red-gold of her hair shimmered—untouchable, and yet here, within his grasp.

  She tightened around him in delicious torment. “Now who is without mercy? Don’t you dare stop.” She set her teeth over his other nipple, and he shuddered at the cascade of sensation that threatened to… No. How could she be a threat? So delicate, never mind the heft of her wings and her bold resistance to those who pursued her.

  She cupped his ass, and the tickle of her wings across his backside made him jerk again. She smiled up at him with wicked delight. “I said don’t stop.”

  “Never,” he gritted out.

  She was so hot and close around him, pulling him in with such ease he decided he had better rethink that threat—if he had the ability to think, which he didn’t, not with his flesh so perfectly bound within her, the aphrodisiac scent of her wings an invisible cloud around them until he was almost dizzy with need.

  A grind of his hips, slow and certain, made her gasp and loosen her grasp, letting him ease back and into her again
as a protest rose on her lips and deep in his bones. He wanted to be here, wanted to give her what she wanted, wanted her to feel all of him.

  Again, he eased back and in, setting up a rhythm that she followed with every clench of her hidden muscles, as powerful as her other secret strengths. A tease, a promise, a threat…it all swirled in his head, washing away reality.

  There was magic in the world, and by rights he should be terrified to realize how it had captured him—how she had captured him with a nip, a tickle, a smile.

  And the lush, swelling feeling she demanded of him.

  Because, damn, he felt it too. How could he not? No wonder the others wanted her, why they wouldn’t let her go. They knew, as he now knew, the passion in her was something to be coveted, stolen if necessary.

  He raised her hips to his, tilting her to reach deeply, fully. The slick dampness of their coupling glistened where his cock met her smooth mound, gleaming in the wisp light. Underneath his knees, the bed groaned, and Imogene echoed it with a moan of her own. The sound quickened his pulse, and he quickened his rhythm, like they had sprinted together with the hounds of hell behind them, toward that cliff’s edge.

  This time, he would push them over. This time he would carry her as she fell.

  He felt her muscles tightening with anticipation, tempting him to lose control, to forget everything except the lust exploding in his veins, but he powered through every stroke—deeper, fuller—counting the wisps beyond the window to stop himself from coming.

  Her breath rattled in sensual pants, singing along his nerves until he was breathing with her, each thrust moving them closer, closer…

  Despite his best intentions to linger, the force of her climax seized them both. She jackknifed against him, clasping him tight with arms, wings, the vibrating flesh inside her that contracted around him with a power that made his eyes roll back in his head. Helplessly, his body followed her lead. His cock spasmed in violent bursts. Every spurt rocked him against her, and she called his name in time, more breathless with each gasp.

  A last shudder racked him as his limbs collapsed, and he slumped over her, chest heaving. If he’d been thrown down a cliff, rolled across a sand dune and tossed into the ocean, he would not have been left more wrecked.

  Arms trembling with a mortifying weakness, he managed to prop himself to one side of her. Their legs sprawled entangled, her wing limp across their thighs.

  She stared up. “Oh. Oh my.”

  The wonder in her voice made him grin. He settled one hand on the soft curve of her backside. Her skin quivered in aftershock. “Did you feel that?”

  She rolled her head across the mattress to meet his gaze. “You know I did. Don’t get cocky.”

  He lifted one eyebrow and flexed inside her.

  She giggled. Then she put her hand over her mouth, but her eyes twinkled at him. Slowly, she lowered her hand. “Very well then. You may get cocky. Again.” She was obviously trying for a tone of royal indifference, but her lowered hand kept lowering, sweeping down the length of him, which made sure that no part of him was going lower.

  Thinking of going down was giving him ideas, and he flexed again. Her smile faded and she half closed her eyes, a sultry look.

  “We have the night, you said,” he reminded her.

  “Every minute. I did not forget.”

  “I won’t either. I’ll count each second.”

  “So few.” Her whisper tingled on his skin.

  “Enough.”

  When she might have objected, he kissed her, drawing her in, losing himself.

  It was still dark when they finally fell, side by side, sated.

  She splayed across his chest, stroking circles over his skin. With one limp flap of her wing, she covered them both.

  As her breath evened, she laughed softly. “Phew. Good thing I’ve been running.”

  “Good thing I run faster.” He tightened his arm over her shoulder.

  She snuggled down to bump the crown of her head under his chin, her head resting over his heart. “Good thing I got caught.”

  Her sigh was warm down his bare chest. But something inside him went cold.

  “Not caught,” he protested. “Merely…where you belong.”

  She nudged him again. “You think I belong here, hmm? That is what the phae say too. I am a wanted sylfana. Lucky me.”

  When he swallowed, the weight of her—which had seemed so negligible before—pressed hard on his chest. “You are lucky to be wanted.”

  She tilted her head back and captured his gaze before he could look away. “Wanted by you?”

