by SK Ryder
Jackson scratched the back of his neck. “Actually, I think it’s time for you to come home with me. This storm’s building faster than they predicted. There’s no telling what it’ll be when it gets here. And this—” He indicated the cottage. “This may not . . .” He trailed off.
Cassidy followed his gaze and felt punched in the gut. There on the porch, silhouetted against the lit living room window, a familiar figure leaned on the railing. Freaking bastard.
“This house has survived worse,” the shadow said, sounding just this side of bored. “Are you not going to invite your guest in, chèrie? This is no night to be outside.”
Jackson propped his hands on his hips. “Who the hell are you?”
“I am Dominic. I live here.”
Jackson glanced back at her as though waiting to hear her deny those words.
She didn’t. She couldn’t. She sighed, exasperated. “My landlord.”
“And roommate,” Dominic clarified, his voice dripping with smug satisfaction.
Jackson headed for the cottage with a determined stride, Cassidy trailing after him. He came to a halt on the top step to stare at Dominic who turned enough for the light to edge part of his angular face. Though she had no idea how he’d moved this quickly, he now wore a pair of form-fitting black jeans and a dress shirt, also black, unbuttoned to mid-chest, long sleeves rolled up his muscular forearms. The wind fluttered the silky fabric around his torso and tousled his black hair. He could not have looked more devastatingly handsome.
“I see,” Jackson said, sounding dazed.
Cassidy leapt at the chance to take control of the situation. “Dominic, this is Jackson Striker. He was just leaving.” She fiddled with the ring on her finger. If ever there was a time to give it back, this was it.
Dominic’s clear, dark eyes flickered to her. “Your fiancé, non? Or maybe not?” he added with a knowing, suggestive tone that made her face burn.
Jackson bristled beside her. “So. This is Nicky, is it? Nice.”
Dominic looked Jackson over and arched a critical brow. “So this is the brave Jackson Striker. Charmant.”
“You’re a . . . guy.”
One corner of Dominic’s mouth tugged upward. “You noticed.”
“Delightful company you keep these days, Cassidy. Do you think you might have mentioned this?”
“It’s not what you think. He’s letting me rent a room cheap. That’s all.” She stopped toying with the ring. This situation had reached critical mass. Insisting he take the ring back now might well turn it nuclear.
Jackson didn’t look away from Dominic for even a second. “Really? And why would you do a silly thing like that? What’s your interest in my fiancée that you would let her disturb your peace and quiet all the way out here?”
With his arms crossed, Dominic leaned against a porch post and slanted Cassidy a quizzical look. “You must know how stubborn she can be. She wanted to stay with me. Who am I to stand in the way of such determination to get away from you?”
What did that bastard think he was doing? Wasn’t her life freaking complicated enough already without him muddying the waters? Cassidy placed a hand on Jackson’s arm to get his attention. He was focused on Dominic like a laser beam. The frantic ticking of his pulse beneath her fingers made her speak with care. “Don’t let him get to you, Jack. He’s obnoxious by nature.”
“I am French,” Dominic clarified without missing a beat.
“And gay,” she snapped.
He leveled one of those heart-stopping smiles at her. “But you like that about me, non?”
“Oh, gay!” Jackson burst out. “Is that it? Well, that makes everything all right then, doesn’t it?”
“Jack, will you listen to yourself? What’s gotten into you?” Cassidy said, taken aback by his escalating reaction. Of course he wouldn’t shrug off the woman he must still expect to marry living with a strange man out in the middle of nowhere, but neither would she expect him to go postal on the guy given what she believed to be a reasonable explanation. She’d seen Jackson lose it once before when he went after her would-be attackers with his fists. She knew he skated awfully close to that edge now. And this time he’d have a handgun in his car.
Definitely not the moment to give him back that damn ring.
Dominic produced a cigarette from somewhere and lit it with an impatient flick of his lighter. The orange flare, sheltered in his cupped hand against the wind, cast his features in long, eerie shadows.
“Please don’t make a big deal out of this, Jackson,” she tried again. “It’s not worth it.”
“Are you out of your mind? What am I supposed to think of—?” He trailed off to watch Dominic exhale a long stream of smoke as though he had never seen anyone do such a thing.
“Such delicious fighting,” Dominic murmured. “If you and Cassidy are going to make up by having sex, may I join you?”
Cassidy gasped. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Dominic gestured at Jackson with the cigarette. “He may have no balls, but he might be fun. You tell me?”
Jackson’s muscles bunched under Cassidy’s hand. Veins protruded from his neck and forehead. At this point she had half a mind to punch Dominic herself. But she knew now what an Aikido black belt was capable of. Armed with nothing but his temper, Jackson didn’t have a prayer.
Unless he went for his gun.
The strange anticipatory glint in Dominic’s eyes made her wonder if he was looking forward to a fight—or getting into bed with both of them.
“Cassidy, do you have any idea—?” Jackson began, hoarse with fury. He tore his gaze away from Dominic to meet her eyes. “Do you have any idea what this is doing to me?”
“Prude.” Dominic sniffed.
