Dark Heart of the Sun (Dark Destinies Book 1) (11 page)

“Liar.” He leaned across the counter. But instead of moving away, she froze, breathless with anticipation of she-knew-not-what. He came even closer.

“It is a sweet, sighing orgasm on a spoon and you know it,” he whispered against her ear, his accent as thick as the sauce. The words curled down her spine in a tingling helix of sensation, engulfing her in liquid heat. When she shivered, he drew back. His face left no doubt that he knew precisely what effect he had on her. Maybe two could play, but only one could win.

Cassidy cleared her throat with an awkward cough. “Okay. That, too.” His eyes were bottomless, drawing her in. Everything in her wanted to look away, back away, but she couldn’t move an inch, not until he turned. And then she had to hold on to her seat to keep from sliding out of it, every bone in her body having gone soft.

“You’re not subtle, are you?” she said, feeling borderline senseless between the alcohol and a hunger for more than food.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Like hell you don’t.
She drank more wine out of sheer frustration and confusion. Add ‘sensual force of nature’ to that list. Was there a woman alive who wouldn’t fall into his arms?

His mouth continued to twitch with quiet amusement as he arranged the fish, vegetables, rice, sauce, and garnish on a plate in a display worthy of a foodie magazine cover and settled the serving before her with a flourish. “
Et voilà. Bon appétit.
”

What’s for dessert?
she thought and immediately chastised herself. Maybe it would be better if they kept arguing.

But it took only one forkful to clear her mind of everything but the food. Tempting as it was to wolf it all down, the sheer rapture of the taste made her linger over every morsel.

“You like it?”

She nodded, honestly humbled and done pretending otherwise. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

“
Oui.
I thought it might be.”

“Aren’t you having any?”

He shook his head. “It is too early for me to eat. This is for you.”

“All this? Just for me? I don’t know what to say.”

“‘Thank you’ will suffice.”

She savored another mouthful of the exquisitely seasoned fish and searched her limited French vocabulary; this food deserved nothing less. “
Merci beaucoup.
”

“
De rien,
” he countered, looking pleased. “Do you think you will want more?”

“Definitely.” These dainty gourmet portions weren’t going to cut it.

Another fillet hit the skillet.

Drunk with flavor and wine, she gestured with her fork. “This is better than sex. Hands down.”

Dominic chuckled. “I am flattered. But if that is how you feel, you obviously have not had the right lover.”

“Uh, huh. And let me guess. You’re volunteering to remedy that?”
What the hell am I saying?

He sobered a little. “You should not try so hard to seduce me, Cassidy. You would not like what you find.”

“Me?
Me
trying to seduce
you
? Oh, that’s rich. I thought seduction is
your
gift.”

“Then you underestimate yourself
.
”

Cassidy tried to smother a grin as she mopped up the sauce with a chunk of flaky, perfectly done fish. Dominic, stunning male that he was, found her ‘seductive’? The idea made her giddy. Then again, she could blame the wine for that as well.

“So?” she ventured when he refilled her plate a little later. “Are you trying to seduce me?” Yes, the censor had definitely checked out. It lay in a drunken, snoring stupor in the corner of her mind.

“No. I’m not.” He sounded more serious than he had all evening.

“That’s not what it looks like from here.”

“Then I owe you an apology.” He set the plate back down in front of her and refilled her glass. Again. “Please don’t take this personally, but my . . . needs . . . are different.”

He returned her questioning look with an air of detached expectation.

“Oh,” she said, realization dawning. “Really.”

“I’m sorry if I led you to think otherwise.”

“Well, no, that’s good actually.” She cleared her throat and sipped the wine. “I mean, seriously. My life is upside-down right now.” Her gaze strayed to the ring now back on her right hand, safe from accidental loss and forgetting to wear it to work—and, whether she wanted to admit it or not, a constant reminder of Jackson and what they had once shared. Damn, this was getting complicated. “I’m here just for a bit. No telling where I’ll end up. I really can’t afford to get carried away . . .” She clamped her mouth shut and nodded to herself.
Stop babbling, Cassidy.
“You’re not into women. That’s . . . fine. All good.”

Completely fine,
she assured herself and blamed the wine for the odd pang of disappointment in her chest.

Chapter 11

Alliances

Dominic busied himself cleaning utensils in the sink while her rampant desire swirled in the air like a rogue wave, threatening to suck him under, cave in his skull, and crush his reason.

Without warning.

While she made love to his cooking spoon, his imagination served up vivid scenes of pushing her across the kitchen counter, climbing on top of her, and claiming her body, her blood, her mind. Her life. His canines and cock both ached in readiness. Nothing but the pulse in her throat and the sweet scent of her arousal filled his awareness.

