Dominic's Nemesis

by D. Alyce Domain

  Sunlight played over his wine-red hair teasing out mahogany highlights. Eden couldn’t be sure. His expression did not emote any specific sentiment, but he seemed just as surprised to find her rattling about Dom’s lair, as she was to find him.

  She slipped her stocking clad foot back where it belonged. “I did not expect anyone would be in here.”

  Seconds ticked by. Still, warm amber eyes melted over her without a word. His presence was a silent roar in her ears. For a moment she tensed. Was he really there?

  She stepped forward. “Mr. Atherton?”

  “Stephan.” He corrected.

  Eden exhaled. He was real, at least. “And you may call me, Eden.”

  Silence reigned again as he pulled the book from the shelf, and took up a seat on the brocaded sofa. She strained to identify the leather-bound volume in his lap. When she again met his face, she found him reading her instead of the book he’d chosen. Eden shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Was he waiting for her to leave or to sit down?

  When he finally did speak again, his voice was refined and educated. He held out the volume for her inspection. “The Modern Prometheus. Have you read it?”

  Eden stumbled again, this time knocking her shawl askew. She recovered and ambled forward to the olive branch he offered. Somehow she managed to make it to the ottoman without twisting an ankle. “No. I prefer poetry to prose: Byron, Keats, and the like.”

  She rolled the volume around in her hands, flipping through the gold-edge pages with vague interest. “What is it about?”

  “A man who creates a monster, and then refuses to love it. The monster does not respond well to rejection.”

  “A horror novel, then.” Her hands stilled, and she held the book out to him.

  Amber glistened on her face, ignoring her outstretched hand. “Will you read a passage?”

  Subtle challenge or polite request? His inflectionless voice didn’t convey. Eden retracted the book, and flipped to the front page. She felt his eyes stalking her like a shadow.

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  His expression would reveal nothing, so Eden did not bother looking up. “The way you stare, I feel like I should make off with the silver so as not to disappoint.”

  “Curiosity, not mistrust.”

  When she did chance a glimpse, he was leaning back, amber cloaked, with his head resting partially on the table back of the sofa. An elegant enigma. If nothing else, she found him a distraction from her own thoughts.

  “Read.”

  So, she did.

  * * *

  Dominic reclined on the settee, not relaxed, but striving to appear so. Cael hovered at the mantle, toying with the crumpled parchment. Dominic had rarely seen his self-possessed brother fidget.

  “Is this what triggered it?” He held up Greyson’s message, not quite looking at him.

  “In a way. Ethan is upstairs, you say?”

  “Yes, shall I summon him?” Cael pivoted toward the study door.

  Alarmed at the prospect of being alone with his thoughts, Dom halted him. “Don’t leave.”

  “Eh, that makes it rather difficult.”

  “I will see him later then.” He caught Cael observing him askance a third time. “What’s on your mind Cael?”

  “Just wondering when you’re going to realize you’re not wearing your spectacles.”

  He blinked twice before the words soaked through. “She saw me.”

  Cael nodded. “Funny, how the mind works, protecting us from things we aren’t quite ready to know.”

  Dominic remembered vividly seeing her, being overcome by her calming spirit. But no thoughts existed of her specific expression as she stared at him. “How did she react? Was she…repulsed?”

  “Hardly.” His brother scoffed with a half-smile. “Just the opposite. I practically had to muscle her out the door.”

  Dom pretended interest in the hearthrug, whilst the fist gripping his heart slackened. She’d seen him and still did not shy away. “You know, I once begged Ethan to gouge them out.” Dom felt Cael’s flinch at his revelation. “But he wouldn’t.”

  “It was Lillian, then, not Lucca. I always thought…”

  Dom raised his asymmetrical gaze to collide with his brother’s concerned eyes. His strength swelled with the knowledge that Eden could still want him even after witnessing his deformity. “My father never laid a finger on me…but stood by and did nothing.”

  A beat passed before either man spoke again, worried amber searched for something in the pewter-blue irises.

