by SK Ryder
The dimples in Dominic’s cheeks deepened with a soft smile. So seductive, so powerful. Immortal . . . haunted.
“How did this happen to you?”
“Very bad luck. Come. You should eat.” He ushered her onto the paved patio of the wine bar she had admired earlier where piano music tried to mute the rambunctious atmosphere of the street. A hostess seated them at a table beneath the canopy of an immense banyan tree. After the waiter departed with Cassidy’s order, she sipped ice water and waited.
The vampire sat with one booted ankle propped on his thigh. Lost in thought, he traced the cast iron patterns of the tabletop with long fingers. “I have not told anyone this story,” he began. “Though I did try to tell you once. The night of the storm.”
“You ended up giving me self-defense lessons.” And God only knew how he managed to not accidentally kill her.
Dominic’s tiny, sad smile scratched at her heart. “I told you about what happened to my little sister, Ana. And what I did to the men who assaulted her. The one man I killed.” She had to strain to hear him over the ambient noise. “Something witnessed this. Something very old, very powerful. And it . . . he decided he wanted me. I never had a chance after that. Every night he found me and fed on my blood, and I never even knew. It takes several feedings before the lethargy starts. A week before you even think about going to see a doctor who will tell you to get more rest when you are really already near death.”
He paused to drink half his water. “That night I was aware of nothing but the need to go outside and stagger like a drunk into the hills behind my family home. Later I learned that I had been silently summoned by this monster. He waited for me there along with another blood-drinker, an Asian woman. I think I knew even then that they were not human.”
For a while, he stared into the street, seeing only the past. The barest hint of emotion flickered across his lean face before he finished his recounting with an air of forced nonchalance. “It was his poison that seethed in me, but he commanded her to feed me her blood, which is what ignited the process and burned me from the inside out until I became what I am now. We were both his creatures. His alone.”
Dominic twisted his mouth into a bitter line as he pushed the sweating glass around on the table. “So this is how the sun became forever lost to me. Eternal night is the price I paid for saving my sister.”
For a while, Cassidy said nothing, trying to comprehend the depths of his despair and the velvet rage in his voice. “You can’t even look at the sun through a window?”
“It tortures me long before dawn. Once it rises, it crushes me into unconsciousness. If I were to be caught in it, I would burn to death.”
She swallowed the knot in her throat. Remembering one of their earliest conversations, she said, “That’s one hell of a ‘sun allergy’ you’ve got there.”
“Oui. A slow way to die. I would much prefer decapitation.”
The waiter returned with Cassidy’s cheese basket and wine. In spite of the conversation, she discovered she was famished. Halfway through the first cheese-stuffed roll, she noticed Dominic’s amused scrutiny. “What?”
“I enjoy watching you eat. Especially when I cook,” he added, warm delight surfacing in his hazel eyes.
Feeling herself blush, she finished the roll. “So how did you end up here? Where’s this guy who thinks he owns you?”
“I ran away.” His expression shuttered. “I ran away from his abuse and ended up marked for death by every other blood-drinker I met. I am a youngling without a keeper. That makes me fair game. I live only because of my skill with the swords.”
“What about the other one I saw tonight? He doesn’t seem to have it out for you.”
“Serge,” he said on a sigh and leaned back to look into the tree’s dense lattice of branches. “Serge is a friend. The only one I have.”
She followed his gaze. Nothing up there but deep green shadows. Yet she had the uncanny sense that something was looking back. It was the vampire next to her that stared at her, though. Or rather at her exposed neck. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to”—she tucked in her chin—“tempt you, I guess.”
Dominic laughed. “Ah, Cassidy, ma petite, you tempt me whenever I am near you and often when I’m not. In every way,” he added, sobering. “As I know I tempt you.”
Her face burned with the sensual insinuations. Being tempted and believing there was no reciprocating interest was one thing. This was quite another. Literally another, she was sure, but she opted to go with the safer option when she said, “So you do like women, then.”
“Oui. Very much.” The look he gave her all but undressed her on the spot. More than her face warmed with it. She remembered all too well the dream of lying in his arms and tasting his kiss.
She reached for her wine, trying to distract herself, then put the glass back down before tasting the contents, recalling the last time she indulged in alcohol in Dominic’s presence. Maybe this hadn’t been the safer topic after all. “And . . . you want my blood, of course.” She cleared the frog out of her throat. “But you never—”
The way he tilted his head and the mischief sparking in those gold-flecked eyes told her everything and more.
Cassidy touched her throat, the faded, mottled bruise. “You did? But . . . but this bruise . . . I had that before I met . . .” She looked at him sharply, her mental gears tripping into place. “This is a vampire bite, isn’t it? That’s why I don’t remember how it happened?”
Dominic nodded, his expression souring.
“Was this you?”
“No,” he said, looking scandalized.
“Okay then.”
Several leaves fluttered from the tree above. Dominic watched them land on their table.
“But do you know who it was?”
