Dominic's Nemesis

by D. Alyce Domain

  “Hmmm, Dom?” She cocked her head, sleep-messed and lovely. Bewildered hazel fixed on him.

  “I’ve missed you.” His hand slid easily into her silken mane and massaged her scalp as he tugged her closer.

  She flew at him with gale force, burying her face in his neck and wrapped her shockingly naked body around him in a full-body hug. She felt like heaven in his arms. He relaxed backward so that he sat on the floor with her atop him.

  “How is your brother Gabriel?” She murmured, twisting her fingers in the thick cotton nightshirt at his chest, her other arm at his back.

  Had he heard her correctly? ‘How is Gabriel?’, not ‘when are you coming home?’ or ‘why haven’t you visited before now?’ Her concern surprised him. Before, she’d seemed almost antagonistic towards his brother. “Better, I think, but not altogether himself yet. I’m actually more worried about Gideon.”

  “What is the matter with him?” With the question, she hummed a contented note.

  “He’s convinced Gabriel’s catatonia is somehow related to his…imminent death.” He held her to his heart, soothing her hair, caressing her cheek, running his hands down the smooth skin of her back.

  “Is he ill, then?”

  “No. He thinks a vision of his death is what’s causing Gabriel’s distress. The possibility is distressing for me as well. But how are things with you? Any new encounters.” She trembled in his embrace. The pulse so fleeting that he wasn’t sure he’d actually felt it.

  “All is well. I’ve been getting acquainted with the Athertons. I…I like Stephan. He’s what I’d want for a brother if I had one.”

  It pleased him, he realized. Some feral, possessive side of him liked that she seemed to be ingratiating herself into his life, his family…cementing a permanent place. Courting friendship with Kathleen, gaining approval from Ethan and Cael, showing concern for Gabriel and now a bond with his youngest brother. His already heated desire for her flared.

  Unable to resist the lure of her lush body pressed so wickedly against him, his hands wandered lower to cup her bottom…grind her tantalizing heat into his budding affection.

  “Did you miss me, cara? Hmmm.”

  “Oh…yes, Dom.” She moaned into his ear, than began nibbling at the rim. The hot rush of breath grew his erection all the more.

  Gawd, he couldn’t get enough of her…the sweet, peaches and pomegranate scent he recognized from his bath visits. The enthralling heat of her body sheathing him like a glove, the quick little breaths she took…each rise and fall of small plumb breasts were a teasing torture.

  “I must…taste you, cara.” He stood with her, grateful the bed was only a few steps away. A longer distance would have been unmanageable at his advanced state of arousal.

  Her soft butterfly kisses trailed down his throat, only halted when he laid her out on the bed and slid down her body. Kissing and nipping at her collar bone, breasts, and several points on her delectable flat stomach along the descent.

  She made a disapproving sound. Her hands converged on his head. Tugging at his hair, trying to halt his progress. “No, Eden, you’ll take pleasure in this. I promise.”

  He paused just long enough to give her his eyes, knowing she liked them and it would quiet her…reassure her of his affection and that the trust now ran both ways. His hands restlessly kneading the skin at her hips, slipping lower to cap over each thigh. She lifted her head off the pillows meeting his gaze over the mound of her nether hairs.

  “Open for me.” And when she did, he nearly came right then and there from the sweet perfume of her arousal. A quiver troubled his hands as he lowered his mouth to her threshold, holding her jittery gaze until the very last moment.

  * * *

  Eden trembled inwardly at the erotic sight of Dominic’s midnight head hovering between her V-ed thighs. Pewter-sapphire orbs glistened with his excitement. She nearly knifed off the bed when she felt his mouth, delicately kiss her folds, one, twice, the third time with a slight parting of his lips…then, his tongue peeked out to lick at her, molest the very sensitive nub there. Her head felt back.

  “Dom….” She tunneled her hands in his hair, this time to encourage him forward, to do more, and be bolder.

