Dark Child of Forever

by S. K. Ryder

  “Comment,” he whispered. “Comment est—”

  “Remember, Dominic.” She put her hand on his arm. He ignored her. “Please remember.”

  Recorded Dominic’s phone doodled with an incoming Skype call.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you, my lord,” said Aubrey’s tiny voice just before the playback ended.

  Cassidy chewed her lower lip. Why hadn’t she stopped the recording before that confusing bit of conversation? Or, better yet, why hadn’t she kept recording? It seemed so insignificant at the time, but it wasn’t insignificant to Dominic now. The bewildered look he cast around the table would have made Cassidy bust out laughing if she didn’t know how much fear and pain hid behind it. None of this would make any sense to him and trying to explain it with any degree of honesty would sound insane. They couldn’t tell him. He had to remember. Somehow.

  He keyed the phone to replay the last thirty seconds. Then the last ten twice more.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you, my lord.”

  Dominic put the phone down. “What . . . what is this?”

  “It’s you, Dominic,” Cassidy said gently. “It’s the you we have known for three years now.”

  “Ç’est des conneries! That is bullshit.”

  The outburst made both Cassidy and Samantha jump in their seats. Jackson only sighed.

  “I know how technology can lie,” Dominic fumed. “This is not me. This cannot be me.”

  Jackson matched his strident tone. “For fuck’s sake, Nick. Why would we waste that kind of time and effort? For what?”

  His gaze narrowed. A calculating quiet settled over him. “You tell me? Why do you want me to doubt my mind?”

  “They’re trying to help you remember who you are,” Samantha said. “Please listen to them.”

  Dominic pinned Jackson with his eyes. “And you cannot simply tell me this? You must play bizarre games? It is more plausible that you want me to create a new past for myself. One in which strangers address me as nobility. What made you think I would ever believe such a thing?”

  “Actually, that’s the most believable thing about you right now,” Jackson countered.

  Cassidy jumped into the fray. “You inherited a kingdom from someone—” who turned you into a vampire.

  “Yes? Go on. This is fascinating.” His accent was thick enough to cut with a butter knife, his gestures small but abrupt.

  “You don’t . . . you don’t remember him now, but he was, well, crazy.”

  “And obsessed with you,” Jackson added and stuffed another piece of toast in his mouth as though trying to keep a torrent of other words from falling out.

  Dominic pursed his lips. “Some of my lovers can be a little obsessive, this is true.”

  Cassidy stared at him. She knew his every memory as if it were her own. While there had been no shortage of lovers in his mortal life, not one of those relationships had been anything but casual, and none ended in anything darker than bittersweet memories. None but one, the last one, the woman he had cared for—before he killed her. Like he killed his father. And sister. All of them among his first victims after being turned.

  All of them still alive and well in his mind now.

  She looked away, suddenly aware of what they were really up against. He was fighting them too hard. On some level he must know what he would find if he remembered the truth.

  And he didn’t want to.

  “Perhaps this is truly what is happening here?” Dominic ventured, placing his elbows on the table and folding his hands. He peered at Jackson whom he had apparently determined as the mastermind behind this nefarious plot. “You have some twisted obsession with me, have lured me from my home, and kept me—”

  “You need to stop right there.” No mistaking the menace in the hunter’s face or in the warning finger he raised.

  Dominic waved at the phone on the table. “—in a drug-induced haze?”

  Another chirp sounded, this one from Jackson’s pocket.

  “What manner of sick pleasure do you derive from me when I am not even in my right mind?” Far from outraged, the words twisted in a sultry dance. “Tell me, Jackson. Do I make you moan?”

  Samantha put her utensils down and wiped her mouth on the cloth napkin with a delicate cough. Cassidy’s face tingled with heat as she recalled the moaning Jackson had indeed done in his sleep, and why. He still remembered, too, if his rising color was anything to go by.

  “The only thing sick here is your head,” Jackson snapped. His pocket chirped again, and he yanked out his phone, glanced at the screen. “Fuck. The Grid has a hit in Europe. Three dead.”

  Cassidy’s heart dropped. “Oh, God.”

  The Grid was the Striker Foundation’s global, high-tech alarm system for potential vampire activity making news. Inevitably, this involved the victims of violent deaths.

  Jackson glared at Dominic. “This is where Garrett and I usually warm up the jet, but instead I’m stuck here watching you scatter your marbles.” Another chime. “And now Garrett is looking for me. Great.”

  Dominic brushed his folded knuckles against his lower lip. He studied Cassidy’s and Samantha’s solemn demeanor, studied Jackson come unglued, and smirked. “So you are obsessed, non?”

  Furious color climbed up Jackson’s bulging neck. “You son of a bitch. You and your obsessive delusions is what got us here. This experiment doesn’t work. It didn’t work the first time. It’s not working now.”

  “Jackson,” Cassidy warned.

  He got up to lean over the table toward Dominic whose smug demeanor faded. “There is no going back. Not for you, not for any of us. Deal with it. Deal with what you are and do the fucking job you signed up for.”

  “Jack!”

