Dark Hunter's Touch. Jessa Slade
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Название: Dark Hunter's Touch
Автор: Jessa Slade
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
isbn: 9781408981795
isbn:
For an instant, her heart flew at the sound of that silver-bell note, her blood sang with the wind of their coming, her pulse pounded with the beat of cloven hooves over sand.
Riding to the fore, the horned Lord of the Hunt lifted his bugle. At the klaxon, three streaks of mottled silver and black leaped ahead—the dogs, almost as tall as the Lord’s stag. The first hound lifted his middle head and cried fury. Eight other hounds’ tongues answered.
“What the hell?” Vaile stood facing the onslaught, hands on hips.
Jolted from her reverie, Imogene grabbed his elbow and whirled him around. “Run!” She took two steps, realized he wasn’t behind her. “Follow me or die.”
He glanced once more over his shoulder, and then he was pounding the sand beside her. Cold both from fear and the rising wind, still she felt the hot bulk of him as he ran.
Though slowed by the soft dunes higher up the beach, the Hunt was angling toward them.
“They’re driving us toward the cliff,” Vaile panted. “We’ll be cut off.”
Earlier, she had jogged around the headland through shallow water where a small river cut through the cliff rocks. At high tide like now, she would normally hike up into the trees to catch the road back rather than risk a scramble over the loose stone on the high cliff. But if they headed inland or tried to descend toward the mouth of the river, the Hunt would capture them.
Anyway, she would be captured. With the three-headed dogs on their scent, Vaile wouldn’t be so lucky.
“You’re faster than me,” she gasped back. “Run ahead, toward the ocean. The Hunters won’t cross the moving water of the river.”
“Won’t leave you.” His voice was grim despite the wheeze.
“I’ll lose them in the trees.” Not likely, but at least he would have a chance.
“Won’t leave you,” he repeated.
They were closing fast on the cliff edge, chunks of rock under the sand threatening to break an ankle. The Hunt was closer yet behind them, and the breath of the hounds was an icy dread on their heels. The enraged baying eclipsed the twilight, rising to a hyena pack’s gibbering cackle and promising doom.
Still, Vaile didn’t veer off. The rock, brittle and gray, broke under their pounding feet. The scrabble of long claws hissed behind them.
Imogene sucked in a huge breath, the mist of fresh river water on her tongue.
She slowed by one step, letting Vaile draw just a heartbeat ahead. He must have sensed her hesitation because he looked back for her. The black edge of the cliff made a broken line against the evening sky just a stride beyond.
She lunged at him and caught him around the shoulders. Salt and heat exploded between them at the contact. The force of her blow knocked them in an arc over the edge.
Below, the little river glimmered moon-silver. The breeze skirled around them, as if desperately wanting to hold them aloft.
The three hounds skittered to a halt at the edge of the cliff with a howled chorus of rage. When she dropped her glamour and the illusion of humanity fell away, their nine-part harmony of preternatural wrath spiraled to the stars.
She held Vaile close and spread her wings.
Chapter Two
It had been a very long time since he’d fallen so hard for a girl.
And from his precarious position dangling two stories above rock and sand and river, Vaile thought it just might get harder yet.
“Don’t squirm,” his flight attendant warned. “I’m trying not to drop you.”
“That’s comforting.”
They came in low and fast, skimming the river. Then his trailing legs caught a dune, and they went rolling in a ball of sand, seawater and swearing.
He staggered to his feet, instantly whirling to face the cliff they had descended so fantastically. The three misshapen dogs paced the rim, drawing back only to make room for the horned rider who stared down.
Vaile gave him a vigorous middle finger.
“Don’t mock them.” Imogene climbed to her feet a few steps away.
“Why? Will they do something worse than push us over a cliff?”
“Technically, they didn’t push us. I did.”
“Ah. True. But since you were trying to save my life, I forgive you.”
She stared at him. “You’re taking this awfully in stride for someone who just flew off a cliff.”
“I have a long stride,” he reminded her. “Plus, I have more pressing issues, such as the impressive amount of sand in my shorts.”
Her gaze flicked downward. “Oh. That’s all just sand?”
For a moment, he thought his cheeks actually heated. But it must have been road rash from the tumble.
She glanced away, brushing at herself. Along with the sand, she brushed off her T-shirt—all the way off. The cotton had shredded under the burst of her wings, and the sorry remains fluttered down around her sneakers.
Judging from the prickling heat that flushed through him, he had road rash all over.
She definitely blushed, raising one hand to shield her breasts. She had beautiful breasts, which he judged would fit neatly in his palm. The blue stone glowed dark against her pale skin. He wanted to lace his fingers through hers and spread her arms to expose her to the light of the moon, to demand she forget such modest notions after she’d so boldly defied their pursuers and gravity itself.
His blood pulsed in a hot tide through his limbs, roused by her moon-white curves. A gentleman would avert his gaze; he decided not overtly salivating was concession enough. “Lingerie commercials aside, I suppose you can’t wear a bra over wings.”
“It does tend to ruffle feathers.” The silvery white wings that cascaded from her shoulders to midway down her thighs weren’t truly feathered, more like shimmering metallic leaves or the scales of a magnified butterfly wing.
“I can’t believe you managed to glide us down on those.”
“I’m stronger than I look.”
“I am starting to see that,” he murmured. The note of surprise in his voice should have gotten him a raised eyebrow at least, but she was obviously considering more immediate problems.
She stared up the empty cliff. “We have to find a place to hide. They’ll go upstream until they can cross at the culvert, and then they will be after us again.”
“Where can we go?”
She directed her clear blue gaze to him. “Don’t you want to know what they are or what they want?”
“They СКАЧАТЬ