“Stop it, both of you,” Cassidy ordered, slapping her hand on Dominic’s chest. It felt like hitting a brick wall. Inserting herself between them, she faced Jackson. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. But for now I’m living with a first-class French jerk. Deal with it. God knows, I am.”
Jackson grabbed both her arms. “Come home with me, babe. Right now. I’ll keep you safe. I swear.”
For the space of several heartbeats, she considered agreeing. She had believed him to be her best friend until only recently and always trusted him in the past. Never had she seen him so desperate, so unreasonable.
Lightning cracked through the night, washing the scene in a harsh brilliance. The thunder that followed rattled the glass in the windows and vibrated in her bones.
No, not desperate. There was nothing in Jackson’s cold gray eyes but determination and anger.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
His grip on her arms tightened, and Cassidy exercised one of Dominic’s half-learned Aikido moves. Spiraling her arms up and out, she shook him off. Surprised, Jackson stepped back, staggering a little. He saved himself from tumbling down the porch steps and ended up standing in the yard, looking up at them with an expression as bewildered as it was furious.
“Don’t do this. You don’t want to stay here. It’s dangerous here.” As if to back him up, more lightning split the sky followed by the first fine spattering of rain.
“Then you should leave. Now.” Trembling, she took a step back toward Dominic. Of the two of them, incredibly, he was the more rational right now.
“I won’t leave you here,” Jackson insisted, starting up the steps.
“She does not want to go with you.” The menace in Dominic’s voice was soft but unmistakable and stopped Jackson on the second stair.
A chill curled through Cassidy, battling with relief. She rubbed her arms. “I’ll be fine.”
Jackson looked like a bottled explosion in search of a corkscrew. Again Cassidy thought of the gun he kept in his car and remembered Dominic’s words abo
ut there being no defense against a bullet.
“Please?” she cajoled, leaning forward.
“Damn it, Cassidy.” He shook his head as if trying to dislodge something from his brain. “You seriously want to stay here? In this dump? With this . . . this asshole?”
“For now, yes. Yes, I do.”
Dominic shifted his weight behind her. “I wonder what that says about you, Jackson Striker.”
“Or you,” Jackson countered.
“Okay, that’s it,” Cassidy declared. She hardly recognized either of these men. The high-voltage tension humming between them crawled all over her skin. “I’ve had about enough of this pissing contest. Jackson, you need to go. We can talk about this when you’ve cooled off.”
He looked like he might try to drag her away again, but instead he raised his hands in a gesture of reluctant surrender. “Okay. If you’re sure. Fine.” He took several steps backward. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Hard rain swept in on an unusually cold gust, and he hurried to fold himself into the sports car. Then he sat, staring at them through the windshield. He did not, to Cassidy’s immense relief, reach for his gun.
“He is not for you,” Dominic murmured. “He does not know you.”
“Oh, and you do? If you did, you wouldn’t be here right now.” She reached over, snatched the cigarette out of his fingers, and flung it into the rain. “Would it have killed you to stay out of sight? To say nothing of pushing every button I didn’t even know he had? What the hell were you thinking? Right now, I swear, Dominic, I don’t like you. Not even remotely.”
Dominic remained silent and unmoving as they watched the Audi rumbled to life. The glaring LED headlights swept over them before cutting into the darkness of the narrow road. Within seconds, all traces of Jackson vanished into the night and an onslaught of rain.
As the tension poured out of her, bone-deep weariness sucked at her limbs. Cassidy turned to the door, but paused before entering. “Just stay out of my way.”
She didn’t expect a reply. And she didn’t wait for one.
Dominic stood in the darkness and let the wind-driven rain swirl around him. Jackson’s fury still filled his senses, prodding the beast, while Cassidy’s words echoed in his heart like a curse. He deserved her contempt, but he could not have done anything other than what he had.
He needed her to stay, and Jackson not only expected her to return to him, now that he knew of Dominic, he was determined to take her away. By force if necessary. For this alone Dominic would have laid waste to him, and if not for Cassidy’s presence, he might well have. Jackson Striker was a spoiled brute unworthy of her gentle spirit.
As her steps retreated up the stairs, another presence climbed over the far rail of the porch and shook himself, flinging water in every direction.
“Wet,” Serge declared with heartfelt disgust.
“Your powers of observation are staggering.”
“Yes. Yes, they are,” he agreed as he settled himself. He had lost the new shoes, Dominic noted, as well as several buttons from his shirt.
“I am in no mood to deal with your insanity tonight. Either be still or find a hole to crawl into.”
Serge chuckled. “Ah, young one. Your patience is gone, but no one lies dead. You’re learning.”
Dominic gave a derisive snort. “You would have stopped me.”
Curtains of rain whipped around the cottage. Wind rushed in tormented trees.
Serge said nothing.
Dominic narrowed his eyes at the old blood-drinker dripping in an Adirondack chair with an unfocused air about him. “You would have, oui?”
“Some things, blood-child, have to play out as they will. Like you and he.”
“This hot-head and I? You see a future for us?” Dominic mocked. On a darker note he added, “It will be very brief. I promise you.”
