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

bring it up…”
    “Oh, it is up all right.” He bent and lifted her, as easily as
one of the hounds might snap a wayward wisp from the air. She shivered a little
but not in delight this time. Why had that comparison come to her mind? Maybe
because he was strong like the hounds, and lean, so the flex of his muscles
played under her palm, denying any chance to pretend she might escape. Not that
she wanted to escape him, though.
    He laid her down on the bed beneath curls of ivy that decorated
the headboard. Smoothing her wings as he pulled his arm out from under her, he
stared into her eyes. “If you tell me to go, I will.”
    She shook her head and reached for him.
    But he resisted her tug on his bare shoulders. He wrapped his
fingers around her wrists, gently pinning her to the mattress. “I want to hear
you say it. And remember, I’m holding you, so I will know if you lie.”
    “Stay,” she whispered.
    The darkness of him loomed over her like night. But instead of
extinguishing the glow in her core, his nearness only stoked the blaze higher, a
bonfire of desire that sparked all the brighter for the shadows around them.
    She arched her hips toward him, echoing her words with the
curve of her spine. He growled low in his throat and released her wrists,
freeing his hands to unknot the halter from behind her neck.
    He anchored his arm under the small of her back, holding her in
the arch while he danced his tongue from one nipple to the other.
    She gave him a breathy laugh and laced her fingers through his
dark hair. “That tickles.”
    “You wanted to feel.” He traced a slow circle around her areola
with his lips, still a tease but hard enough to make her gasp, as if he was
drawing the air from her body. “And I want to feel you here .” He settled square between her thighs.
    She sighed and corkscrewed into his embrace, entwining arms and
wingtips around him. She felt him all right, his heat and the friction of his
skin. This was a physical enchantment not even the most powerful phae could conjure.
    With the halter top undone, she easily shimmied the dress down
to her knees and kicked the crumpled fabric aside.
    “No panties,” he noted with an approving leer.
    “Bras get in the way of wings, underwear gets in the way of—”
he smiled slowly “flying.”
    He stilled, and his arm behind her tightened. “You think I can
make you fly?”
    “I know you can.” While he was distracted, she tucked one hand
between them and eased the zipper on his jeans all the way down.
    With each tick of zipper teeth, he pushed harder toward her.
“Imogene…” On the last tug, he hissed out a breath as she took the hard length
of his erection in a gentle grip. He bucked against her hand. “Imogene, wait. I
didn’t think…”
    “Then I won’t think either.” She stroked him once, delighting
in the velvety slide of his erection, holding him fast though his body trembled
over hers. “Don’t worry. Human and phae might share
common ancestry long ago, but this encounter won’t have any consequences, for
either of us unless I wish it.” And even if she might wish it otherwise, their
time together would be as fleeting as the moon’s path across the sky.
    “But…”
    She captured his mouth with her own, tangled tongue to tongue
to draw him back to her own earthly spell. He came willingly.
    With fumbling hands, he shucked the denim. Each awkward bump of
his hips against her center sent another crest of excitement through her. The
cool skin of his flanks, the hot press of his erection left her senses
reeling.
    But when his hands settled on either side of her, pressing the
mattress down, she had to open her eyes, to see him naked.
    All that running had given him a Hunter’s body, lean and
strong. She could spend hours—the kind of enchanted hours that passed as
centuries—tracing each line of muscle, each ridge where his pulse throbbed. But
she didn’t have that kind of time.
    Only the wisps against the window lighted