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

by Nocturne

  “You can call me Mo. And I can’t accept gifts with strings attached.” She waggled the necklace so the chain swung.

  “Mo? Really?” Vaile held up one hand. “Okay, fine. No phone number. I see you all the time anyway, and I don’t think that necklace belongs to anyone else. High tide washed it up just to match your eyes. Pretty blue with a touch of heavy metal.”

  She slanted a glance at him. “Wow. There’s a line. Too bad I’m not a fish.”

  His smile widened, and his dark eyes sparked at her with amusement—and a deeper, simmering heat. “So you won’t bite?”

  Her gaze locked on his lips and she sighed to herself. “Sorry, no.”

  Since her running shorts didn’t have pockets, she slipped the necklace over her head. The pendant nestled between her breasts, warm through her thin T-shirt. While they were talking, the sky out to sea had gentled to seashell pastels. But the shadows under the trees had crept farther over the dunes, emboldened by the close of day. Rising above the spires of the inland pines, a slim crescent of moon failed to hold back the darkness.

  Imogene restrained a shiver. “I have to go.”

  Vaile’s expression tightened. For a moment, his features were as still and hard as the rock cliffs, and then he nodded. “I’ll see you around then. Maybe I can get the ocean to find me a few strands of amber beads to match your hair, too.”

  She shook her head but didn’t say anything. She couldn’t very well tell him that her freedom—and his life—depended on them moving in opposite directions. Her midnight fantasies might keep her grounded in the human realm, but they could never be more substantial than fairy dust in morning’s light.

  She turned reluctantly to go, indulging one last look at Vaile over her shoulder.

  He opened his mouth—that fine, fine mouth—as if he wanted to call her back. But whatever words he might have spoken were lost in a sudden clarion call, bright and sharp as a blade slicing through the night.

  Vaile glanced back just as down the beach, from the deep shadows under the pines, the Wild Hunt burst forth.

  For an instant, her heart flew at the sound of that silver-bell note, her blood sang with the wind of their coming, her pulse pounded with the beat of cloven hooves over sand.

  Riding to the fore, the horned Lord of the Hunt lifted his bugle. At the klaxon, three streaks of mottled silver and black leaped ahead—the dogs, almost as tall as the Lord’s stag. The first hound lifted his middle head and cried fury. Eight other hounds’ tongues answered.

  “What the hell?” Vaile stood facing the onslaught, hands on hips.

  Jolted from her reverie, Imogene grabbed his elbow and whirled him around. “Run!” She took two steps, realized he wasn’t behind her. “Follow me or die.”

  He glanced once more over his shoulder, and then he was pounding the sand beside her. Cold both from fear and the rising wind, still she felt the hot bulk of him as he ran.

  Though slowed by the soft dunes higher up the beach, the Hunt was angling toward them.

  “They’re driving us toward the cliff,” Vaile panted. “We’ll be cut off.”

  Earlier, she had jogged around the headland through shallow water where a small river cut through the cliff rocks. At high tide like now, she would normally hike up into the trees to catch the road back rather than risk a scramble over the loose stone on the high cliff. But if they headed inland or tried to descend toward the mouth of the river, the Hunt would capture them.

  Anyway, she would be captured. With the three-headed dogs on their scent, Vaile wouldn’t be so lucky.

  “You’re faster than me,” she gasped back. “Run ahead, toward the ocean. The Hunters won’t cross the moving water of the river.”

  “Won’t leave you.” His voice was grim despite the wheeze.

  “I’ll lose them in the trees.” Not likely, but at least he would have a chance.

  “Won’t leave you,” he repeated.

  They were closing fast on the cliff edge, chunks of rock under the sand threatening to break an ankle. The Hunt was closer yet behind them, and the breath of the hounds was an icy dread on their heels. The enraged baying eclipsed the twilight, rising to a hyena pack’s gibbering cackle and promising doom.

  Still, Vaile didn’t veer off. The rock, brittle and gray, broke under their pounding feet. The scrabble of long claws hissed behind them.

