Dearly Beloved Read online

  “Must you sneak up on people?”

  He ignored her for the most part, just as he ignored the chair on the other side of her little table. He must have known leaning against the rail and giving her a perfect look at his profile would be devastating. And damn it all, it was. Courtney took another sip of her drink before placing the glass with precision on the table top.

  “I do not sneak. I entered. You do not listen.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of a contraction?”

  He turned to face her, leaning backwards now, and that just put all that man in perfect line-of sight. Tonight he was wearing khakis and a black shirt of some t-shirt material that molded to eye-catching pecs before trying to cover up some truly amazing abs, and then it meandered somewhere beneath his belt-line in defeat. He wore his hair longer than she liked, but with it pulled back in a tail, it wasn’t an issue.

  What was she thinking? Nothing would look bad on this guy. And it wasn’t her issue.

  “You have forgotten.”

  “Forgotten what?”

  “I ask the questions.”

  “Listen Handsome. You keep saying that, and then you muddle your way through some words, and nothing ever gets asked.”

  “Dominick. My name is Dominick.”

  It sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth. On him, that was thrilling in a dangerous/sexy kind of way. It also made a river of goose-bumps rise on every bit of her skin. The man was solid sex appeal. Solid. She sighed heavily and dramatically.

  “All right. Fine. You win. Dominick. But I rather like Handsome. I mean, surely you’ve been called that before. Somebody in your acting career had to have mentioned how drop-dead gorgeous you are. It can’t be just me.”

  And why couldn’t she just shut up?

  “Acting career?”

  “It’s a stretch, but I suppose you could be a model. No. That’d be a severe waste. There’s a huge chunk of folks looking for smoldering sexuality and man! Have you got the market cornered on that one. I’m the target audience of advertisers, you know, and trust me. You’ve got what it takes, although you’d probably melt the film every time they try to shoot you.”

  “Shoot me? Who else will try?”

  He was closer, leaning down onto the table and making it groan with the weight of holding him. She hadn’t seen the movement. The champagne flute wasn’t the only casualty, as it rolled off the edge of the table and shattered on impact. It felt like her heart was going to come right through her chest. She had to wait several full beats and swallow before trying to make sensible words again.

  “Wow. Here I was speaking of supreme sexual attraction, and you go and demonstrate. You’ve definitely got it, Dominick-my-man. In spades.”

  He narrowed his eyes next. Like that would do anything other than make him more virile and amazing. The man was over-acting, and he was good. Better than any day-time soap star she’d ever seen.

  “Who else will try to shoot me?”

  “Damn near everyone, I assume.”

  “What?”

  “I said – damn near everyone who sees you will try—.”

  “I heard you!”

  “Then why on earth are you asking?”

  He didn’t look like he got frustrated often, if that’s what his howl exhibited. That, and the way he lifted the table from the floor, rippling major arm muscle before flinging it right over the balcony. That was just too much machismo. The table wasn’t light. And he was being ridiculous. They’d probably make a fortune off this video.

  It also eliminated any kind of barrier between them, and the next moment he was squatting at her side and looking at her with the darkest, sexiest eyes she’d ever seen. His position also made every thread of his trousers mold to every bit of muscled thighs and calves. And that t-shirt might as well give up the ghost. It didn’t do more than cling and define. She couldn’t help it. She sighed in full feminine appreciation.

  For some reason, it looked like two small spots of color tipped the tops of his cheeks. That was totally unnecessary and overly done. If she’d thought him gorgeous before, she’d just been trumped.

  “I will repeat this once more. I ask the questions.”

  She nodded, swallowed, and touched the bandage on her neck. For some reason, the sensation of heat radiated right through the gauze and into her fingers. He looked like he knew it.

  “How did you find me?”