She had caught him off guard in the worst possible way.

His fault, all of it. What was he thinking, plying her with this much wine, whispering of sweet orgasms, and speaking of exquisite lovers? Just watching her enjoy what he prepared for her made him delirious with pleasure. By also encouraging these flirts, he couldn’t push his own limits any harder if he tried.

And he had shattered hers.

Cassidy bolted for her phone when it rang on the living room table, a desperate grab at distraction. Her gait was a bit unsteady as was her greeting to the caller. Dominic had no trouble picking up the male voice on the other end, demanding to know if she was all right.

She sagged into the sofa cushions and buried her face in one hand. “Really, I’m fine. Just in the middle of dinner. Wasn’t watching my phone for texts.”

“You’re not eating right, are you,” the caller challenged, and Dominic’s nerves rippled with mild irritation.

“Jackson, please don’t lecture me. I get enough of that from Nick—” Her face twisted into a hideous grimace as she half curled into a fetal ball. The caller, Jackson, wanted an explanation. “Nick-
e
,” she croaked, hand over her face. “Nicky. My roommate.”

Dominic froze, ambushed by memories of the last time someone called him by that name. His family. His world split open wide and slammed shut again like a clap of thunder, lashing him with an agony so immense, were he human, he would die of it on the spot. He forced himself to focus on Cassidy’s awkward explanation of her living arrangements.

“You don’t need to worry about my diet. Nicky . . . is a chef, so . . . she cooks for us. Gourmet food. It’s delicious.” She glanced in his direction, her wide, blue eyes beseeching him to understand.

He did, but he didn’t like it, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose in agitation when Jackson asked to see her before leaving on a business trip. Dominic leaned across the kitchen counter, straining to hear every nuance of their conversation. Tightly controlled irritation in Jackson’s tone, uncertainty in hers as she stared at the ring on her finger. As the back and forth continued, she turned over her hand, hiding the diamond.

“I’m sorry, Jackson. My schedule is pretty full right now. Maybe when you get back.” She cut the connection without waiting for a response and flopped into the cushions, head thrown back.

Dominic admired her invitingly bared throat before recalling himself. “Do you love this man?”

“I really don’t know anymore,” she said, sitting up. “Right now I . . . can’t be near him.”

“Why?” he asked with studied casualness and made careful note of her teeth catching on her bottom lip.

She broke into a fit of giggles. “The mansion got too small.”

As Cassidy finished eating, her story poured out in a torrent. At the center of it all was Jackson, the man whose ring she wore with such uncertainty. Their connection ran deep, forged in a shared understanding of grief and recovery that Dominic couldn’t help but envy. For all his passionate but ultimately superficial relationships, he had never known anything even close.

Everything changed once she arrived at Jackson’s home and encountered his wealth and family. They frowned upon her common aspirations and the life she imagined for herself and Jackson. Cassidy spoke in vivid detail how it all came to a head the Friday before her arrival at the cottage when the Striker family patriarchs took their heir’s future wife to task over the main course.

“It was like the Spanish Inquisition, and nothing I said was right. It became obvious that the last person they want Jackson to marry is a middle-class career girl who is in no hurry to procreate.”

“But . . . Jackson asked you to marry him,
non
?”

“He seemed to have forgotten that bit.” She hesitated, hurt edging her face. “He just sat there, right beside me, and didn’t say a thing. I needed him to be there for me, and . . . he didn’t even look at me.”

“
Espèce de cul
,” Dominic said softly. “Asshole,” he clarified at her questioning look.

“That’s what I said.” She laughed and wiped at a moist eye. “Although I probably shouldn’t have shouted it at all three of them before storming out of the dining room. I think Jackson’s mom was on the verge of fainting. Her, I actually like. His sister . . . half-sister, too.”

Dominic smiled, admiring her spirit and wishing he had been there to see it, wishing even more he could have defended her. He had known scores of women—and a few men—who would have conveniently forgotten their principles in favor of a life of plenty.

“Jackson later apologized, and I couldn’t stay mad at him. He said his father and uncle are traditionalists, but as long as we didn’t go out of our way to upset them . . . or call them names”—she groaned—“there was no reason we couldn’t live the life we wanted. Everything was . . . good.”

Dominic finished turning off the stove and setting the dishes to soak in the sink. Leaning back across the counter, he emptied the final shot of wine into her glass. “Then why are you here?”

Her hand surreptitiously reached for her neck as she met his eyes. Dominic waited.

“Something happened,” she began. “I woke up with this and . . . I have no idea how it got there.” A small shrug and a wave of one hand. “I can’t even think about it. It’s like my mind bounces off something when I try. Like it was so traumatic I’m blocking it out.”