“Your shadows overlap.”
Dominic bit his tongue against demanding specifics and impatiently swiped at the wet hair hanging into his face. “You are useless. Completment.”
Serge chuckled. “But you made no bodies tonight. Whose fault is that?”
“Oui. It is your fault that I am hungry.”
Serge purred with satisfaction, but had said all he intended to on the matter. That Cassidy lived tonight because of Serge was understood. As was Dominic’s gratitude.
After a while, Dominic found himself in the other chair, Serge all but forgotten as the storm howled, buffeting the cottage and his thoughts.
With part of his awareness he listened to the house creaking under the assault, ready to leap into action should serious damage occur. The rest of him puzzled over the riddle of Jackson. From the brief time Cassidy’s soul had pressed against his, Dominic knew Jackson had been there for her in the past and now without explanation wasn’t, leaving her angry and adrift in a place far from all she knew as home. She craved stability in her life and did everything in her limited power to create it on her own, refusing to rely on anyone else to provide it. Between her mother’s death and her father’s betrayal, too much loss and disappointment had shaken the foundations of her world and left it crumbling. Yet Jackson didn’t understand this about the woman he wanted for his wife. He truly knew her not at all. He certainly didn’t deserve her.
Neither did Dominic, of course, but Cassidy was like the sun in his bleak existence—always desired, forever forbidden. And someday soon, if knowing him did not destroy her first, she would, like the sun, destroy him. Although he prayed he would never see her fear.
The storm still growled across the sodden land an hour before dawn, but the torrential rains finally eased to a determined drizzle. At some point during the night, an already leaning cabbage palm gave up the fight against the winds and crashed to the ground across the mouth of the driveway, cutting off the cottage from the rest of the world. Dominic roused himself and went to heave it aside. Then he stood for a while and allowed the night to embrace him, begging it to absorb him as though he had never been. But there was no solace in the ebbing darkness. He felt like a raw nerve standing there with rain dripping from his face, his clothes soaked through.
When he returned, Serge still sat in his chair and stared into space, expression blank, lost in his private madness. Dominic passed him without comment and entered the house.
Power had gone out, killing all the annoying electronic hums. Only the sounds of her breath and sleeping heart filled the uneasy darkness. As was his habit before retiring for the day, he stepped into the tub in the downstairs bathroom and let scalding hot water pound over him. The heat seeped into his skin, warming him, making him feel almost human.
He lathered and washed. When he found his cock swelling in his grip, he lingered there. Stroking hard and fast, he recalled with perfect clarity the soft weight of her in his arms, her willing mouth on his, her sighs against his face. The beast did not begrudge him this meager satisfaction. Without the presence of a human’s mind and blood, it cared nothing for what he did or felt.
When he finished, Dominic pressed his forehead against the cold tiles and felt despair suck at his heart. An eternity of nights spent battling the beast and jacking off in the shower is all he could look forward to. Though perhaps now that she had declared her unqualified dislike of him, eternity would last only a few more nights.
He toweled off, contemplating this. He never wanted to know her fear. But was her disgust—not of the beast, but he the man—any easier to bear? It shouldn’t matter. He had left his human life and sensibilities behind. She would never know that Dominic Marchant. And yet . . .
Seconds later, he ghosted through her door. The cat’s head popped up from the blankets. It retreated beneath the bed with its usual haste.
Cassidy lay among mounds of rumpled sheets, evidence of restless sleep and troubled dreams. One window stood
propped open, admitting random gusts of damp wind which ruffled her hair and kept the room cool now that the air conditioning was out. The only thing covering her was a faded yellow shirt emblazoned with a sleeping kitten. ‘I don’t do mornings,’ the lettering declared, making him smile.
Without any particular intent, Dominic crept into the bed beside her, shifting the mattress beneath his weight no more than the cat might have. He moved closer and inhaled her natural perfume. Letting his vision expand, he basked in the web of swirling golden life surrounding her. It coalesced and shifted—toward him.
Her eyes opened, blind in the darkness, then closed again. She reached out one hand, let it brush against his face, and mumbled, “You promised not to come in here.”
“Please do not hate me.” The words were a whisper. The emotion behind them pinched and twisted his heart. He had rarely felt so helpless.
She didn’t reply, drifting near the abyss of sleep and then stepping back when he pushed his face into the wealth of her hair.
She touched him again, the heat in her gentle fingers prickling into his cheek. Imagery flowed from the physical contact and feathered against his mind, intense and rich in detail. The oasis, green and bright. But this time he saw how she saw him there on his knees, staring up at her in shock and delight. With the shadow of the beast in his eyes.
“I don’t hate you.”
Deep in his chest, his heart unclenched ever so slightly. “Do you want me to leave?”
Again that long, long pause. “No.”
He realized she believed she was dreaming. It did feel like a dream, even to him. The beast slept, and in its place, the man had surfaced. He stretched into her touch, letting her explore his face. So warm, so alive. Her breath brushed across his throat and shoulders. He wept when she kissed his cheek.
It means nothing, he chided himself. She does not know the real you. She does not even believe you are truly here.