Retribution (Book 3 of The Dominion Series) (52 page)

"Why so early?" I say, as I watch him dress.

"I have a meeting with Terri tonight and I want to make it there with some time to go over a few things with security at the residence."

I nod and watch him from the bed, the sheets around me against the chill in the room. A vampire's body isn't as warm as a human's but we still can feel cold and heat. I still prefer warmth to chill.

Julien comes over and bends down to kiss me one last time before leaving.

"Next Friday?" he says, his voice light, but there's a note of regret in it that he has to wait so long before we're together again.

"Next Friday night, same time. Meet me on the beach if the weather's good."

He sits beside me and leans in to kiss me again.

"Back in October after you left me to go to Michel," he says. "I thought we'd never be together again. The only thing that kept me going was Soren's compulsion."

"I know," I say. "I felt so bad, but I also felt responsible. I thought it was my fault that Blackstone released the plague. I didn’t leave because I wanted to. I love you, Julien."

"I love you."

He kisses me once more and then leaves me. I hear the door close and the lock click behind him and I lay back, listening as he walks to wherever his ride is waiting.

Dylan's back that night from Cambridge. He brings with him a crate filled with bottles of blood from the local volunteer group packed in chipped ice.  We sit by the fire and talk in quiet voices about the classes he attended and how people are trying to keep society together, keeping a skeleton crew of faculty working, and a roster of classes going, working day and night to find work-arounds for technology that failed due to using plastics. We spend the weekend talking about our families, our pasts, and telling each other stories about our parents and growing up.

I ask him about the deaths Julien and I investigated. The woman in the nursing home, the boy with cancer, and the man whose wife took her life – Dylan gave them all painless deaths at their requests. The young female adepts were Soren's work, as I suspected. He was weeding out Adepts who were loyal to him and those who chose the Council.

Finally, Sunday morning comes and it's time for Dylan to go back to Boston.

We hug, and for the first time, I feel like I truly have a brother. He feels real to me now.

"So, I won't be back on Friday, I guess."

"You have Amy," I say. "She must be getting fed up with you doing 'sister duty'."

He smiles. "No," he says. "She understands. Her parents are in Boston so she stays there on weekends and hangs out with the girls."

"Are you going to turn her?"

"That's up to her."

"How come she gets a choice and I didn't?"

He shrugs. "She may not either." He smiles and picks up his duffel bag and goes to the door. "If you need anything, use the HAM radio in town to send me a message. I'll come right away, but you can always ask mom or dad to help. They're up to speed."

I nod and wave to him as he goes out to his car. I close the door and turn back to the empty cottage.

I sleep alone all day, and it's a cold outside so I get the fireplace stoked when I get up, eating a light breakfast when I should be eating supper but until I get the day-walking drug, my days and nights will be mixed up again like they were when I first met Michel.

I soak in the tub because it's really chilly in this cottage. I know I'll have to move to a winterized house soon, but I can't leave the coast right now. I
need
to be here. I need to adjust to life as a vampire. I have to feel more certain of my choice before I move back to Boston and start life over as a vampire hunter for the new Council.

Once the sun sets, I get dressed in something warm and wrap a scarf around my neck. Then I get my ancient binoculars and a blanket and climb down the hill to a spot on the beach that's sheltered from the wind. It's a brilliantly clear night with no moon this early so I can watch the Taurid meteor shower with no worries of clouds or the moon affecting the show.

It's when I'm standing on the blanket, spying the Orion Nebula – a tiny smear of white in the belt of Orion – that Michel shows up, walking towards me from around a huge dune, stepping over a spit of sand that stretches out into the surf. He smiles when he sees me, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his hair ruffled by the breeze off the surf.

My heart does a little flip-flop because he's so beautiful.

He doesn’t say anything when he gets to me, just takes the binoculars out of my hands and wraps one arm around my waist, pulling me against him. He kisses me, the fingers of one hand tangling in my hair. Our kiss goes on and on, and when we connect, I feel his emotions and he's so happy to see me, so relieved that I gave them my ultimatum and demanded that they either share me or give me up completely because I couldn’t choose.

He
thought
I'd choose Julien.

He knows how hard submission is for me, how much I fight it despite being aroused by it. He hoped I'd choose him, but he knew from our connection that I was also just as in love with Julien as I am with him and couldn't pick one. He thought his desire for my submission would be the deal breaker, but it wasn't. It was the deal sealer.

I have to have
him
and
it
, but we must work out new terms, now that we're not doing it to make a show to Soren and now that he has to share me with Julien.

My heart would break if I had to have one without the other. It was an impossible choice. This was the only way – one at a time, separate from each other. I won't become Marguerite and make them watch each other with me. I'm not that cruel.

"Eve, I don't want to watch the meteor shower right now."

I pull away and try to slip out of his arms.

"Michel, I just got everything set up…"

"It lasts all night and I need you, Eve.
Now
," he says, his voice husky. "I can't wait."

"You waited three weeks," I say and laugh. "I just got things ready for us. I have a thermos of tea, even some cookies for you to eat."

He makes that sound in the back of his throat and smiles, his smile lopsided. "I want to eat
you
," he says, all Dom. "I'm not used to being made to wait."

I turn back to the sky, smiling to myself. "Don't get all Dom with me, Michel," I say and smile to myself.

"
Don't get all Dom with me
," he mutters, but I can hear his smile in his voice. "You want me precisely because I get all Dom with you, Eve."

