Dark Redemption (24 page)

         
Dominic held her in silence, the two of them unmoving beneath the downpour of
water, their bodies still linked as they slowed their ragged breathing. Kate
loved the feel of his skin against hers, his hardness against her softness. It
was as though each was truly made to be the reciprocal of the other. Not just
as a vampire and a werewolf, but as a woman and a man.

         
They were made for each other.
Meant to be together against
all odds.
No matter what anyone in their world had to say about it. Come
what may, they would face it together. Kate couldn’t help but believe that
whatever higher power was out there, he or she couldn’t possibly begrudge them
their love.

         
“What
ya
thinkin
’?” Kate
asked,
her voice barely louder than a whisper.

         
Dominic smiled, letting her slide down his body.
“About you.”

         
Kate cocked a brow at him. “Is that so? What about me?”

         
“I love you, Kate Ridolfi, with all my heart.”

         
“I love you more,” Kate countered.

         
Pressing a soft kiss to the tip of her nose, Dominic shook his head. “Agree to
disagree?”

         
“Deal.”

         
As they took turns soaping and rinsing each other’s bodies, Dominic laughed.
“This could turn into a vicious cycle,” he joked as he washed her breasts. “I
wash you. I touch you. I want you. I make love to you. Then we’re back to the
washing. I may never leave this shower again.”

         
Kate chuckled and kissed him, reaching around his back to shut the water off.
“Here, I have the perfect solution for that.” With the twist of a handle, the
spray of water sputtered to a stop. “Now you have to get out and take me to
bed.”

         
“No sacrifice is too great,” Dominic agreed with mock solemnity. “For those of
us about to die, we salute you.” With that, he scooped her up in his arms and
carried her out of the shower.

         
Setting her down on the plush bath mat, Dominic wrapped Kate in a fluffy white
towel,
then
secured its mate around his waist. The two
of them dried off, draped the towels over the drying rack, and headed to the
bed.

         
Settling in beneath the crisp, white sheets, Kate snuggled up against Dominic’s
warm side. Fatigue quickly settled in. It was beyond past her bed time.

         
“I know you’re tired,
cara
,” Dominic whispered,
stroking her hair as he spoke. “But I think we should blood share before you go
to sleep.”

         
“You sure?”
Kate asked, plagued with doubt. No one
knew what the outcome would be. A million things could go wrong.

         
Dominic nodded, smiling at her in reassurance. “Yes. I want to be a part of you
in every way.”

         
“Okay,” Kate agreed, trying to leave the reluctance she felt out of her voice.

         
Scraping her incisor along her left wrist, Kate opened the vein there. Her own
blood was sweet and hot on her tongue, not fulfilling, but teasing. 
Katerina snarled to attention. Kate told her to shut the hell up and get back
in her corner. This wasn’t her business. Katerina argued that blood and sex
were always her business, but Kate ignored her.

         
She wanted this moment to just be between her and Dominic. No demons. Besides,
she didn’t trust the blood thirsty, selfish bitch not to try and bleed her
husband dry.

         
“Here,” Kate said, offering her wrist to Dominic.

         
Dominic’s full lips closed around the wound. Kate’s insides performed back
flips. The feel of his mouth against her skin, tasting her blood was so
innately erotic. It seemed so natural, so fulfilling. Her pulse raced and her
core softened. With gentle pressure, Dominic sucked the cut, drawing her blood
in smooth swallows.

         
“Sorry if it’s gross,” Kate whispered, furrowing her brow in concern as she
watched him drink. It was hard to concentrate on anything but the pleasure, but
Kate couldn’t forget that as natural as blood sharing was to her kind, it was
just as unnatural to Dominic.

         
Lifting his mouth from her wrist, Dominic smiled up at her. “It’s not gross at
all. You taste good.”

         
“Really?
Like what?”
Kate asked, her
curiosity piqued.
Did blood taste as good to werewolves as it did to
vampires, even though they didn’t need it to survive?

         
Catching the stream of blood about to drip down the back of her arm with his
tongue, Dominic shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe like a nice rare prime rib in
protein shake form.”

         
“Ugh.” Kate shuddered, making gagging noises at him. “Please don’t compare me
to a slab of bloody, murdered meat.”

         
“You’re an oxymoron,
cara
,” Dominic said with a low chuckle. “You’re
probably the only vampire I know who drinks bagged blood instead of fresh and
insists that eating meat is murder.”

         
Kate shrugged, a smile teasing her lips. “What can I say? I’m the evolved
version of my species.”

         
“Yes, yes, you are,” Dominic agreed. “Now hurry up and convince the rest of
your species to evolve already.”

         
“Shut up and drink before I heal and have to cut myself again,” Kate laughed.

Dominic
obediently covered the wound with his mouth and resumed drinking. Kate loved
watching his face as he did. It was so intimate, knowing he was seeing inside
her mind as he took a piece of her soul to live inside of him forever. She
couldn’t see what he could see, but his emotions flashed across his face as he
reacted to the memories he’d become privy to with each swallow.

The
dizziness and weakness began to set in, but Kate didn’t mind. It made the
experience all the more euphoric. Dominic must have noticed the change in her,
because he stopped. Holding pressure over the cut, Dominic studied her face
with concern in his dark eyes.

“You
okay,
cara
?”

“Yeah,”
she smiled sleepily at him. “I’m just a little tired.”

Dominic
didn’t seem super convinced by her response as he watched her through narrowed
eyes. “I think it’s time to feed you and put you to bed.”

“Alright,”
Kate sighed, wriggling in closer to his side.

