by S. K. Ryder
He released her hand. “He is a very fortunate man.”
Breath escaped her in a pained rush. He wouldn’t acknowledge their connection. Their relationship was part of a life he didn’t want to face right now. So he didn’t.
Cassidy’s heart ached all the way back to the Beach Tiki. An invisible cloud now obscured the day’s brilliance. The truth longed to be told, but she remained silent. She couldn’t face the possibility of him refuting her outright with another fantasy he would spin to protect his own sanity. As if sensing her despair, he regaled her with humorous anecdotes from his life and travels. She knew them all in detail, but they still made her laugh for the sheer joy of listening to him share them as though for the first time.
When they strode across the Beach Tiki’s dune walk, they were smiling, and the people they encountered smiled back.
“Two for lunch?” the hostess asked when they were about to pass the entrance. Lunch already? The clock hanging among the decorative driftwood on the wall read eleven. They had walked and talked for longer than she thought.
Dominic studied the chalkboard menu. “Oui. S’il vous plaît.”
“You’re hungry?”
A lopsided smile and one-shoulder shrug. “Always.”
They were shown to a prime location table at the rail on the back deck. Delicious aromas wafted in the sea air, and Cassidy realized that not only was she hungry as well as thirsty, she was also in dire need of a restroom. She paused before deciding to take her leave with as little fuss as possible. They had forged a new connection this morning, a level of trust, however tentative. Dragging him to the ladies room so she could keep tabs on him wasn’t workable and shouldn’t be necessary. Besides, he was engrossed in the menu.
When she got back, she found him staring out at the waves, and she chastised herself for doubting him.
They continued to talk over their food—a steaming bowl of mushroom soup for her and a gourmet jalapeño cheeseburger for him that somehow managed to ‘not taste like anything.’ He wolfed it anyway.
“You should try riding it home,” Cassidy told him when they returned to the bike, now covered in a dull sheen of salt spray.
“You cannot be serious, chère,” he said, but his smile encouraged her not to let it rest there.
She pressed the helmet into his midsection. “I’ll show you. It’s easy.”
To her relief, he grabbed the helmet without argument. Though a small, cynical part of her wondered if he considered the bike a potential escape vehicle, she was heartened by his curiosity as she showed him how to work the controls—and by his amazement at how natural riding felt. Once on the road, he opened the throttle for a brief burst of speed that had Cassidy yelp and clamp her arms around him.
“Mon Dieu!” she heard him exclaim. The machine hummed beneath them, motoring along at a stupendous twenty-five miles an hour all the way home.
And it was home they went. He found his way there without directions or hesitation.
“Not looking for the airport anymore?” she asked when she had pulled off her helmet and sunglasses and shook her hair out of the untidy bun.
His expression turned mysterious and a little sheepish. “You say this is my home? Perhaps I should . . . explore it some more.” He pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head, revealing a playful twinkle in his eyes.
“Oh, oui. You should,” she agreed. Then, before she could stop herself, she had her mouth on his and swooned into his arms when they came around her. Unlike almost every other intimate moment they had ever enjoyed, this time they were not in each other’s heads, did not share every emotion, or feel every sensation. They were two souls in two bodies connecting on a new, but no less profound level that affected them both.
For long moments after the kiss ended, they stood, embracing. Breathless.
Dominic sounded a little hoarse. “Cassidy, chère. What are we to each other? Truly?”
“Everything,” she whispered. “Everything.”
He pulled back to study her face. She could tell by the wary pinch at the corner of his eyes that her serious tone took him aback. He might be enchanted by her and suspected a history between them, but he was also a man without a memory who feared being manipulated.
She forced a more relaxed demeanor and took hold of his hand. “Come. I’ll show you.”
Just outside the garage, a path ran between the house and a box hedge that shivered in the breeze. Once past the guesthouse, round stepping stones curved across the plush lawn to an alcove shielded by tall, jungle-dense landscaping. There, a burbling Jacuzzi tub with a small waterfall took up most of the space. Beside it sat a double-wide wicker lounge, well-padded and full of pillows.
“We have spent quite a bit of time here,” Cassidy said, removing her jacket and dropping it on another chair.
Brinkley unrolled from a discarded towel among the pillows and produced a huge, toothy yawn. Dominic gave him a quick scratch under the chin. The cat closed his eyes in bliss.
“Have we?” He glanced back at her and paused, forgetting about the cat. Given the cool wind at the beach, the off-the-shoulder top hadn’t put in an appearance over lunch, but Dominic’s gaze was all over it now.
“Oh, yes, we have,” she assured. Her shoes came off next.
“Doing what?” He had a good idea, his tone said.
“Mostly we watch the stars.” She stepped close to him and unzipped his jacket to slide her hands up his solid chest and over his shoulders. “Afterward.”
He let the jacket slip off his arms and drop to the ground. His gaze became hooded. “Oh, oui? After what?”
Her answer was a soft, teasing kiss.
“Is this where you seduce your helpless prisoner into docile compliance, madame?” he murmured.