  His mouth closed over her most sensitive areas, the hot wet sucking of his tongue built up a tension in her, a beat of wanting that pounded through her body demanding to be satisfied. She couldn’t keep still under the achingly sweet assault. When he used a thumb to tweak the nub, whilst his tongue’s tip edged slightly into her, she knew a moment of madness. Her breathing staccatoed, hips writhed in sync with his rhythm, mind screaming in ecstasy. The mini thrust of his tongue mimicked those of his man’s appendage, driving her ever wilder. She was Icarus, flying too close to the sun, in grave danger of bursting into flames…

  Just as she felt herself about to explode, his withdrew his lavish tongue and mounded her. She had but a moment to wait for him to dissolve himself of the pants he wore. Then, his center aligned with hers, the pulsating heat of his arousal lay at her entrance. Without preamble, he surged forward, at the same time closing his mouth over hers in an open-mouth kiss hotter than the bowels of hell. She took both with a greed abandon, her body more his than hers. His weight pressing into her, the heat, the texture of the cotton nightshirt he still wore sliding luxurious against her skin. The wondrous friction, and spicy fullness of him pumping endlessly inside her. Pleasure blossomed like a rare flower until it ignited into a thousand pinpricks of sensation ravishing her body. She broke the endless kiss in a scream of release.

  Afterward, Dom lay with his head on her stomach and his body to the side of her. He toyed with her pink-tipped nipples, fascinated. He wore the nightshirt still, but didn’t seem at all bothered by her slipping her hands underneath it to caress the flawed skin at his back.

  “You’re going to leave again.” He hadn’t said, but she knew.

  “There is still business to attend to there. Gideon is insisting that I be prepared to take over the family lands and legacy in the event of his untimely death.”

  “How long will you be gone?” She frowned. Her head seemed fuzzy all of a sudden, but what he spoke of sounded like a lengthy process.

  He raised up then to look her straight in the eye. “Hopefully no more than a few days…just so he can give me the grand tour and take care of some legal matters.”

  She nodded, trying to beat back the fear he would never return from Italy…that death would take him from her like it had so many others she loved.

  “But you’ll visit again.”

  “I’m…not sure.”

  She withdrew from the apology she saw in his eyes.

  “No, cara, don’t.” She tried to shift away from him, but he wasn’t having it. He simply grasped her despite the struggle and re-deposited her onto his lap. “Shhh. I won’t go until you fall asleep.”

  Amid his soothing hands, soft whispers, and butterfly kisses, Eden relaxed. He slipped back inside her and showed her how to ride him …sweet and slow. Afterwards, she fell asleep cocooned in his embrace, head pillowed on his shoulder.

  * * *

  She stirred, jarred by an arctic draft grazing across her naked skin. The next thing she felt was the pounding in her head…the pain refused to be ignored. Ugh! The caressed of icy fingers at her breasts shocked her into full consciousness. It wasn’t Dominic’s gentle palm molesting her nor was it his presence in bed with her. Her eyes popped open, her splintered head snapped around, a familiar dread setting in as she realized just whose hand had ahold of her.

  “DOM!” She called for him even though her rational mind knew that he was gone, far away in Italy and would not be back for who knew how long.

  Pure anguish poured forth from her lungs as she snatched the sheet around her and stumbled from the bed. Blind, grappling along the floor in the blackness that rivaled the darkest pit, she screamed again. Where was Stephan’s fire? He promised to keep it burning all night.

  A maniacal sound crackled
inside her head; a frigid claw seethed around her body, the chill creeping into her soul. The invasion bordered on a rape. A mental rape, where her own consciousness was shoved aside. For one horrifying moment her world shifted from one of participant to observer. Chill and ice replaced her life’s blood. Death filled her heart. Wild panic thoughts, alive with hatred and distorted images overtook her mind.

  “Eden!” Somewhere to her right a new fire roared to life, dazzling and violent, licking out of the hearth like arms trying to save a drowning man. The flames illuminated the chamber to the intensity of midday.

  The icy grip loosened, and burned away like frost at sunrise. Her mind was hers again. “Stephan…” a collapsed heap on the floor, she managed to croak out his name.