  Imogene sucked in a huge breath, the mist of fresh river water on her tongue.

  She slowed by one step, letting Vaile draw just a heartbeat ahead. He must have sensed her hesitation because he looked back for her. The black edge of the cliff made a broken line against the evening sky just a stride beyond.

  She lunged at him and caught him around the shoulders. Salt and heat exploded between them at the contact. The force of her blow knocked them in an arc over the edge.

  Below, the little river glimmered moon-silver. The breeze skirled around them, as if desperately wanting to hold them aloft.

  The three hounds skittered to a halt at the edge of the cliff with a howled chorus of rage. When she dropped her glamour and the illusion of humanity fell away, their nine-part harmony of preternatural wrath spiraled to the stars.

  She held Vaile close and spread her wings.

  Chapter Two

  It had been a very long time since he’d fallen so hard for a girl.

  And from his precarious position dangling two stories above rock and sand and river, Vaile thought it just might get harder yet.

  “Don’t squirm,” his flight attendant warned. “I’m trying not to drop you.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  They came in low and fast, skimming the river. Then his trailing legs caught a dune, and they went rolling in a ball of sand, seawater and swearing.

  He staggered to his feet, instantly whirling to face the cliff they had descended so fantastically. The three misshapen dogs paced the rim, drawing back only to make room for the horned rider who stared down.

  Vaile gave him a vigorous middle finger.

  “Don’t mock them.” Imogene climbed to her feet a few steps away.

  “Why? Will they do something worse than push us over a cliff?”

  “Technically, they didn’t push us. I did.”

  “Ah. True. But since you were trying to save my life, I forgive you.”

  She stared at him. “You’re taking this awfully in stride for someone who just flew off a cliff.”

  “I have a long stride,” he reminded her. “Plus, I have more pressing issues, such as the impressive amount of sand in my shorts.”

  Her gaze flicked downward. “Oh. That’s all just sand?”

  For a moment, he thought his cheeks actually heated. But it must have been road rash from the tumble.

  She glanced away, brushing at herself. Along with the sand, she brushed off her T-shirt—all the way off. The cotton had shredded under the burst of her wings, and the sorry remains fluttered down around her sneakers.

  Judging from the prickling heat that flushed through him, he had road rash all over.

  She definitely blushed, raising one hand to shield her breasts. She had beautiful breasts, which he judged would fit neatly in his palm. The blue stone glowed dark against her pale skin. He wanted to lace his fingers through hers and spread her arms to expose her to the light of the moon, to demand she forget such modest notions after she’d so boldly defied their pursuers and gravity itself.

  His blood pulsed in a hot tide through his limbs, roused by her moon-white curves. A gentleman would avert his gaze; he decided not overtly salivating was concession enough. “Lingerie commercials aside, I suppose you can’t wear a bra over wings.”

  “It does tend to ruffle feathers.” The silvery white wings that cascaded from her shoulders to midway down her thighs weren’t truly feathered, more like shimmering metallic leaves or the scales of a magnified butterfly wing.

  “I can’t believe you managed to glide us down on those.”

  “I’m stronger than I look.”r />
  “I am starting to see that,” he murmured. The note of surprise in his voice should have gotten him a raised eyebrow at least, but she was obviously considering more immediate problems.

  She stared up the empty cliff. “We have to find a place to hide. They’ll go upstream until they can cross at the culvert, and then they will be after us again.”

  “Where can we go?”

  She directed her clear blue gaze to him. “Don’t you want to know what they are or what they want?”

  “They are bad news. They want you. I am in their way.” He ticked off the points on his fingers. “I was focusing on the important stuff.”

  She pursed her lips. “You were focusing on my breasts.”

  “Important stuff,” he reiterated. He flashed her a lazy smile.

  Another blow from the horn—farther away, but still too close—shivered each grain of sand and droplet of water so that the beach scintillated with uncanny brilliance. The otherworldly beauty froze his smile in place.

  “The Hunters are coming fast,” she whispered. She stepped closer to him. He breathed the scent of her, wild and heady, like a rare flower that shouldn’t exist trapped here between bare rock and vast ocean.

