Blood Mate (18 page)

Nicolette held
Dominic’s desolate gaze for seconds that loomed and stretched,
threatening to engulf August’s concept of eternity. A moment later,
time collapsed in on itself as she turned and darted toward the door.

The vampire was
faster. He dragged her back to the living room, kicking and screaming
about how much she hated him. She reared back and spit on him. He
wiped his face and felt his vision go red. The place in the back of
his mind, the long-shriveled conscience that had tried to re-awaken,
chastised him for his actions, but it was easy enough to push the
half-starved thing back into its box so he wouldn’t have to be
bothered with it. It was easier to be free.

His voice lowered
as he pulled her closer. “Ask me to make this easier. I’ll make
it so easy. I’ll make you love every second.”

“August, please…
”

“Was that so
hard?”

Dominic
white-knuckled the chair as August’s fangs descended.

He bit into her
tender neck. She moaned and began to relax in his arms, their link
already taking over. The tragedy was that if it weren’t for her
husband, they could be happy together without any of this angst.

He stopped
drinking almost as soon as he’d started then dragged his fangs
lightly over her throat. “Take the rest of it off, my dear. Take it
off slowly. Let us both enjoy the show,” he whispered.

This time, the
doubt and fear were gone from her eyes, replaced with the
unmistakable animal lust.

“You’ve done
something to her,” Dominic said.

“Of course I’ve
done something to her. She’s my mate. She belongs to me. She
consented to a blood exchange between us that links us for all
eternity. Are you beginning to see how you are the third wheel here?
How you have no claim on her?”

Nicolette’s gaze
was vacant as she swayed and shimmied out of her jeans.

“Come here,
poppet.” August pricked his finger with one fang, and blood bubbled
to the surface.

A sound between a
whimper and a purr escaped her throat, and he chuckled as she took
his finger into her mouth and sucked as if he offered her the last
drop of sustenance in the world. Dominic leaned forward in his seat,
obviously aroused by the display.

Nicolette sucked
the blood until the wound sealed. Even under the power of a warm, wet
mouth’s suction, she couldn’t stop him from healing too fast to
satisfy her greedy desires. She whimpered but allowed the finger to
slide out of her mouth.

“You can have
more if you’re a good girl.”

She unsnapped her
bra and dragged the straps down her arms. Before she could slide her
panties down, August pulled her close, her back flush against him. He
ripped the scrap of fabric off and rubbed her already-swollen clit.
Nicolette bucked against his fingers. He withdrew his hand and pushed
her closer to her husband, who still gripped the arm rests as if he’d
been glued there.

“Straddle him.
Rub against him. Let him feel how wet I make you.”

She was too far
gone to resist grinding her bare pussy against her husband’s leg.

“So, what do you
think, Dominic? More or less than the results you could get?”

Dominic glared at
the vampire.

August brought
Nicolette’s arm to his mouth. He bit down and drank, eliciting a
moan from her as she rocked against her husband. When he finished
drinking, the vampire pulled her away from him.

“Do you really
imagine she wants you at all? I never needed to drug her,” Dominic
said.

August’s face
remained mild, but the barb hit its mark. “Stop. Speaking.”

August took in the
blissful silence as he pulled Nicolette onto the couch with him. He
arranged her on her back, her legs splayed.

He leaned over her
and licked the glistening folds of skin. She groaned and squirmed
against his mouth as he lapped between her legs, but she was crying.
Even with his blood. He felt her pain as it dug into him and burned
through his veins. What the fuck was he doing? He snapped out of the
red haze and pulled her into his arms and held her.
She’s right.
I’m a monster.
He didn’t
deserve her. He didn’t deserve salvation.

“I’m sorry,”
he whispered. “I’m so angry. I can’t shut it off. I wanted to
hurt him. I wanted to punish him. I couldn’t see you. I couldn’t
think. I can’t shut it off. I’m sorry.”

He pushed her away
and retreated into the kitchen.

