Read Online NocC 021 - Jessa Slade - Dark Hunter's Touch - Harlequin 2012-08 by Nocturne - Free Book Online

itself,
but oh no, she had never meant to bring Vaile down with her....
    A heavy weight slammed between her helplessly spreading wings,
and her eyes snapped open at the impact as Vaile, clamping his arm around her
belly, tried to lift them from the fatal plunge.
    The trailing edges of his wings hit the water with a vicious
slap, and water sprayed up around them. He strained against gravity and the
weight of water, as if by the magic of his ferocious will alone he could power
them skyward.
    His leathery wings snapped out to full extension, shedding
droplets in a shimmering arch that caught the moonlight. For a heartbeat, they
hung together, suspended in the monochrome rainbow of night-dark ocean, pale
foam and silvery droplets. Then one more powerful downward thrust rocked her
head back against his shoulder, and they shot free, high above the waves.
    She had never commanded such power on the wing, and the wild
thrill of it made her pulse sing in her veins.
    Or maybe that was Vaile’s arm, locked tight under her
breasts.
    “Drop me,” she hissed. “Leave me to drown.”
    “Let you escape, you mean? After all I did to hunt you down?
That’s my knack, you know. I always find what I
want.”
    “Your prey.”
    “You.”
    Why would he tell her his knack? Maybe he thought telling her
would keep her from running again. As if she would ever have another chance.
Back in the phaedrealii , her desires would wither,
like her rarely used wings. Returning to a sylfana ’s
carefree, thoughtless existence, she would forget everything she had felt. She
would even forget how badly she had wanted to feel at all. Nor would she be
bothered by the cruelty of Vaile’s betrayal—cold comfort at that. “Just tear off
my wings, and drop me in the ocean.”
    His breath was a warm sigh in her ear, and his bare chest
almost scorched the damp folds of her wings trapped between their bodies.
“Imogene—”
    “Whatever you do to me, it will be no worse than what the Queen
has in mind.”
    He tightened his grasp. “Even she is not so…well, she is that
cruel, and you said you have seen worse from her, but you haven’t done anything
that unforgivable. Yet.”
    “I led that man not to his death but to the loss of everything
that made him who he was, from his delights to his fears. I gave him to the
Queen, and she took all that from him. And worst of all? I told myself that I
was running away to make his sacrifice meaningful, to make sure that even though
he had been used up, I would never again be used to ensnare another man. But the
truth is, when I saw those treasures of his emotions, I wanted to feel them too.
Like our Queen, I wanted to take that passion, all of it, and that is why I will
never forgive myself.”
    The wind of their flight nudged tears from her eyes—just salty
water. There was no magic of emotion in them.
    Although the tears seemed to sap Vaile’s power—because he dove
toward the shore—he backwinged abruptly, in one leathery sweep, to land them
with a knee-jarring thud. He kept a grip on her arm as he circled around in
front of her. It wouldn’t take but a moment for the hounds to catch up. For that
moment, though, they were alone.
    But his expression wasn’t horrified. He looked pissed, his eyes
sparking with the same light as the angry hounds. “What you saw the Queen do to
enhance her power is terrible, no doubt. But the illusions of the phaedrealii must remain intact. If all the Hunters had
been killed the night the old Lord came Undone and if all the phae were loosed of the Queen’s restraints, do you
think they would stay behind the walls of the court? No, they would take to the
sunlit world with their havoc. We save two realms by holding ourselves
apart.”
    “At what cost?”
    “It could be worse. It has been worse, though not since the
Iron Wars. But now that I’ve found you, that is over. The phaedrealii will take you back like nothing ever happened.”
    “Exactly,” Imogene whispered. “Like