“Someone who should know better than to leave such a mark. Someone who will not touch you again while you are under my protection.” The ragged edge in his voice wasn’t quite human and didn’t encourage follow-up questions. Not that she needed any. She’d seen tonight in living color what it meant to be under Dominic Marchant’s protection in the supernatural world, and that was more than good enough for her.
He finished his water and softened his tone before speaking again. “I did not leave a mark. And you remember more than you should.”
Her brows gathered. “I do?”
“The night of the storm,” he offered with obvious reluctance.
“The storm . . . oh, the kiss. Not just a kiss, was it?”
“Non. Not all of it. My bite is painless if I want it to be. And it heals quickly. The way your arm did.”
“I had a dream . . . a vision.” She hesitated. “Was that part of it?”
He gave her a long, unhappy look. “Oui. That doesn’t usually happen. It surprised me. I almost killed you because of it.”
She reached for a fortifying sip of wine. “No. You didn’t.”
“Sotte,” Dominic said and shoved his disheveled hair back with an angry stab of his hand. “Little fool. Why didn’t you run the night you met me? Why are you even still speaking to me now after all you have learned?”
She had no answer to his first question, at least not one she could put into words, but the second was surprisingly easy. “You’re my friend, aren’t you? Or was all that as fake as you pretending to be—”
“Human,” he finished, shaking his head. “Non, Cassidy. What I feel for you is real. And the truth I concealed from you, I withheld because I knew you were not ready to hear it. For reasons I do not understand, I cannot make you do or believe anything you do not wish to do or believe. The way Aurelius did.” The memory of how easily that ancient vampire had fogged her mind into accepting the impossible sent a shiver racing across her shoulders. Dominic’s tone softened. “You can choose to ignore my compulsions. So I had no way
to blunt this news for you. You would have been terrified, and I would have been powerless against my need to consume that fear. And your life.” He leaned closer, his voice turning as liquid dark as his gaze. “But here is a truth you must hear now, ma amie. At sunrise tomorrow, you must forget this night and all you know of me. You can never be truly safe in my presence. No mortal can. Friend or not.”
A sensible suggestion, given the night’s harrowing events. In light of the last three weeks, however, pointless. If telling her would have gotten her killed, then not telling her had saved her life right from the beginning—and every night since. He meant her no harm, and he never had.
“I won’t do that, Dominic. I’m not afraid of you. And you need more than one friend.”
“Stubborn girl.” He sighed, his lips twitching with bemused resignation. He would understand if she changed her mind, his expression said. Perhaps he even expected her to.
Cassidy raised a hand, aching to soothe that cynicism with a touch but stopped when he sat back. Instead, she reached into her purse and retrieved a pink plastic bag which featured the logo of a Key Largo gift shop. “This is for you.”
“Ah, chérie, you shouldn’t have,” he drawled, but his face registered reluctant interest as he took the bag from her, then fell into shocked surprise when he unfolded the black T-shirt inside. A pirate skull grinned back. ‘Bad to the Bone’ read the caption.
“I had one like this.”
“I know. I threw it out the first day when I cleaned. It had something sticky—” She shook the inevitable conclusion out of her head. “It was pretty filthy. I thought I ought to replace it. And to apologize for all the grief I’ve caused you. Which was clearly more than I imagined.”
The corners of his mouth turned up a little. “Merci.”
“You’re welcome.” She watched him study the print. “Is that how you see yourself?”
“It is what I am.”
“Well, I think you’re wrong about that, my friend. You’re not ‘bad to the bone’.”
He arched a quizzical brow. “Did you forget so soon?”
“No. I will never forget what you showed me tonight. But as I see it, your bones are the only things bad about you. The rest of you is just plain old pain in the ass.”
“Mmm, non, ma petite,” he purred, his smile as mysterious as it was wicked. “The rest of me is French.”
Chapter 26
Gray Areas
Cassidy watched the sun rise over the Atlantic as if she had never seen a sunrise before—and never would again. The sheer silent power of it, the explosion of color and heat, stirred an ache so intense she found it difficult to breathe. But as the gentle orange glow turned into a blinding blaze, night seeped from the sky and with it all traces of eternal magic.
Until darkness returned, vampires were no more.
She wiped at a tear trickling down her cheek. Dominic had delivered her to her room only a couple of hours ago. For a while she lay on her bed, staring at shadows on the ceiling, thinking. Eventually she climbed into the shower and let hot water beat away what grime and filth remained of her violent introduction to the supernatural world.
The commotion in the bathroom roused Samantha. “Sunrise meditation,” she said, shaking out her thick braid into a wavy blond cascade. “Excellent idea.”
As good an idea as any, Cassidy supposed as she followed her friend to a secluded spot on the resort property. They settled cross-legged into the thick, well-tended lawn and faced into the soft sea breeze. But while Samantha sat, eyes shut, communing with the universe at large, Cassidy watched sunlight sparkle on the water and contemplated a universe shifted into an alternate reality. In the glaring light of day, the lines blurred further in her mind, and what was real and what wasn’t became increasingly uncertain.
