The Dark Huntsman: A Fantasy Romance of The Black Court (Tales of The Black Court Book 1) (5 page)

He put his boot on the coffee table. Resting an arm on one knee, he bent over her. His pupils were huge and dark. His blue eyes ringed by astonishing black rims. She grew light-headed. If she didn’t watch out, she’d be begging to be his sex slave.

“You are on to something, Alice.” Trina forced herself to listen. “The classic bargains for a life are magical objects, sex, and family members. But there is one more option…” The next word fell between them like a grenade.

“Servitude.”

Her breath stopped. A hole opened in her chest as big and wide as an abyss in the ocean.

She blinked slowly and evenly as the word sank in.

“Servitude?”

“Servitude. Seven years is the classic number. Seven years, and the queen might even stop looking for you.”

“But…my aunt, my cousins. They'll think I'm dead. They’ll wonder what happened to me, scry for me. And who will protect them? My aunt is old.” With sudden, sick certainty, she was sure he would hide her away. Would her cousins even be able see to wherever he’d take her? “Seven years is too long.”

“For the queen to leave you alone, your family will need to think you dead.”

“But seven years. That may be nothing to you, but to me it’s huge. It’s my life! To not see my family for seven years? You’re insane.”

Hot tears pushed behind her eyes, her voice rose higher and higher despite her best efforts at control. “And what would I be doing?”

She pictured herself slaving a chunk of her life away. Washing stone floors with a scrub brush while he lounged in a chair with a drink and watched her with hot, disturbing eyes.

“Enough!” He paced back and forth between her and the fireplace, his power flaring. Trina held still, she didn’t want to draw his anger. “We’re wasting time. I can only spare your life if we make a bargain. Those are the rules. I need to go back and leave something… something to convince her you’re dead. Bargain or no, I still have to answer to the queen or she will be after me instead.”

He took Trina's shaking hand in his warm, surprisingly calloused one and ran his thumb in a soothing motion over her palm. She resisted closing her eyes and sinking into the sensual stroking sensation.

“We seal this bargain now, or I take you back and kill you.” His soft voice stroked her, capturing her, despite her knowledge that none of this attraction was real. His thumb slid up and down her skin and she repressed a responding shiver. “Seven years is customary, but one will do for us. One year and a day. You will still be young, your family will still remember you.”

The fire crackled and popped in the silence and Trina understood the meaning of eternity in a moment as his compromise dangled, a sharp knife wrapped in his velvet voice.

For one year, I can do anything if I have to. Scrub floors, clean up after his horse. One year of labor or death. Not much of a choice, but it is a choice.

She took a deep breath.

“Okay.” The word fell out of her mouth.

It was done.

Triumph rocketed through his eyes. He stood, hauled her off the couch, and pulled her into his chest. The blanket slid down, her nipples rubbing against the soft silk of his shirt. The thin material caught between her and the heat packaged in his leather pants.

“A kiss to seal our bargain, milady.”

She had no time to prepare for his firm mouth. She fought, pushing against his lips with hers, her fists caught between them. The kiss softened and she relaxed in surprise.

The release was just as sudden. He pushed her away and she fell onto the couch.

He crossed the room to the door, his mouth twisted, his eyes remote. “Take the first room on the left at the top of the stairs. I’ll see you in the morning. Oh, and lock the door,” he called over his shoulder. “My uncles shouldn’t be back until morning, but if they find you here they’ll not hesitate to take advantage.”

“Wait! Where are you going?”

He turned, his silver hair decorations chiming, his expression grim. “I’m running out of time. In order for the queen to stop hunting you, someone must set the scene for your false death.”

“How?”

“I’m going to set a fire and burn your house down.” He smiled. “But don’t worry, I’ll be back. We have unfinished business, you and I.”

Trina went weak in the knees. Now that he was gone, she let go of her resistance and sank back into the couch, touching her swollen lips.
Damn. One kiss and she was gelatin. Not a good way to start a job
.