  “Dominic, please tell me what happened. This isn’t healthy. It’s poisoning you.”

  He looked away. “I haven’t hidden it completely. Ethan knows and so do Gideon and Gabriel.”

  “They know only because they were victims of the same woman’s abuse. Have you ever voluntarily unburdened yourself to anyone?”

  He hesitated, but deep down, he knew it was time. Time to let it all out, and perhaps finally heal from the festering wound of his childhood. Stephan needed him whole. Eden deserved a true mate, not a stigmatic man-child with an Oedipal complex. “Talk to me about Eden first.”

  “Alright.” Cael’s fidgeting ceased, and he abandoned the message on the mantle. “I find Miss Prescott to be lucid and quick-witted, with a healthy buoyancy. I haven’t the slightest doubt of her sanity.”

  “What about the hallucinations? The bruises. That cannot be normal.”

  He tilted a hand to punctuate as he spoke. “I agree there is something different about her, but she isn’t mad nor is she likely to be in the foreseeable future. The ordered manner of her thoughts, the subjects she chooses to draw, the details on her sketches, her response to the world around her, yes, even her visions, none are the workings of a madwoman.”

  Dominic met his brother’s optimism with caution. “No more riddles, Cael. How do you explain the things she sees, if not—”

  “Everything without explanation is not madness, Dominic. Remember, she also sees you.”

  Dominic sensed Cael was working up to something. He walked over to retrieve some forgotten item from across the room.

  “Here, let me show you something that may better illustrate my point.”

  Poised for revelation, Dominic frowned at the unremarkable drawing Cael placed in front of him. “The Duchess and her infant. I don’t understand.”

  “Miss Prescott rendered the portrait. When I asked her what led her to sketch those particular faces, she admitted she’d seen them recently.”

  His brow crinkled. “How? They’re dead.”

  “Dominic, this is the woman and infant Miss Prescott claims she leapt into the marsh to save…the very same marsh where they drowned if memory serves.”

  Dom opened his mouth to say…nothing. He couldn’t think of a single coherent word.

  “Flip to the next one.”

  When he did, he saw yet another sketch. His breath caught. “Eden drew this?” His fingers flitted over the images on the page, tentative, awed. “Gideon…Gabriel…”

  “I think it’s time you face the possibility that there’s something else at work here.”

  * * *

  The light had grown dim. Even in a hexagonal room with panoramic windows, the sun must set some time. Eden folded the corner of the page and closed the book as quietly as she could, lest she awaken a sleeping Stephan. He looked especially defenseless in slumber, his fallen angel face half-masked in twilight.

  From the time she’d read the first word to the whisper of the last one, he hadn’t spoken. He seemed content to listen, quieted. Occasionally he’d pierced her with amber orbs. She assumed, to gleam her reaction to a certain scene in the novel.

  If pressed she’d acknowledge that Mrs. Shelley’s Prometheus had its merits, but she found the man stretched out lengthwise before her a more compelling read. So unlike Dominic in manner and appearance, Eden marveled at the similar vulnerability she sensed in him. She couldn�
�t dismiss it. Neither Atherton nor Dr. Raine had called forth her sympathies. But somehow, their brother Stephan did.

  The thought of Atherton led her back to worries over Dominic. She rose from the ottoman amid protesting joints and stiff muscles. She wouldn’t solve the mystery of Stephan tonight. With a thought to let Dr. Raine know of his brother’s whereabouts, Eden gathered up her shoes and shawl and tiptoed out of the library.

  She halted inside Dominic’s music room, struck by night’s transformation of it into a backdrop from one of Byron’s poems. The full moon clouded the eye overhead, illuminating the stage in a perfect spotlight. Eden emerged from the pitch shadows outside the circle to pay homage to the lacquered black lady. She sat down at the keys, let her lids rest and hoped she remembered all the notes.

  Midways through the requiem, the hairs at her nape bristled. Still she played, swaying as her almond-shaped nails flitting over the ivory. The lingering bass chords echoed off the walls and seemed to close in on its maker, even as she brought the solemn melody to a finish.