  “There is no place to hide.” He didn’t bother whispering.

  “In plain sight.” She took another step closer. Even streaked with sand, with her red-gold hair roughed into standing waves and her wings tucked demurely behind her, she shone almost too pure for his gaze.

  His hands twitched, reaching out to her of their own accord—wanting.

  She gazed up at him with glimmering gemstone eyes. “Do you trust me?”

  How could she ask that, when he was the one with his hands settling at the tender junction of her neck and shoulders, just above her bare breasts and her delicate wings? He brushed his thumb along the line of her jaw and felt her tremble.

  Afraid, was she? Of the Hunters following? Of him or of herself?

  “I just jumped off a cliff with you,” he reminded her in a ragged voice. “And I didn’t scream at all.”

  “Then kiss me.”

  His stroking thumb stilled. “Kiss you? Here? Now?” Even with those furious Hunters on their path, his heart had not hammered as painfully as it did now. “But—”

  “Kiss me.” Her voice quivered then smoothed, like bright quartz pebbles turning over in a gentle wave. Helplessly, his body swayed toward her, drawn by the undertow. “Kiss me as if there is no room even for moonlight between us, as if we have only one breath to share. Kiss me now.”

  Before she finished speaking, his lowered his mouth over her parted lips and did as she commanded.

  Ah, sweet good night! She was more than he had dreamed. Every time they had passed, with every fleeting glance, she had thrown one more loop of mystery around him. Now he had her in his arms, and he would finally have his answers.

  She tasted of forbidden yearnings, of sunlight that made the shadows deeper. He curled his fingers in the fall of her hair, and the silky caress over the backs of his knuckles set his every nerve ablaze.

  He drew her close against his body until the pendant ground into his breastbone. The twinge distracted him, and he tried to gentle his grasp. It was too much too soon. But she gripped his biceps and drew herself up to her tiptoes, surfing his chest like a perfect breaking swell.

  Her tongue teased his. Yeah, something was definitely swelling.... He returned the favor, tracing the slick inner curve of her out-thrust lip. He nipped gently, and her grip tightened on his arms.

  She pulled back just a bit. Her eyes, searching his, were wide enough to catch a last spear of moonlight just before the clouds closed entirely.

  He stroked one finger down her exposed spine. Beneath his calloused palm, the trailing edge of her wing was softer than velvet. He rubbed the scalloped bottom, amazed how the tissue-thin substance flexed with curious strength against his gentle tug, as if at the memory of a restless wind. The sensation delighted him on some deep level. The feeling was obviously mutual because she closed her eyes and swayed into him.

  He caressed her wing again in one long, slow sweep from shoulder blade to backside. His fingers were faintly slicked with a silvery powder that smelled like sex; as if she wasn’t irresistible enough, her wings cast off an aphrodisiac.

  He closed his eyes briefly, struggling to find his control even though the musk of arousal was pushing him toward an edge with a sharper drop than the other cliff she’d pushed them over. “Do you want me to stop?”

  She shuddered. No, the movement wasn’t hers. The sand beneath their feet quaked. Their pursuers were coming closer.

  “Don’t stop!” A chill mist rose around them, and her cry twisted in a desperate plume.

  He gathered her closer. His shoulders stiffened as if he could warn off all that threatened her with his possessive stance. Even as he claimed her for himself, he understood why the Hunters would never stop searching; with the silver glow of her spirit and the sky-blue sparkle of her eyes, she was too precious to lose.

  The pounding of hoofbeats echoed in his ears, along with the sound of hungry hounds panting....

  Or maybe that was just him.

  He flattened one hand against her back to brace her and then bent her gently to trail his lips down her neck. The slender arch of her throat trembled under his mouth with the resonance of her breathy moan. He inhaled the earthy perfume of salt and damp sand and rousing flesh. His own shaky exhale unfurled like dragon smoke across her skin.

  The mist had thickened and coiled in sinister figures, half seen and menacing…ravenous and seeking.

