Night Kissed (Chosen Vampire Slayer #1) - Mila Young Page 0,66

Or was it the full curve of her lips, the tantalizing hollow between her neck and her collarbone, the way her long, dark eyelashes dusted her cheeks when she blinked?

Perhaps I’d never know. And perhaps it didn’t matter. The next thing I knew, I heard my voice offering to join our efforts.

“It’s possible I could be of some assistance.” I spoke casually, as if this whole exchange meant little in my eyes. “With your permission, that is.”

“You are helping me.” A little smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. I wanted to be insulted, but the outrage refused to manifest. “Fine, I’ll bite. What have you got?”

“You’ll find out.” I may have plunged into the deep end, but I wasn’t about to give every secret away. “Tell me when you want to meet again.”

“Here?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Where else?”

“Right.” She glanced at the whirlwind of officers marching on and off the scene, their boots leaving a mess of prints in the snow. “Well, I don’t see them finding much of anything here. Nothing they can use, anyway. Why don’t we give it forty-eight hours, and then we can come back and scope things out again?”

I nodded. “Sounds reasonable.”

She regarded me closely. “Promise you’re not going to ditch and make me look like an idiot for trusting you. Because that’s what I’m doing right now, Logan. I’m trusting you.”

As if I could parse her motivations any better. “Forty-eight hours,” I said. “I’ll be here. That will have to be good enough.”

Veronica held out her hand. “All right. Shake on it, then, and let’s get the hell out of here before they see us.”

We shook hands. On the way back out, I let her go ahead of me, and then I veered off her path, looping through the forest.

If she stopped, or if she looked for me, I didn’t see her, nor would she see me. And that was exactly how I wanted it to be.

Chapter 22

Orion

Whether or not she thought I was ancient, Veronica had forced me to realize how much of my life had gotten stale. Seeing her was like taking a shot of adrenaline directly into a vein. It was a small relief to know that her liaison with Seth had not diminished my desire for her. If anything, my passion soared to new heights, fueled by seething jealousy. Coupled with that, her words about her not being necessarily just exclusive with me played on my mind a lot. I still hadn’t worked out how to overcome the jealousy inside me, but the thought percolated.

In turn, I began to brainstorm ways in which I might successfully turn her. Before she came into my sphere of awareness, I would’ve considered the very notion unconscionable. Veronica was far from the first enticing, attractive young woman I had sired into a vampire, but it had been decades since the last attempt.

And there were several good reasons for that. Whenever those memories threatened to creep to the surface of my consciousness, I shoved them down deep. She would be different. She had to be.

And what if your precious, beautiful Veronica goes rogue, like the others? What if you have to put her down?

The possibility, however remote, was agonizing. Part of me wanted so much to push her away and save us both from the suffering that often seemed inevitable. But another, larger part figured that if we were going to be dragged into an eternal hell, we might as well go together.

It was too late for anything else, really. I already thought of Veronica as mine.

The sound of the house phone ringing was so foreign to my ears that it barely registered. I doubted anyone has called us on it since we moved in here. Annoyed, I grabbed it blindly off the cradle on the table where he sat, prepared to either ignore the call or deliver a blistering criticism.

I answered the phone, “Hello.”

“It’s me,” she said. Veronica’s voice was low and furtive, as if she thought the line might be tapped. “Got a minute?”

The moment I heard her voice, my entire perspective shifted. “Maybe.” The answer was yes, but I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of knowing it. “What for? And how did you get our number?” I didn’t even know the number.

“It’s very easy to track down house phone numbers if you know where to search on the web. Anyway, there was an incident earlier tonight. Like an hour ago. I couldn’t get too close, but there were