Chapter Three

Logan left the cottage, his blood buzzing from kissing the witch. He greeted the lolling hounds with absent pats and strokes behind their ears all the while cursing the lack of time needed to seduce the wild-eyed beauty.

Time enough for that after he returned.

He whistled for Solanum and pictured the witch as she had been during their bargaining session. Waist-long black hair tangled around her face and pale shoulders. Green eyes shadowed with exhaustion, the last vestiges of her power keeping her upright on the couch. She’d wrapped his blanket high around her breasts, seemingly oblivious to the indecent amount of smooth, bare thigh that remained exposed.

Punishing him with isolation and sending him after a nubile young witch was not the queen’s smartest chess move.

Look what had transpired.

Red eyes approached. “Did you do her yet?” Solanum asked, his dark equine form barely visible in the shadows.

“Crass, even for you.” Logan left off spoiling the hounds and pulled on his leather gloves.

“Crass sure, but man, it’s been a long time for you. I’d have done her.” Solanum’s eyes gleamed. “That is, unless you had some action in the queen’s dungeons. I’ve heard stories.”

Logan shuddered, and the puca whickered a low laugh.

“Luckily for me, the bitch forgot me in a hole.” Finally, after she’d spent far too long making sure he’d remember why he was there. Logan distracted himself from the dark memories with thoughts of his new toy, and how he could use her against the queen.

“We have an errand to run before it’s time to report to the queen,” he said.

“Insane. Why would you risk her shutting you up again?” Solanum asked. “Let’s just run wild instead.”

“If I don’t go back and cover my tracks, she’ll do worse than toss me in the dungeon,” he said. “I could run, but someone, somewhere would find me. I won’t live long looking over my shoulder. And there is the prince.”

“So fuck the wench, kill her, and move on.” Solanum’s muzzle nudged his shoulder. “I’ll kill her for you, she looks delicious.”

Not going to happen. Logan had his own plans for the witch, none of which included killing her. The green herbal smell of her silky skin was fresh in his senses. No, he’d avoid killing her. If he could.

“You know that killing her won’t be enough. The queen will find something else for me to do to earn my freedom. I need an edge, and this witch is it. Someone as powerful as the queen shouldn’t be concerned with a human witch. Somehow, she’s important, and I mean to find out why.”

“Be honest. You were all set to kill her ‘til you saw her in the flesh. You always were impulsive, now you’re finally free and making the same mistakes. Leave the fucking politics alone, be a free agent, like me.” The puca kicked up his hooves in a little dance. “You’re playing with fire. Pacify the queen and kill the wench.”

Logan swung up on the puca’s back. “Don’t forget, she’s an important piece in the game. There are other girls, to be sure, but none like this one.”

“Too many years without getting any, and your noggin is fogged. Do her and clear your head man,” Solanum said.

“Good advice. I’m working on it. Now back to the witch’s lair, I don’t want any loose ends leading back here. My uncles will not be happy.”

“I thought we were going to Court.”

“We will, but first, we fire the witch’s house.”

“Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Cauldron burn and cauldron bubble. Burn, baby, burn!”

Logan hung on to the capering puca and cursed the queen. They sped up and the portal opened. There had been too many years of the puca running free, causing havoc. It was a wonder world upon world wasn’t burnt down to ash.

Logan lounged against the antechamber wall of the Black Queen’s court, a small inlaid box waiting at his feet. Surreptitiously he looked around, taking in the crowd of petitioners who were there before him. A tiny, familiar-looking fae dipped her chin and buzzed her wings from the opposite bench, her multi-faceted eyes glittering. He nodded back, struggling to come up with her name. It seemed he had the dubious distinction of still being recognized, even if only by the minor fae.

“Logan Ni Brennan!”

He almost jumped. But he wouldn’t do that, not here, instead, he casually moved off the wall and over to the official gnome standing behind an equerry’s desk. Here, if one jumped, he was in danger of being the victim. In the Black Queen’s court it was better to be hard as iron.