"Shh" I say and pull away completely. "You're distracting me."

I turn my binoculars towards another star – Betelgeuse – a red supergiant, and seeing it makes me think of Julien and his story of the two stars colliding, setting off a supernova. I push Julien from my mind. It's not fair of me to think of him when Michel's just arrived

"Such a saucy mouth," Michel says. I smile to myself and finally give up when he steps closer from behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, resting his chin on my shoulder, his face beside mine. "Have I told you I love your saucy mouth?"

"You want to control my saucy mouth with your contracts and clauses," I protest.

"I want your saucy mouth on me." He moves my hair out of the way, but when his lips press against my skin, I remember Julien fed there the other night and he feels my memory. He pulls away and moves to the other side, kissing me where Julien hasn't fed.

Part of me feels incredibly bad that I'm making them do this – share me. I feel rather like a selfish little girl wanting a pony
and
a new bicycle for my birthday, but it was either this or neither of them.

I could never choose.

Julien is so open now, so willing to just love me, and he lets me know it without reservation. I read over my journal and see how frustrated I was with his demands that I just fuck him, back when we were living together in the warehouse. He said he couldn't give me what I wanted, what I thought I needed, but he was wrong. Now, he wants to give me exactly what I need. I fell in love with him despite his seeming inability to love me. There is a sweetness to Julien that makes my heart glad to be with him.

I know he loves me with a wild abandon.

But Michel? I fell in love with him at first sight, with his unruly black hair below his collar, his blue eyes and thick lashes. He gives me something that Julien can never give me. His calm strength, his quiet passion, his desire to protect – to
own
me – makes me weak. When we're together, I feel completely possessed and safe for once in my life.

I laid out my offer in my letters to them and let them decide if they could do it. If they could learn to share, one week on, one week off with time for me to be all alone on the weekend if I chose. So this was them deciding that they could try.

I wasn't sure if Michel would show up tonight. I was sure he'd feel slighted that I spent time with Julien first. I sent Michel a message through the HAM radio operator to explain.

I flipped a coin. Julien won.

As I watch a falling star streak across the sky, Michel's busy with his hand up my sweater, cupping a breast, tweaking my nipple and I think he's not hurting too much right now. I close my eyes and finally give in trying to watch the meteor shower. When he feels my resistance wane, he grabs my hand, pulling me away from the beach.

"
Now
, Eve," he says, urgency and a little bit of amusement in his voice. I let him pull me along the shore and up the hill to my cottage, enjoying him going all Dom with me, smiling as he takes my keys and opens the door, picking me up and carrying me over his shoulder like some caveman. I squeal and pound his back lightly with my fists but I'm laughing because he seems so much better than I expected and it makes me happy. He closes the door and turns the lock, then carries me still giggling to the bedroom. He throws me down on the bed, undressing me with an urgency that ignites my desire.

"I see you still want to control everything," I start to say, but he shakes his head.

"Quiet," he says and silences me with his mouth. He kisses me forcefully, his hands reaching up under my sweater to cup my breasts. "You talk far too much for a submissive." He kisses me once more, slowly, one hand squeezing a breast, the other reaching down to my zipper.

"Michel, we have to talk about that--."

"Shh," he says and places his fingers over my lips, stopping me from speaking.

He kisses me again and when he pulls away, I persist. We have to talk about this contract I signed.

"But Michel…"

"No, Eve," he says, his voice firm as he strips my jeans off and pulls at my panties. "No talking. Not now." He takes off his sweater and hastily unzips his pants, removing his briefs and socks. He leans over me, fully naked, nestling between my thighs. "There's more time than you can imagine for talk. I just want to fuck you,
now
."

"I just want
you
right now," I say and grin, trying to assert myself despite how his need to dominate things arouses me.

He makes that throat sound again and shakes his head. "Oh, those dimples," he says. "They're my undoing."

"I like the thought of undoing you, Michel," I say, closing my eyes as he slowly and very deliberately kisses my cheeks, one after the other, his tongue touching my skin. "I like the thought of doing you and undoing you and then doing you again."

He stops his motions and for a moment, I wonder if he isn't angry at me because I'm refusing to be quiet, but he just lies there, me naked underneath him, his face in my neck, his mouth open, tongue pressed on my skin. He wraps his arms around me, sliding them under me and pulling me against his body so tightly. He does nothing but hold me, his face in the crook of my neck, one hand in my hair.

"Michel," I say, trying to connect with him, but he's blank. I try to pull away. "What is it?"

He just shakes his head and kisses me, but when he finally opens himself to me again, I sense his relief, his lingering fear just now dissipating that I'd leave him because he killed my mother. I feel his horror when he thought that I'd die in the boardroom from the poison he had no idea Dylan and I were going to use against Soren and the Twelve. I feel his dread that we'd never be together again because I'd choose Julien – the one who offered equality and wild abandon. All the fears finally evaporate and he's momentarily overcome.

He pulls away finally, breaking our kiss, which has become more about love than lust, and presses his forehead against mine.

"I thought you were going to die in front of me." He looks in my eyes and I see that his are wet. "Eve, I couldn't bear to lose you."

"Oh,
Michel
," I say and cup his face, tuck his hair behind his ear, my own eyes tearing up from seeing his.

"I love you," he says, and runs his fingers over my cheek.
  "When you learned about my role in your mother's death, I thought I'd lost you forever."