Passion After Dark (27 page)

I grabbed my bag, keys, a drink and with a final glance at my appearance I let myself out of the house, climbed into my car and drove off towards Dominick
’s home.

Dominick.

It was the middle of the night when Dominick woke. He had no idea anymore which day or night it was, how many had passed since Allegra had told him she couldn’t share a life with him.

He was weak, so weak now, it took every effort to raise his head to try and see the
time. It felt strange to be in bed in the middle of the night, he hadn’t spent a full night in bed since he was human.

He
’d woken in a tangle of sweat soaked sheets again after another nightmare where he’d heard Allegra crying and screaming. Strange it sounded like she’d been screaming his name, but that didn’t make sense.

Carefully he raised his hand to see if the small amount of blood that Francesca had force fed him had aided with his healing but the skin still looked raw. Not as cut up as before, but
he just wasn’t healing when he wasn’t feeding. He peeled the sheet off his cock and winced when he saw the sad state it was in. He had literally skinned himself, nearly peeling the skin off from his self destructive need to punish while he masturbated.

He
dropped the sheet so he couldn’t see what he’d done to himself anymore and rolled over just wanting sleep to claim him again and wipe his mind of the miserable state he was in. Sleep took away his pain, at least for a little while.

He had just closed his
eyes when he heard a car pulling into his driveway and he groaned. Not bloody Fran again. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone to die? Damned woman wouldn’t leave him to wallow in his pain and misery until the final death claimed him. Fuck but it was so typical of her, make him suffer while he was suffering. Well, she’d enjoy that.

There was a knock at the
front door and Dominick cursed. “Fuck off Fran.” He called out but his voice was too weak to carry any real volume.

He just wanted her to leave him a
lone, he wanted everyone to leave him alone. Without Allegra there was nothing to make his life worth living and as the faint tapping of someone knocking on his door sounded again, Dominick rolled over and succumbed to the darkness, the oblivion that sleep gifted him, never hearing the door open or seeing who entered his home.

Chapter Seventeen.

Allegra.

When I pulled up in Dominick’s driveway and walked to his door, I found myself shaking with nervous tension. What if he rejected me? Maybe he’d already moved on? More than likely was the fact that Francesca was setting me up to make one hell of a monumental mistake by coming to his house, thinking he was pining away for me and it could all be some horrible joke on her part.

I knocked at the door and waite
d but nothing. For a brief moment I thought I’d heard a voice but when I strained to listen for it, there was nothing. I tried knocking again but Dominick didn’t come to answer.

I stepped back and looked up the upper level of the house and I could see a d
im light coming from one of the bedrooms, but was that his room? I wasn’t familiar enough with the layout of his home to know whether it was his room or not.

I walked back to his front door and stood there for a moment. Should I try knocking again or go?
I’d come all this way and the memory of my dream had frightened me although commonsense told me it was a dream, not reality.

Finally with a deep breath for courage, I turned the handle on the door and couldn
’t believe it when it swung open. Did Dominick have no sense when it came to not leaving your home open to intruders? Still, he was vampire and more than likely he’d be much stronger than anyone who might step into his home and if they shot at him, bullets wouldn’t do much, would they? I was coming to all these conclusions in my head based on TV shows about vampires, not reality but until only a few weeks ago I had no idea vampires existed beyond the imaginations of authors and movie producers.

I stepped into Dominick
’s home and quietly shut the door, my ears listening for the slightest sound in the house. I couldn’t hear anything and I could hardly see anything either as the house was mostly in darkness.

Slowly I worked my way along the walls until I found a light switch and stood blinking under the ov
erhead lights as they suddenly lit up the room and blinded me.

I was in a large living area and I could see the staircase that wound it
s way up to the upper level beyond the room I stood in. I made my way to the stairs and climbed my way up as quietly as I could and from there, in the semi darkened hall, I followed the tiny sliver of light I could see under a closed door which I realised was Dominick’s bedroom. So he was home, but not answering his bloody door obviously.

I knocked lightly on his door and
waited but nothing. Why wasn’t he answering? He couldn’t be sleeping. He was a vampire, they were up at night and it was 3 am so definitely the middle of the bloody night.

Perhaps he wasn
’t home and he’d just left his bedroom light on to give the illusion someone was there. Still, leaving his front door unlocked and going out wasn’t the most sensible thing to do. “Are you going to stand around all night debating this or just find out if he’s home?” My inner voice asked and I hated that again it was saying something that made sense.

I was beginning to question what Fran had said though. I wasn
’t so sure she hadn’t been toying with me by saying Dominick was letting himself slowly die since he couldn’t have me.

I pushed open his bedroom door and stepped in,
my eyes travelling around the dimly lit room. I saw nothing at first but as I walked further into the room and spotted something red on the bed, my heart dropped when I realised it was blood, a lot of blood and in the middle of the white sheets coated in blood was Dominick and my god, but he looked dead.

“
Oh god.” I whispered, my voice cracking and I couldn’t stop the sob that escaped my lips. I rushed forward and looked in horror at him. He was a shadow of his former self, a shell of a man. His skin was sallow, his cheeks hollowed out and his lips were so dry, they were cracking.

I couldn
’t see where the blood was coming from but there was so much of it and I needed to lift the sheet so I could find out.

I looked at his face as I slowly raised the sheet
but he didn’t stir which scared me. It was night time, he shouldn’t be sleeping but this wasn’t sleep, he looked so sick, so close to death it terrified me. Was he dead? With no pulse and not needing to actually breathe it was hard to tell.