He said nothing, silently encouraging her to go on even as renewed anger at Serge scraped at his nerves. The old fool was stronger than this. There was no excuse for leaving a mark like that on her skin and such turmoil in her mind.

“Jackson knows what happened. I can see it in his eyes. His whole attitude toward me changed overnight. He got so distant. I . . .” She shook her head.

“What did he tell you? About that night?” Dominic wondered in a tone of almost disinterested calm. Inside he seethed. What else had that imbecile blood-drinker done?

“He didn’t tell me. I didn’t ask.” She swallowed before adding, “For all I know, he did this to me.”

He did not!
Dominic bit his tongue to keep those words from escaping, words he had no way of explaining. She radiated pain and confusion, and he ached with the need to ease her anguish.

“Maybe he does not know what happened,” he offered. “Otherwise why wouldn’t he tell you? If he loves you?”

She looked unconvinced.

“Love knows no secrets,
non
?” Dominic said, wishing he would have no secrets from her.

Cassidy held his gaze as though she sensed his deeper sentiment. “No. It doesn’t.”

For a while she fell silent, deep in thought and in her glass while he finished tidying the kitchen, lost to his own speculations and drifting on the lyrical rhythms from the radio.

“Tell me about yourself, Dominic. You’ve listened to my tale of woe. Let me return the favor.”

He hung up the towel and apron, and retrieved two bottles of Perrier before replying. “No one should have to hear my . . . tale of woe. It is not fit for”—
humans
, he thought and set one of the bottles before her—“a friend.”

The smile curving her beautiful mouth soaked into his skin like the warmth of the sun. “Then tell me what you would tell a friend.” She took his offering and broke the seal. “I’m a good listener.”

Sometime past midnight, Cassidy found her bed—under her own power—and drifted off to sleep. Dominic sat for a while in his corner of the sofa downstairs, listening to her sleeping breath, reluctant to break the spell by stepping onto the front porch and finding what he knew lurked there for an hour already.

He had told her about his life before, in sketchy terms at first, then in increasing detail as he allowed himself to remember the warmth of a life he would never know again—the smiles of his family, the voices of his friends, the electric-blue of the Caribbean under a mid-day sun. Strange how speaking of these things made them almost real again and less the echoes of insufferable loss.

Sitting folded into the sofa’s far corner, Cassidy took it all in with interest, respecting his wish and never asking the one thing she surely most wanted to know—why did he no longer live that life? By the end of the night, had she asked anyway, Dominic thought he might have told her. He almost believed she would nod and understand.

But only almost.

For a few more moments, he held onto that dream. Then it evaporated around him together with the elusive humanity he cultivated for her. He inhaled, tasting the damp night air drifting through the open windows, and exhaled on a soft growl.

Outside a chuckle rose. “Foolish child. You cannot outrun your destiny.”

“Or you, it seems,” Dominic said, feeling weary. Why hadn’t he put this one down already? Outside, he found Serge blending into the shadows in an Adirondack chair.

“You need me.”

Dominic leaned against the porch rail and crossed his arms. “What I need is for you to tell me what happened the night you fed from her,” he said so low only another blood-drinker would hear him—not a human sleeping by the open window above them.

“I saw the light in her soul.” Serge beamed as if proclaiming a miracle.

“And you did what? Exactly?”

“I drank, of course. I had to know her mind, know her light. It was . . .”

“What compulsion did you put on her?”

Serge looked mildly offended at having his proclamation cut short. “To not see me. Nobody ever sees me.” Wistful sigh.

“And the man she was with?”

“The man?”

“Her man.” Blank stare. “He was there that night. You compelled him also?”

“Oh, no. No, he is not her man.”

Dominic fought for patience. “Regardless, he was there. Did you drink from him?”

Serge gasped, then shook his head, muttering, but stopped when Dominic growled a warning. “So impatient, blood-child.” He straightened a little and looked away. “He was . . . repulsive.”

“Repulsive,” Dominic repeated. If an accurate description—and he couldn’t think how—that might explain Cassidy’s sudden reluctance for her fiancé’s company. If Serge reached this conclusion while feeding and deep in her mind, he might well have accidentally compelled her to feel likewise. “Repulsive how?”

The old blood-drinker had that far-away look again, his voice soft. “He has a light, too. But he is not her man.”

“You are useless,” Dominic spat on a snarl of sheer frustration. It was all he could do not to slam the door behind him. The beast slithered in his heart, tormented by memories and hunger. Only one thing would appease it. Pulling on his leathers and boots wasn’t even a conscious decision.

He steeled himself for an argument on the way out, but Serge didn’t even hesitate before leaping onto the back of his bike, eager to ride. “You need me with you,” he declared, chuckling. “Yes, you do.”