  Well, they could back the hell off; he already had her.

  The pendant had slipped off center and the V of the chain arrowed over her left breast. He framed the lower curve of her breast between his thumb and forefinger and plumped the flesh until the blue stone shifted over the darkening skin of her nipple. She moaned again as he pressed his lips to the center of the V, just off the upper swell of her breast where her heartbeat matched itself to his.

  “I refuse to scream ‘Mo’ when I come,” he whispered. “Give me your real name,”

  She shook her head fretfully. “Who said you are going to come? And my name doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.” He looked at her. The cold nipped at the moisture of her skin, dampening his lips.

  “Imogene,” she gasped. “Just don’t stop.”

  He dipped his head again and laughed against her flesh. His lower lip brushed over the steel and closed on her puckered flesh. He traced his tongue in a slow circle around her nipple, drawing the peaked pebble deeper into his mouth.

  She moaned and threaded her fingers through his hair, holding him close.

  Around them, the shadows shifted in vain, as if casting around for something gone missing. Vaile closed his eyes and ignored the cold darkness that pulsed around them in favor of the vibrant warmth beneath his hands.

  His body shifted in response to each minute motion of hers, like a dance. She tilted her shoulder, and he suckled at her other breast. She angled one foot back to take his weight, and he nudged his knee between her legs. The wispy fabric of her shorts slipped over his thigh, less obtrusive than even the sheerest bedsheets. He might as well be naked for all the modesty his own shorts offered.

  As if she’d read his thoughts—certainly she could not mistake his interest—her hands slipped along his shoulders and down his arms to settle just above his hip bones. Another scant inch and she could slip down his waistband.

  Instead, she pushed him back. “Vaile.” Her voice was hoarse. “They’re gone. You can stop now.”

  He kept his feet planted in the sand. “I’m not sure I can.”

  “You will. You are not like them.”

  The words doused his ardor like a sneaker wave. He straightened and let the leverage of her hands set him back a step.

  As if the same invisible wave had cleared the shadows, the moon was back. The clouds had parted. The coiling mist was n
owhere to be seen. “You are too cruel.”

  “I used to be, but I am trying to change that.” She lowered her head. The moonlight glimmered on her wings as she pulled the forward segments around her ribs to hide herself. The short drape left her shoulders bare and a deep exposed V from neck to navel. The blue stone dangled like a hypnotist’s charm in the shadow between her breasts.

  He dragged his gaze away and ran his fingers through his hair. The harsh rake didn’t erase the sensation of her hands clutching his head as she arched beneath his mouth.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  “You’re safe now. They are too arrogant to double back; they will never believe they overlooked us.”

  “They were right on top of us.” Almost as close as he’d been on her. “A kiss made us invisible?” Of course, it had been more than a kiss.

  “They weren’t looking for two enraptured lovers on the beach. They are hunting a rebellious sylfana.” She clutched the folds of her wings tighter without looking up. “A sylfana is a heartless, useless phae princess, cold as ice over stone, inhuman, unfeeling.”

  He reached out to touch her averted face and tipped her chin up to meet her gaze. “But you hid us—which was quite useful, I think—and they didn’t see, so you must have felt something.”

  Her eyes caught the moonlight. “I could not lie about that.”

  “From the stories I remember, fairies lie all the time.”

  “Not when you get ahold of them. Skin to skin, they must tell the truth—if you can find the skin—the truth—under their glamour. But then you can never let them go.”

  “I’m not holding you now,” he pointed out.

  “No.” Regret throbbed in her voice. “Which is why I have to go. The Hunters might not return tonight, but tomorrow when the sun sets, they will come again and try to catch my scent.” Slowly, she reached up to touch his jaw, echoing his caress. “I might not be able to protect you again.”

  “Since when is protection in the job description of fairy princesses?”

  “It isn’t.” Her hand slipped down his chest to rest above his heart. “Usually sylfana lead men out of the sunlit realm and into our Queen’s court of illusions where you are summarily devoured, in more ways than one. But I will not do that—will not be that—anymore.”