Dark Heart of the Sun (Dark Destinies Book 1) (17 page)

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.

But, oh, to be part of this dream . . .

She took his face into both her hands and kissed him on the mouth, tasting him in a slow, bold, soul-deep kiss that left him weak with need for her. For one sweet moment, he let her. For one sweet moment, he allowed himself to believe this was real. For one sweet moment . . . he was human.

Then she pressed her soft warmth closer against his rock-hard body. His recently satisfied cock stirred back to life—and with it the beast. He felt his humanity slip. Became hyper-aware of the delicate rivers of blood pulsing beneath her satin skin.

Out on the porch, Serge growled a warning. Dominic ignored it.

What he couldn’t ignore was the searing pain against his cheek.

Breaking the kiss with a gasp, Dominic pulled both her hands away from his face. One of them bore a ring made of pure silver. In casual contact, silver caused little more than an annoying tingle. Held against his skin like this, the metal caused stinging blisters to erupt. In a distant flicker of lightning, the ring winked at him, haughty as the man who gave it, warning him off.

Dominic clenched his jaw. The ring had saved her. From him.

“I’m sorry, Dominic.” Cassidy sank back into her pillows with a weary sigh. She squeezed his fingers before retrieving her hands from his. “I’m sorry I’m a girl.”

“
Non . . .”
He stopped himself. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t break this spell. No promises he could make that he would keep. As she drifted back to sleep, he sensed her swirling dreams, colored by longing and edged with regret.

Her spirit embraced his soul. Her torment broke his heart.

He kissed her damp forehead before reluctantly sliding out of bed.

With a mixture of relief and irritation, he spotted Serge hovering in the doorway, ready to yank him from the brink of disaster. Dominic shoved past him and then stopped to make sure Serge followed him downstairs.

“You did well, blood-child.”

“I failed,” Dominic snarled. “She is no longer safe with me. I want her too much.”

“But she is your key. You need her.”

“I need you to leave my lair. I will not go near her again tonight.” Only because mere minutes remained of the night. Though the skies outside were still mottled with clouds, the sun’s weight settled on him with increasing force.

Leaving Serge by the front door to seek his shelter where he would, Dominic turned down the hall—where he came to an abrupt halt. When he was here earlier to change his clothes, he had moved too fast to contemplate the meaning, but his photographic memory made note of the angle at which the back bedroom door stood open.

Which was different from how he had left it.

He drew a deep breath, half-hopeful, half-terrified that she had ventured into his inner sanctum. If so, it would only be a matter of time before she came here during the day and destroyed him, regardless of her feelings for him.

It wasn’t her scent he caught in the stagnating air, though. It was Jackson’s.

With every nerve in his body buzzing in alarm, he moved through the tiny room, smelling for traces of the man. There were few—the door, the light switch, handles on several dresser drawers, a hint on the hilt of one of the swords—but they were strong and deeply offensive. It was reasonable to expect the man to search the house for Cassidy when he came looking for her earlier. But this small, shuttered room had held enough interest for him to distract him from her possible troubles. Why?

Suddenly Dominic regretted having so little control over himself in Jackson’s presence. It never even occurred to him to make an opportunity to ‘speak’ with him in private, to taste his blood and know his mind. The beast only wanted to rip open his throat and be done with him. It still did. Now more than ever.

“The sun comes, blood-child.”

Dominic whirled around, fangs extending, ready to tear into someone, anyone, to vent his frustration. Serge stood just inside the door, looking as inoffensive as it was possible for a soggy derelict blood-drinker to look.

“Tell me, who do you smell in here?”

Serge shrugged but didn’t meet his eyes.

“Did you know about this? Did you know he would invade my lair?”

Another shrug.

“Of course you didn’t. How could you?”

Serge gave him a disappointed look. He had been on the beach, watching over Cassidy the entire time. He wouldn’t have been aware of Jackson’s doings at the cottage any more than Dominic was barring any truth to his claims of clairvoyance, which Dominic refused to play into.

“You want this to ‘play out as it will,’ do you? Then so it will. Tonight I will know Jackson Striker’s mind. The consequences be damned.”

Serge looked troubled. “But why? Why risk killing the man who fights for her . . .”

“She is better off without him.”

“. . . when you already know his mind?”

Dominic froze where he stood. Serge’s words cut through his raging emotions like a sword, revealing a truth he had refused to acknowledge. Oh, yes. Dominic knew. He had seen, heard, and smelled everything about the man, and only one explanation made any kind of sense at all.

“He knows.”

Serge nodded, pleased. “He does.”

Dominic sat on the edge of his bed, stunned. “But he’s human. No human can know about us and live.”

Serge chuckled. “So much more is possible than you know, young one. You have much to learn, and you will. But first—” He held out his hand. “Come spend the day with me in the ground.”

The sun was close. Dominic felt it in the sluggishness sucking at his limbs. The beast was reluctant to leave the sanctuary at this point and didn’t quite understand the threat inherent in remaining here. Serge, with his greater age and strength, would be able to function for a while longer and help him find cover.

Dominic didn’t move. It was a good day to die, and a good way, too. Perhaps Jackson would spare Cassidy the truth about his fate, leaving her to remember him only at his best—remember the kiss that would be the last glimmer of joy he would ever know.

“No,” he said, the decision settling over him with an otherworldly peace. “I will stay here.”

A panicked little sound escaped Serge.

“This will play out as it will,
mon ami
.” Dominic settled on the mattress, his energy draining away from him as fast as water from a sieve. “Watch over her for me,” he whispered.

Then the memory of her kiss enveloped him and carried him into oblivion.