Passion After Dark (29 page)

“
Get me a towel Nick so I don’t bleed all over her.” Dominick rushed to do as he requested.

He tucked the towel in aroun
d her face and bit into his wrist and once the blood was flowing, he held his arm over Allegra’s face and they all watched as the blood flowed into her.

She began to swallow and then to draw on him, sucking at his blood supply. When Fabian thought she
’d had enough, he pulled his arm free and they cleaned her up then left her.

Dominick stood staring down at her as she lay peacefully, her skin pale and so smooth, like porcelain. She was so beautiful and soon she would be vampire. Fabian and Fran left the ro
om and Dominick bent to kiss her soft cheek. “Ti amo Cara.” He whispered and followed the others from the room.

There was nothing more they could do now but wait. When he joined the others Fabian turned to him. “
I should punish you for doing what you have done Nick but from what your sister has told me, you were unconscious and therefore unaccountable for what you have done. Still, I have punished you already although none of us will know yet if I have truly punished you or not.”

Dominick frowned at Fabian
. What did he mean he’d punished him already?

Fabian smiled, his pale eyes fixed on Dominick. “
It was not necessary to feed more blood to Allegra. You had given her enough for the change to take place but this way when she wakes, now she has both my blood and yours in her, we won’t know if she will want one of us. She could have reason to hate both of us, but the blood ties us Nick, you should know that and now she has both yours and my blood in her. Who will she choose if either? Who will she love? Who will she want to fuck?” He smiled and when the seriousness of what his sire was telling him started to sink in, the pain registered on Dominick’s face at the deception and Fabian threw back his head and laughed.

Chapter Eighteen.

Allegra.

God but I just wanted to sleep. I liked it down deep in my dreams where it was nice and quiet. I had seen something briefly, a light, a big bright light that beckoned to me and it was beautiful. It felt calm and peaceful and loving but it was gone, suddenly it was gone and everything was black again, dark and a little scary to me.

My body ached, god it hurt and I didn
’t know why, I didn’t know where I was but I couldn’t open my eyes, no matter how hard I tried.

I could feel something happening to me, my body felt like it w
as changing and as I struggled to rise up out of this dark place I was in, I could hear voices. I think I could anyway. They were softly spoken voices and I strained to hear what they were saying but I couldn’t. It sounded like a man and woman? Or was it two men? I wasn’t sure.

As I listened, the voices became clearer and I could tell it was two men. They sounded angry, they were shouting at one another. God, but did they have to yell? They were starting to hurt my ears and the woman, there was a woman too
, she was trying to get them to calm down. Too much noise, I wanted the quiet back, I wanted the bright light that represented love and peace back but it was gone.

“
Did she just move?” I heard the woman’s voice close to my head and I would have jumped if I could get my body to co-operate but it wouldn’t. I tried to move my head and I think it moved, slightly, just the barest of movements anyway. Fuck but this was so hard. Why couldn’t I move? I just wanted to open my eyes. Was that too much to ask?

I stru
ggled to open them and managed the tiniest of slits where a faint sliver of light came in but it was too much effort and with a sigh, I gave in to the darkness again and everything faded away, the voices, the light and blissfully there was nothing but silence.

Dominick.

Dominick wanted to kill Fabian. He looked at his sire as they stood around the bed where Allegra lay and he just wanted to kill him. Why did he have to want her too? Why had he done what he’d done? Now he didn’t just have the worry over how his bellezza would react to being turned, there was a possibility that she could want Fabian since his blood was in her body too.

“
Why Fabian, why do you want her so much? Why do you wish to destroy me, to tear apart my relationship with Allegra?”

Fabian
turned his pale eyes on Dominick and smiled. “Because I can’t have her Nick. What is it about wanting the things we can’t have? You know she wanted me to wipe her memory so she forgot all about you and in exchange she was to be mine for the night to fuck? That’s why she came to see me. You want to know what the funniest thing was? I couldn’t alter her mind. For some reason it wouldn’t work on her and that has never happened before. So before you ask, no we didn’t fuck although she was aroused. I made her come when I bit her Nick, she came for me then.” He chuckled quietly. “I don’t like to lose and I saw an opportunity to still win this. This is not just about punishing you son, this is for her. She rejected me and I didn’t like it. My ultimate revenge will be to have her groveling after me wanting me to fuck her and I will if she chooses me, but then I can reject her again and she won’t be able to escape the memories of what I did to her. She’s going to remember my rejection and feel the pain of it for eternity. There will be no escaping the memories for any of you Nick.”

Dominick stared at Fabian in shock at his words. He knew his sire had always been a bastard but he had no idea just how big a bastard he could be. He seriously got off on these mind games a
nd it was a mind game as they waited to see what state Allegra would be in once she woke. God but it would kill him if she chose Fabian but it would be once, Fabian never wanted a woman a second time. Could he get past knowing she’d been fucked by his sire, even just once? He could only hope that he wouldn’t be put in a situation where he had to find out.

“
She’s getting close to waking you two when you’ve finished with your macho bullshit Fabian.” Fran’s voice interrupted them. “She’s moved slightly and her eyes opened a tiny bit but her heart, can you hear it?”

Dominick moved closer to Allegra to listen for her heartbeat and he could hear it, just. It was slow, irregular with its beats but she herself looked far better than she should for someone whose hea
rt was dying. Her hair was a glossy pool around her, her skin smooth and blemish free. God, although she was beautiful to him and had been beautiful as a human, she was going to be stunning as a vampire. He could see that already.

