A few moments later a young doctor came into the room carrying a computerized medical clipboard.
Immediately Laura felt her interest pique. He was devilishly handsome, with a smile whiter than his pristine lab coat and blond hair that perfectly complemented his darkly tanned skin. Yummy!
“Good afternoon, Ms. Stone. I’m Dr. Dominic Meternich, the replacement for Dr. Caruthers,” Dominic said, closing the door. “What exactly happened to you?”
“I was attacked by a swarm of bees,” Laura muttered, feeling flustered by her pitiful state of dress and fighting the urge to scratch everywhere.
Looking over the clipboard, Dominic scowled. “Good lord, how many times were you stung?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Actually, I wasn’t,” Laura admitted grudgingly, her twitching hands clasped in her lap. “I was chased by a swarm ... but all of this occurred when I fell down a hill.”
“I see,” Dominic said, placing aside the clipboard to gently massage an ankle.
His soft touch was electric, and Laura found herself unexpectedly thinking highly inappropriate thoughts.
“Well, there don’t seem to be any broken bones, or sprains ...” Dominic muttered, releasing her leg to finger her ribs. “Are you dizzy, or do you have a headache?”
“No, doctor ...” she said in a throaty whisper.
As he moved upward to her throat, the room was starting to become very warm and sweat trickled down her back. Tiny trickles of current seemed to be pulsating through her entire body. Merciful heavens, his touch was magical! This was her secret fetish, to be seduced by a physician in the examination room, and her heart beat even faster at the thought that it might finally be happening.!
“Any tingling in your fingertips, or trouble breathing?” Dominic asked, running his fingers through her hair to check the scalp. His face was only inches away, his breathe warm on her cheek.
“No, doctor ...” Laura moaned obediently, trying not to wiggle. Looking into his dark green eyes, she saw herself reflected in them a million times, tiny Laura after Laura, as if he were a funhouse mirror. Smiling for no sane reason, she started to giggle, feeling oddly woozy, almost drunk, and totally aroused. I wonder if doctors taste like hospital food ...
In cold authority, Dominic pushed Laura down flat on the table, and lifted her skirt. Feeling incredibly vulnerable, she could only quiver in delight. Oh, God, it’s a dream come true!
“Are you experiencing any unusual pain?” Dominic asked politely, cool fingertips pressing on her bare stomach.
Not down there! “B—but almost e—everywhere else ...” Laura finished in a strained whisper. “Af—after all, I t—tumbled down a goddamn hill, rolled through a mul—mulberry bush, over some b—b—broken glass, and lah—lah—landed s—spreadeagled on a Crown Victoria!”
“Spread-eagled? Well, at least they’re in season.”
“Fords?”
“Mulberries,” Dominic said, unexpectedly dropping the skirt. “Well, no harm done, eh? Okay, you may leave now.”
Still trembling, Laura felt his words like a hard slap in the face, and she sat upright, a surge of cold fury banishing the erotic illusion. “What was that?”
Drying his hands on a surgical towel, Dominic smiled. “You’re perfectly fine, miss. Have a nice day.”
“Are you insane?” Laura roared furiously, extending an arm. “Just look at my—” But the cuts and bruises were gone, every one of them. Her skin was smooth and perfect; even some old childhood scars were now missing. She ran a tongue along her teeth, and the missing molar was back.
“This is not possible,” Laura muttered, ripping off a bloody Band-Aid to find unmarked skin beneath. “How did you ... when ... what just happened?”
“Magic!” Dominic laughed, starting out the door.
With her mind still off balance, Laura could only desperately reach out a hand. “No, wait! Please.”
“Yes?” Dominic asked, standing in the partially open doorway, poised halfway between the darkness and the light.
“Really, what did you do to me?” she asked, sliding off the table and walking closer. “These cuts should have taken weeks to heal! Months!”
“But, Laura, I already told you how that was accomplished,” Dominic said, closing and locking the door. “I used magic.”
“Okay ... is that a brand name?”