  “I warned you never to come here.”

  His voice emanated from the opaque edges of the room, its familiarity a relief to her.

  “As long as you visit my chamber, I’ll go where I please.” She closed the top down over the ivory, and stood. “Do you play?”

  “Music is curative. I find solace in it.”

  The resonance and direction of his baritone changed subtly every few seconds, orbiting just inside the rim of darkness. Was he tracking her? Eden shuffled her feet, and pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders. She knew the edgy fright of deer facing a hunting party. But this was worse, much worse. She couldn’t pinpoint her stalker’s angle of …approach? Attack? What would he do when he finally decided to strike? Her bravado vanished so completely until she wondered where she’d mustered the courage to taunt him only moments ago. Trembling lips voiced the first thought that popped into her mind.

  “I left Stephan in the library.”

  A pause. She sensed a hitch in his step. “He is…alright?”

  “Yes, he’s asleep.” Why wouldn’t he be alright? But she bit back the question. Time enough to get into that later. A little more to the left, yes, his voice had come from there. Confidence rebounding, Eden pivoted around the pianoforte’s bench to extend a hand in his direction. The loose fringes of the shawl fluttered with her movements.

  “Have you ever noticed that shadows exaggerate even the tiniest fears? Come.”

  An eon passed. He wouldn’t expose himself. Her arm ached, but the pain in her chest was an all-consuming agony that cut right to her soul. Defeated, she let her hand fall and turned to grant him his solitude. Sooner or later she would have to admit that he would never…

  The thought dissipated as the touch of warm skin slipped into her palm. She spun so quickly that her slipper’s heel tilted at an awkward angle. The shawl tumbled, forgotten, to the floor. Bracing herself for a fall, Eden grappled for the nearest support. Him.

  His arms enveloped her in a safety-hug, fitting her petite frame into his chiseled stone torso…clothed only by a cotton, dress shirt she realized. The material seemed blindingly white so near her eye. She stood silent. Cheek pillowed against chest, his gentle fingers massaged into her hair just above her ears. Willfully disassembling her bun, she suspected. Eden remained content to soak up the intoxicating heat of his embrace, until her disjointed heaving breaths righted to a mild pant, and finally a sigh.

  “They’re beautiful, Dom.”

  “They are grotesque. I didn’t imagine you’d like them.”

  She smiled, loving the deep rumble the words produced against her cheek. “Why ever not?”

  “My eyes have been the single most damning pall over my life. Every awful thing that’s happened to me has been because of them.”

  “Well, I’ve seen them, and nothing dire has happened.” His body went stiff against hers, as if he did not quite agree or perhaps he feared she tempted fate by saying so. She let her hands migrate upward. One to rest atop his shoulder; the other encircled his back. She trailed soothing caresses down his chest and at the small of his back

  “Are you wearing the spectacles now? I’ll wager you aren’t.”

  “How did you and Cael get on?”

  She aimed to talk until she got him to relax again. “Fabulously, once the battle lines were drawn. He is very different from Dr. Raine, but I rather liked him. He did not treat me like a madwoman, though he must have thought me one.”

  Eden exerted a small pressure against their embrace. When he let her pull back, she chanced a glance up. He gazed down at her, unabashed, naked eyes bathed in radiance and shadow. They were as mismatched jewels twinkling in the moonlight, fringed by ink-dirtied bristle lashes.

  “What are you so afraid of?”

  His gaze shifted, infinitesimal. The hand that had been lost in her ruined bun dropped down to curl around her throat, in a dangerous and possessive caress. “That you’ll hurt me…like she did. Or that I’ll hurt you…like she did.”

  Eden couldn’t keep the tremor from her voice. “She who?”

  “My mother.”

  His thumb, flitting back and forth over her bare skin, stroked her breathing up to hitch and skip rhythm. She closed her eyes to savor his touch, her fingers restless to rob him of the shirt so they could roam his chest. The memory of his artist-rendered torso sent another quiver of anticipation down her spine, even as he seized her face in both his hands, tilting her expression to collide with his.

