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3
Night Rituals
An hour before dawn, Dominique pushed the bike back into the shed. A chill fog had rolled in from the sea, spreading over the land the way black ice spread under his ribs. He shouldn’t have come back here, not tonight. Not knowing what Cassidy would expect of him. But staying away was impossible. He would always be drawn to her, she who knew him as no other. She was the keeper of his soul and the source of his humanity—both of which he had come dangerously close to losing tonight.
After camouflaging the other vampire’s leavings as a more mundane death, he had pushed countless pushers, pimps, and petty criminals into incoherent terror. Somehow, they all walked away, a little paler, remembering nothing, and compelled to confess every crime that ever crossed their minds at the nearest police station. Their blood warmed his belly and lulled the beast into contentment.
It did nothing for his peace of mind.
In the back downstairs bedroom, he stripped out of the leathers and boots, and spent only enough time in the shower to rinse away any remaining traces of the hunt. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of gym pants before ghosting up the stairs and into the main bedroom.
The woman in the bed made a shapeless lump beneath a blue and yellow comforter, only a riot of russet curls visible in the pillows at the top. He stayed by the door and watched her sleep in the diffuse glow of a nightlight from the adjoining bathroom. Her scent permeated the damp air that squeezed past the aged window frames. Like honeyed nuts, rich and deep, the aroma was distinctly Cassidy, a balm to his frayed nerves.
He closed his eyes, savoring, listening to the drowsy cadence of her heart, half hoping she wouldn’t wake up. Then he heard the sheets rustle and opened his eyes again to meet her deep blue gaze over the comforter’s edge. Her hair, shoulder length and unruly with humidity, framed her heart-shaped face like a lion’s mane. Despite himself, he smiled.
“That must have been some hunt,” she said. No judgment. Only understanding. She knew him so well, it was a given that his late return to her side was not by choice.
He slipped beneath the covers without meaning to, knowing he shouldn’t, knowing he courted heartache just being in her presence. She wriggled close, a warm weight nestling against his side, and he curled one arm around her. “It was, chérie. Quite the hunt.”
Her hand caressed the shirt covering his chest, silently questioning its presence. “Show me.”
His canines tingled, preparing to elongate and do what she was really asking—pierce her skin, taste her glorious blood, and re-ignite a rare telepathic link between them. It was a miraculous bond, an intimacy that allowed her to survive being his human lover, but it was not without danger. Renew it too often, and they risked triggering her transformation into a blood-drinker. Not often enough, and the beast considered her prey again. Every two weeks was the middle ground they had settled on, and they made an ecstatic, passion-fueled ritual of it.
This was supposed to be that night. This was supposed to be that moment…
Dominique’s thoughts flashed back to the scenes she would see and experience if their minds reunited. The pimp, the female vampire. Her ruthless seduction, his unholy reaction. The hunger that still simmered despite all the blood and terror he had consumed since.
His jaw tightened, locking away his eager teeth. She could not learn these things. At least not until he had made sense of them and brought them under control. They were more than a betrayal of their intimate relationship. This new lust to feed on sexual passion to the death was too close to how she almost died only a six months ago at the hands of another blood-drinker. For all that she understood about him…there would be no understanding this.
Her hand slid up his shoulder, a thumb brushing the spot on his neck he would normally lance on hers. He shivered. “It’s almost dawn.”
Ignoring his flimsy excuse, she shifted closer and seared a kiss against the pulse below his jawbone. He felt her mouth all the way down to his toes and plenty of places in between. A deep, involuntary breath filled him, saturating his senses with her warmth and…smoke?
Dominique stilled as alarms shrieked in the back of his skull. Breathing again, slowly this time, he focused. Burning cedar? Or his imagination playing on his fears? But it was gone. Nothing in this air but salty seas, winter winds, and the woman in his arms offering the gift of her blood, her mind, and her body.
Something heavy landed on the mattress, startling them both. Eddie, an enormous black-and-white Maine Coon cat, marched across the lumpy comforter toward them. The cat had long avoided Dominique, respecting the vampire as the superior predator. Eddie’s willingness to approach him was a recent and much welcomed development.
Cassidy sighed. “Oh, Eddie. Not now.”
Eddie head-butted her scrunched-up face and then gave Dominique’s nose a thorough sniff. Any other night, he would have been elated at this sign of trust and acceptance from his little predator brother. All he felt now was an inexplicable anger. With the tips of his fangs showing, he snarled at the cat. Saucer-eyed and flat-eared, Eddie bolted backward as though blown by a wind. He thumped off the foot of the bed with an uncharacteristic lack of grace and bolted out the door.
Cassidy sat up. “Okay, that’s it. What is going on with you? What the hell happened out there?”
Dominique studied the motionless ceiling fan. “I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean, you’re not sure? Who did you kill? Anyone I know?”
“Non. Nobody you know.” Though that would have been so much simpler to explain.
A small fold creased the skin above her freckled nose. “But someone did die?”
He told her in French.
“I get the ‘bastard’ part, but not the rest,” she said, her words clipped with agitation. Her lack of comprehension of his native language was yet another sign that their minds were currently far from one.
“He died before I ever touched him,” he clarified. “Apparently, I scared him to death.”
She stared at him. The corner of her mouth twitched before she gave a small cough that sounded suspiciously like a stifled chortle. “Oh. Really. I can’t imagine how that might have happened.”
