Page 23 of Dark Hunter's Touch
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 turning bitter on his tongue.
Chapter 7
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 fae—not that Olette 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 faedrealii. Perhaps the restlessness preceded a jaunt across some starlit moor or maybe a wild tear down some unsuspecting Main Street; the stables of the Steel-Born Court provided horsepower in many forms.
Whichever way the faedrealii went, Olette knew she would not be attending, not since she had declined the queen’s command to procure another victim for her magical dissections.
Olette hadn’t denied the queen to her face, but the hobgnome chancellor—who had relayed the command—looked as aghast as if she had.
“You must go.” The overbearing hobgnome slicked back his long, pointy ears in dismay. His sallow skin was ghoulish in the pale blue-green light of the stolen smart phones strung on a cord around his neck. The phones blinked on and off with the images of ghostly faces. The glass and precious metals could be spelled to hold various magics, but Olette didn’t want to know if the faces were leftover avatars of the former owners…or perhaps the former owners themselves. “The queen says you seem to have a knack for bringing back the most expressively emotive subjects.” The hobgnome peered at her, his beady, jet-black eyes nothing like the jovial squint of the chipmunk-cheeked statuary she’d seen in human gardens.
No faecould force out the true nature of another fae’s knack—not even the queen—though tricking, wheedling and guessing were considered acceptable tactics. But taboo or no, even the most obsequious courtier in the faedrealii would be reluctant to find his knack the sole focus of the queen’s formidable attention.
Olette forced herself to remain impassive, her wings slack from her shoulders, while her mind whirled at the chancellor’s evident interest on the queen’s behalf.
Why had Queen Ankha even noticed her? Were the impulsive little breezes a manifestation of a stronger knack to have drawn royal interest? Olette let out a slow breath to calm her racing pulse. She had always thought merely being sylfana had attracted the poor humans who had followed her to their doom. Yet now she wondered… Once, before her wings had unfurled and before the sylfana allure and aphrodisiac had fully manifested, she had freed a nameless wounded whelp to fly.
The memory of the full-fledged hunter under her hands in the ruined cabin—his pulse and his cock rising to her touch—threatened her illusion of detachment. What else could she set free? For a moment, the possibilities diverted her. What if she was not as weak as she had always thought?
Just as quickly though, the truth broadsided her, knocking the breath from her lungs as easily as a tornado shred frail sylfana wings.
What she had most yearned for—to feel, to live, to be free—had run riot over the humans’ caution, loosed their inhibitions, unfettered their emotions…and ultimately meant their magical dismemberment to feed the queen’s pitiless curiosity and need for power. And Vaile had taken a bigger risk than he knew, using her knack against her to ensnare her senses and ultimately her body. If she had Undone his fae prohibition against true emotion, he might have become like the old, mad Lord Hunter himself—or another victim of Queen Ankha’s gruesome thievery.
Discovering her own power to set spirits free, now, when she was most thoroughly imprisoned, made her laugh until her throat burned as if she had swallowed pure iron.
The chancellor perked his ears and gave her a peg-toothed smile. “So you will go?”
She leaned down to return the smile. “Never, ever again.”
To her surprise, he had let her walk away, and the queen had not pursued the matter. No one was pursuing her anymore. Maybe she had finally become the nothing she had feared, less meaningful even than her errant breezes.
