Page 3 of To Run with the Wild Hunt

Apparently he'd been planning his revenge quite thoroughly.

The woman draped across my lap wouldn't stay unconscious forever, though I suspected she would sleep for hours still from the shock of near-death and the strangeness of the power coursing through her body. Lexi, I thought, the name sliding into my memory as if it had always lived there—as if I'd been born knowing it. Alexis Sharpe.

Soulmate bonds were strange things, the greatest gift and cruelest curse of Faery. When two people who could find an eternal balance made true contact with each other – a meeting of the eyes, a touch of skin to skin, a shared moment in the chaos of time – faery power bound them together with the same strength as a vow. But there was no guarantee, not for love nor for hate. A soulmate could be one's most implacable enemy as easily as one's cherished lover.

She could become anything to me. She could even become nothing to me… but only if I chose to leave her, here and now, and remain away for the allotted span of her life. If we were together… if I brought her with me to Faery… we would be drawn together inexorably. Even if I abandoned her, I couldn't guarantee that our paths wouldn't cross again.

It was even likely. Sarcaryn, damn him, would surely see to it.

I found a path and I led my hounds underhill with Lexi still slung across my saddle. I didn't want the complication of a soulmate, but I'd hunted and caught her, and what hunter leaves his prey behind? She belonged to me by right of the hunt. And, too, I didn't want to give Sarcaryn the satisfaction of knowing he'd struck home with the vulnerability he'd exploited. Let him think I'd won my heart's desire from his paltry attempt at a curse. No predator shows weakness to his prey.

Such justifications felt natural, even though I knew the true reason I kept her. I wanted the woman who had laughed in the face of her death to look into my eyes and choose me.

The exhaustion eased as we crossed back into the deep wilds of Faery, the wild magic soaking into my bones and bolstering my beasts. One of the black hounds gave herself a shake, and a few tails started to wag as they picked up the pace again, heading for home at a springing trot.

I didn't push them, but neither did I slow them. Wolfhounds knew their bodies, and only the act of running could override their natural disinclination towards discomfort. The lure of home drew them back to their beds, and I followed with a rather more pensive mood.

When we reached the Ruined Palace, I handed off my horse and hunting-mask to one of the servitors and carried Lexi into my home. She curled up against me as if she belonged there, her lips parted and body soft. Long, umber-brown hair fell in loose tangles, torn from her careful braid by the teeth of my dogs, but the color was already flaking away, dissolved by the force of my power in her. Beneath, the natural rose-gold of her hair asserted itself, the strands themselves healing from the chemical abuse heaped upon them.

I laid her on my bed, her freckled skin pale against the dark furs of faery beasts that had no names. Her long fingers belonged to an artist, the nails carefully trimmed and delicate calluses roughening the fingertips. She had scars on her face, small kisses of mortality that lent gravitas to her otherwise girlish features, her cheeks soft and lips full. That mouth was made for kissing, with a ruddiness that begged to be claimed. I could almost see it, the way she would look when playing with a man, her white teeth against those red lips as she bit them—

I had to stop, breathing hard with my hands on either side of her body, my stiffening cock pressing against the fabric of my pants. My pulse roared for attention, throbbing in my groin and beating in the veins of my neck.

Fuck.

How long had it been since a woman had lain in repose in my bed? Since one had looked me in the eyes and defied my commands, even unto death?

A lure I couldn't resist, in the gently curving body of a woman with full breasts and soft sides, her hips made for sinking my fingertips into as I drove every inch of my cock into her heated embrace—

I forced my thoughts away again, my cock demanding attention, every pulsing throb of blood through my shaft so unbearable I wanted to take myself in hand right then and there, with the impatience of an adolescent. You're a god, I snarled to myself, my fingers digging into the bed as I struggled with my desire. Stop acting like a stag in rut.

Sarcaryn was the god of sexual pleasure, and like all gods he could influence the patterns of the world. When he leaned his power into the patterns of Faery that tied people together as soulmates, the people who were drawn together were those who were sexually compatible. It didn't matter that the Stag himself surely knew nothing about my sexual predilections. The power that ran through my veins was faery, and Faery knew me.

Soft. Pale. Beautiful. Everything I wasn't, and everything I desired, prey for a thing like me and yet made inviolable by the bond that gave her everything I possessed, down to the depths of my wildness.

With care, I undressed her, taking off her torn and bloodied clothing and not allowing my fingers to trace along the smooth expanse of her skin. She had a tattoo running along her ribs, a stylized hare captured in a full run with the words "But first they must catch you" written in its wake. There was another on her ankle, a bright yellow flower with a red-and-black spotted beetle on the spiky leaf, and a third on her thigh, a crude heart etched with dots of black that looked to have been made by an unsteady hand and a blunt needle.

They weren't dissolving like the dye in her hair. She must have regarded them as part of herself.

At last, I couldn't bear being in the same room as her, not with her skin bare and her expression soft. I didn't fear losing control—but the ache in my groin demanded to be satisfied, and my life would be far easier if I tended to my base impulses before washing the blood off of the nearly-naked woman lying on my bed.

I didn't go far, not wanting to leave Lexi alone in such a vulnerable state, no matter that any enemy would have to get through both my servitors and my hounds to reach her. But I went far enough, getting two doors between us before sinking onto an upholstered chair with a groan, freeing my cock with an edge of desperation.

Precome wet my underthings and dripped down the stiff length of my shaft, my cock twitching as I wrapped my left hand around myself and started stroking. Each rough stroke of my hand sent pleasure streaking into me, my whole body commanded by the beast between my legs. It had been so long since I'd felt like this—since physical pleasure had gripped me with unrelenting need, every beat of my heart a war-drum dedicated to lust.

It wasn't enough, could never be enough, my cock throbbing with unbearable demand. I knew what I wanted, and my hand could never compare to the all-encompassing heat and pressure of the depths of a woman's body.

My mouth could, though. My throat. My tongue. On occasion, I even preferred such things to the enticing slick of a woman's cunt.

There are some few benefits to being beheaded. In addition to being a relatively swift way to die, if you happen to be truly deathless instead of merely immortal, having a detachable head opens a new realm of intriguing bodily positions. I'd suffered the indignity of being beheaded on the battlefield, spent millennia hunting for my stolen head as the Headless Horseman, and millennia more hunting my enemies as the Dullahan. I'd certainly earned the right to do with myself as I pleased.

Once, perhaps, I might have been able to heal myself, but I'd wandered the mortal world for too long, and the force of myth wound through me. I was the Dullahan, cruel and hard, holding my head up with my skeletal fingers fisted in my tangled hair as I brought terror to those I hunted. I was Herne the Hunter, antlers raking the sky and black hounds racing before me. I was the Devil himself, pursuing sinners to drag them down to Hell.

I was Nuada Silverhand; Hunter, Healer, King. And I was burning with desire.

With a groan, I ran the silver finger-bones of my right hand along the woad tattoo encircling my neck. The skin parted, tattoo dissolving into a wound that would never heal. Pale blue flame flickered up as I took my head off my shoulders, the death-light of a will-o-wisp marking the flow of power that linked my head and body.

Breathing hard, I brought my mouth to the head of my cock, my vision filling with the sight of my own needy body: stomach tensed, thick veins snaking along the length of my shaft, precome falling in a clear line from the ring in the red tip of my cock. My moan of desire cut off as I wrapped my mouth around myself, pleasure searing through me as my tongue massaged my sensitive cockhead.

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