The hurt and loss I’d suffered from Adam was a part of me, interwoven into the person I’d become over time as surely as my parents’ deaths had hardened me and overcoming Percocet addiction had strengthened me. The person Adam had devastated all those years ago wasn’t the same person in this room with Dominic. Even if Dominic hurt me in the exact same way with the exact same weapon, my injury would be different. I wouldn’t turn away, naked and shivering, to staunch the hemorrhage; this time, I’d fight back until we were both bleeding. And Dominic, being Dominic, could heal my body head to toe with a lick of his tongue afterward.
Adam’s presence had been a bright, shiny beacon high up on a hill, but after the pain of my parents’ deaths, the light I’d once basked in became a spotlight for my wounds. Instead of leaning on him for comfort, I’d turned away from him in grief, and Adam, the beacon that he was, couldn’t dim his light, not even for me.
Dominic wasn’t bright and shiny. His presence was like a shroud, and I could willingly lose myself hiding in the cover of his darkness. He understood my wounds because, like me, his own pain had needed time and space and solitude to subside. He’d helped me find an anchor in the storm and had the patience to wait until that storm passed because he knew the truth about wounds and living with them. He understood the burden of choosing to live despite them.
I took a deep breath and pressed his hand firmly against my breast. “I’m not a virgin. I’ve suffered heartache, just like you and everyone else who’s ever loved, and I’ve been afraid to feel. I’ve been afraid to live. But I’ve never felt more alive in my entire life than I feel here with you.”
The tense, pinched expression in his eyes wilted, and in its place, the bloom growing between us turned its face to the sun and basked in its rays.
Dominic’s lips quirked. He was struggling to keep his expression neutral and failing. “Tell me what you want, Cassidy.”
I inhaled sharply. He was going to make me say it.
He must have felt my hesitation, because he tsked his tongue and shook his head at me in gentle rebuke. “You must tell me exactly what you want of me. Not only do I want to hear the truth of us on your lips, but I refuse to endure false accusations later tonight or tomorrow or next week when you decide I somehow seduced you with my wicked ways.” He gave me a look. “I want this as much as you do, but I refuse to take liberties if you’re not willing to admit that you want liberties taken. You must say what you want, Cassidy. Exactly how you want it.”
He really is wicked, I thought, but despite my reservations, I relented. “I want you, Dominic,” I whispered.
The heat of my blush burned my face from hair root to chin as I finally admitted the truth to him.
He made a circular gesture with his hand for me to continue.
I sighed, digging deep in my reservoir for courage and strength. Why were words so much more difficult than actions? Ask me to jump in front of a bullet or open a vein for the man, no problem. But admit my true feelings? The risk of bodily injury, dismemberment, and death were obviously not as frightening as the risk of embarrassment and rejection.
“I want you to finish what you started and make love to me,” I said, my voice soft but unwavering. “I want your bare skin against mine and your hands on my body. I want you inside me.” I swallowed at the look on his face, like that of a child on Christmas morning. Granted, a child with fangs, but the glee and unadulterated joy of witnessing a miracle was there in his expression just the same. “I want all of you.”
Dominic was on me in an instant, executing my every want. He stripped me of my shirt and bra, and I ripped the shirt from his body, buttons springing out in every direction and raining over my hardwood floor. He pressed his bare chest to my bare chest and the dual exhalation of our groans swelled the apartment with need.
“Another shirt bites the dust,” he commented. “You’re hell on my wardrobe.”
“You’re hell on my sanity, but do you hear me complaining?” I unzipped his pants, finished with being the least-dressed person in the room.
“Yes, I hear your complaints all the time,” he said, breathing his dissatisfaction across the shell of my ear. “I don’t respect your boundaries or your privacy. I bound you to me metaphysically without your knowledge. I won’t let you write the article that would expose me, ruin you, and kill us all.” He nibbled on my earlobe and simultaneously moved the hand I’d pressed to my breast, massaging my nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “All you do is complain.”
I gasped and shuddered. “Are you trying to dampen the mood?” I asked, not feeling dampened in the least despite the recitation of his worst faults. I shoved his pants down to his knees and squeezed the long, firm length of his erection in my hand.
His body stilled. His lips on my neck paused their nibbling, and I could feel a tremor wrack his body with a sharp inhale.
“My point—” He tried to continue, but as my hand stroked over him, distracting him, his words were stilted and breathless. “You managed to transform your apartment into a fallout shelter to secure your privacy.” He groaned as I squeezed tighter and stroked longer and faster. “Our bonds have saved us on multiple occasions; we’ve taken strength and life from each other that we otherwise would have lost, thanks to those bonds.”
I shifted my hand so my strokes pulled him high and taut, his balls bouncing from the motion. He cursed softly.
“And no matter what I do,” he continued steadfastly, a man determined, “you will be the end of me, the end of us all, and write your article anyway. You don’t need space, apology, or permission from me to attain what you want.”
“Is that right?” I asked, grinning. I could tell by the roll of his eyes into the back of his skull and the slack-jawed tilt to his head that he was lost in my touch. “What do I need from you?”
“Me.”
