Page 151 of The Darkest Chase

I’m in so deep I don’t mind his vast darkness or the nameless thing we’ve become.

I just know that after loving Micah Ainsley, there’s no earthly way I’ll ever be the same.

I can’t remember falling asleep.

I think I blacked out toward the end as I came down from my high.

Micah must have untangled our bodies and put me to bed because when I wake up with the morning sun stabbing through the window while my feet are numb from Rolf sleeping on them, I’m still with him.

Safely cradled in his arms and tucked under the covers with absolutely no recollection of how I got here.

Though my body remembers what he did to me last night.

…and the fact that I still have to walk up that hill today on foot.

Ugh.

Groaning, I burrow into Micah.

Just a little longer.

Just another minute before I have to go face Xavier Arrendell and pretend I don’t know the awful truth and hope that this time he’ll keep his grubby hands to himself. At least until after the first check clears.

“Stay put. My alarm still has about six minutes.” Micah’s voice drifts into my hair, gritty with sleep.

“I don’t think six more minutes will make us any less tired,” I whisper into his chest.

“Whose fault is that?”

“Yours. Totally,” I bite off.

His chest shakes against me in a muted chuckle.

“Good answer.” He pauses and yawns into my hair. “You’re going to make me get up, aren’t you?”

“Mm-hmm,” I mumble into his chest, still burrowed in and not moving at all. “Now I have to go home and get dressed and hope Grandpa doesn’t notice I look like I’ve been attacked by vampire bats.”

“I’ll lend you a jacket to cover up.” He sounds too smug as he kisses my jaw. “Shit. In what world am I lucky enough to land a girl with a vampire kink?”

“I don’t have a vampire kink!” I shove at his chest. “I just have a very active imagination, thank you very much. And you just happen to tick a few of my boxes.”

“A few?” He stares at me with his eyes narrowed. “So, you’re telling me you wouldn’t like me if I wasn’t an albino fuck with a twisted appetite?”

He says it lightly, teasingly, but I wonder how much he’s really asking.

If he really thinks I only want him as this unicorn thing who fits my fantasy, this rare freak who turns my crank and nothing else.

I pull back enough to really look at him.

He’s perfection incarnate in the morning light.

Not that I’d ever tell him that when he’d just start scowling, killing that soft, sleepy expression.

He’s described himself as a canvas for his father’s violence in the past, but I don’t think he realizes his skin can hold so many other colors.

Like the dawn light, casting gold and pink and even a little violet into his hair, his skin, his eyes, until he’s not so pale at all.

He’s wearing the morning, my very own fallen angel with an aura too beautiful for life.

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