Chapter Thirteen

Nicole couldn’t
look at Dominic. Instead, she searched for her clothing, something to
cover up and hide. She turned away as she slipped her shirt over her
head and put the jeans back on. She didn’t bother with
undergarments. She just wanted to be covered.

“Nicole. Come
here, sweetheart.”

In spite of the
million reasons she could think of to run out of the house and never
stop running, she crossed the room to him. The sight of his arms held
out to her made her heart stick in her throat.

“Come here.”

She sat on his
lap, and his arms came around her. She started to cry again.

“I’m sorry I
didn’t believe you. In my defense, vampires aren’t real.”

She couldn’t
help the small, nervous laugh. “Do you still love me?” She was
afraid to hear the answer but couldn’t fight the urge to ask the
question.

“It’s not your
fault. If he could control
me
like that… ”

She wanted to tell
him the truth. It
was
her fault. It was her fault she’d
allowed the link and tied herself to him. And she wasn’t
enthralled—not like Dominic had been. He’d had no free will to
resist the vampire’s commands. She simply hadn’t had the will
power, not with August’s bite and his blood. The blood made her
stop caring for a while, but it didn’t remove her free will.

But if she told
him that, he’d be disgusted, and she still needed one person in the
world who could love her. Someone human.

“Where’s my
bracelet?”

He opened the
drawer on the end table and pulled it out. As the clasp snicked
against her skin, she let out a breath.

“This was all
that kept me sane when he had me locked up.”

Dominic stroked
her hair and pressed a kiss against her forehead. “We’ll run,
like you wanted. At the first opportunity, we’ll go.”

Nicole shook her
head. “It’s too late. He’s never going to let me out of his
sight again.”

“No. I’m not.”
August stood in the kitchen doorway, a bottle of beer in hand. His
eyes narrowed. “Don’t you two make a cozy pair?”

“Jealous?”

Nicole tensed at
Dominic’s taunt.

“Of what? A
silly human who will age and die, while I’ll have her forever?
Literally?”

Dominic didn’t
bother to mask his contempt. “Of the love you can’t have. I bet
you thought that display would make me hate her. You wanted me to
reject her so you could cuddle and comfort her and talk about how I
can never understand you two. I’m a lawyer. I deal with the ass
crack of humanity on a daily basis. You’re just another thug to
me.”

A second later,
Nicole found herself sprawled on the couch, flung there by two
hundred pounds of angry vampire. Fangs plunged into Dominic’s
throat.

She scrambled to
pull him off her husband, but the vampire swatted her away like an
annoying fly, growling as he drained the man she loved. “Please,
August, don’t. Don’t hurt him.” She could barely squeeze the
sounds through vocal chords already taut from fear.

August let Dominic
fall, wiped off the blood with his arm, and went to retrieve his beer
at the other end of the room. He took a few, slow sips.

Nicole rushed to
Dominic’s side, pressing fingers to the unmarked side of his throat
to find a faint pulse struggling to keep pace with life.

She barely saw him
through the tears clouding her vision. “Please… you can save
him.”

“He’s too far
gone. If I give him my blood, he’ll turn.”

Nicole screamed, a
long unending wail, as if she could shatter glass. As if she could
shatter August, and the universe would bend to her whim just to make
her stop. She pulled Dominic into her arms, not caring when the blood
smeared her clothes.

“Please,
Dominic. Please… don’t leave. I can’t lose you, please.” She
looked up at the ceiling, helpless. “Please, God, please. Bring him
back. Please.” She cradled him in her arms, sobbing, begging the
universe, August, Dominic, God, anything that might be out there,
anything or anyone that could possibly have the power to undo it.
She’d give anything, strike any bargain to undo it.

She’d be angry
with Dominic later. Taunting a vampire like that. How could he have
forgotten such a recent object lesson? How could his anger have
overwhelmed the knowledge of what fangs could do? How they could
shred and tear and reveal the fragility of human life.

She rocked him,
her hands shaking as she brushed the hair from his eyes. She pressed
her fingers to his throat again. Slower, more strained. Almost
stopped. Almost over. “God, no. Please Dominic, please don’t do
this to me, please, please, please. God, please. Please bring him
back. I can’t live here without him.”

