Page 14 of The Darkest Chase
There’s something brutally innocent in her gaze.
I’m fucking arrested. Lost for words.
For what I was trying to do.
For what I should even be thinking in this situation.
Think, Micah. Find your brain and quit fucking staring.
I should be thinking about her safety and nothing else. She’s a flushed, disheveled mess and I don’t even know her name.
Only, right now, I’m gutted.
An unhinged thought cuts me open.
I’m staring at the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.
3
DARK WHISPERS (TALIA)
I’m being kissed by a vampire.
That’s the first thought clouding my foggy mind as the pale man leans over me. Maybe I’m hallucinating from low oxygen, but he looks—
Inhuman.
Imaginary.
Dangerous, with his red, red mouth descending toward mine.
His skin glows like moonstone.
His hair, too, a pale silvery-white like ice teased into sideswept strands. His face is so beautiful, so angular. He’s like some dark elven prince from the dirtiest fantasy books, smoldering and strange.
And his eyes—Oh God.
They’re somewhere between desert blue sky and arctic grey.
Twin moons on a hollow night, holding me hypnotized.
Yes, in the back of my mind, I know he’s a cop. He’s wearing a navy-blue police uniform.
I’ve seen him before.
I even remember when he first moved here a few years ago. Half the town whispered about Junior Sergeant Micah Ainsley because they’d never seen an albino before. The other half whispered because he was from ‘the big city’—New York City, I think—and they thought he’d be stuck up as hell and cosmopolitan.
But when he quietly blended into our town, mostly out of sight when he’s not walking his dog or doing local patrols, everyone just sort of stopped chewing that bone, and he faded into the scenery.
I’ve never had a reason to talk to him.
No one bothers us much at A Touch of Grey, not even the odd teenage vandals during tourist season. We don’t deal with the police.
So I’ve never really gotten a look at him up close, just quick glimpses as he heads past the shop some mornings with his hands full of coffee.
But now, he’s all I see.
He becomes my whole world as he seals his lips to mine and literally breathes life into me and I blush like I’m dying.