Free NocC 021 - Jessa Slade - Dark Hunter's Touch - Harlequin 2012-08 by Nocturne Page B

lie,” he told her, as if she might
have forgotten that.
    And he covered her mouth with his own.
    She did not bite, but her sharp inhalation seemed to yank the
air from his body. For a dizzy heartbeat, he felt as if they had gone aloft;
every muscle was tight with yearning, his breath and heart suspended. His wings
spread in impulsive reaction, rattling the leaves above their heads.
    Though he had meant to tease her with the touch, the sensation
of her lips softening and opening under his caught him like a gale force wind
and ripped away any intention and all thought.
    With a groan, he buried his hands in her hair, tangling his
fingers in the red-gold locks to tilt her head to his onslaught. He swept his
tongue across the inner rim of her lip and sealed their breath between them as
he locked his mouth over hers. The taste of her reminded him of their one night
in her island cabin, how she had come apart so sweetly in his arms, how she had
whispered his name without hesitation, how she had told him she was happy....
His wings arched forward, like a raptor mantling its prey. He wanted that from
her again, wanted everything, from her violent release to her sleepy smile.
    The bone-deep force of the primal response stunned him into
gentling the kiss. He lightened the pressure of his mouth and smoothed his hands
down her arms—as much to soothe himself as to apologize for his ferocity. Not
that she had ever been afraid of him, or of anything else for that matter.
    Maybe she was right, and he was the one who had always been
afraid....
    Slowly, letting the slick moisture bind their lips until the
last possible second, he lifted his head to look down into her dazed eyes.
    He skimmed his hands up her gold sleeves to the too-sharp point
of her shoulders. “You need chocolate.”
    She took a shuddering breath—whether at his touch or the
thought of chocolate, he wasn’t sure—and swayed toward him. “I need only one
thing…”
    His body yearned toward hers in answer. “Yeah?”
    She leaned fractionally closer to him, so her nipples—peaked
through the silky gold—grazed his bare chest. “I want you…”
    He swallowed hard.
    “To let. Me. Go.”
    She put no magic in the words, but his hands sprang open as if
gremlins had wrenched back his fingers.
    She stood there a moment without fleeing, poised with her wings
half spread. Her unflinching gaze pierced him like the devastating light of the
blue-amber sun, shredding him inside. It was he who stepped back.
    A faint, mocking breeze swirled between them, bearing a drift
of poppy petals. In the shadow under the tree, the blossoms were dark as old
blood. He had told her once that his only fear had been not catching her. He had
found her—it was his knack, after all—and yet somehow he had lost her too.
    She finally averted her gaze, but her words seemed to pin him
still. “If my wishes had any power, Hunter, I would wish that I would never see
you again.”
    As she turned on her heel, the obliging breezes billowed the
train of her long skirt out behind her as she walked away, leaving him with the
withering petals and the wild-sweet taste of her on his tongue.
     

Chapter Seven
    Out in the sunlit world, the moon was waning, thinning
the barriers between the realms until the gate magic was accessible even to the
weakest phae —not that Imogene had seen sun or moon
lately, since she lacked the spores to create even the smallest, shortest
passage.
    But the Queen had summoned all her courtiers to her, which
meant some agitation in the phaedrealii . Perhaps the
restlessness preceded a jaunt across some starlit moor or maybe a wild tear down
some unsuspecting Main Street; the Queen’s stables provided horsepower in many
forms.
    Whichever way the phaedrealii went,
Imogene knew she would not be attending, not since she had declined the Queen’s
command to procure another victim for her magical dissections.
    Imogene hadn’t denied the Queen to her face, but the