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

fog—the seductive lie that pure
sensation would save her—she had held together herself. Her own fault. But it
shredded now on the sharp talons that topped his wings and the cold, cruel winds
of reality.
    All that time she had been fighting against the phaedrealii ’s love of delusion she had never wanted it
so badly as this moment. She would just have to reweave it herself, out of the
tattered threads of her pride.
    Lies and pride offered thin coverage at the moment, though, so
she drew the edges of her aching wings around her as she tilted her chin
imperiously. “One night. That is all we were supposed to have together. That
night is long past.”
    “It wasn’t enough.”
    The low pitch of his voice reverberated through her, finding a
yearning echo in places deep within her core.
    “It was more than you deserved,” she said. “Even skin to skin,
you lied.”
    As she yanked the chain over her head, she swallowed against
the hurt that cracked her voice. That was not a truth she would give him.
    “I didn’t lie to you. You didn’t ask me anything.”
    As if that made her feel less the fool… “You should have just
let the hounds shred me yesterday when they caught us on the beach.”
    “No.”
    Without the softening human glamour he had worn, his skin shone
like the backlit razor edge of an obsidian blade, highlighted against the
velvety black of his wings and the darkly mellow gleam of his leather jeans. The
steel-studded collar around his neck glinted like bared teeth. But his naked
chest was the same, a broad expanse of flight-honed muscle where she had rested
her head last night.
    She squelched the memory and lifted her lip in a sneer. “I know
the Lord Hunter keeps all his killers on a short leash. Did you need a night
with a sylfana so badly?”
    His bare shoulders squared against the arc of wings as he met
her gaze without flinching. “No. I wanted you.”
    The answer silenced her for a heartbeat. “Why?”
    He shrugged, and his wings dipped in an almost bashful
movement. “This.”
    At first, she didn’t understand what he was showing her. Then
he reached up to spread his long fingers in a V on both sides of a raised scar
at the joint where his wing met his shoulder. Though the edges had knit well,
the wound must have been horrific. In fact, his wing must have been nearly
severed…
    “You,” she whispered. “The Hunter whelp.”
    “I did not even have a name then.” His finger slid over the
knot of scarring. “You told me I wouldn’t feel it forever. You were wrong. I
still feel it. But it reminds me of what I wished for, what I wanted most.”
    “To fly.”
    “No, I wanted you,” he repeated. “Apparently it was you who
decided to fly away.”
    Her throat tightened. “Not soon enough, not far enough.”
    “After I became a Hunter fully fledged, I saw you at one of
those never-ending feasts. The wisps danced around you, and the breeze tugged
your hair into loops around your shoulders. You just stood there, but every part
of you yearned for flight.”
    That could have been any one of hundreds of nights. “The
Queen’s illusions are much too strong for me to see through, but her court
always stinks of ashes when I face into the wind.”
    “I never noticed anything except you. I wanted to make you
dance.”
    Imogene narrowed her eyes. “You are probably a phae strong enough to force me to burn through my
slippers.”
    “No. I meant…” The hesitation went on long enough for even a
long-lived phae to get impatient. “I wanted you to
want to dance. With me.”
    She wished she had seen him on that night, just another one of
the Queen’s Hunters, keeping watch from the shadows—for trouble both beyond and
within the phaedrealii . They could have indulged in
one of the court’s meaningless liaisons and parted ways without this pain. “You
felt that longing? Then don’t you see that the Lord Hunter was right? The phae should be free to want, to desire, to feel. It is
a magic within