would go out alone for a while on Friday night, Cassidy’s emotions waffled between regret and relief. Despite having taken her out in grand style for several nights in a row, emotionally he had pulled away so far by now that being near him was torture. He didn’t even enter the cottage—at least not while she was awake. Every morning, she found Eddie cowering under the bed, letting her know the vampire had recently lingered in the room.
While she was grateful for his efforts, they couldn’t make up for the widening chasm between them. He felt it too—she could see it in his bleak eyes—but did nothing. Whatever his reasons for not sharing his mind with her, by now they had taken on cataclysmic, world-ending proportions in her imagination and stoked her mounting anxiety.
Not long after he left, she couldn’t sit still any longer and walked down the lane to Samantha’s cottage. Serge opened the door before she even knocked. With his tousled, caramel-streaked hair, Hawaiian shirt and board shorts, he would have been the epitome of a hippie surfer if not for the hideous way the bright colors clashed with his supernaturally pale skin. They did, however, perfectly compliment his cheerful demeanor.
He ushered her inside what was essentially a mirror of her own cottage, but vastly more updated. Plush new furniture filled the living room to one side of the front door. On the other, modern appliances sparkled in the granite-festooned kitchen. Spotless white tile covered the floor throughout.
“Great timing,” Samantha greeted as she put down her phone. “I just ordered pizza.”
Cassidy frowned. “You don’t eat pizza.”
“But you do, right? Veggie pizza I can handle.”
“Thanks,” she murmured. Serge must have been watching her and alerted Samantha to get the comfort food organized. So much for forgetting her problems for a while.
She kept the conversation light and trivial, but once the food arrived, she realized her attempts at distracting herself were doomed. Serge took delivery of the pizza and handed it to Samantha. Then he dropped all human pretensions. In a voice vibrating with power, he ordered the delivery boy to present a vein. The young man’s color bordered on ashen by the time Serge—now well-fed—sent him on his way with a cheerful slap on the shoulder and a generous cash tip.
“I’m liking this century,” Serge declared cheerfully as he waved Samantha’s smartphone. “So much bounty to be summoned with such ease.” His tongue mopped a smear of blood off his lips as he returned to the sofa and resumed watching a black-and-white swashbuckling adventure film.
“Sam, you’re creating a monster,” Cassidy said under her breath.
Samantha pulled a fragrant cheese-oozing slice onto her plate. “Taming,” she corrected with a gentle smile.
Proving her brother wrong was probably closer to the truth. Serge had been Jackson’s first kill, and would have stayed that way if not for Samantha’s swift intervention. The old pirate had been her devoted shadow ever since.
By the end of her first slice, Cassidy gave up. She spilled the whole sad tale of her troubles with the vampire in her life.
Her friend listened, concern furrowing her delicate brow. “That doesn’t sound like Dominique.”
“Tell me about it.” She lifted the lid and pulled another gooey helping out of the box.
“My guess would be that he’s just trying to protect you from something.”
“That makes no sense.” Last time Dominique had tried that, they both had almost died. He knew better. “I’m on intimate terms with his alter ego. I’m never safer than when our link is strong.”
Samantha looked away and took a long drink of lemonade.
“Sorry,” Cassidy murmured. Her telepathic bond with Dominique was a sore spot for Samantha, whose relationship with Serge, no matter how solid, would never be more than a shadow of what Cassidy and Dominique enjoyed.
When Dominique allowed it.
“Then maybe it’s not you he’s protecting,” Samantha speculated.
“How do you mean?”
“It might be your relationship he wants to save.”
This gave Cassidy pause, but then she shook her head. “I don’t see how. It feels more like he’s trying to destroy it.”
Samantha glanced over her shoulder at Serge, who appeared oblivious to their conversation but surely followed every word. “Then I’m guessing. I don’t know.”
“But I bet Serge does,” Cassidy said, watching the lounging vampire for any hint of a reaction. There was none. She exchanged a look with Samantha, who put a hand on her arm and gave an encouraging squeeze.
“Don’t worry, sweetie. As long as you two are together, nothing can harm either of you. He is smart enough to figure that out. You’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right. And I hope he figures it out soon.”
A sharp knock at the door made both women jump. They looked to Serge, who hadn’t moved. “Who is it?” Samantha whispered.
Serge muted the already indistinct sound of his movie and gave them a doleful look. “Go and see.”
“Oh great,” Cassidy muttered. “More ominous mysteries.”