“No. This is where I tell the not-so-helpless love of my life to kiss me like he means it.”
For two long heartbeats he stared at her, letting those words sink in. Then he claimed her mouth in a kiss that left no doubt that he meant it. That primal need she had glimpsed earlier surfaced with a vengeance. Grasping her head in both hands, he kissed her hard and deep. By long habit, her body pressed against his. Heat blossomed in her belly, stoking a passion at once familiar and strange. This was no supernatural hunger reverberating between them. This was her own female reaction to him as a man.
When he began trailing wet kisses down her neck, she arched back and nearly wept at the sight of the deep-blue sky. They would make love in the sun and one way or another he would remember it, so help her God.
After she freed him from the confines of his jeans and briefs, she grinned up at him. He looked a bit uncertain again. “Do you have something for—?” He gestured at his erection.
“No. No condoms for us,” she said, sobering a little. “We don’t need them. For anything.”
“Non?” Still doubtful.
“No.” She kissed him until he was convinced.
Dominic allowed her to pull him into the creaking lounge and let his fingers explore her body after she shed her pants. She straddled him, eliciting a deep moan, followed by lusty French that made her laugh with abandon. Oh, oui, she knew exactly how fantastique she felt to him, how much he wanted her—needed her—to quench the fire she had ignited in his blood.
Cassidy held back nothing.
With sunlight glistening on their straining bodies and striking sparks of blue and copper from their wind-blown hair, they surrendered to each other as they had a hundred times before by the light of the moon. And as he had a hundred times before, Dominic rolled her beneath himself with impeccable timing and an easy strength that was anything but human. His smile was dazzling and full of wonder.
“Salut, mon amour,” she murmured.
His answering kiss was thorough, punctuated by a slow, grinding rhythm of
his hips that made her moan. Oh, dear God. He didn’t need to read her mind to play her body like a fine instrument. He was and always had been a virtuoso.
When he brought himself home, there was no sign of the spiral, no trace of the beast. It was only the two of them this time, and the sight of his beautiful face wanton with ecstasy and bathed in sunlight made her eyes fill with tears of joy.
But she stopped breathing when she saw that same face become sharper, almost skull-like.
His eyes snapped open, full black and bereft of all humanity.
The vampire was awake.
Staring into the sun.
“Dominic,” she whispered.
He began to shake. His delicate skin darkened to a furious red.
“Dominic!”
He looked down at her, uncomprehending. Then his arms buckled, and he collapsed on top of her.
Cassidy pushed at him, shook him, yelled for him. “Oh my God, Dominic, wake up!”
Nothing.
With a mighty heave, she rolled him onto his back. Blisters erupted all over his face, neck, and torso.
Hysteria clanged in her chest. The suppressant was gone. He was a comatose vampire sprawled in a poolside lounge during a sunny afternoon. Soon to be ash.
Cassidy’s head spun as she snatched at the forgotten towel crammed in between the pillows and spread it over his face and neck. She closed his shirt, pulled up his pants over what had to be the most painful sunburn in history, tucked his hands beneath him, piled pillows over his feet. This might slow the sun’s ferocious progress, but wouldn’t stop it. She had to get him under cover and fast.
But where? How? Serge lay buried somewhere in the foliage surrounding the alcove, but there was no way she’d be able to dig a grave in time with her bare hands. And dragging him into the house would take too long and cause too much damage.
But compared to what? Spending the rest of the day out here? Either way, he would die.
A wordless, frustrated scream tore out of her. Get your shit together, Chandler. Think, damn you! But her mind was paralyzed with shock, thoughts bolting around like frightened rabbits. Oh God oh God oh God . . .
“What’s going on out here?”
Cassidy jerked around to see Samantha rush into the alcove and come to an abrupt halt, her hand flying to her mouth. “What . . . is that—?”
“Sam! Help me. We need to get him out of the sun.”
Samantha spun on a bare heel and disappeared. “Back in a sec.”
“No! Where are you going? Help me!” More tears burst from her eyes.
“I am!” Samantha called. Seconds later, she was back, carrying a stack of towels, likely everything she could grab out of the cabinet by the pool shower. “Here. Start wrapping. Then we can worry about moving him.”
They made a towel mummy of Dominic. Multiple layers of terrycloth swaddled him, corners strategically tied together to keep them more or less in place. Then Cassidy grabbed him beneath his arms while Samantha tackled the feet.
“Shit, he’s heavy,” she huffed. It was the first time ever Cassidy had heard her friend swear.
Stumbling and tripping, they carried and dragged his limp bulk to the back door to the guesthouse, which was the closest entrance. Samantha darted from window to window, clapping shut blinds and drawing curtains, steeping the place into a murky gloom. But Cassidy did not risk unwrapping the mummy until they had situated him in a bathroom with only one small window that Samantha ran out to seal with the attached accordion hurricane shutters. The blisters on his face no longer bubbled, but his face still looked like it had been dragged over hot asphalt. She carefully kissed the relatively undamaged top of his head. “I’m so sorry, my love.”
