Prince of Air and Darkness by Jenna Black Page B

that he tried to hide it or anything, but he didn’t particularly flaunt it either. Strange how with only a change in posture and facial expression, he’d managed to make it unmistakable.
    “If Mr. Macho Stud can give me a massage,” he said, his voice suddenly pitched higher and his hands punctuating his speech, “then you’d have to admit he’s the genuine article. No straight man would let me get naked within a hundred yards of him if he’s not an honest-to-God massage therapist.”
    She laughed out loud at the mischievous twinkle in his eye. She tried to imagine Hunter putting his hands on Jackson’s naked back, and she had to agree that if anything could flush him out, that would be it.
    “Thanks for humoring me, Jackson,” she said.
    He picked up his cup of tea, his pinky pointing daintily outward. “You don’t have to thank me, darling,” he lilted. “I plan on enjoying myself.”
    ****
    Hunter prowled his apartment, nerves jumping and singing as he waited for Bane to bring the device he’d promised. Practicality told him he had to enlist the goblin’s help, but that didn’t make depending on Bane any less distasteful. It seemed such a cruel irony that it had come to this.
    Hunter had come to the mortal world brimming with confidence and sure that Kiera would have no chance against his charms. He would sweep her off her feet, get her pregnant before he had a chance to get attached. He’d even told himself he could accomplish his mission without hurting her—after all, she’d never know he’d impregnated her on purpose, and when he disappeared from her life, he would be just an ordinary failed relationship in her memory.
    He had not been prepared for her resistance. Nor, he had to admit, had he been prepared to like her. He’d bedded mortal women before, and never had even the prettiest of them managed to touch him in any but the most superficial way. He’d assumed he was incapable of feeling more than lust for a woman. Before Kiera, his full palette of emotions had seemed to comprise lust, hatred, and fear.
    Cursing his mortal father for falling into the Faerie Queen’s arms and siring him, Hunter opened a bottle of Chivas. Feeling decadent and dissolute, he held the bottle to his lips and downed a big swallow, hoping to dull his mind, because he didn’t like where his thoughts were going. He downed another swallow, but no alcohol in the world worked that fast, and his mind spiraled out of control, conjuring memories best left buried. Memories of a warm smile, of kind words and real affection. Memories of feeling safe, of knowing someone stood between him and the terrifying hordes of the Unseelie Court. Bittersweet memories that always led him down the same road, to the memory of the execution.
    His father had somehow managed to shake off the seduction spells the Queen of Air and Darkness had woven around him. He had snatched his seven-year-old son and fled the Queen’s palace, making for the nearest Faerie circle in hopes of escaping into the mortal world. The endeavor had been doomed from the start.
    The Queen’s executions were never quick, never clean. She ruled her Court with terror, and her mortal consort paid a terrible price for his betrayal. And Hunter had been forced to bear witness to the entire ordeal.
    His father was bound, naked, to the whipping posts that loomed ever in the palace courtyard, a reminder of the price of displeasing the Queen. Each day for a full week, the Queen ordered her consort flogged. Bane, wielding the whip, had stripped every inch of skin from the poor mortal’s back, while Hunter stood in his mother’s arms, her hand holding his head so that he could not look away. Each night, she used her magic to heal the wounds so that her victim would live to suffer more.
    After the seventh flogging, she’d declared it was finally time for Hunter’s father to die. It still wasn’t quick. Bane used a knife, inflicting wound after wound, none serious enough to