Read Online Violet Midnight (Violet Night Trilogy) by Lynn Rush - Free Book Online Page A

hair. His pulse roared through his mind like raging river rapids. His mind rioted. In the quiet of the library, it seemed that much more amplified.
    Her hands traveled over his shoulders. As her fingers caressed where his mark was, it burned. Pulsed with a separate heartbeat.
    “We’ll never get to the trunk at this rate.” Her sweet breath tickled his temple as she feathered kisses along his skin, and it sent another tidal wave of desire colliding with his spine.
    He did want to go see the documents, but maybe a little later. A step into her brought him flush with her body. Her curves molded to him, igniting a heat storming through his stomach. He’d been with other women, but this—no, Emma—was something entirely different. Primal.
    His shoulder flamed. That was new . She gravitated to his neck, and he sucked in a breath, trying to calm himself, but the ache pulsed.
    “Hold on a second, Em.”
    “You okay?”
    “My arm’s burning.”
    She yanked her head up. “Where? Is it the one with your mark?”
    “Yeah.”
    He began rolling up his sleeve, but his shaking fingers muddled with it. The pain was distracting.
    Emma squinted, but what worried him was the gasp she sucked in.
    “What’s wrong?” Did she see something? She leaned to the side and surveyed the area, then took hold of the fabric at the seams and ripped.
    A soft red glow reflected in her pools of violet.
    She stepped back, her mouth agape. Her stare scorched a hole through him. “We need to get you home.”

TWELVE
     

    “What does this mean, you think?” Jake asked, as he leaned against his kitchen counter, watching her.
    She cranked open the freezer. Empty. “No ice?”
    “Don’t drink or eat, remember?” Jake flashed his breath-stealing smile and rubbed his shoulder.
    At least the glow was beginning to subside, but Emma didn’t know what the whole glowing-mark-thing meant. Not even a clue. Her wrist hadn’t flared. No Vamps attacked, so why did his arm light up?
    Emma took the three long steps separating her from the sink and turned on the water. “Does it still hurt?”
    “Not so bad. Initial burn.”
    “Is this cold yet?” she asked, pulling his hand under the stream of the water pouring out from the faucet.
    “Yeah, cold.”
    She snagged the towel hanging from the cabinet door handle above the sink and stuck it under the stream. “My mark burned a little at first, jarring until I got used to it. But, yours shouldn’t be doing it now since there aren’t any Vamps nearby.”
    “You’re the expert, not me.” He inched toward her, still leaning against the counter.
    She wrung out the towel with shaking hands and pivoted to him. “Here.” She dabbed at the dull pulse of red emanating from the inner circle. Damn if that skull wasn’t disconcerting. Like it glowed at her with purpose. A dark one.
    “So maybe I’m a different type of Hunter.” Jake coughed into his free hand. “And my mark isn’t a detector like yours.”
    “Possible.” Why hadn’t she gone through Gabriel’s stuff sooner? She might have found something on this. On Jake. “Let’s get this annoying red glow snuffed out then we’re back to my place to do some research. This thing’s never glowed like this before?”
    “Sure hasn’t. Hey, how’d you find out what your mark meant and that it was a Vamp detector?”
    “If you believe in luck, then it was a lot of dumb freakin’ luck. My mark kept flaring around a certain set of people. Tall, lanky, pale. We didn’t know what it meant, so we didn’t do anything.”
    “I thought the glow wouldn’t stop?”
    “If I’m too far away from the Vamp, I can’t sense it. Because think about it…if I could feel every Vamp all over the U.S., I’d never get any peace.”
    “So, you have to be within a certain proximity. How far?”
    “I’ve been able to gauge it better up here, since the campus is so small. Down in the city, though, there were so many people it was hard to tell. But from what I can