  Desire soared in the face of his frown and the strange emotion swimming in the depths of his eyes.

  “Dammit. Haven’t you any sense of self-preservation?”

  She softened her lips with a smile, her fingers already plucking at the buttons of his shirt. “No, I haven’t.”

  Chapter 22

  Gawd! She didn’t know what she did to him with those adoring hazel eyes that seemed an open window to her soul. A soul he’d seen and embraced many times and knew to be just as pure and perfect as the delicate beauty of her face. He could spill himself just from that expression, gazing upon her and having her see them and not shrink away, but shine back at him with passion dipped in green-gold. Passion for him. He couldn’t resist.

  Ahhh…but touching her, thinking about her beneath his body, lips parted, eyes shining. There was a time when he’d contemplated which was worse…the years spent alone, devoid of all human contact, or those endured in hell when every touch was one of pain and torture…but not now. Now he knew the truth: her touch was the sweetest pain of all.

  The moment his lips closed over hers, some primal instinct seized control of him. Denied warmth and affection for so long, he was like a ravenous beast, desperate to satisfy the craving lest the prey somehow free itself and he lose the opportunity forever. He devoured her mouth, taking from her the sweetly-offered gift of her innocence. Her hands, light and tentative, caressed his chest…she must have finished with the buttons some time ago, because her fingers set fire to his skin. He relinquished his hold on her just long enough to divest himself of the cotton barrier and fling it to parts unknown.

  She killed him, her mouth just like her hands, so accepting, so open, hot…moist heat that he sank his tongue into, sucking, tasting, lavishing with an urgent gentleness. He felt her groan into his mouth, echoing his own growing need. Wait…

  Abruptly, he broke off. Her breathing was as erratic as his. Her stare, confused. His body throbbed from loss; his nether regions protested most of all. “Eden, not…here. My room.”

  He searched her upturned face, needing to be sure she knew what she was letting herself into. “Do you know what I’m asking? What’ll happen if I take us there now?”

  Her voice hitched, he noticed. She had to swallow several times to get the words out. “Yes, Dom, I know. I want to.”

  And he was too weak to say no. “Climb up and hold on to me like before.”

  Waves of desire shot threw him as she hooked her arms ar
ound his neck. He helped her shove the heavy skirts aside so she could twin her legs around his waist. Her inner thighs hugging him, her face turned into his throat…his groin spiked when she touched a light kiss just shy his Adam’s apple.

  “That’s right, cara. I’ve got you.”

  After adjusting his hands so that one supported her gown-ed bottom and the other steadied her head against his shoulder, he took several deep breaths to calm himself enough to shimmer. When he did, he wasn’t prepared for the tenfold boost to an already blazing need. He hoped she didn’t change her mind when he exited the astral, because the after burn alone would leave him hard for hours, semi-hard for days. He’d deny himself if he had to, but that would mean avoiding her while he battled his overwrought desire. And not seeing Eden had become a torture all by itself; her half-smile, the white-blonde wisps tickling her nape. No, none of that. He forced himself to concentrate on their destination.

  He stepped off the astral and shattered into a million prickling shards of desire, screaming throughout his body, jagged and shrill. They touched down adjacent the bed, and flopped in a messy heap on the counterpane. He rolled over so that she clung shivering atop his body. Her hair curtained over both their heads.

  “Eden?”

  Dominic ran gentling hands through her hair, smoothing it back so he could pry her face away from his neck.

  “Eden, what’s wrong?”

  “I…I feel hot…all over, tingly. My breasts, they ache.” Her gaze was flushed, excited. “And the mouth between my legs, it’s…hungry.”

  Hell. The astral had affected her. Of course, he should have realized it would. She, for reasons he’d yet to discover, seemed touched by otherworldly things. Her sensitivity to his presence, her hallucinations—or visions as Cael wanted to call them—were proof enough.