Page 15 of Dark Hunter's Touch
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 peppered a row of kisses along 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 faedrealii 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 end of the Iron Wars, the queen would send fae out here just to watch. She has always been curious about humans—many of the faeare—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 faedrealii.”
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 fae can give.”
He reached up to smooth his thumb over Olette’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 had fallen for a fae and followed one 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.”