“The queen will see you now.” From his spot guarding the entrance to the throne room the gnome’s expression, and small, disapproving sniff, said someone had obviously made an enormous error.

Logan straightened off the wall, picked up his box, and kept his face smooth and emotionless. This was the first time in a lifetime he could remember the queen ordering him to be seen immediately. A flicker of foreboding touched his neck. A sudden black cloud of knowledge that the witch was more important than he’d thought settled inside him. Maybe keeping her had been a mistake.

He walked past the hard wooden benches filled with petitioners, and shut out the disgruntled mutterings and stares. A malicious foot stuck out and only fast reflexes, honed from years spent here in court, saved him. How could these fools know he would prefer to be anywhere but walking into the Black Queen’s court.

A sobbing blue fairy spat hot venom and missed his boot by a finger. “I’ve been here three weeks. Three weeks!”

You always had to watch out for the sweet looking ones.

“Wait here.” The officious little gnome wasn’t finished letting him know his place. He left Logan once again cooling his heels at the base of the twenty-foot-tall doors that opened into the thousand-year-old hedge, and into court.

A drop of sweat licked its way down his spine as he admired the soft, hot pink roses twining up the side of the thorny hedge walls. The skin at the small of his back began to itch. That he’d forget the queen favored an almost tropical heat showed his level of distraction. Black leather was not working here. He’d been careless.

“Well, well, well. Look what the lions have dragged in. Haven’t seen you in, say… fifteen years. Or has it been longer than that? I didn’t notice.”

“Bosco.” Logan’s chin dipped in brief recognition.

Slim and tall, a true Tuatha De Danann, Bosco posed, leaning on a nearby pillar in a negligent fashion. He had tweaked a traditional jester’s garb into a tight, black and white motley of shorts and tank that showcased his black eyes, white punked hair, and other assets.

“I didn’t think she’d ever let you out, after your betrayal.”

Logan’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t betray anyone.”

“Well, the queen certainly didn’t take well to you backing the prince instead of her. She should have expected it of a mixed breed like you. I’d say, since she threw you in the dungeon, she thinks you’re a backstabbing cur.”

“You haven’t changed, Bosco, still sniffing around court for easy meat.” Logan refused to be taunted into losing it today. He had to keep his cool. “Bugger off.”

Bosco gave his eyes an exaggerated roll. “One would think that growing up here, you would know better how to survive this cesspool.”

“I’m still alive.” Logan’s tightly locked jaw ached. He stifled the almost smothering rise of memories of his miserable childhood, and how many times he’d been saved from Bosco’s crowd by luck. Luck, and the prince.

“Hmmm. So, are you the prince’s man, or the queen’s? The dungeons can be a powerful persuader.” Bosco slid off the wall, circling around Logan, searching for weakness. “I know you aren’t a fan of the queen’s choice of bride for poor Kian, but surely, marriage to one of the troll-kin is better than imprisonment. Or at the very least, a different kind.”

Was Kian still imprisoned? The prince hadn’t been in the queen’s dungeon and he sure as hell hadn’t contacted Logan since his release. Anxiety knotted his stomach. Concern for the prince was not something he could afford today. Nor was trading information with Bosco.

His liege, the prince, would have to wait. He had the witch to protect first. Not for the first time he regretted his impulsive nature. He should have learned his lessons better in the dungeon.

“Logan Ni Brennan to see her majesty.” The clear voice of the seneschal rang out over the crowd. Logan turned his back on Bosco, ignoring his hiss of displeasure. Bosco was the queen’s fool, not someone who would ever be his ally. It was time to face the bitch.

The enormous doors opened and Logan stepped through into the glitz and glitter of the never-ending party that was the Court of the Black Queen.

Court. What a crock. A gorgeous cover for a mass of social quicksand, shifting and sucking the unwary down to their doom.