Dominic (13 page)

Remembered kissing her, fucking her. It clamored to press itself to her warmth again, to inhale her sweet innocence.

After the Bonding, he’d fal en asleep in her bed, his nose buried in her hair, his arms encircling her and her daughter. He was accustomed to

sleeping by day, but never before had he slept in a bed other than his own. It had the most peaceful slumber he’d ever enjoyed.

She’d awakened before him and was ful y dressed when he joined her downstairs. Once again she was shrouded in another long gown that

covered her from throat to wrist to ankle, like feminine armor. Her face was pale and her cheeks flushed, her throat long and white.

His lips curved. How could he have ever thought her plain?

He took a step toward her, gently brushing his knuckles along the new, pink skin of her daughter’s arm. “There are things you should know,” he

began.

“What things?” she said sharply, drawing herself and her child away.

He straightened, abruptly realizing her mood. Had he real y imagined that one night with him would have her forgetting her husband?

He hardened himself against the surprising dart of hurt that pierced him at the fear he saw in her eyes. After al , he reminded himself, he was a

demonhand and was accustomed to inspiring such an emotion in others.

She eased closer to the front door, fidgeting. She wanted him to go. For long seconds, they stood like strangers in the front hal , the same place

where he’d first glimpsed her in the flesh last evening.

“You want the child?”

Her brows shot up, and her arms tightened around the bundle she held. “Want her? Of course I want her.”

“Yet you took precautions to prevent her conception.”

“I want her,” she insisted.

The girl stirred, punching the air with a fist, and Emma swayed gently to comfort her. Her hold was gentle, natural. Loving. The child calmed, and

her fingers began to fiddle with the lace edging of her mother’s bodice, drawing Dominic’s gaze there and lower.

Her waist was slender again. Women recovered from a Satyr birthing within hours. In the very next Cal ing a month from now, it would be physical y

possible to plant another child in her. Satyr men could father six children a year, were they so careless. Sowing, reaping, sowing, reaping in an endless

cycle.

Gods! He’d like to be the one to do the planting the next time. There, he’d admitted it to himself. He wanted to stay here with her. Usurp another

man’s rights. Fool that he was.

She launched into conversation. “I don’t wish to be ungrateful. And I’m not. But as you can imagine, last night was difficult. For Carlo. And me. It wil

be best for everyone if you are gone when he returns.”

Dominic rubbed his right hand with his left. The demons within his palm had been unnatural y silent since he’d crossed the gate, a fact for which he

could only be grateful.

They would kil him one day, and immediately upon his last breath his power would pass on to the tiny being swathed in this woman’s arms. How

could an untutored girl be expected to bear such a crushing burden?

He glanced back at Emma. How much should he tel her?

Parents were never informed until necessary, and the Facilitator had warned him not to speak of such matters to her.

None could cross into this world from his without an invitation. It seemed certain she and the child would remain safe here, happy in their

ignorance. Until his death.

Then Emma would learn to hate him. When she discovered what her child was, had become with the help of his mating.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

Her defiant gaze found his. For a moment, her spectacles caught the light and turned her eyes bleak, like twin reflecting glasses.

“What happened between us…it was not wrong,” he said quietly, trying to convince them both.

“Please,” she whispered. “It’s over. Let’s not speak of it.” The light changed, and her eyes were revealed again. They were shadowed and hol ow.

Vulnerable.

But he would not take pity on her. Not he, for al knew him to be pitiless. “You’re angry and embarrassed. But you
will
listen.” He gripped her

shoulders and felt the tension in them. “If anything happens to me, your child wil feel the effects in ways you can’t imagine.”

She shook from his hold and stepped back. “Is that meant to be a threat of some kind?”

Hands on his hips, he glowered at her. “Only a fact.”

She shrugged, not comprehending. “Then I bid you keep yourself wel so that nothing il befal s my daughter.”