Samantha stood in the doorway to the tiny, blue-and-white tiled bath and wiped at the sweat covering her forehead. Wisps of thick, blond hair clung to her face and neck. “What happened out there?”
“The death of a dream, Sam.” Cassidy stood and leaned on the vanity. The only thing she wore—the oversized, off-the-shoulder blouse—only just covered her crotch. She tugged at it a little, gave up. “He woke up when, well”—she indicated her state of undress—“he woke up. The suppressant stopped working. He was totally himself.” She glanced at the motionless heap of towels by her feet. “Still is.”
Samantha’s eyes glistened. “So he’ll never be able to be awake during the day and have any idea of how special that is for him, will he?”
Cassidy stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She opened her mouth to speak, but there were no words. All she could do was fall into her friend’s arms and sob.
Chapter 9
Consequences
Dominic had seen the sun.
It was only a moment. A singular, sublime moment during which a climax pulsed through him and he felt the sun’s warmth on his face before it turned into a kiss from a blast furnace. But that moment would be seared into his mind for years, decades, centuries. And the woman who took him there—the one he thought he couldn’t possibly love any more—her, he would worship for the rest of time.
Both Samantha and Serge insisted on feeding him enough of their blood to get him on his feet. Then it took two solid nights of hunting before he stopped resembling a patient in a burn unit. Two more after that before he recovered most of his strength.
While Serge blamed himself for misinterpreting the fiery erotic visions he had seen when Jackson first brought the suppressant, Cassidy agonized over having seduced Dominic without thinking what it might mean for the beast slumbering in his heart. In the throes of passion, it always surfaced. Why had she risked waking it?
“No, you did right,” he told her. “I had to remember, or none of this would have mattered.”
And he remembered. A few glorious seconds of sunlight. That was all he would ever have of this mad experiment, for he would not try this again. The risk was far too great.
But exactly how great didn’t become clear until the night he woke to discover his present and his past in a fiery collision.
After almost two weeks since they last renewed their bond, the telepathic link between him and Cassidy was too weak to support the exchange of clear thoughts without a physical touch. But sensing emotions and impressions was still possible, and the first one that plowed into him that night was high anxiety. It riddled her like holes in a Swiss cheese.
He embraced her mind, trying to soothe her. All would be well. He’d take care of everything.
Then he looked through her eyes and felt his world tilt off its axis.
Maman!
She sat across from Cassidy in the side porch on the other side of the house. Tall and graceful, and a classic, conservative dresser, Francesca Marchant was everything Dominic remembered of his mother. She had cut her hair, though. Instead of the carefully confined brunette locks streaked with silver, she now sported a short precision cut with a wave of full silver flowing from her distinctive widow’s peak. She looked older but also stronger than he had ever seen her. A woman on a mission.
The man sitting beside her with the cat curled in his lap was another shock. Dominic hadn’t seen his cousin, Étienne Pélissier, in almost ten years. But there he was, dressed in shorts and an untucked shirt, the nut-brown embodiment of beach bum rather than the sophisticated patron of Parisian cafés Dominic remembered.
Francesca and Étienne. In his house. Now. Dominic moaned.
Francesca’s expression softened into concern as she looked at Cassidy and inquired about her well-being.
Cassidy tried to deflect. Dominic could tell she was grimacing. The onslaught of his emotions threatened to overpower her in spite of their weakened link. Sitting up in his cot, he tried to quiet his reaction. She got up and excused herself.
By the time she made it to the kitchen, Dominic h
ad the vault door unlocked and swinging open. She rushed into his arms. The moment they touched, her memories came into focus for him.
It was like a bomb going off in his skull, the culmination of his every fear.
They had come because of a ‘strange’ call from Dominic, they said, giving them this address and claiming to be confined here against his will for the last four years. So here they were to get to the truth of it all, to liberate him, to resurrect him from the dead.
“Mon Dieu.”
“The five minutes I left you alone at the restaurant,” Cassidy whispered. “That’s the only thing I can think of. You must have gotten your hands on a phone.”
Merde. Given the near-cataclysmic way that day ended, this possibility had never even occurred to her.
“I couldn’t send them away. Samantha and I were ambushed. They saw we knew something. And they brought a police escort,” she hurried on. “I’m so sorry, Dominic, but I had to tell them something. I had to do . . . something.”
What she had done was put them at ease enough to dismiss the officer. Then she invited them in and told them as little as possible. For two hours, she played hostess, watched every word that left her mouth, and counted every second to sundown. She explained what she could without straying into the incredible, supernatural, or downright horrific, deflected numerous questions with ‘Dominic can answer that better than I,’ and to everyone’s astonishment—including her own for the monumental understatement that it was—explained herself as his wife.
Dominic cupped her head in one hand and pressed it to his shoulder. “Oh, mon amour,” he murmured. “I am so very sorry.”
Serge roused from his cot and rubbed his eyes. “My lord? What happened?”