The knock repeated, strong enough to rattle the door on its hinges. Samantha approached it as though venturing into a tiger’s den. What she found glowering on the other side wasn’t far off.
“Dominique?”
His gaze darted past her, first finding Serge on the sofa, then Cassidy at the kitchen counter.
“What can I do for you?” Shock strained Samantha’s voice. Dominique avoided her like he avoided daylight. He rarely came near her home. And he never knocked on her door.
“Cassidy?”
“Yes, of course.” She stepped aside. “Come in.”
Dominique entered the room, a vision to behold in his full black leather regalia, all effortless grace and leashed power, bristling with agitation. He came to a halt five feet away from Cassidy. The heart-stopping scowl on his face hardened. No doubt he would have preferred to speak to her privately, but without their link, that wouldn’t be happening here.
Nor was Cassidy particularly inspired to leave with him just now.
“You’re back early,” she said, breaking the awkward silence. “What happened?”
“I almost fell into Jackson’s latest trap.” His tone was clipped and his French accent thick as a stew.
Samantha smothered a gasp behind one hand.
Cassidy slid off the barstool. “What? Where? How?”
“La maison…euh…Jim Lawley’s home has been made into a trap for me,” he declared, hands gesturing to encompass the room as though it might harbor a similar threat. “If not for the smell of new paint, I would not have noticed the changes and would now sit in a silver-lined cage, awaiting my tormentor’s twisted pleasure.”
She grabbed the counter edge for support. No, this couldn’t be happening. Not again.
He took two more steps toward her and leaned in close. “Sais-tu…do you know anything about this?”
“Me? Are you insane? Why would you think that?”
“You are the only one who knows I go to see that useless man and why.” He glanced at Samantha, who had paled by several shades. “Or should I ask my tormentor’s sister?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the sister sputtered.
Serge still hadn’t moved from his nest of sofa pillows, though he watched them all with a strange, far-away stare that gave Cassidy chills. He didn’t watch them so much, she knew, as he watched the possible future events being triggered by this very moment.
“Jim Lawley is out of town. Has been since Tuesday.” On a more sarcastic note, Cassidy added, “But you’d know that if you had bitten me when you were supposed to.”
Another five or ten seconds, then the outrage drained from his face. “Why did you not tell me this?”
“I’m sorry. Jim’s personal plans aren’t a priority for me right now. Want to guess why that might be?”
Shoulders slumping, he shoved the fingers of both hands through his disheveled hair. “D’accord. But what about Jackson? How would he know I might be there?”
It took her only a second to make the connection. Then her stomach fisted with anger. “That manipulative, opportunistic, freaking bastard.”
Everybody looked at her, expectant, but she hesitated. This was a conversation she hadn’t intended to have in words, much less with witnesses. But whatever.
“He came to see me on Monday, and he saw Jim acting at his compelled finest. He put two and two together. There was no point in denying anything.”
Dominique’s eyes rounded, incredulous.
With mounting disgust, she recalled one more thing. “He also heard Jim talk about going out of town. Son of a bitch.”
“Jackson Striker contacted you? And you did not tell me this either?”
Cassidy crossed her arms. “I really didn’t think you’d want to hear about that while we were out on our dates. Or about the colorful things he had to say about you, of which there were plenty.”
He leaned one hand on the cold granite countertop beside her. “Merde.”
“Exactly.”
“Jackson is not going to give up,” Samantha said with a disappointed shake of her head. “Please be careful, Dominique.”
Cassidy saw the subtle tension running through him and recognized it for the hostile annoyance it was. He was moments away from snarling at Jackson’s sister outright—or worse.
The oracle on the sofa chose that moment to speak. “What must be, will be.” Dominique shot Serge a murderous glare that was acknowledged with a careless shrug. “You know what you have to do, blood-child.”
In the silence that followed, the tension in the room folded back on itself and doubled, then quadrupled. They all knew what Dominique had to do—to be whole, to survive.
When he turned to Cassidy, the hunger and desperation pooling in his darkening eyes stilled her breath and made the blood roar in her ears. Would he bite her now? Right here? Merging their souls? Even succumbing to the delirious passion that would follow? In front of witnesses?
So be it. Witnesses be damned, she decided and raised her chin, exposing more of her neck, daring him.
Several more seconds ticked by. Then the darkness ebbed from his eyes. He gently cupped the back of her head and pressed his forehead to hers, silently urging her to understand.
“Je t’aime,” he said, his voice hoarse with ache. “I love you. Never doubt it.”
And then he was gone.