Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,114

my end, but I thought, What a shame he’s so broken. I don’t know what he thought about me, but it couldn’t have been too bad, because he asked, “May I kiss you?”

“I usually don’t kiss until at least the first date,” I said, trying for a joke, but my voice was breathless. You can’t make a joke without the right delivery, and I had fumbled it.

“May I kiss you?” he asked again.

I didn’t know what to say. Yes was logical, but no was safer, or maybe it was the other way around. I was beginning to lose the fight to keep my pulse and heart rate even. The hand on the side of my face was so big that he could have palmed me down to my neck, but the touch in that moment was gentle. He was playing by the rules I had so recently given him. I’ve always believed that effort should be rewarded.

I whispered, “Yes.”

He leaned down toward me. I had a memory of the only two times we’d kissed before; both had involved us taking the heart and head of a vampire so that our arms were covered in blood. The violence and gore had excited him. How could I let him kiss me now? But I did. It was like his hand on my face, the gentlest of touches, and my pulse raced up into my throat so that I could feel his lips but taste my heartbeat on my tongue.

He drew back from me and whispered, “You’re afraid of me now. Why?”

I had to swallow before I could answer, because my mouth had gone dry. “I remembered when we kissed before.”

He smiled, and it filled the dark caverns of his eyes with happiness. “So did I.”

I stepped back from him then and almost got hit by the door when it opened behind us.

“Are you coming outside, Blake?” Leduc asked as he looked at the two of us.

I nodded. “Yeah, just need some air.” I pushed past him and stood in the cool air outside, taking in deep, even breaths of it.

“Are you okay?” Newman asked.

I don’t know what I would have answered, because a rental SUV pulled up, and it was Edward.

38

I WAS RUNNING toward him before I’d thought it through. I had time to see that he was wearing blue jeans and well-worn cowboy boots but was missing the cowboy hat that usually covered his short blond hair. The whole outfit including the brown leather bomber jacket was so not Edward, but perfectly Ted Forrester. I wrapped my arms around his waist, because I knew Edward was in there somewhere. He hugged me back, but I felt that moment of hesitation in his body, because in all the years we’d known each other, I had never greeted him like that. The hesitation made me start to pull back, but he held me tighter, and whispered into my hair, “What happened? What did he do?”

We both knew who he was. I pulled back enough to see his face. His blue eyes were already starting to fade from bright to winter sky blue. That was the color his eyes were when he killed. I didn’t want him to do anything unfortunate just because my nerves had gotten jangled. If we ever pulled the pin on the grenade that was Olaf, I wanted it to be for something real.

“Nothing. He’s actually behaved himself well.”

Edward moved us so that no one in the sheriff’s office could see his face, and then he stopped pretending. The face was still the same face, but the expression on it was cold and matched the winter sky eyes. “Tell me the truth, Anita.”

“I swear to you that Olaf has behaved himself. We’ve actually had two good conversations where he was reasonable and compromised.”

His eyes narrowed. You didn’t have to know him well to read the expression. He didn’t believe me.

“My word of honor, Edward—Ted—that he has done pretty good, far better than I expected.”

He settled his arms more comfortably around me and raised an eyebrow at me. I started to try to back out of the hug, but he held his arms in place. “You can get out of the hug when you explain to me why we’re hugging in the first place. Are you lying about what he did so I won’t go in there and shoot him?”

I frowned at Edward, my arms still around his waist. If he was holding on, then it was the most comfortable way