  “Obviously.”

  “That makes me feel…” She pecked a kiss on his jawline. “Happy.”

  “Happy.” It came out as a growl.

  “The court is a place of violent expression, from riotous glee to bleak agony, but never just happy. That is too much of a real emotion. I am beyond happy to feel happy.”

  He pulled her higher on his chest, never mind the weight that now seemed to push every breath from him. “Then I am…happy too.”

  She grinned at him, a slow dawning smile that lightened her blue eyes. “I can tell.”

  With a louder growl, he rolled her and slipped into her ready warmth.

  She held him close, never looking away, so that he wondered who exactly was caught.

  He took his time, measuring each stroke to the depths of her sighs. Her orgasm was slow and languorous, and she stretched full-length against him, her wings spread wide to either side in a shimmering background.

  And still she looked at him, so he felt as if he were falling. Unable to bear such intimacy—even with his body buried in hers—he dipped his head to kiss the arch of her neck. The steel chain he had given her was cool against his lips.

  “Come with me.” Her murmur vibrated her throat against his tongue.

  “I will.” And he did, in one wild tumble like a bird on the wing pierced through the heart.

  It was a long time, if not quite an eternity, until he caught his breath. So much for all the early morning and late night running.

  But finally he pushed himself up off her and looked down. “This is how I will imagine you.”

  She had been smiling—a satisfied, sleepy smile that made him want to summon another hundred Hunters just so he could fend them off by kissing her again—but at his words, a faint shadow crossed her eyes. “You will forget.”

  “Never.”

  “Then maybe I will, with the phaedrealii walls around me. When I fade back into the nothing again.”

  “No. You aren’t like that.”

  “You don’t understand.” The edge of her wing curled to cover her. “I was exactly that.”

  Careful not to fall off the narrow bed, he rolled to one side and pulled her close. “That is why you ran away.”

  She nodded against his chest. “At first, when she took power after the Iron Wars, the Queen would send phae out here just to watch. She has always been curious about humans—many of the phae are—and since you purified your iron into steel, we can walk more freely in the sunlit realm. Sometimes humans would follow us back to the phaedrealii.”

  He kissed her crown. “I’d follow you anywhere.”

  She twisted her head to frown up at him. “Don’t say that. You must never enter the court, or you might never leave.”

  “Maybe I wouldn’t mind—” he kept his gaze fixed on hers “—if you were there.”

  She bit her lip, hard enough to leave crescents like tiny, blood-red moons. “That would make it worse.” Her eyes glimmered. “If you are feeling something… The Queen uses emotion to enhance her power. The rush of anger that speeds the tongue. The lightness of laughter that makes the heart seem to float. The swell of desire that makes the world narrow and deepen. These are magics she wants to take for her own. But she wants more, more than the phae can give.”

  He reached up to smooth his thumb over Imogene’s lip. “How bad could it be?”

  “Bad.” She let out an
unsteady breath. “Not long before I ran away, I was summoned to the Queen’s chambers. When I arrived, her chancellor made me wait in the corner, because she had a man—a human man—in her bed. He was one who had followed a phae—followed me—from the world back to court.”

  Vaile lifted one eyebrow. “I’ve read the story of Tam Lin. Fairy queens seem prone to such behavior.”

  “And fairy princesses too?” She echoed his raised brow. “Yes, some phae take human lovers, but this man wasn’t just enthralled. He was…empty. The Queen had taken everything from him.”

  “She killed him.” Vaile kept his voice matter-of-fact.

  Imogene shook her head. “All that remained was a husk, but he lived, if you want to call it that. She was still working with her glass knives and burning steel when I arrived, and she spoke aloud as she took the man apart. She was saying, And this is his heart, which we will call love, because we save the cock for other uses.”

  Vaile’s arm tightened around her. “What sort of dissection is that?”

  “The chancellor keeps a dozen stolen smart phones, and he was so thrilled to show me pictures of what they had done to enhance the Queen’s power. They had taken the man’s spleen to render down for anger, a lung for laughter, his leg for fear because the chancellor said cowards run.” She tucked herself tighter against him. “That is when I knew I would run. I looked into the man’s eye—they had plucked out one, and all I can think is the eyes are the window to the soul, and they took his soul—and I saw he knew what he had lost. That man was losing himself, as the phae have already lost themselves. As I will lose myself again and become the nothing I feared.”

  “Imogene—“

  She surged up to kiss him, hard. “When you say my name, I think maybe it is possible I could be more, with you. But I won’t risk you.” She kissed him again.

  When she lifted her head, he smoothed back her hair. “Skin to skin, we can’t lie, you said. I see there is something more in you. You have something they don’t. You feel something they can’t. Or won’t. That is why they want you back.”

  “That is why I am doomed.” She tried for a wry smile and failed.