“Emma,” he said, pointing up the stairs toward her bedchamber, “like it or not, a part of me passed to you and your child last night. The three of us

are bound. It’s now my obligation to watch over you both.”

“That’s the duty of a husband and father,” she whispered. “Just go. Please.”

He stood irresolute for a few minutes. Then he turned away.

She fol owed him to the door, obviously anxious to see him gone. His every instinct urged him to take her in his arms. To stay and protect her and

the child. But others needed him as wel .

He opened the door. Stepping outside, he glanced back to her, speaking more gruffly than he’d intended. “Tel Carlo to contact me if I’m needed.”

“You won’t be.”

With that, she shut the door quietly but firmly, leaving him standing in the desolate chil of the morning.

The gate that would al ow him passage to Else World lay hidden in the forest at the center of the Satyr estate. He departed for it on foot, his steps

leaden. He tried to banish the niggling feeling that his business here was unfinished. It was only a delusion, a symptom of the Bonding.

Forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other, he trudged on toward the gates that would deliver him home. His life and duties in Else World

awaited.

He soon found himself cresting a rise, and he paused there, soaking in the beauty around him. Verdant hil sides covered with new life stretched

out on al sides in every direction. Ancient vines sprawled up stakes, along with newly grafted ones. In a few months, they would bear fruit—the wine

grapes that gave life to the Satyr lords who dwel ed here.

This world wasn’t the anathema he’d expected. It wasn’t like his own. Days here would be passed til ing the soil. Bringing forth life instead of

destroying it. An existence here wouldn’t reek of treachery and war, as it did in his world.

He was weary of kil ing. Perhaps this was the only reason the idyl ic picture of a life with Emma and her child had appealed to him so.

His boots ate up the distance to the gate within minutes. Once he passed through it, he would never see her again.

Stil the Bond dragged at his senses, urging him to go back. Urging him to nurture the child he had helped bring into the world. Urging him to love

and protect the mother.

She would be difficult to forget. But forget her he would. He’d been only a tool last night, a body used to bring forth a Chosen One. It was what he’d

agreed to.

Carlo would have enough difficulty breaking the Bond that had been forged tonight without further interference from Dominic. His daughter would

grow up with some kind of normal existence here. At least until Dominic died.

“Emma.” The name on his lips was an imperceptible sigh. It was the last time he would say it. She could not be his in any meaningful way. It would

only bring her harm.

With enough time and distance, he would forget her. He would lose himself in other females.

Yes, it was best for al of them that he left. And stayed gone. This longing for her would fade in time. This episode in his life was over. Finished.

Yet the almost weightless bit of cloth resting in his pocket put the lie to this. A stolen handkerchief monogrammed with Emma’s initials. It was too

slight to be felt, yet he felt it there, curving his hip like a living presence. A part of her.

It was a talisman. A reminder that because of tonight, the necessity of remaining alive had taken on new meaning for him.

For if he died, Emma’s daughter would quickly discover what hel was.

12

D
ominic stepped into the silence of the cave. Its wals were a glorious amalgamation of granite striated with gold and other metals encrusted with

precious and semiprecious stones.

His steps were silenced by the springy moss underfoot as he crossed the short distance to the gate. He passed through it easily, for travel in the

direction he went did not require an invitation as it did in the opposite one. He could not have gone to Emma last night without Carlo to accompany him.

Carlo’s scent was fresh in the tunnel. He’d recently been this way. Their paths would likely cross again, but not soon. Dominic would not be

rejoining the regiment. The usefulness of that ruse had ended.

On the Else World side of the gate, the wal s of the tunnel gave way to other rock and al oys unknown in Earth World, metals that flickered and

flashed with magnetic properties designed to keep evil at bay—at least within the tunnel closest to the gate. Medal ions placed by his superstitious

ancestors in hopes of warding off invasion from another world they’d never visited were lodged here and there in mica and hematite.

