Night Kissed (Chosen Vampire Slayer #1) - Mila Young Page 0,24
my gaze over the side of her neck and over her throat. The blood pulsed through her carotid artery. I could hear it, smell it at being only a couple of feet apart. A shadow of the rich, metallic taste hovered on the surface of my tongue. My mouth began to water. But beneath that lay something new, something dangerous, something tempting. I narrowed my gaze on her. Veronica was so much more than a human. I didn’t quite understand it, but a shadow lingered beneath the surface. Who exactly was she?
“Is there nothing I can do to change your mind to come home with me?”
“You have nothing I want.” She held her chin high, her hands stiff by her side, and I didn’t miss her gaze sweeping over the three of us constantly. She was watching our every move.
Her words had told me one thing very clearly, but the signals from her body, the heightened heartbeat, the faintest hint of red shaded her cheeks said something else entirely. “It would be a damn shame to waste a body with so much potential.”
“I’m not here for your entertainment.” Veronica’s face reflected disgust and disdain at the same time her pulse sped up.
I knew that I had her in the palm of my hand, no matter how hard a fight she thought she was putting up. Not to mention that all together, we had her outnumbered and outclassed.
“Then what do you want? To spy on us?”
She gave no response, but the truth showed itself at the corner of her mouth, curling upward ever so slightly. The fire was back in her eyes as she stared daggers, first at me, Seth, then at Logan. Ever dispassionate, they gazed back at her.
“I could have you killed,” I replied.
“For crossing paths with you out here?” She pursed her lips in a mocking expression looking like she might break out laughing.
“You should just do it.” Seth spoke up at last, pushing his way into our sphere. He stood at my shoulder and glowered down at the captive. Smoke rose from his nostrils, wreathing around his face. “What a waste of time. Bring her home, or let’s chuck her in there too.” On the last word, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the icy river thundering along at his back. I glanced at the surface of the water just in time to see the last of a pale, slightly mottled hand disappear below the current.
“Enough,” I warned.
The demon grunted and fell silent, but I noticed that he, too, was transfixed by her sensuous beauty. His expression betrayed the naked lust I felt stirring within me. To see him want her so openly enraged me.
That was the moment I decided that I wanted to make her mine—in body and in spirit. Turning new vampires was a practice I had abandoned for decades, that I had, in fact, sworn never to repeat. Mistakes had been made in my careless youth, and they had cost me dearly. On the rare occasions I allowed my mind to venture back to those days, I remembered little more than brokenness and shadow, a constant crisis of faith.
One look at Veronica and those long-held convictions flew out the window. All I could think about was how she’d taste and the feeling of her death and rebirth in my arms. So many times it had been orgasmic in its own way. Pleasure mingling with pain. The thought of experiencing that moment with her filled me with a fiery passion I hadn’t felt in years.
Her hand fell to her waist, which I assumed was where she kept a weapon. No one would come alone after us without a plan for when things turned bad. She took several steps backward, aware this wasn’t a fight she’d win if she started one. But it occurred to me that her intention hadn’t been about battling us but to gain intelligence.
The urge to sweep her up and spirit her away to the house threatened to blind me to everything else in the world. It was tempting just to say that nothing else was of consequence until I’d gotten my fill of her. But not even her potent allure erased the gravity of other, more pressing issues. My body longed to have its mounting hunger sated by her flesh, and yet I understood that she was no more than a distraction. To acquire her would be to acquire a weak point for my enemies to exploit.