  Courtney narrowed her eyes until he was blurred through her eyelashes. It helped. Not much, but it did help. She might even be able to get her voice to work again, especially if he was going to use broken-record psychology on her. That ploy was so see-through, it was impossible not to spot it. He was obviously being paid well to get this kind of action/reaction for Shawn’s little e-film. That table into the sea stunt was probably going to get him a raise. Fine. She’d go with her original plan then. Men! Sometimes they were just…idiots. She pulled in a deep breath.

  “All right. You got me. I’ll tell the truth. We got word you were here. That’s how I found you.”

  “From where?”

  She couldn’t keep a straight face long enough to get through this, but she was going to try. “Top source. Top.” She repeated it soundlessly for effect.

  “Who?”

  Wow. He just looked good enough to kiss with his lips in that pout. She really needed to concentrate here. Courtney said the first name off the top of her head. “Kevin.”

  He frowned. On him, that was even stunning. “Who?”

  “It’s an acronym.”

  “A what?”

  “It stands for…Kelp EValuators…uh…INternational.” She choked back the laugh but it wasn’t easy.

  “How?”

  “How…what?”

  “I ask the questions!”

  “You are impossible! I can’t answer if you don’t tell me what you need the answer to.”

  “How did you find me?”

  That was definitely said right through gritted teeth. A nerve poked out one side of his jaw, too, delineating it for her. Courtney gulped.

  “It’s a secret.”

  “You will tell me, and you will speak of it now.”

  Courtney regarded him for a moment. “Fine. You’re onto me. I had a sending unit with me.”

  “There was no transmitter in your attire. I know. I went through it.”

  “You went…through it? My diving suit?”

  “And the other thing you wore.”

  “What?”

  “That is yet another question. I have warned you. I will not do so again.”

  “That other thing happened to be a four hundred dollar bathing suit! Four hundred, hard-earned dollars. You better not have damaged it.”

  “It has been shredded.”

  Courtney screeched. She kept her lips sealed so it wouldn’t be ear-drum splitting, but it was still loud and angry, and it made her neck wound go to a solid throb. Nothing changed on Mister Perfect, though. Not one iota of his expression. And that was just too much on an already wretched scene.

  “I hope you’re being paid a lot, Mister Dominick Miklos St. Whatever. And I mean a lot. Because I’m taking every penny. You hear me? And not just from you. I’m taking yours, too, Mister Elliot!” She’d looked over his shoulder to shout that part to the entire room before looking back at her host’s enigmatic expression. “I am not amused. Not anymore. I mean, I wasn’t amused before, but now I’m really—!”

  Apollo/Dominick reached over and put two fingers against her lips, stopping her tirade in mid-stream with a solid jolt of sensation clear to her toes. And back. Courtney’s eyes went huge, probably mirroring the look of shock coming from him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  He shouldn’t have touched her. He shouldn’t be anywhere near her. Realization hit as the oddest roiling motion altered the elements about him. He didn’t know what to say or do. She wasn’t just a new weapon of some kind. She was something else. Something so huge, he didn’t think he had the ability to grasp
it at the moment. This woman awakened something massive within him. Fully. Indefatigably. Completely. Shifting him completely off his axis. The closest match he had was an earthquake.

  Dominick had experienced enough of those. He’d had to rebuild the villa more than once, the last following the great quake of 1953. That one destroyed most of this wing as well as the kitchens. It hadn’t the effect of this thing.

  “What…just happened?”

  The whisper touched his fingers, sending a tremor through him. All the way through him. Dominick blinked. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.

  He didn’t subscribe to the theory of mating. He’d heard of it, every vampire did. Scoffed at it. There was no such thing as a person slated as his one true mate. The one being capable of making him whole. Fusing with him. Bonding with him. Making this entire immortal existence an eternity of pleasure rather than a constant repetition of nothingness. Such a thing was too fantastic to exist outside of fairytales. He didn’t believe it, and he refused to start now. Not to him. Not now.

  And not… her .