Magic was thick on the ground along this length of the channel, swirling as high as his waist at times. His black boots cut through it as he stalked

homeward, sending it scurrying as if it, too, feared him in the same way his own people did.

The mist dwindled toward the end of the umbilical cord that connected the two disparate realms. Ahead, his world waited to swal ow him in its

open, black maw.

He’d almost forgotten that al would be in darkness here at home, for day and night were reversed in the two adjacent worlds. And on Moonful, the

nights here lasted for very nearly a day and two nights, spanning a thirty-two-hour period.

Before he’d gone with Carlo to Earth World, he had already passed one Moonful here in Else World in the company of female Shimmerskins.

Then, scant hours later, he’d crossed through the gate to pass a second Moonful with…Emma. A thril ran through him at the thought of her.

Even after last night’s long hours of fucking, his cock twitched at the prospect of taking her to bed again. Emma, of the long and lovely throat, soft

skin, and guileless, doelike gaze.

Suddenly he was disgorged into a world dipped in moonlight. The inky darkness momentarily disoriented him.

The first blow came from out of nowhere, blasting his shoulder and bringing him to his knees. Foolishly mooning over a woman he could not have,

he had let his guard down. Hadn’t been expecting it.

A second strike fel . Pain seared his right wrist. This dagger had been purposeful y aimed, meant to sever his gloved hand from his arm.

Leaping to his feet, he stood half crouched with his arms tense at his side. Sensing their own kind nearby, the unnatural souls he housed beneath

the glove shrieked for a release he would not al ow.

Demons. Four males and one female. Al naked, with olive complexions, muscled arms and legs, and tufts of greasy hair atop their heads and

crotches.

Assuming a fighting stance, he faced al five of them.

“Fools! Do you stil believe chopping off my hand wil free those I keep in thral ?” he taunted, trying to force them into action. They were visible only

when they moved, so it was best to wait for them to attack.

Even without his sight to guide him, he sensed their locations from their body heat and their stench. Knew they were more or less arranged in a

semicircle before him.

Like him, they existed only to kil . Unlike him, they were stupid. Too stupid to understand that if they succeeded at fel ing him, the souls of their kind

that he held captive in his palm would not go free. They would simply rise up in the palm of another—his successor, Emma’s daughter.

The thought lent him new strength and a determination to defeat them.

Another lunge came at him. Two of the males at once. He feinted back and then drew his weapon from his boot and slipped it into the closest

one’s gut, twisting it in his entrails. Its face came close for just a moment, and he glimpsed himself in its savage red eyes.

His free hand grabbed and rotated the other’s wrist so the point of its own dagger struck it high between its ribs. With a savage downward thrust,

Dominic nailed the demon to the earth with its own weapon.

Something sliced his side, and agony seared him. More attacks were delivered in rapid-fire flashes of multihued light. He ducked from the next

blow and the next and then lashed out, mortal y wounding two more of them in a single strike.

They’d left themselves open. Demons were lethal, but they were driven by bloodlust and rarely took time to think before pouncing. They overcame

their victims only by attacking in sheer numbers.

He pivoted toward the last remaining one, but only an occasional hint of its flash was visible now and then as it retreated in the distance. The

female. They were always the quickest, the smartest. When he’d skewered the last of her companions, she had departed, living to fight another day.

He straightened, his lungs heaving. Blood and breath stil pumped wildly in him, primed for battle.

Four bodies littered the ground at his feet, silver fluid seeping out of them to soak the surrounding vegetation. Stalking to the first of them, he

kneeled alongside it in the dirt. It stirred, fluttering in alarm at his approach.

Though he’d fatal y wounded these four, he’d left them alive. It was best not to kil completely before the extraction took place.

Removing his glove, he drew out a hand that was pale compared to the rest of his body, for it was rarely exposed to sunlight. He turned it upward

toward the moon, revealing a silvered palm as reflective as any mirror. It caught the lunar light. Captured and amplified its strength until it blazed with a