Dominic
tilted his chin up and to the side, offering her access to his pulsing jugular.

Kate
licked her lips, so confused and torn by exhaustion and thirst. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,”
Dominic confirmed, hugging her closer.

Slowly,
with as much care as she could manage, Kate sank her fangs into his throat.
          Dear Lord, she’d died
and gone to heaven. Dominic tasted sweeter on her tongue than anything she’d
ever imagined. Like chocolate and Dominic and mind-blowing sex, all rolled into
one tasty little package for her. With long swallows, Kate drank in his essence,
soaking up his memories as she siphoned a piece of his soul for her keeping.

Evocative
memories played before her mind’s eyes like a movie, flashing through her mind
in a kaleidoscope of scenes.
A young Dominic playing hide-and-seek amid the
rows of grape vines in a massive vineyard.
A beautiful woman
doting on him as a child.
His mother.
That same child sobbing over a grave.
His
mother’s.
Her heart ached with his loss, though it had been
centuries before.

         
Kate could feel his emotions as if they were her own.
Could
see his memories as clearly as if she was there.
Dominic as a lanky
teen, refusing to cower before Matteo as his older brother lashed out at him.

         
Scenes of violence, scenes of bloodshed.
Endless hours of relentless training.
Slaughtering
vampires.
The agony of digging silver bullets out of
wounds and healing against the poison.
Looking into the dead eyes of a
young girl’s decapitated head.
Shaking with rage.
Caprice.

         
Nightmares.
Reliving Caprice’s
torture night after night.
Swearing vengeance would be his. Dominic
  standing
before a man.
His father.
Sifting through files on his plane.

         
Watching Kate in a graveyard.
Watching
her fight her attackers, filled with confusion.
Holding a battered Kate
in his arms, knowing he would never hurt her.
Falling in
love.
Feeling human again.
Dancing
beneath the stars with Kate.
Making love, knowing the
depth of his betrayal.

         
The pain as Kate walked away.
The agony of living without
her.
His hurt over her betrayal.
The joy of her acceptance.
Every memory, every moment of influence from
Dominic’s life was there for the taking. And Kate basked in them like the
warmth of the sun she would never again feel on her skin.

         
Kate drank him in, reveling in the oneness of this new connection. She was a
part of him and he was a part of her. Sharing memories and emotions, linked by
souls, as well as hearts.

         
Such joy, such peace, came from blood sharing with
Dominic,
Kate ignored the cramping pain in her stomach, the burning in her throat. But
then the burning spread and she was on fire. Gasping in pain, Kate withdrew her
fangs and curled into a ball around the convulsions in her stomach. She wanted
to vomit. She wanted to die. She wanted to do anything to purge her body of the
unseen force attacking it.

         
Sweat dripped from every pore as she trembled and panted with exertion. It
wasn’t sweat. It was blood. She was bleeding from every pore as her body burned
from the inside out. Every cell in her body felt engorged and angry, ready to
burst at any moment.

         
Kate could faintly hear Dominic’s concerned voice in the distance. She wanted
to answer him. She wanted to reassure him that she was alright, even if she
wasn’t. She wanted to scream at him at the top of her lungs, ‘What did you do
to me?’

         
But she couldn’t. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Her tongue was too
large for her mouth, swollen to the point of cutting off her airway. Kate knew
she was dying. She closed her eyes to shut out the pain of Dominic’s devastated
face, of his desperate pleas. Sucking in one final, ragged breath, she let go.

***

         
Dominic cradled Kate against his side, reveling in the feel of her soft, smooth
naked skin against him. When her fangs had sunk into the flesh of his neck,
there’d been the slightest pinch, but then nothing but pleasure. Kate milked
the wounds with suction similar to what she used in lovemaking and his body
responded in kind, aroused by the familiar feel of her mouth on his skin.

         
He wondered what she saw as she drank his blood. For the experience of drinking
hers had been phenomenal. He’d seen inside her mind, watched her memories on
playback as if they were his own. He’d felt her emotions and understood her heart.
It was the single most enlightening experience of his long life.

         
His wife wasn’t a vampire. Well, not in the usual sense anyway. Kate’s mind had
drawn a line in the sand to help cope with the trauma of becoming a creature so
outside of her nature. She truly had two different sentient beings living
inside of her, one the epitome of all things good about Kate, the other all
things bad about her darker nature.

Dominic
met Katerina in Kate’s mind. No wonder she’d been afraid to feed from him. The
demon had no feelings, save jealousy and anger. She had no remorse, no thoughts
for others. She was the anti-Kate.

The
memory of her encounter with Ambrogio flashed through her mind and Dominic
cringed. This he did not want to see. Yet there it was, carving out his heart
with a dull spoon.
And yet…
Dominic saw Kate huddled
in the corner of her mind, disgusted and grieving, as her demon seduced the
other vampire. The woman with Ambrogio wasn’t his Kate.

True,
it was her body, but Kate couldn’t bring herself to do it. Dominic didn’t know
why, but that mattered a lot to him. She would never give herself willingly to
Ambrogio. Only the vampire demon inside her would.  Guilt filled him as he
experienced all of her remorse, shame, conflict, and self-loathing. He wished
he could take it all away. Like an ungrateful ass, he’d made her feel worse
about the sacrifices she’d made to save him.

He
would spend the rest of eternity making it up to her, showing her it didn’t
matter what her demon did, that he would love her unconditionally for the
pure-hearted woman she was.

Kate
made little satisfied noises low in her throat as she fed. Dominic stroked her
silky hair and the smooth skin of her back as she drank her fill, wondering if
she could feel his thoughts at that moment.