Laughing, Dominic started to sit down. Instantly, a chair rolled around the examination table and stopped to perfectly catch him.
“Good trick,” Laura muttered uneasily, squinting to try and find the strings. But there did not seem to be any. “Was that done with magnets?”
“Nor is it an illusion,” Dominic said, making a gesture in the air. Across the room, a medical magazine stirred, then floated into his hand.
Studying the ceiling, Laura hunted for hidden wires or some other disguised method of conveyance. “Impossible,” she muttered, a butterfly of fear fluttering deep inside her stomach.
“Not at all,” Dominic said, tossing aside the magazine. It vanished in midair.
“Magic fills the world! That is, if you know how to summon the power.” Clenching a fist, he squeezed until the knuckles popped. Spreading the fingers, he revealed a white silk brassiere, monogrammed with the initials LS.
With a gasp, Laura grabbed her chest and found her breasts unbound under her designer blouse. “That was clasped!” she cried, jumping to the floor.
“Yes, it was.”
“And you never went anywhere near my breasts!”
He grinned. “True, although more’s the pity. You’re a strikingly beautiful woman, Laura Stone ... Or should I call you Heather Montclair?”
Stepping back, Laura tried to sit down, but the table now seemed a million miles high. “Whatever do you ... I mean, that was my old ... I haven’t used that name since ... ”
“Your second husband died under mysterious circumstances,” Dominic said, giving a slight bow. “Of course, please forgive an old man’s foolishness. I promise to never mention that name again ... Miss Stone.”
Fighting to catch her breath, Laura looked at the smiling man. The tan was fading... changing into a naturally dark skin tone; he was becoming older, more heavily muscled, and now there was a slight European accent in his voice. British? No, maybe Italian ...
“Who ... what are you?” Laura asked, not exactly sure that she wanted to know the answer.
“My driver’s license says Dominic Meternich, but my actual name is Sepatas Natta,” Dominic stated, brushing some imaginary lint off his cuff. “A very long time ago, I was a slave to Julius Caesar, until a wandering gypsy unexpectedly showed me that vampires exist.”
“Vampires!” Laura snorted in disbelief, crossing her arms.
Smiling widely, Dominic exposed every inch of his long white fangs.
Recoiling in fear, Laura paused, then slowly started to reach out to touch the fangs in fascination—only to stop inches away. “Julius Caesar,” she said, her heart thundering like cannon fire. “But that means you’re almost—”
“Two thousand years old,” Dominic said, retracting his fangs.
“Which means you’re ... immortal.”
“Yes.”
“And you drink blood—”
“No.”
“...sleep in a coffin ...”
“No.”
“...and can change into a ... wait, what was that?”
“I sleep in a penthouse, and don’t drink blood unless I want to,” Dominic stated, crossing his legs at the knee to straighten a cuff. “Otherwise, I eat whatever I wish, as much as I wish, and never gain an ounce. I don’t grow old, feel cold, and while I can change into a bat,” he smiled, “I much prefer my G5 private jet.”
A long time passed with Laura not doing much of anything except breathing heavily.
“All right, you’re obviously not here to kill me,” she finally said, tucking the bra into a pocket. “So the logical reason would be ... recruitment. Is that the correct word?”
“Close enough,” Dominic chuckled, splaying his fingers to make miniature lightning crackle among his nine rings.
Openmouthed, Laura could only stare at the display, fear and avarice battling for supremacy in her mind. Then everything went blurry.
Gasping in terror, she quickly backed away, the paper bunching underneath, and nearly fell off the table until her backside hit the wall.
“It might be wise to remove your contact lenses, my dear,” Dominic chuckled. “You don’t need them anymore.”
Reaching for her face, Laura hesitantly felt around her eyes, half expecting to find something there. But encountering nothing unusual, she licked a finger and took out a lens, then did the other. The room went back into focus again.
“Amazing,” Laura breathed, tucking them away into a pocket. That was when she noticed that her dress had been repaired; every rip, tear, and stain was gone. The material appeared brand new, and smelled freshly laundered.