Dominic forced my hand away and slid inside me, the thick length of his shaft stretching and filling the deepest parts of me, and we stopped arguing.
He remained stock still for a moment, his expression wide and full of wonder, and when he did finally move, just a slow retreat and even slower thrust, we both gasped and shuddered in pleasure and awe at the person we’d become.
He rested his forehead against mine and shook his head. “I can’t believe we’re finally here. I can’t believe this is real.”
“Don’t let it end,” I said, writhing my hips impatiently.
He chuckled softly and leaned back, gazing over the length of my body with hungry eyes. “I can’t believe you’re mine.”
Mine, I thought, and everything about that thought and our bodies together as one felt right and whole and inexplicably freeing.
He moved again, slowly retreating and thrusting forward harder this time, again and again until I didn’t know embarrassment or reason or reality from insanity. He filled me with such pleasure and promise that I didn’t have room for anything else inside myself but him.
I came in a screaming, clenching explosion, and I thought I heard Dominic murmur, “Thank God,” before his shuddering groans joined mine. I watched him over me, his furrowed expression focused and driven, nearly in pain, and I couldn’t help but smile in wonder at the power I had over the formerly most powerful creature in the city.
I sighed. It was the same power he had over me.
Dominic withdrew from inside me and collapsed next to me, his upper half on the couch, his head resting on my chest, his arm slung over my stomach and his lower half kneeling on the floor, his legs intertwined with mine. He shook his head, and the soft wisps of his hair tickled my chin.
“That sigh better be one of lingering pleasure,” he said, his voice still rasping, “and not your typical pessimism. Usually I appreciate your pragmatism, but in this moment, so close to divine perfection, I will not tolerate anything but satisfaction.”
I smiled. “Okay.”
Dominic lifted his head, his expression wary now instead of blissful. The huff of his breath blew across my chest
as he grunted. My nipple puckered. “You never give in to me so easily.”
“Enjoy it. It’s not likely to happen again anytime soon.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“My easy acquiescence. Not this,” I said, indicating us sprawled naked together on my couch. “We should most certainly do this again. And often.”
Dominic chuckled. “How often?”
I shrugged. “Well, we never made it to the bed. And there’s still the recliner, love seat, and ottoman left to test out in the living room.”
His grin was swift and rakish. “Far be it from me to exclude a piece of furniture.”
Dominic made good on his word. We kissed and licked and loved throughout my apartment, fighting over each other’s body parts as intensely as we fought over everything else. When we eventually ran out of living room furniture, kitchen countertop, and area rug, we landed in an exhausted, blissful stupor on the bed, curled into one another. The strong, unyielding planes of Dominic’s muscles pressed firmly against my curves. I luxuriated in the feeling, too sore to move, too thoroughly spent to care, and for the first time in a very long time, utterly content.
I’d been delightfully, delectably wrong. Despite all my efforts to distance myself from Dominic and his limitless reach by transforming my apartment into a fallout shelter, the sanctuary of Dominic’s arms contained a warmth and sustenance I’d never thought could exist in a world without my parents.
And I’d found it in a world of monsters with one of the biggest, most badass monsters of all.
The Leveling
Our lives are nothing but a compilation of moments—snapshots of laughter, love, tears, blood, grief, pain, and joy—but the moments we choose to hold dear are the life we lead. I could choose a various number of snapshots in which I scoured civilizations and ruled kingdoms and bathed in my enemy’s blood before drinking it, but that was the life I chose to lead before other moments in life became dearer. Now, I choose you.
—DOMINIC LYSANDER, evading my questions on his morally corrupt past
Chapter 30
The smell of roasting meat woke me. My stomach growled, and I peeked one eye open under Dominic’s arm against the single ray of sunlight beaming onto the bed through a crack in the blinds.
Both my eyes snapped wide open.
Sunlight.
I catapulted myself out of bed, ignoring Dominic’s groan and the lightning bolt streaking through my hip to twist the blinds down, un-snag all the curtains from their sashes, and snap their seams closed against the light.
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. I’d bought beautiful, gauzy curtains that didn’t do much against sunshine, intending to protect apartment from vampires, not for them. Even with the curtains fully closed, light filtered through the fabric, glowing into my apartment instead of shining. Dominic would still cook in here; he’d bake instead of broil, but he’d burn just the same.
I ran to the linen closet—my version of running, which for anyone else might appear as hobbling, but for me was a dead sprint—and pulled my winter quilts and comforters from storage. Once they were draped over the curtain rods in addition to my ineffective curtains, the room was finally plunged into shadow.
Dominic had woken, either from the pain of being burned or from my own racket as I’d sun-proofed the room; his arm was flung over his face, covering his eyes as he groaned.
I stepped cautiously toward the bed. Dominic wasn’t his best self during the day, often succumbing to his gargoyle-like form. He didn’t look particularly transformed now—the hand attached to the arm covering his face appeared human—but if I’d learned anything from my time with Dominic, it was that appearances weren’t reality.
“Are you all right?” I asked, careful to keep my voice neutral.
“No,” he said, and his voice rumbled from his chest, not in a growl like it would normally rumble, but rather like he needed to clear his throat. “I have a headache. And my throat is parched. And I’m exhausted.”