She studied the fine white scar on her forearm, the only trace of the knife wound that should have landed her in the ER. Under ‘Dr.’ Marchant’s ministrations, the cut had healed thin and smooth. It looked like nothing more than a long-ago cat scratch.
The scrapes on her face were gone, and she shivered a little, remembering the caress of his soft tongue there, the momentary tingle as the injuries healed while she drifted, enveloped in his spicy cool scent. ‘Poison’ he called it, the substance in his saliva that made it happen. ‘Miracle’ was more like it. Had she known beings like him existed when her mother lay dying of cancer, she knew she would have searched the world to find one—and gotten herself killed if last night was any indication of how vampires usually dealt with mere mortals. Obviously Dominic was an exception.
Maybe.
She genuinely cared for him. He made her laugh and stood by her when she needed him. He even put his immortal life at risk to save hers. She thought of him as a friend even though what she felt for him at this point was more. Way more. But she would be a fool to forget the surreal monster she witnessed killing that terrified boy. Or the darkness in him that hungered for life like a black hole hungered for light. In her heart of hearts, these two sides of Dominic had yet to merge into the same entity.
A lone figure bounded along the beach beyond the clattering coconut palms, his tall, tanned, and muscular body instantly familiar.
“Jackson,” she called with a guilty jolt. She’d forgotten all about him.
“Shhhhhh,” Samantha admonished on a dreamy sigh.
“Sorry.” Cassidy got to her feet and hurried after him. “Jackson. Wait.”
He slowed, but not because he heard her over his ear buds. Done with his morning run, he now moved on to his cool-down stretches. He looked surprised when he spotted her jogging in his direction, the borrowed green meditation shawl fluttering around her.
“Are you all right?” Cassidy asked.
The brow over his nose pinched tight. He leaned forward into a hamstring stretch. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She hesitated. According to Dominic, a chunk of Jackson’s memories had been ripped out of his head. There was no telling what he remembered. Or how.
“You seemed upset last night,” she offered, wrapping the shawl tighter around herself.
“And you’re surprised?”
“Well, I—”
“Turned me down for a romantic dinner because you were too busy touring strip clubs with your gay roommate. What the fuck did you expect?” He switched legs and glanced at her astonished face. “Yeah, I saw you. Nice, Cassidy. Real classy.”
She stared at him, speechless. So he had filled in the hole in his memory with random bits of imaginings, concocting a hybrid reality all his own. One in which she was the bad guy.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, regretting she didn’t have that damn ring handy to throw at him. For the duration of this trip, to avoid questions from Samantha, she had zippered it into a pocket in her purse, which was back in the room.
Jackson gave her a long, hard look, his jaw muscles bunching, before walking away.
Once he disappeared into the building, Cassidy turned back to the quiet expanse of ocean and tried to calm her rattling nerves. Aurelius must have done far more damage than she realized. Plus, the vampire who first attacked her must have done a job on him, too. She’d have to ask Dominic if he could unscramble Jackson’s brain before he became completely delusional.
On the drive home, Samantha filled the car with a chipper Calypso beat that fit the sun-drenched scenery going past but grated on Cassidy’s exhaustion and festering frustration. She desperately needed to talk to someone about her experiences, how it was possible and what it could mean, but she harbored no hope of explaining any of it to her sweet human friend.
For thirty miles, Samantha talked nonstop, analyzing all the yogic wisdom she had absorbed at the conference before noticing Cassidy’s lackluster responses.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m carrying on over her
e while something’s obviously bothering you. Do you want to talk about it?”
Vampires are real, she thought, but shook her head. “No. Not really.”
“It’s Jack, isn’t it.” Samantha sounded grim. “I saw you with him this morning. It looked like he was being a real jerk.”
“Well . . .”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“What? No. No, seriously, Sam. We’re over.” Of this, Cassidy was more certain than ever. Part of his recent behavior may have been due to supernatural influences, but by no means most of it. “He just hasn’t gotten that through his thick skull yet. You heard him. He even said that’s why he followed us down here.” Not to mention following her out into town and flying into a jealous rage when he found her chatting with a promising source. Who, as it had turned out, wanted to drink her blood, but it wasn’t like Jackson would have known that. “To be honest, he’s starting to creep me out.”
“I know. He doesn’t take no for an answer. No Striker ever does.” Samantha sighed. “Like I said, I love him as my baby brother, but, dear God, I couldn’t imagine being married to him. I don’t know how Mom can put up with half the crap his father dishes out.”
Cassidy’s tired brain turned this over and spotted an opening. “Warren the maybe-sorcerer?”
Samantha chuckled. “Right. I did say that, didn’t I? He and Garrett are secretive enough, that’s for sure. And Jackson, too, come to think of it.”
“What if . . .” Cassidy searched for the right words while tightening her ponytail against the wind blasting through the open windows.
“What if? What if what?”
“What if they are?”
“What if the Strikers are a clan of wizards?” Samantha’s already high voice rose another octave with giddy disbelief.
