“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, pulling back from her mouth, running his finger over her lips, moist from his kiss.
“I am not. My hair’s caked in mud, I need a shower.” She chuckled.
“That’s not what I see,” he said.
“Then good thing it’s dark in here,” she countered.
He kissed her again, and this time the kiss went from soft to hot. His mouth tasted so good. Sweet and tangy like blood. Her blood. His blood.
They must have just fed off each other again. But this time she wasn’t repulsed. She was too into the kiss, too into Liam, to care.
She may be facing death, but right then she wanted to feel alive. To feel passion. To touch. To be touched.
The next thing she knew, they were lying on their sides. The hard dirt beneath her didn’t even feel bad. All she cared about was Liam. He rested beside her. His shirt was off. She traced a tattoo of an odd-looking cross symbol on his shoulder.
His hand slipped under her shirt and the kisses grew hotter, sweeter.
Natasha moved her hand down his abs and around his waist.
They should stop before it went too far, but then logic intervened. All they had right now was each other. How could it be wrong to cling to that?
His fingers slipped beneath her bra and brushed over her nipple. It felt heavenly and so real. Even more real than before.
She turned her head, let her eyes drift open and saw a tennis shoe. Natasha’s shoe. Natasha’s closet. The she felt a hand again, on her breast.
“Shit!” Della muttered, snapping out of it. “Get your hand off my—”
“Shh.” Chase’s other hand, the one that wasn’t fondling her boob, pressed over her mouth.
Della instantly remembered why they had to be quiet. But his hand, still gently cupping her breast, stayed where it was. And while she hated admitting it, it felt heavenly. But also wrong. Crazy wrong.
“Move your other hand, now,” she whispered through his palm in a voice low enough he couldn’t complain, but he must have heard her deadly intent, because his eyes widened.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t … I wasn’t.” His voice came lower than a whisper, for her ears only. “Oh, hell, I’ll move my hand if you move yours.”
My hand? Still struggling to connect with her own body and to leave the vision, her breath caught with the startling realization. Chase wasn’t the only one getting touchy-feely. Her hand was down the back of his jeans, under his soft cotton underwear, and gently caressing his butt. Blood rushed to her face instantly.
She yanked her hand out of his pants.
“Easy,” he said again, slipping his hand out from under her shirt and pulling her against him. She started to struggle and he whispered, “You’re going to hit the wall and we’re going to get caught.”
Caught making out in Natasha’s closet while her parents were downstairs, a voice inside her said. She listened, not to the voice, but to what was happening in the house. Sure enough, she heard voices, a male and female.
She took a deep, sobering breath and slowly shifted away, getting a few inches from Chase. But it didn’t make her feel better. How could it?
She’d just gone to second base with the Panty Perv. Unintentionally. But it still counted, didn’t it?
She tried to remember anything about it—him touching her, her touching him—but all she could remember was being Natasha and being high on Liam’s kisses.
That’s when she knew Chase had been inside Liam, just as she’d been inside Natasha. Did that mean she couldn’t get mad at Chase? Probably. Somehow, she got the feeling he hadn’t been the one to slip her hand in his pants. She’d done that all by herself. Or with Natasha’s help.
Oh, but she still wanted to be mad at Chase.
And when he looked at her, she glared at him. It might have been wrong, but it still felt good.
He frowned. “I think we can leave … quietly. They both seem to be downstairs. We should be able to open the window and jump without them seeing us.”
She gulped tension down her throat. Two kinds of tension. The one she felt low in her belly from Chase touching her, and the other kind. The kind that said they weren’t out of the woods yet—they could still get arrested for breaking and entering. It didn’t matter if the window had been open.
On her hands and knees, she followed him out of the closet. As she rose up, her gaze shifted up to his butt, his cute muscular butt, and she blushed again.
He carefully and quietly lifted the window then looked back at her. “Jump to the right, out of view of the front window. Stay behind the trees, and head to the car. I’ll be right behind you.” His words came so low she barely heard them.
She did as he said, and landed to the far right of the window. She made it to the line of trees. The sun had already started to rest in the west. The golden light caught on the red and yellow leaves and made them look even brighter.
Adrenaline took her another few steps, then she stopped. She hadn’t heard him land. She looked back. Chase wasn’t there. Where the hell was he?
One. Two. Three. She was giving him to ten, then she was going in after him.
She got all the way to nine when he finally appeared at the window and leapt out, landing on his feet a good ten feet away from the view of the window.
Together, they made their way through the small patch of trees to the road. When Della spotted the blue Camaro, she could almost breathe.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
“Get in, and I’ll tell you.”
And that’s when Della noticed the bulge under his shirt. “You took something!” she seethed. “They’ll know, damn it. They probably have everything in that room memorized.”
“It was in the closet, behind some shoe boxes. I don’t think they even knew it was there.” He pulled out a small book. “I think it’s a diary.”
Della instantly thought of Miranda and her diary. Sure, Della had teased her about wanting to read it, but she wouldn’t have. Those were private.
“That wasn’t yours to take,” Della said.
“If it helps us find Natasha and Liam, I’ll gladly take any hell you want to give me for stealing.”
Della fought with her conscience, debating if he’d been right or wrong, then decided she probably would’ve done the same thing. But for some reason that didn’t stop her from feeling as if Chase had done something wrong.
Maybe she was just still angry at him about other things. Things that involved them on a closet floor. Oh, yeah, that had been so wrong.