She didn’t
notice August behind her, not until he pulled her off the limp body.
She watched in horror as he ripped into his wrist and forced the
blood down Dominic’s throat.

“NO! You said
he’d turn. You can’t!” She beat on him, but it was like hitting
a boulder.

“Stop it,
Nicolette. You begged God. I
am
God. And you know it. I’m
the only God here who can answer your prayers.”

When the vampire
seemed satisfied Dominic had enough blood for the change, he scooped
her husband up and carried him to the car.

***

Nicole tried to
forget about the body in the backseat as they drove. “Will he
turn?”

“Most likely.”

She hated herself
for the way her heart flipped at the idea of having Dominic with her
forever—how selfish to want him to be a monster so he wouldn’t
leave her alone with August.

“Is he going to
have to kill people?” And then search for his own blood mate to
make it stop? How would she cope with
that
? The shoe was too
tight on the other foot.

“I don’t know.
With you bound to me, I don’t know the consequences.”

“How can you be
such a monster?”

August growled
from the driver’s side. “I don’t know, Nicolette. After
centuries of killing people, it sort of sticks. What the hell else
was I ever going to be?”

Dominic looked so…
dead—pale and motionless in the backseat. Maybe he was. If he
turned would he still be Dominic? Would there ever be jokes between
them again? Would he be like August or would he be good?

“Nicolette… I…
apologize again for what I put you through tonight. I was angry he
let them lock you up in a hospital. I was angry I didn’t have
access to you. I had to punish him, but then I saw how you were
together… I was kidding myself. I may have you forever but if I
ever separated you from him, you’d never forgive me. I never feel
more lonely than when I’m in a room with you but your heart and
mind is with him.”

She couldn’t
stand to see that mock sincerity in his eyes, so she stared out into
the darkness and up at the moon that was so full and bright.

“I thought you
said you could share.” Sure he could.

“I
can
share,
Nicolette. But I can’t be shut out in the cold entirely. If you’d
only let yourself feel something with me.”

“It’s wrong. I
made a vow to Dominic. I love him.”

“And I’m
letting you keep him. We have to find a way to live together. I can
share, but I have to have a real piece of you. You have to let me in.
Forever won’t be so long if you’ll surrender and find a way to
make peace with this. Do you not think I will have to find a way to
make peace with this?” He waved a hand in Dominic’s direction, as
if by doing so, he could make her husband vanish into thin air.

There was nothing
that could make any of this right. The vampire was too volatile. His
promises had turned to ash and slipped through the cracks until it
was as if they hadn’t existed at all. She and Dominic were fucked.
If August didn’t know that, it was because he’d had enough time
over the centuries to master the art of denial.

When they stopped,
Nicole was shocked to find they were at her parents’ house. She’d
been too deep in her thoughts, too obsessed with the blurring pattern
of the passing trees outside the window as each blended into the next
in a long ribbon of dark green, too upset to pay attention to which
direction they were driving in.

August turned when
she put a hand on his arm. The expression on his face reflected back
to her what she must look like: a heroine in a horror movie—that
last harrowing half hour where she’d been tormented as much as she
could stand and still there was more suffering and danger ahead.

“August, please.
I’ll do anything. Please, please don’t.”

He flipped off the
headlights. Nicole sat numbly in the passenger side as he came around
and opened the door for her. “Let’s not make this difficult,
Nicolette.”

The tears burned
now. They’d fallen so long and so profusely that her eyes were too
raw and sensitive for more. And yet more came. She glared at him and
shook her head.

“Nicolette, this
must be done.”

“No. We can go
back home. Let’s just go. Please leave them alone. They haven’t
done anything. Please don’t hurt them.”

Was there no one
she loved that he could leave breathing tonight?

“It’s time to
say goodbye. Don’t make this difficult.”

“A-are you going
to kill them?”

August reached
into the Bugatti for her. She fought as he pulled her out, but it was
the struggle of a butterfly, a valiant fluttering of useless wings.