  Dominick moved his hand, cradling it about her neck in order to lift her right to his nose, ignoring each whiff of air on his face as he narrowed his eyes and studied every facet of this woman. She wasn’t exceptional. Nothing to take a second look over. She kept her honey-colored hair at shoulder-length, shorter than his. Light brown lashes encircled greenish-shaded eyes that stared wide-eyed at him. A light sprinkling of freckles crossed her nose. There was that perfect mouth, though, shaped for kissing. And there was a definite smell about her. Something indefinable that whispered of longings and needs he’d thought long lost and forgotten.

  Dominick tilted his head, inhaling perfect woman scent as something shuddered into existence in the depth of his chest, radiating through every dead cell. Everything male in him responded. It wasn’t an earthquake. It was solid, amazing, perfect, unmitigated wonder. If he believed in deities, he’d set out offerings, pen volumes of psalms, commit sacrifices in honor. Instead he went to his feet, melding her to him with his free arm. Then he went higher, hovering above the marble floor with the overwhelming volume of emotion he was trying to deal with. He couldn’t stop any of it. His spirit was soaring. Physical movement was simply a manifestation of it.

  “This is not a good idea, Dominick.”

  She might be saying it, but the way her body stayed pinned to his, the quickness of each breath, and the swift lick she’d made on her bottom lip, plumping it even more for him, weren’t demonstrating anything like it. The aura wrapped about them seemed to radiate from within. He’d never felt so light. His head was spinning with it and then his body joined in.

  “You can just stop right there, Mister. I mean, no. This is so not happening. And you can just set me down, too.”

  If she hadn’t been panting through it, cursing him with more perfect breaths, and if he wasn’t hovering in a plane of existence that defied physics…well, maybe he could do what she requested. Maybe.

  “You need to say something. I can’t carry on a complete one-sided conversation. I mean, I can, and usually do, but I’m usually alone, too.”

  Say something? If he tried, it might be a sob. Emotion of this level and this magnitude was beyond his experience. His spinning slowed, widening to access the available space. If he still had a soul, it was singing. Something was filling his ears with orchestral sound.

  “Listen, Dominick. No way did you get paid to do this. Even in Shawn Elliot’s Pranks-Gone-Wild reality shows, there has to be some semblance of reality. Know what I mean? Who’s going to believe you go from over-bearing asshole with one sentence lines to a lover with superman powers who…flies? Did you put something in my drink? Because that’s patently unfair. It’s cheating. And you can add that to your video, Shawn-You-Jerk! How the heck did we get this high?”

  She’d turned her head to yell something into the air about him, before becoming a quivering mass of female that latched onto him, her legs encircling his upper thighs while her arms looped around his torso. That was too much contact. Dominick fell, slamming to the floor beside his panel door, and the next moment he had her within the enclave of his sanctuary. To a vampire, it was easy to see and easier to navigate. To the woman in his arms, it must be terrifying. Pitch black and quiet, unless one listened carefully and fully while holding their breath. Then the slightest sound of lapping waves could be heard from his grotto, eighty feet below.

  That could be what she was doing, since she’d decided to cease breathing. She wasn’t controlling her heart-rate. That muscle was pumping her life fluid with rapidity, making her infinitely more desirable. Dominick hovered in the center of his rotunda, working to control urges and cravings that hadn’t much hope of containment. He’d never dealt with such massive need. His arms tightened, and then trembled, and then went to all-out shudder as she struggled for control.

  He was losing.

  She called to him with every continued moment of their existence, and he hadn’t any weapon to fight it. He couldn’t. The denied feeding last night was a factor, but he didn’t need fluid every night. He could go weeks without feeding. He couldn’t go much longer without her. Everything on him knew it.

  Stone stairs were carved into the sides of the rotunda. Two turns took him to each level and each complete arrangement of living quarters. Seven stories in all. As if he’d need the rooms. Carved wooden banisters encased the steps. He’d embossed silver atop the railing. It caught any light, looking like a fine-tipped pen had been put to use if he looked down. He didn’t. The stair angle wasn’t steep, nor was the spiral. Eighty feet separated the dimensions between where they were and the bottom step. He’d designed it that way on purpose. For efficiency, aesthetics, and speed.

