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Priceless, she thought. Not that money would ever be an issue for him again. Among the things he learned in his sire’s blood was how to claim the wealth Kambyses had amassed over the ages. Dominique’s personal net worth now far exceeded that of the Striker billions, as befitted the Lord of Night.
“Dominique,” she said carefully, her heart squeezing into her mouth. “Are you…are you…proposing?” She knew the answer because she knew him. But for once she needed to hear him say it, too. This possibility was too overwhelming to leave open to interpretation.
He took her hand in his, thumb rubbing over her fingers as he met her eyes. “If you thought that performing such a ritual would give us anything we don’t already have, then yes. I would find a way for you to wed a man who is legally dead.”
She heaved a tiny sigh of relief. She’d been leery of marriage since her father’s betrayal, and accepted Jackson’s proposal only because at the time he was her best friend. Though he, too, betrayed her trust soon enough.
No, marriage hadn’t been part of her life plan since she was too young to know better. Maybe not even then.
Plus, this was Dominique. He was a reality onto himself. By being with him, she was part of a world where human standards didn’t apply. In their world, they were already joined until death do them part. Nothing would ever change that. Nothing could ever make their relationship stronger than it was. Certainly not a piece of paper.
Nor jewelry, no matter how breathtaking.
“Then why give me this?”
He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Because I love you. Because you are my lady and my soul. Because you are my queen of the night. Now more than ever, you are my reason for being, my anchor to all that is true. You belong with me, Cassidy Chandler, and I want there to be no doubt about this in anyone’s mind when they see you, regardless of whether I am by your side under the stars or you walk alone in sunlight.”
With him. She belonged with him. Not to him. Emotion swelled her heart. A pure, heady mixture of trust, love, and desire. She was as free to leave him and return to a mortal life as she ever was.
And she knew she never would.
Cassidy squeezed the ring on her finger. The metal warmed and radiated into her skin, almost as though setting invisible hooks. “You are my home, Dominique. You always will be.”
Joy. It beamed from his face to pierce the night in countless ways. She could feel it in his strong, confident touch when he pulled her close; taste it in his deep, passionate kiss when he took her mouth; and heard it in his playful, guttural growl when his teeth found their mark.
Within moments, her mental edges dissolved as she tuned into the blaze of light that was his natural state of being. Life, passion, love, all amplified a hundredfold and radiating out into the collective vampire psyche.
Well, maybe.
As far as they knew, no one had yet tuned into the change of programming. Except Serge, of course, who basked in Dominique’s presence like a cat in a beam of sunlight. But Serge knew what was happening from the beginning. Without that, ancient habits apparently died even harder than merely old ones.
They heard him cackle from the cockpit as he picked up on the emotional surge flowing from his lord.
Cassidy sighed her bliss into the star-spattered sky beyond the ballooning sail while Dominique finished taking his “refreshment.” She shivered with anticipation when he closed the tiny injuries with sensuous strokes of his tongue. Burying her face in his thick hair, she savored the fresh notes in his scent, wet and dark with hints of earth and spring to come.
So much yet to come. One thought, echoing in two minds.
He settled deeper into her arms beneath the blankets, his groin swelling against her hip, inviting. She shifted her legs, accepting. Some things were unstoppable. Such as this moment right after their telepathic link re-ignited. They would always make love. Now was no different—even with an audience. Her hunger for him overruled all of her normal inhibitions—as did her French vampire lover’s exhibitionist tendencies. With his new gifts, they could have rendered themselves invisible, but by the time he moved as deeply in her body as he moved in her soul, neither of them cared enough to bother.
Samantha’s breathless murmur rode the wind. “They’re such a tease.”
“Hush,” Serge replied, entranced.
As much as Kambyses’s power had changed Dominique, one thing remained the same—his heart still beat, his blood still flowed, allowing him to function as a man. He could indulge in lovemaking for the rest of her mortal life, and a thousand years beyond that.
So much yet to come.
Rocked by the sea and cradled by night, they moved together in a slow, primal rhythm, emotions and sensations ricocheting between them. In her awareness, a familiar glowing, crystalline spiral formed around them. It twisted out of the sea and into the stars, and pulsed in time with their escalating passion. Dominique never saw this. The spiral was Cassidy’s alone, her perception of his vampire essence, the beast, coming for her. Any other mortal lover, unaware, would have been swept up and killed at this point. Instead, she reached for it, whispered to it her love, and felt its sepulchral breath the moment the ecstasy crested over them, turning their bodies as liquid as their minds.
The spiral shattered, untold shards of fading light whirling away, disappearing, undone. Undone as they were undone. Undone and reassembled into a new and glorious whole.
As she lay, catching her breath, Cassidy tried to imagine a thousand years of making love with this magnificent man who wielded unspeakable power with such heart-stopping vulnerability. She didn’t think it would be enough. What would it be like once she, too, became immortal? Now that she had decided to join him once, she knew she would again—when she was ready. When they were both ready to leave the sun behind forever. Maybe in a year. Or five. Maybe more. Maybe less.
Then she would taste his blood.
So much yet to come.
He kissed his way up her neck, along her jaw and chin, then brushed her lips with his. She nipped at him, questioning, demanding. Rapture when his mouth melted into hers.