  His nostrils flared with agitation as he looked at her with eyes as cold as any predator’s.

  “Don’t,” she said, shaking her head a little, praying that Jackson would pick up on her meaning.

  Samantha did. “He’s not ready,” she said under her breath. “He has to remember on his own.”

  “And in the meantime we babysit him? Nice.”

  Cassidy threw up both hands. “Oh my God, Jackson, go. Meet your plane and go to Europe. Do what you have to. But don’t do it here.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I am. Very.” She touched Dominic’s forearm where it lay on the table. The familiar tendons twitched beneath her fingers. “We’ll be okay on our own. We always have been.”

  “He’s not in his right mind. What if he pulls another stunt like last time?”

  “He won’t.” Not without Jackson around to provoke him.

  “I can’t let you—”

  Samantha pushed her chair back and stood. “She’ll be fine. C’mon, Jack. I have a class to get ready for and Garrett is waiting for you.”

  Jackson met Dominic’s glower with his own for several more seconds. Finally he shook his head, disgusted. “I don’t know why I give a shit. I really don’t.”

  Dominic inclined his head, making a wave of ebony fall across his forehead, and blew him a kiss.

  “Fuck off. Cass, you’re on your own.” He turned to go, turned back. “And if you know what’s good for both of you, lose that other shot before sundown.” The front door slammed behind him.

  His half-sister broke the awkward silence by thanking Dominic and Cassidy for breakfast. “I’ll be home this afternoon if you need anything.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  After Samantha retreated out the kitchen door, Cassidy slumped back in her chair. Dominic regarded her curiously. “We are always okay, chère?”

  “Always,” she said without hesitation and met his warm human gaze. A stranger stared back. “We’ve been through far worse than a little amnesia.”

/>   He flashed her a seductive smile. His voice purred in a way that would have sent shivers down her spine if not for the words. “So you are—what is it—the ‘good cop’?”

  “No. I’m—” your lover, your partner, your friend, your reason for being, your tether to humanity, to life, the other half of your soul. She swallowed it all down into her aching heart—“here for you.”

  “Truly? Then please help me return to my home.”

  Cassidy rubbed her right temple against the pressure building there and opened her mouth to explain, to argue, but couldn’t. She couldn’t give him facts that didn’t fit with what he believed, no matter how benign. He wouldn’t trust them, maybe not even hear them. Just like he wasn’t seeing the clues all around him—the speed with which his injuries healed, the unnatural paleness of his skin, the hard edges to his inhumanly beautiful face, even the fact that he hadn’t used a toilet that entire first day. He questioned none of this because he already knew the answers.

  And he didn’t want to.

  Cassidy reached out and wrapped her fingers around his unresponsive hand. “All right, Dominic. If you want to go home . . . I’ll take you home.”

  Chapter 8

  Coming Home

  The only thing Cassidy dared not do today was let Dominic out of her sight. The amount of damage and grief he could cause with a single international phone call was incalculable.

  Which is why she escorted him to his closet and watched him take in the mostly empty miles of Cherrywood shelving and stacks of drawers. A handful of T-shirts and gym pants, plus some dress shirts and jeans, and a grand total of three pairs of shoes was the entirety of his wardrobe. That and the black leathers and silver-buckled boots waiting in a far corner. He studied this last but made no comment before turning away, ignoring the outfit and the blood-soaked history it represented.

  “They all fit. They’re all yours,” Cassidy said, giving no hint about what he might select.

  He pulled off the T-shirt and dropped his gym pant bottoms, affording her a glimpse of the bare assets with which she was so familiar, but which were oddly new in the light of day. He arched a sweeping brow at her. “Underwear?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Right. That drawer.” She pointed. A minute later, he was packaged in briefs, a pair of jeans and fresh shirt, and stuffed his bare feet into the sneakers. She tossed the leather jacket at him and gestured for him to follow her.

  Though she didn’t spend much time there most nights, Cassidy maintained her own suite in the house, a place that was distinctly her own, and her walk-in closet was far better stocked than his. While she eyed the tidy collection of colors and styles, she shed her tunic and shorts without thinking. A soft groan sounded behind her. Dominic stood with one shoulder leaning against the frame of the closet door, arms crossed, a slow smile curving his sensual mouth.

  Oh. Right. This version of him would be a stranger to her body. The thought made her skin tingle.

  Raising her arms to gather her hair in a messy bun, Cassidy gave her amnesiac lover a coy look and her most evocative French to inquire if he saw anything he liked.

  “Oh, oui, madame. Beaucoup,” he agreed with unfettered appreciation. But he didn’t move from his spot, content to ponder her underthings and the treasures they barely concealed.

  Cassidy took her time selecting a pair of jeans and a flirty off-the-shoulder top, giving him plenty of opportunity to admire the view. It was a challenge not to grin so hard her cheeks ached. Everything else about him and their relationship was so radically different, the possibility he might show any sexual interest in her hadn’t even crossed her mind. Yet, there it was. She could feel it in the heat of his gaze raking over her body. He wanted her in a most primal way.

  But there was something else he wanted more.