  Dominick ignored the steps to swoop down, the ascent causing strands of her hair to slide across his face where they caressed. Faster. Swifter. He was at the ledge leading to the fourth floor. The next instant, he was through the arch and within his rooms, where no living or dead thing had ever been, other than him.

  The bed was another canopy, settled dead center in his room, elevated on a pedestal, as were all his beds. The maroon and black color scheme of his bedding nicely set off the dark Spanish oak construction. He placed her on his mattress, leaving her long enough to illuminate everything he could find. He didn’t need the light source, but he was about to mate – with her - and he wanted to see every little nuance of it. He’d have been quicker but trembling gave him trouble. He couldn’t even light a candle? Dominick looked at his own fingers in surprise after his third failure to keep a match lit.

  “Ok, Dominick. Listen. I’m going to just pretend that little episode didn’t happen. I am not here in some secret cavern with you, well away from any hidden cameras and sound feeds. I did not just go flying through the air, drop like a rock, and then end up in yet another massive bed. No. Didn’t happen. And I am not in a setting resembling something from a Victorian stag film. Not that I’ve ever seen one, but I’ve heard of them, and I have a fairly decent imagination. I mean, it must be decent…and then some. Look at what I’m imagining here. Oh my. I mean, oh frickin’ my .”

  Her words ended with a garbled sound. Dominick didn’t ask why. He’d leaned across her to set the candelabra on the headboard, using both hands so nothing would rattle. The headboard was crafted thick so it could support the width and weight of so much silver and candle wax. It was also high. Golden glow flickered about as it embraced the interior. Dominick didn’t wait to evaluate it. He didn’t dare. His fingers were giving him trouble again, and he needed to unlatch the semi-sheer panels of his canopy to pull them into place, creating an oasis of privacy. She started talking again as he reached the second post at the footboard, stopping him momentarily.

  “You need to say something here, Dominick. I mean, really. I’m not exactly immune to this plan of yours. Damn it. Why does my mouth always have to trip me up?”

  He slipped a glance at her then away. It was the best he could man
age.

  “Or at least ask. You’re transparent as all get-out. Anyone can see through this. And it’s not like I’d truly turn you down. What am I saying? Does any woman ever turn you down? Ever?”

  Turn him down? He puzzled that before letting it go. It had been too many centuries since he’d needed a woman. There wasn’t much asking. What a man wanted, he took. Women were then left to fester with hate over it. His mother drummed that into him before he’d even reached puberty.

  “I mean, I admit it. You’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. You’ve got the body of a god, the face of a model, and the heat coming off you is enough to melt asphalt. You probably have the package to back all that up. Geez. I should just shut up when I’m ahead. I wouldn’t even mind the ‘I ask the questions’ stuff right now. Trouble is…now that I’m ready, you don’t say a word. Not one. I mean, I’m all for the strong silent type, but you’re taking it to the extreme. And I do mean extreme.”

  She’d interspersed her words with a low tone when she’d mimicked him. He almost smiled, but caught it before exhibiting elongated canines that were sure to startle her.

  “You probably should’ve been warned that when I get nervous, I start talking non-stop, and then I sound like a complete idiot. As if you can’t figure that out for yourself. Shawn probably counted on it. Except…I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know where we just disappeared to, and how. Damn it! I’m not discussing how we got here, because I’m just not. It probably looked very good on the web, though. How did you do that anyway? Did we really just fly? And no. Don’t answer that.”

  One panel had a knot in the tie attaching it to his foot post. Dominick pondered it.

  “Um…I’m really nervous here and that means I’m talking. And you’re not doing anything to help the situation. Nothing. In fact, you’re making it worse. Oh, don’t look at me like that. You already know exactly what you do and in what measure. It’s probably practiced. I get it. You’re not just an actor, you’re an athlete. That explains everything. Women probably swarm all around you. All the time. You don’t have to sweet-talk them. It’s a waste of time. So. What sport are you in? Soccer?”