As they all crowded aroun
d her, her heart gave one last tired sounding beat then fell silent and they watched and waited. Dominick could feel his stomach tightening with nervous tension as the moment that would shape his entire future approached. Soon he would know whether Allegra forgave him or hated him and whether she would want him or Fabian or possibly even both.

Her eyelids began to flutter, her lips parted and with a sudden loud gasp as if struggling for air which she no longer needed, Allegra
’s eyes opened and her vivid hazel eyes stared straight up at the timber framing of his bed for a while, a frown marring her perfect features. She was like that for several minutes and no one knew what she was doing or what was going through her mind but finally her gaze shifted and moved around them all before settling on him and they widened.

Allegra.

I could hear voices close by and they sounded familiar. One voice in particular was a voice that I somehow knew was important to me. I made another effort to open my eyes and suddenly found that I could.

When I looked up I could see a heavy timber frame that appeared to be attached to the ceiling with a creamy kind of gauze fabric pleated around the entire edge of the timber frame like a skirt.

I was covered in white sheets and dressed which surprised me. Why would I go to bed dressed? Something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it straight away as to what was wrong.

I continued to st
are at the frame above me for a few minutes, frowning as I tried to remember what had happened, why I was apparently in bed fully dressed and what it was that somehow felt different about me.

I heard a faint noise and turned my head seeing people standing around me. The woman with the black hair and black painted lips was familiar but something to
ld me I didn’t really like her and the blonde haired man with the strange pale blue/grey eyes seemed familiar to me too but there was something about him. I couldn’t remember what, but he made me feel uneasy.

Finally I turned my head to the third
man and he was staring at me with such vivid blue eyes. He was beautiful, god he was stunning but as I stared at him, fleeting thoughts started running through my head. They were little more than brief flashes at first but he was in them. He was bleeding in them and something was wrong and I saw myself holding my bloody arm to him but then nothing. What was it that happened? I just couldn’t see what it was about him that played in my mind in what seemed like a series of fragmented videos.

I met his eyes for longer,
staring at him and then suddenly everything crashed its way through my head and I knew, I looked at him, the man I’d loved and I knew what he’d done to me, he’d tried to kill me. My eyes widened, my mouth opened and with a voice that was slightly rusty at first, I began to scream, on and on, louder and louder as I stared at him, I screamed.

Dominick.

Dominick stared in horror as Allegra with her gaze locked on him began to scream, a high, loud, blood curdling scream. Her eyes were wide and filled with terror and he went to reach for her, to try and comfort her but one quiet command from Fabian to ‘leave her’ stopped him from doing anything.

“
Be quiet little one.” Fabian told her. “You have nothing to fear. Do you remember what happened? Do you know why you’re here, what you’ve become?”

Her eyes shifted to his and she stopped screaming which made Dominick feel sickened by how quickly she capitulated to his command. Was she already proving that Fabian had a hold over her? She had his
sire’s blood in her but she also had his so that should make her listen to him also. Why she had screamed at him and looked terrified he had no idea but he needed to find out somehow.

“
I…I…I’m starting to remember things.” Her voice was raw as though she was suffering from a sore throat but Dominick knew it was just part of the process of her body adjusting to being vampire and the large volume of blood affected them at first.

“
What do you remember?” Fabian asked her again.

“
I remember talking to Francesca when I was leaving your house. She said Dominick was dying but I thought she was just saying that to stir me up and I went home but I had an awful dream that Dominick was dying so I came to him and found him…god I found him…he looked dead…and the blood…so much blood…I had to save him.” Her voice trailed off.

“
Go on little one.” Fabian was using that soft, cajoling voice he used when he was trying to reel a woman in for sex and Dominick ground his teeth together, frustrated that his bellezza seemed more interested in his sire than him.

“
I tried to save Dominick but he wouldn’t stop feeding on me and I couldn’t get him to stop. I was so scared and he wouldn’t stop. Fuck but he wouldn’t stop and I don’t remember what happened after that. I must have passed out. I know everything was getting so dark.”

As Allegra told her story, Dominick closed his eyes, to hide the agony her words stirred in him. He had done this to her, he had taken her life from her and given her the choice of death or living an existence she
’d insisted she wanted no part of. God, it would be perfectly justified if she hated him, fuck, he hated himself right now.

“
Do you not know at all what happened after you passed out Allegra?” Fabian asked and her eyes moved to him again.

“
I don’t know, something doesn’t feel right but I…I…I feel, somehow, I feel different.”

“
You were dying my child.” Fabian began. “The decision had to be made to let you go or make you vampire. Do you understand now?”

Dominick watched her eyes widen again and slowly she raised her hand, placing
it against her chest and she closed her eyes. They waited, they all watched and as they watched tears escaped from her under her eyelids and ran down her face, into her hair. God what did her tears mean? Acceptance or denial or was she building up to explode and tell him she hated him and could never forgive him?

Allegra.

As I listened to Fabian’s voice and his last words started to sink in, I finally realised what he was trying to tell me, or more appropriately, he was trying to see if I would come to the realisation myself without him needing to spell it out.

I placed my hand over my chest and felt nothing, no beat of my heart and finally that thing that I kept thinking felt different but I couldn
’t put my finger on it, penetrated as well. I wasn’t breathing.

I looked up at Fabian again, feeling something, some kind of draw towards him although this was Fabian and in my mind he was an arse, sexy, but still an arse
and the bastard had come on me too. I remembered that from when I’d been at his home and he’d made me come and I hated that I’d given him even that much of myself.