  “Where are we going?” he asked as she considered an all-out seduction.

  She sighed, slipped into a random pair of shoes that were sturdy enough for what she had in mind, and grabbed her purse and a light jacket. “You’ll see. C’mon.”

  In the garage, she ignored her own new Mercedes coupe and walked up to Dominic’s BMW motorcycle. The thing looked like it was flying just sitting there. Tricked out by a previous owner with more ego than sense, the low-slung, pitch-black bike could move at two-hundred-plus miles per hour. Amazingly, it wasn’t the bike that had killed the guy—a player in South Florida’s drug trade—but the vampire who claimed it. Dominic had used it to carry him far and fast when hunting meant making bodies. While he had killed no one in years, he still preferred the bike as a convenient mode of transportation.

  “Want to ride?”

  Dominic scoffed. “You are joking. I have never been on one of these things.”

  “Fine. I’ll drive,” she said with forced confidence. Dominic had taught her how to ride, and she had a license issued by the state of Florida. But this machine was a whole lot less menacing at night when Dominic was there to keep control of it with his supernatural reflexes. Now, during the day, driving it with her mere mortal skills felt like asking for trouble. But if there was a chance of reaching him, she’d risk it.

  Of course, having him climb up behind her and feeling his hands steal around her waist was also worth a few risks. The embrace felt more sensual than practical, as if he had been looking for an excuse to touch her. It was all she could do to gather her distracted wits and ease the bike on its way.

  The five-mile trip took fifteen minutes. After the first five, Cassidy relaxed enough to enjoy what was a glorious morning. A late-season cool front had brought what was sure to be the last dry air for months, leaving the sun to blaze diamond-bright in a sapphire sky.

  All that and Dominic was with her. If not for his amnesia, she would be the happiest girl on the planet.

  “This does not look like an airport,” he observed after she had parked and they pulled off their helmets. When he squinted against the light, she handed him the wraparound sunglasses she wore and retrieved a more stylish secondary pair from her purse.

  “Nope. It’s the Beach Tiki.” She pushed the glasses onto her nose. “It’s one of your favorite places to catch a bite,” she added and grinned at her personal joke. The blood supply here was always varied and plentiful and often steeped in the relaxed hormones of vacationers who spent their days playing in the surf and their nights partying and making love.

  “Another breakfast?”

  “If you want.” She paused a beat. He didn’t react. “But I was thinking we might go for a walk.”

  “To an airport?”

  Her smile grew rueful. “In a way.”

  On the beach, miles of sand stretched north and south and to the east, blue-black waters foamed under a stiff wind. Only a handful of people dotted the sand, and the distance disappeared into the thick mists kicked up by the rolling waves.

  Cassidy hunched her shoulders against the salty gusts, which were stronger than she had anticipated. Dominic didn’t appear to notice. As she knew he would, he became absorbed in the sight of the churning water, his hands tucked into the pockets of his half-zipped jacket. With the wind in his raven hair and the sun on his chiseled features plus the mirrored, futuristic sunglasses, he looked like something straight out of a glossy fashion magazine, even a movie star. Admiring eyes turned their way from the Beach Tiki’s back deck.

  “This is nothing like Saint-Barthélemy.”

  “I know,” she agreed, strolling away from the gawkers. “Tell me about it.”

  Not that he could tell her anything she didn’t already know, but that wasn’t the point. He talked. Slowly at first, then more freely as he got lost in memories of the life she knew he mourned. The warmth and sunshine of his island home, the peace, the love of family and friends. Her heart ached when she heard him speak as though it were all still real, listened to him refer to loved ones long dead in t
he present tense. She was glad for the oversize sunglasses hiding her eyes.

  She told him about her life in Colorado, all the grief she had left behind there, and how some of it had followed her in the form of her father who now lived in Fort Lauderdale, managing a string of car dealerships belonging to his new wife, the widow of a friend—the friend Dominic had accidentally scared to death with his beast. That last bit, she didn’t mention.

  “But you live very well now,” Dominic said when she fell silent. “Did you win the lottery?”

  “You could say that. I fell in love.”

  “Ah. Of course.” He nodded. “Jackson.”

  “What?”

  “The man with his own plane. It makes sense. The house is his, non?” He gave her a long look. “As are you?”

  She stopped, feeling hit over the head. “No. I’m not his. Where would you get that idea?”

  Dominic shrugged. “You wear no jewelry except for one exquisite ring. It must mean much to you.”

  She lifted her hand. The sapphire was set in platinum and surrounded by two glittering waves of diamonds. It looked like a little piece of ocean on her finger. She felt awe every time she looked at it. Not because it was worth a fortune, but because of what it represented.

  “It’s only a ring,” she said and watched Dominic raise her hand by the fingertips to admire the jewel more closely. “But the person who gave it to me . . . he is my world.”

  “Ç’est magnifique.” Dominic pulled down his sunglasses far enough to peer over the top. “Two souls. One body.”

  “Yes,” Cassidy whispered and closed her hand around his. She felt faint with hope when he returned the squeeze. She waited, praying he would take her into his arms and kiss her senseless.