  He brought with him a wall of heat, stopping just short of where she lay. She thought his hesitation due to some concern that he would inadvertently harm her, but his expression reflected confusion and then a predatory menace when he shifted on the balls of his feet. He eagle-eyed the room.

  Could he sense it too? No, impossible… Because if Stephan sensed the entity, that meant she wasn’t a lunatic. Dominic would have to believe her now.

  “Eden?” He looked down at her then, questioning, “What did that thing do to you?”

  “Do? I…don’t know.” She stammered. The growing queasiness in her stomach and pounding in her head made any high level of thought difficult for her battle-scarred mind. She wrapped the sheet more securely around herself.

  He seemed to realize a proper answer was not forthcoming, and shoveled her into his arms.

  “Where are we going?” was all she could manage.

  “Anywhere but here.”

  Chapter 30

  “Tell me good news.” Matthias willed under his breath and beckoned Egan into his office. The dinky little hovel was the only private space afforded him by the Reform Board. Their sentry lurked up and down the halls, supervising the procedural changes mandated by the Board as a condition of allowing Ciaran Isis Asylum to remain open and operating. In the wake, half the inmates were temporarily relocated to other facilities, including the delectable morsel he’d slated to be his next conquest.

  His new custodian, Egan, was a definite trade-up from the traitorous Harry. Matthias had taken a different approach in the acquisition process. With Harry, he’d prized obedience over intelligence. The second go ‘round, he’d gone into the slums of Southwart seeking reliability and cunning and found a god sent in Egan. An Irish lad, pale as death with a panoramic gaze in perpetual tracking mode, and lithe cheetah’s grace…a combination Matthias himself found a touch unsettling.

  “Well?”

  “Target has some interest in a recluse. Foreign noble. The name Ambrosi mean anything to you?”

  Matthias’ ear peaked like a pointer on the trail of downed game. “The blind Conte.”

  “Aye, that’s him but he ain’t blind, lest not in the regular way. Target sent a message requesting an audience. Request was denied. Target exhibited frustration.”

  This was too good to be true. He already had a line on the reticent Conte. He hadn’t heard from the client since his initial visit, and given his precarious circumstances, he’d decided to put the investigation on hold. Perhaps now was the time to re-open his dig into the Ambrosi closet of secrets. If nothing else his involvement would irritate Greyson and probably jeopardize any ambitions he had of gaining Ambrosi’s cooperation in whatever it was he wanted from the Conte.

  Always suspicious of any good fortune that was not hard won, Matthias narrowed his focus to the lad before him. “How did ya come by dis information?”

  “Tumbled one of the maids a couple of times.”

  “Any chance you can plow’er for more information?”

  His cruel twist of a mouth turned up in a smile. “Anything in particular you want to know?”

  Therein lay his weakness. He was stumbling around in the dark when he came to specifics. “Anything on Greyson.” In the mean time, he’d just have to work with what he had. “An’ whose tha blonde livin’ at Ambrosi’s. Bony, middling height, genteel. I wanna know her purpose there.”

  Chapter 31

  Daybreak found Dominic in the most unlikely place…the dungeons beneath the heart of Castello di Ambrosi. Flickering candelabrum in hand, he paced towards the edge of the granite pit, the very one from his tormented childhood. He had expected to be paralyzed by memories, dread his constant companion, reliving the nightmare with each panting breath. When first he stepped off the astral into his ancestral home he was prepared to be laid low by aftershocks of past wounds he’d bandaged over but never healed from. But his breathing remained even, as it was now. He came to the lip of the pit. The memories of the torture he’d endure in this place did not overwhelm him. Instead, they seemed muted, so far removed that even when he made a concentrated effort to call forth the horror only faded images appeared to him. Where pain should have surfaced, a dulling ache pricked at his heart.

  He squatted, setting the brass candelabrum on the stone floor. Where the pit had once been, lay a slab of grey-green limestone.

  “My first official business as the acting Conte Ambrosi was to fill in this pit. I had plans to wall off the whole of the dungeons and lower tombs but that was before Gabriel…” The words hung.

  Dominic straightened to find his brother Gideon walking up behind him.

  “I knew I’d find you here.”