Dominic lowered his arm and looked at me. Gone were his reflective, nocturnal, icy eyes that bled from midnight blue to white in the center. His eyes had irises, which were midnight blue, but surrounding his irises was white sclera, and in the center, there was something I’d never seen in his gaze. His pupils contracted to absorb the light.
I gaped.
He broke eye contact with me and stared down at his own hands. He flexed his fingers into fists and then opened them wide, only to flex them again.
A minute passed in silence. He didn’t move except to stare at his flexed hands.
“Dominic?” I asked softly.
“I once told you I’d feel bereft without my heightened senses, essentially blind and deaf compared to the visual and auditory acuity I’m accustomed to.”
I nodded, hesitant to find out exactly where this train of conversation would lead us, but relieved he was at least speaking.
“It feels worse than I remember, worse than I could have imagined. I’m essentially crippled without my senses, and without you at your full strength either,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m afraid we’ve lost the battle before it’s even really begun.”
I cupped his face in my hands, less afraid of him than I’d ever felt since meeting him all those weeks ago, and for that very reason, more afraid for him than I’d ever imagined feeling.
“We’ve had our backs up against the wall before, and when everything seemed lost, when you were shot through the heart and burst into flames and Jillian escaped and all that was left was me and insane hope, we still won,” I reminded him. “No matter how lost things seem, you’ve got to hold on to hope. Sometimes that one, tenuous strand of hope is the harness that helps you climb the mountain safely instead of plunging down the ravine to certain death. And I should know,” I said, forcing a smile, “I’ve gone rappelling, remember?”
He shook his head, trying to pull away, but he was so weak, at nearly human strength, that I could tighten my grip and keep my hold. “You didn’t go rappelling. Ian Walker tried to convince you to rappel into Bex’s coven, but you were physically incapable of bearing your weight in the harness because of your hip.”
I blinked. “How do you”—I shook my head—“it doesn’t matter. That doesn’t change my point,” I said sharply. “Someone once told me that you are not immortal. Nothing is. You’re just long-lived and difficult to kill. One day, whether it’s fifty years from now or another five hundred years from now, you will die just like everyone else, because nothing, not even the sun or this earth, will last forever. Eventually, you and I and the coven will no longer exist, but not today. Today, we live.”
Dominic met my eyes, and the sadness in his very human gaze broke my heart. I wasn’t accustomed to looking into his eyes and seeing his soul. Somehow, seeing Dominic stripped bare made me feel naked too.
“Today, Jillian officially has all of my strength and powers,” Dominic said. “And in addition to her own army of Damned vampires, she now has control of my coven. Even the most loyal to me will struggle against the power of her direct command, and without the coven at my back, it will be very difficult to stay alive today. Or, how might you put it?” he asked, a light twinkling in his eyes. “To retain my existence.”
I scrunched my nose at him.
“My death would seal the complete transfer of my Master’s power to Jillian, but even if I do survive, there are many ways to lose my coven—if not by the transfer of power, than by crippling their will or poisoning their hearts.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You think she could convince an entire coven of loyal vampires to just, what, have a change of heart?” I asked, letting my voice drip with doubt.
“She turned the tides of my loyal coven against me when she was my second and I in full command of my powers,” he reminded me.
“And we stood against the tide and held strong. We—”
“We are in hiding,” Dominic said. “Now that I am at my weakest, I have no doubt that she—leader of an army
who feasts on beating hearts—will find a way.”
“We will find a way,” I insisted.
He rested his forehead against mine and sighed. “My reign as Master of New York City was by far the most agonizing and fulfilling endeavor of my very long existence.” He expelled a breath, more sob than sigh this time, and shook his head. “The weight of responsibility and chains of leadership bound me as surely as my coven was bound to my rule, and those confines were both constricting and comforting. Each individual vampire was my family, and the coven was my legacy.” He made a choking noise in the back of his throat. “How can I let go, Cassidy? If Jillian wins, whether by my death or by her own force of will, how can I leave them behind, bound to her rule?” He shook his head, the brief glimmer of light and humor in his eyes winking out. “I’ve failed them.”
“Some things transcend time and death. Some things are eternal, lasting long after we’re gone. Even if Jillian usurps your rule, even if you die trying to regain control of your coven, your reign as Master vampire of New York City transcends even you.”
Dominic made a humming noise in the back of his throat. “Such sweet words said by an even sweeter mouth. If only they were true.”
“I’m in the business of exposing the truth, remember?” I grinned. “Speaking of which, do you know what would help immortalize your memory?”
Dominic raised an eyebrow.
“Allowing me to quote you in my article.”
His gaze was leveling. “Seriously? You want to do this now?”
“The article’s main focus is the existence of a new, undiscovered species living in a city beneath New York City. It makes perfect sense for the leader of that species to be quoted. In fact, not obtaining your quote would be remiss of me. People will want to know your story, your history, how you survived and thrived undetected by humans. The people will want to know what you have to say.”
Dominic scoffed. “I don’t care what ‘the people’ want. They are human and insignificant.”
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