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He shot her a sour look.

“Your alter ego must have been terribly disappointed, poor baby.”

“Beside himself,” he muttered. He couldn’t meet her eyes anymore.

After a brief silence, she said, “But that’s not what you don’t want to show me, is it? That’s not why you won’t have my blood.” The disappointment in her voice scratched at his heart, but he remained still and silent. “You know better than that. I know you do. There is nothing you could have done that you can’t share with me. Or that you haven’t already shared with me.” She cupped his face in one hand, her fingers grazing against the stubble shadowing his cheeks. “I’m here for you, my love, always. No matter what. We’re a team, remember?”

A well-spring of uncertainty opened within him. His whole body ached with his need for her. How could he exist without being part of her? How could he exist without her love?

How could he exist with her knowing about this dark new hunger?

He gathered her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. In a harsh, emotion-chocked whisper, he said, “I made you a solemn promise that I will be by your side as long as you will have me. On my eternal life, this is an oath I will not betray.” And he would do nothing to motivate her not to have him. Nothing at all. “But I need time. Just a little time to…think about some things. On my own.”

“Vampire things?” she wondered against his chest.

He loosened his hold far enough to meet her eyes, making no effort to hide his hunger for her, nor his love, or his gratitude. “Oui.”

“Don’t I know all about those by now?”

“Perhaps too much,” he admitted. How she stayed sane knowing all she did about his world mystified him.

Her eyes glistened, but her voice remained steady. “I see.” She inclined her head in a tiny gesture of surrender. “All right. Maybe I should think about some human things. For a change.”

He kissed her, tasting her resignation and disappointment—and feeling the hope in her tender response. Always hope. “J’taime, Cassie,” he murmured, pressing his forehead against hers. “I am yours. No matter what happens, I am yours. Never forget that.”

She nodded, wordless. They lay together, cocooned in an alien silence they had not known since before he first tasted her blood. He would have killed her then, if not for Serge.

Dominique’s thoughts reluctantly returned to the blood-drinker pirate who had saved both their lives twice over since that night, acted as his guide, and was his only friend. Serge teetered on the edge of madness more often than not, claiming to see futures unfold in the blood he drank, and sometimes even in the auras of others. Like earlier tonight, when he had looked through Dominique into another reality. A “night for games”, he proclaimed, and so it had been. Vampire games. The sort Dominique wanted no part of but couldn’t seem to escape.

The crushing weight of the sun rolled over him. By the time it mounted the horizon, both he and Serge—whom he heard impatiently pacing the yard below—would be buried deep beneath the dunes. Staying in the house during the day when they were unconscious was not an option—not with a vampire hunter lying in wait for them.

He lingered over a parting kiss with Cassidy as he did every morning and slid out from under the comforter, taking care not to expose her to the chill air. She shimmied into the spot he had vacated and snuggled her face in his pillow. What he wouldn’t give not to have to leave her now.

“You should talk to Serge,” she said when he was almost at the door. He knew what she would say next, yet her words—the words he dared not even think—still shot apprehension up his back. “Whatever happened to you tonight…maybe it’s part of the prophecy.”

4

Ulterior Motives

Cassidy Chandler, coordinator of the Orchard Beach Gazette’s brand new Digital Services division, had barely set foot into the office when she needed the day to be over.

No, that wasn’t right. She needed it to be over since the moment the sun had come up.

After a night fretting over Dominique’s whereabouts and his refusal to complete their ritual, she reeled with both lack of sleep and a ragged sense of loss. As her link with him faded, she felt increasingly adrift, with land in sight, but no way to get to it until he tossed her the lifeline of their re-ignited bond. Afterward, his presence always hummed in her heart like a taut wire, even during the day.

Not today. Today she was untethered.

The usual “good mornings” floated after her, along with a larger than usual number of speculative glances. Rumors still swirled about how she, a penniless rookie, could break her engagement to the son of the Gazette’s most influential patron and somehow end up with a promotion. Cassidy didn’t make sense to her coworkers. Some days, she didn’t even make sense to herself. Like today.

The only genuinely friendly smile in the place was Larry’s. The large, semi-retired court-reporter who had been her champion from day one, handed her a steaming mug of coffee, along with a warning. “Brace yourself, kiddo. There’s someone waiting for you.”

Cassidy turned toward her office—one of only three with a door—and nearly dropped the coffee. Sure enough, through the window that separated her office from the central cubicle bullpen, she could see the close-cropped head of the man sitting in her visitor chair. She closed her eyes. I really need this day to be over.

“He was waiting outside when Jan opened the door this morning,” a disembodied female voice said. A second later, Brandi’s head—every blond hair flawlessly in place—popped up above the cubicle wall. She lowered her voice. “It’s so sweet how he’s still pining for you.”

Cassidy gave the resident gossip columnist an incredulous look. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“On the feisty reporter and the billionaire heir? Oh, honey, that story’s going to have legs for years.”