They got in the car and Chase raised the top to make them less noticeable, and took off. As they passed the house, a man and woman were outside the house looking up at the open window. They zipped past, but Della did notice the man standing beside Natasha’s mom wasn’t the man in the family picture. Nevertheless, seeing them outside told Della just how close they’d come to being caught.
Too close.
* * *
“You getting anything helpful?” Chase asked fifteen minutes later, She hadn’t spoken since they’d left Natasha’s neighborhood as she read through the diary.
“No,” Della said. “It’s normal stuff, and it dates back almost two years.” She looked down at the handwritten notes from Natasha’s diary.
Another two minutes passed when he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“The diary?” she asked, but she honestly knew what “it” was. Or at least, she feared she did.
“You’re giving me the silent treatment. So let’s just talk about it.”
She hadn’t purposely not spoken to him. She’d been busy reading Natasha’s diary, and feeling guilty for doing it. And then, trying to figure out why her aunt had been calling Natasha’s mom.
There was a connection. One she’d assumed had just been Chan. But if Chan’s mom was calling Natasha’s mom, it had to be more. Della was going to have to figure out what that was. But how, without going to see her aunt? Without making her father furious at her?
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
“Yes and no.”
“What?” he asked, confused.
“Yes, I heard you, and no, I don’t want to talk about … ‘it.’”
“You can’t be pissed at me about that.”
“Sure I can,” she seethed in a low voice.
“You’re not being fair.”
“Where did you get the idea I was fair?”
He chuckled. “Hey, you had your hand on my ass and I’m not mad at you.”
“Well, that just says which of us has a better handle on this. Because you should be pissed. Fondling strangers isn’t—”
“We aren’t strangers.” He glanced back at the road, but not before she saw the laughter in his eyes. A few seconds later, with his humor gone, he added, “We’re bonded. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to accept that.”
She started to tell him she’d never accept it, but she didn’t even know if it was a lie. So she just kept her mouth shut. Oddly enough, that seemed to bother him more than anything. She tucked that info away for another day.
“Look,” he said. “It happened because of the vision. And instead of being worried about it, we should be trying to figure out if maybe we got anything from the vision to help us.”
“You’re right,” she said.
“Wow, can I have that in writing?” he asked with sarcasm.
She frowned and closed the dairy. The entries were about a boy she liked and what her girlfriends did. And it sort of broke Della’s heart because the relationship between Natasha and Amy and Jennifer seemed so special. Special like her relationship with Miranda and Kylie.
What had happened to these girls? Were they still missing Natasha?
“I don’t remember much of the vision,” Della said.
“I could see better this time,” Chase said. “I don’t know if that means there was more light in there, or if the ghost let us see.”
“I could see better, too. And I guess it could be either.” Della tried to remember details. “Liam had a cut over his brow.” She let her mind go back to the vision, trying to put the pieces back together. “He got it defending Natasha.”
“From who?” Chase asked, as if Della might hold a key to finding them.
And damn it, she wished she did. “I don’t know, I just … Natasha thought about the fight, and I saw him being hit, and her trying to stop it and her feeling guilty. What was Liam thinking about?” she asked.
He cut his eyes at her, looking almost guilty.
“Oh, hell! Why did I even ask? All you were thinking about was getting her naked, right?” She let out a low growl.
“Hey, it was him. Not me.” He looked back at the road. “And I don’t think he was the only one into it.”
Della couldn’t deny it. Natasha had wanted Liam, too. She just wished Natasha’s wanting hadn’t led to her groping Chase’s ass.
“She had a tattoo,” Chase said, shifting gears.
“She doesn’t seem the type to get a tattoo,” Della said.
“Well, she had one. On her shoulder.” Della suddenly remembered seeing one on Liam’s shoulder as well. Oddly, she recalled Natasha tracing it with her finger, knowing it was there, when Della could hardly see it.
“That’s strange,” Della said.
“What’s strange?”
A ring sounded in the car. She put their conversation on hold and pulled her cell out of her pocket. Her heart took a nosedive.
Don’t let it be Steve.
When she saw it wasn’t Steve, her heart rose back up. Then went right back down. He hadn’t called her. Probably wasn’t going to call her. Just like Perry. But damn, that hurt.
Staring at the phone, she forced herself to speak. “It’s Burnett.”
Chase readjusted in his seat, making the leather crinkle. “Making sure we haven’t done something stupid, no doubt.”
“We did do something stupid,” she said.
“That wasn’t stupid.” He looked at her with a sexy hooded-eye grin. “Hate me if you want, but I enjoyed it.”
She growled at him. “See, you are like every other guy. All you think about is sex. I was talking about going inside their house.”
“Oh, then that was definitely not stupid. We found out what we needed to know.”
She agreed with him, but couldn’t stop from making a point. “It would have been stupid if we’d gotten caught.”
“But we didn’t,” he said. He looked at the road and then back. “And that’s not all I think about. Not with you.”
“Right.” She looked back at the ringing phone.
“You’d better answer or he’ll have an aneurism.”
She cut him a disapproving look. “You need to get over your animosity toward Burnett.”
“He’s way overprotective.”
“Because he cares.” She answered the call. “Hey,” she said into the phone.
“Where are you at?” Burnett’s voice boomed out of her phone into the car.
Della picked up a shitload of tension, but decided to ignore it and hope it was just the vampire’s normal I’m-worried-therefore-I-roar voice.
“Just left the Owens’ house about fifteen minutes ago.”
“And?”
“It’s her,” Della said, feeling Chase looking at her. And unable to stop herself, she shifted her eye to him. He looked concerned and held out his hand as if saying he was willing to do the talking. She shook her head.