When I got the
sheet high enough to see under it, I nearly vomited at what I saw. What had happened to him? His cock looked like the skin had been peeled off it like a damned grape being peeled of its skin. Did he do this to himself? Fran had said he’d harmed himself and now I could see she hadn’t lied to me about his condition.

Gently I lowered the sheet again and fought to keep the bile that burned the back of my throat from rising any higher but the sight of his cock had sickened me. What had he done to himself and w
hy wasn’t he healing?

“
He’s not feeding, he’s slowly starving himself so he dies.” Fran’s words came back to haunt me. My god but this was self inflicted? Dominick wanted to die? Did I mean this much to him that he had no desire to live if he couldn’t have me?

Well, I had to help him and now but how?
He couldn’t die. I loved him and I’d been a fool and he was suffering because of me, I had to make this better, for both of us, but mostly for him. It was killing me to see him like this. I gently shook him, calling his name but he only groaned before falling silent again.

I had to get blood into him but I couldn
’t bite myself like he did. He had the fangs which made it easier but I had to find something to make myself bleed and bleed freely too as I could see Dominick was too weak to suck the blood from me. I had to get it so it ran into his mouth.

I looked around the room but couldn
’t see anything that would help me so I rushed into his bathroom the colour fading from my cheeks when I saw the blood splattered in the room. Fighting the nausea burning in the back of my throat again, I started rummaging through drawers looking for something sharp but there was nothing.

Of course he wouldn
’t need to shave or anything like that. He was dead, his semi bearded look was how he was going to look for eternity. It was sexy as sin on him but his appearance wasn’t important right now, saving him was. If I didn’t get blood into him, he wouldn’t make it.

I
had to find something so I hurried downstairs and found the kitchen which was equipped as a fully functioning kitchen which surprised me. Did Dominick cook for human visitors or something? Still, it meant he had appliances and cutlery but most importantly, knives, he had plenty of very sharp knives and picking one up I rushed back upstairs to my poor broken vampire.

Once I stood over Dominick again, I knew I had to do it. I had to cut myself so he could feed but thinking it and doing it were two entirely different things. I had a high threshold for pain but I
’d never cut myself, not deliberately anyway and this was going to need to be more than a small flesh wound, I had to bleed and bleed heavily.

Taking a few deep breaths to try and prepare myself, I held the knife over my wrist and before I could think about it too much
I slashed the blade across my skin, screeching from the pain then letting loose on a string of obscenities which helped me feel a bit better at least.

My blood began to flow over Dominick
’s face but he wouldn’t open his mouth, he was unconscious or so close to death he couldn’t respond, I wasn’t sure which, but I was going to need to open his mouth somehow.

With my blood running everywhere I somehow got
his lips pulled apart and held my wrist over him, watching as my blood dripped steadily into his mouth. The cut hurt like the devil but I ignored the pain, pulling on the wound enough to keep it from trying to seal over and the blood from congealing.

I heard
a choked sounding noise come from Dominick and almost sagged with relief, he was starting to actually swallow the blood in his mouth now. I was so worried he was too weak to do it for himself but he was managing.

Already I could see a hint of colour coming back to his cheeks so that meant the blood was starting to do its job. Suddenly Dominick
’s eyes opened but they were glassy looking and unfocused.

“
Dominick?” I whispered to him but he didn’t respond. His eyes might be open but he wasn’t lucid yet from what I could see. As I watched him his fangs descended and his hands came up, latching onto my wrist. He dragged my arm down to him again and I cried out as he bit into me, right over where I’d cut myself, his teeth puncturing the vein and he began to suck noisily.

I smiled, he was back, he was going to be ok.
On and on he sucked and I began to panic. He was feeding too long, he never fed this long. I had to get him to stop, I needed him to stop now.

I pulled at my arm to try and make him release me but he just tightened his grip. Fuck but this was bad, I could feel myself starting to get light headed
and still Dominick fed with no sign of letting up on me.

“
Dominick…please…stop…Dom..Dom…you’re killing me.” I gasped as grey started to cloud my vision and I knew I was going to pass out but more importantly I was going to die. Dominick was going to kill me and by the time he realised it would be too late.

Once more but so weakly it made no impression on him anyway, I tried to pull my wrist free but I couldn
’t and I could no longer see Dominick for the black closing in around me and with one last whispered sigh of his name, I slipped down into the darkness.

Dominick.

God it was so fucking good, the blood, lots and lots of warm, sweet, delicious blood and it just kept coming and he couldn’t stop drinking it. While it flowed, he kept feeding like a starving man and he was starving. He’d denied himself blood for days and he was so weak but he could feel the blood coursing through his body and it was helping, it was making him stronger.

Vaguely he could feel someone trying to take his blood supply from him a
nd he tried to open his eyes again but he couldn’t. He was still too weak for that. There was a voice too, soft and familiar to him but he couldn’t respond, he tried, but he couldn’t answer the voice, not yet, not right now.

The blood was starting to
come slower and he had to draw harder to get more of it and no one was trying to take it from him anymore. He heard that sweet familiar voice again before it fell silent and he smiled to himself, really enjoying this dream he was having.

He was still feeding,
but slower now, basking in the euphoric glow he was feeling as the blood surged through his body, healing him, making him stronger when suddenly another voice cut through his dreamlike state, yelling at him, frantic and the vein that he still fed from lazily was abruptly torn from his mouth.