“Can all v—vampires do this?” she asked in a small voice.
“No, only me,” Dominic laughed, “and my novice.”
“Protégée,” she corrected automatically.
He smiled. “As you say..”
Laura frowned. Had that been a test of some kind? The nerve of the man! she raged privately, then relented. Actually, she rather liked that he questioned her competency. Only fools trusted anybody implicitly.
Reaching into a pocket, Dominic extracted a golden ring carved in the shape of a Chinese dragon chasing its own tail. As he turned it about in the fluorescent light, the jeweled eyes of the tiny golden dragon flashed a thousand different colors.
Mesmerized, Laura had no idea what the ring was, or did. Perhaps it was just a token, a symbol of her allegiance to him. But even if it was something much darker than that she didn’t care, and there started to build in her an unnatural need to possess the ring and the magic it contained. There’s no price too high to pay for eternal beauty ...
“Would you like this kind of power?” Dominic asked, anything but casually.
The answer to that question required no contemplation whatsoever. “Yes,” Laura said, putting a wealth of feeling into the single word.
“It would mean betraying the man you love.”
“And whom would that be?” Laura asked curiously, then burst into laughter. “You don’t mean that idiot I work for? I don’t love Colt, just his money!” She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. There was something so compelling about this man that she felt the need to only tell him the truth.
“Good answer,” Dominic smiled, pocketing the ring once more. “Come closer, my dear.”
In her haste, Laura almost stumbled sliding off the table. Crossing the room, she knelt before the sitting man and bowed her head in submission.
Briskly rubbing his hands together until the flesh glowed like molten iron, Dominic grabbed her by the throat and began to squeeze. Trembling slightly, Laura braced for pain and the stink of roasting flesh. But nothing seemed to happen, and after a few seconds he let go.
“W—what did you do to me?” she asked, touching her neck.
“See for yourself.”
Unearthing a compact mirror, Laura saw a strange glowing symbol on her skin. It was sort of like an ampersand combined with a lightning bolt.
“That is the symbol of my house,” Dominic said, “and only others of our kind can see it. But none of them.”
“Them?”
“Mortals, ordinary people, the common clave.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “The great unwashed.”
Oh, muggles. “The great unwashed is also my term for ordinary people,” she admitted, rubbing her throat. Her fingers encountered nothing, and there was no pain. In fact, there was no pain anywhere. She felt absolutely wonderful. Never better!
“Indeed? Then it seems that we have more in common than I ever imagined,” Dominic chuckled, standing to offer her an arm. “Come along, Laura, time is short, and we have much to discuss ...”
***
With a jerk, Rissa came abruptly awake as a wave crashed over her bare legs, the foamy brine rushing directly to an intimate location best left unsalted for a wide variety of reasons.
Still asleep, Colt turned over to place an arm protectively across her shoulders and murmur something too soft for her to hear.
Gazing lovingly at the handsome man, Rissa brushed some dried sand off his cheek, then scowled as a crab scuttled by with her shoe held proudly in its pincers. Snatching it back, she placed a hand on Colt and sent a mental command to the ring. Power surged through her body, there was a brief flash, and they were both sprawled on her giant featherbed back at the mansion, their assorted clothing piled high on the floor nearby. I love this ring!
“Sorry, must have dozed off for a sec,” Colt mumbled, groggily opening a single eyelid. “What time is it, sweetheart?”
Sweetheart? She liked that. “It’s time for a shower,” Rissa whispered, reaching out to pluck a piece of seaweed from behind his ear.
“Surenoproblem,” Colt yawned, flexing his arms until the joints cracked. “Help me find my pants and I’ll go get the car.”
“No need, we’re home,” she said, laying back on the bed, and stretching.
“Are we?” asked Colt, sitting upright and blinking. “Now, how the fu— ahem, I mean, when did that happen?”
“You carried me naked through the streets of Savannah in your powerful arms!” Rissa said with a straight face, then spoiled the effect with a giggle. “Or perhaps we took a cab, I forget.”