  Nonplused, he gestured to the limestone. “Returning isn’t as I thought it would be. The past does not affect me overmuch. I am finally free of Her.”

  The taller man inclined his shadowed brow at Dom’s upper torso, pensive. “There is a school of thought that says: two women cannot occupy the same house. Perhaps the saying is also true for the same heart.”

  Dominic looked down at himself to find a hand rubbed at the place over his heart. “Perhaps.” He dropped the hand and shed his thoughts of the past. The time had come for him to come out of hiding. “Gideon. I would prefer not to think on your death, but I will admit that I can no longer shirk my familial responsibilities. If this trip to Italy has taught me one lesson it is that I am not that wounded little boy anymore. It’s time I conduct myself appropriately. If you would, please re-acquaint me with the Ambrosi estates. In the event of…for when I take my place as the reigning Conte Ambrosi.”

  His brother nodded, slate grey eyes twinkling. “Certainly. I shall have Valentina to sit with Gabriel in our absence.”

  Dominic bent to retrieve the candelabrum, then straightened to meet his brother’s gaze in the gentle candle glow.

  “It’s good to have you back, Dominic.”

  * * *

  “This is the Chateau Ambrosia?” The infamous Chateau ‘Aphrodisia’, where their mother had conducted numerous illicit relationships. Dominic did not bother to disguise his bemusement.

  “What is left of it, yes. The front façade hinges at the cliff’s edge overlooking the vineyard proper and adjoining winery. Ambrosia has somehow managed a modest profit even under Lucca’s neglect but nothing resembling the golden days when Nonno was Conte Ambrosi. The Ambrosia label graced every aristocrat’s table here and abroad…”

  Dom scarcely heard Gideon’s financial report. Being denied the chance to own and presumably restore this crumbling ruin had sparked his uncle Fausto’s wrath and subsequent swath of mischief. Impossible. Nonna must have exaggerated her younger son’s motives. No noble in his right mind would want the hassle and expense of owning such a worthless monstrosity…which according to Gideon was only marginally profitable.

  Perhaps, if one were a business-minded person and had an interest in the vinification process, there would be some personal satisfaction in rebuilding the adjoining winery to its former magnificence. But he knew Fausto well enough to rule out that possibility. His uncle was not an intellectual nor was he a man of business. His forethought did not extend beyond immediate self-indulgence and the bolstering of his own image. Neither of which were boosted
by inheriting a rotting heap villa and mediocre winery.

  Gideon continued his status report as they strolled along the grounds of the skeletal masonry remains. Glass-less windows abounded, as did crumbling spires and turrets of eroded sandstone. The sight put Dom in mind of a beggar’s smile filled with shattered teeth, tooth-shaped gaps and blacken gums.

  “Lucca let it sink to ruin, but the foundation is surprisingly strong. Gabriel and I have…had plans drawn up to restore it.” He waxed eloquent and matter-of-factly, flourishing a hand in the chateau’s direction. “…Perhaps, as a second residence, a dowry for a future niece or if Stephan should ever wish to become an active part of the legacy I think he would enjoy the business aspects of the Chateau.”

  “Enough, Gideon.” Dominic halted him with a sharp gesture when they reached the cliff’s face. “Why do you think Uncle Fausto would be in such a lather to preside over these ruins?”

  Grandiose did not come close to an adequate description of the vineyard below. The lush green patchwork of alternating crop squares started halfway down the face of the cliff and extended onto the valley floor. A fat ribbon of blue zigzagged through the valley cutting Ambrosia in half. The vines of the opposite bank continued, running up the face of the next hillside and ended just short of its crest. The winery proper nestled into the hill’s base.

  “It’s a beautiful property to be sure, but the annual income from the Castello and adjacent lands is worth a multitude both in monies and prestige. Even some of the lesser holdings, Ambrosi Shipping or Ambrose Manor with it’s sizable trade wealth and I believe a hereditary seat as the local magistrate should present more of a lure than this place.”

  “The nearest Gabriel and I could figure is that he had or rather has some hope of searching for the legacy’s origin and finding the famed Ambrosia treasure.”