Colt rubbed the back of his neck. “That bottle of champagne must have really hit me hard,” he mumbled, clearly mortified.
“Well, not the first one. But those next two—”
“Three bottles!” Colt gasped, suddenly wide awake. “Dear lord! My dear Miss Harmond, if I behaved in an untoward or inappropriate manner, please believe me that—”
Quickly she silenced him with a kiss. “You were a perfect gentleman every moment.” Which was true. Clearly, she was going to have to come up with better excuses for odd events happening when using magic. The poor man looked absolutely contrite over the possibility of treating her poorly. Either that, or just not use the ring for a while. Hmm, tough choice.
“Honestly?” Colt insisted.
“Well, you’re naked in my bed,” she said with a sweeping gesture.
“Good point,” Colt chuckled, bending over to kiss her stomach.
That sent a fluttery sensation through her body oddly similar to summoning magic, and Rissa debated upon returning the kiss in a far more interesting location instead of apologizing. Then she caught a pungent whiff of the sea and realized it was him, or possibly her. Perhaps both of us?
“Shower first,” she stated, swinging out both legs and padding naked across the bedroom.
“Give me a minute to enjoy the show,” Colt chuckled, brushing back his hair. Sand sprinkled to the bedsheets. “Never mind! Shower it is!”
Dominating the bathroom, the shower was a huge cube of translucent Plexiglass, covered with elaborate designs in geometric shapes. Recessed nozzles were located everywhere, and there were several built-in seats with cushioned railings.
Wondering if the strange designs were actually runes of some sort, Rissa used the small control panel on the outside of the cube to set the water to the proper temperature. Stepping inside, she was pleasantly surprised to find the floor tiles warm, not cold as expected. A split second later, she was hit with a gentle spray from the ceiling, then from two different sides, and finally up from the floor, which promptly blasted away the unwanted salt from the beach. Ah, better!
“Impressive shower,” Colt said, closing the door. “Is this another of your grandfather’s inventions?”
“My guess would be yes,” she said, using a bar of soap to lather her hands. The air was already swirling with misty fog that added a lovely surrealistic feel to the environment.
Ducking his head under the ceiling spray, Colt began rinsing aw
ay the loose sand. “Clever fellow. You should see his design for the hunting lodge.”
“Love to!”
“How about tomorrow? We can have a picnic in the woods.”
“I’ll bring the food this time. Anything special you’d like?”
“Yes, no champagne.”
“Deal!”
With the warm water cascading in a steady stream from the ceiling, Colt began soaping her shoulders in long steady motions, the suds trickling down to cover her like the finest lace.
“That feels wonderful,” Rissa purred.
“That was the general idea,” Colt said as he began to massage her back.
For a brief span they stayed that way, allowing the warm water to wash away the sand and salt of their impromptu beach soirée and savoring the wonderful world of privacy.
“Clean body or a clean mind,” Colt said unexpectedly. “Take your pick.”
“Come again?” Rissa asked in confusion.
“That’s what a sign on the wall says,” he replied, pointing a finger. “Clean body or a clean mind.”
“Well, since we’re in the shower, I think you know my position on the matter.”
“Mine, too,” Colt said, his hands moving down her back, then sliding forward.
Glancing backward, Rissa smiled. “You better be serious,” she growled deep in her throat.
“With you? Always,” replied Colt with a smile.
They kissed again in a banquet of intimacy, hands roaming freely everywhere. Now private words were spoken, secrets revealed. Then they went beyond speech, every breath needed to fuel their trembling bodies locked together in the primordial ecstasy more basic than conscious thought.
Softly in the background the intercom chimed, but neither of them noticed or cared.
Lost in an ephemeral torrent, their minds were conscious only of each other, touch and taste, sight and sound, their bodies joined in a wild elixir of near-drunken intoxication ...
Belle, Book and Candle: A Fantasy Novel by Nick Pollotta Page 14