Dark Peril (40 page)

Her fingers traced every rib, his tapered waist, splayed over his flat, hard belly. She felt the muscles bunch beneath her hand in reaction. Already he was hard, very aroused, thick and long and straining toward her hands, but he moved then, sighing softly.

“We have to be careful, Solange. You need to eat.”

His voice was firm and she allowed her protest to die in her throat. She did need to eat, but she needed him more. She touched her tongue to her lips and nodded, hardly daring to breathe in case the wrong thing came out. Like a protest.

This evening wasn’t supposed to be about her and what she needed—she wanted it to be about him, but she was uncertain how to proceed.

He dried her off with a soft, warm towel, as always taking care to make certain she was completely buffed and rosy before he did the same for himself. Solange didn’t move, watching him without blinking, afraid she might miss the smallest sign from him. He donned his usual elegant clothes with that easy wave of his hand she found so breathtaking.

“Which robe?” His voice was low and husky, taking for granted that she would want one of the gowns he’d made for her—the gowns he preferred her to wear when they were alone.

“The dragon robe,” she said, unable to meet his eyes. She
loved
that gown. Her heart pounded and she tasted fear and excitement in her mouth. When she wore the Dragonseeker robe, she felt not only beautiful, but as if she truly belonged to him.

Dominic held out his hand, and the exquisite stretchy lace lay over his palm. Gallantly he held the robe so she could slip her arms into it. He cinched the waist himself, so that it was tight in the middle, flaring over her hips, but leaving the front open. The fabric clung to the sides of her breasts, leaving them bare of even the star-strewn lace.

He cupped her breasts in his hands, lifting the soft weight, his eyes going hot. Her breath exploded from her lungs as he bent and sucked one nipple deep into his mouth, tugging and rolling with his tongue and teeth until it was a hard little bead. His mouth moved to her left breast to repeat the same attention, taking his time, teasing and stroking until her soft moans became mewling whimpers of need.

Her breath came in ragged gasps as he continued to lavish attention on her sensitive nipples. Her breasts felt swollen and hot and her body tightened into a restless, familiar ache. She shook her head, her gaze cloudy, her hair spilling around her shoulders in complete disarray.

“This is supposed to be for you,” she whispered.

He smiled and tipped up her face. “This
is
for me.” His hand slipped down her open robe to find her sex. He slipped his finger inside of her. “You are so hot and wet for me, Solange. So ready. For me.”

She shuddered, gasping at the shocking heat racing through her body.

“This is definitely for
my
pleasure,” he whispered. “All for me. I want to touch you, Solange. And I need to know you welcome my touch anytime.” He pushed two fingers into her and made a sound of appreciation deep in his throat.

She felt that sound resonate through her entire body. Everything in her settled. She would do anything for his pleasure. If it was important to him that she was aroused, she would take pride in being ready for him.

“I love how you feel,” he whispered, his eyes darkening more. “Soft like silk.” He brought his fingers to his mouth. “But even more, I love the way you taste.”

Her heart lurched. She got lost in his eyes, in the dark, heated depths, just melted until the violent world around her fell away and she thought of nothing but him. A tremor ran through her body as Dominic sucked at his fingers, his eyes dark and hot. A small whimper escaped as a bolt of lust shook her entire body.

He smiled, male satisfaction very evident. “Come with me, Solange. You need to eat.”

Eat?
Had he actually said
eat
? Her body was hot and needy and he wanted her to eat? She licked her lips and took his outstretched hand. He led her to the candlelit table and held out the high-backed chair for her. This small cavern was their world, and he liked elegance and finery. The dishes on the table were beautiful, as was the silverware. Everything Dominic did had an elegant touch to it. He was Old World and courtly and made her feel special beyond anything she could ever have fantasized. Solange pushed down the uncomfortable feeling of not belonging. She
did
belong—here, with Dominic.

She put the woven napkin in her lap, her fingers sliding over the soft material. Beneath the table she twisted her fingers together in an agony of need. He had given her all of this. A home. A man who treated her as an equal. A man who listened to her and addressed her fears with respect and love. She had never imagined a relationship could be so good, and it made her sad for the loss of her people. All the women who had been brutally used and thrown aside because Brodrick refused to acknowledge they were good for anything but breeding.

Dominic was the opposite of everything she despised in a male. He fed her meat, one small bite at a time,
meat
, which he found repulsive and yet knew the cat in her needed. She could see the effort he had taken to study what foods would best suit her body, and the balance was all there. Dominic cared for her health and comfort. He cared for her peace of mind.

Solange bit down hard on her lip, tears glittering in her eyes. She blinked them away, hoping he hadn’t seen, but Dominic saw everything when it came to her, every small detail.

“What is it?” He took her chin in his hand and tipped her face up to his. “Tell me.”

He could have easily looked into her mind, but she loved that he didn’t. That he waited. It allowed her to gather the courage needed when she was too shy or embarrassed. Eventually, she knew, she would get over that and realize fully that everything she felt and said was important to him.

“You move me.” She couldn’t find better words. “The way you love me, it—moves me.” She struggled to get the words past the thick lump in her throat. She wasn’t like him. She couldn’t find easy compliments, but it didn’t mean she didn’t feel emotions every bit as deep and intense as his.

His smile made her tilting world come right again. Her heart fluttered and she found herself smiling back, breathing easier, as if her lungs followed the rhythm of his.

“I want to discuss the conversion with you, Solange. We need to look at it from every angle before we make a decision. We have no idea what it will do to your blood—or to you—and that worries me. Your jaguar is strong and there may be repercussions.”

She continued eating, watching his face in the flickering candlelight while she turned the idea over and over in her mind. Conversion. Becoming Carpathian. Living in the ground. Drinking blood instead of eating. She could do all those things as long as she was with him—but she couldn’t give up the other half of who she was. She was jaguar. She would always be jaguar. Her cat was
her.

“What happens if I don’t convert?”

He shrugged, the movement easy and casual. “I told you. We would both grow old and die together.”

“You would stay with me?”

“You are my lifemate. You are the woman I love. There is no other answer. And Solange,” he leaned in to her, so that her gaze was held by his, “there would never be regrets.”

She believed him. That changed things instantly for her. He would give it all up for her without regret. Everything in her loved him, yearned for him, wanted desperately to give him back all the things he’d given to her. She felt a little helpless not knowing what women did for their men, but even if she didn’t know, she would forge her own path, just as he seemed to be doing with her.

She picked up a slice of mango. “Would my jaguar be destroyed?”

“I do not have the answer for that. What happened with your cousin?”

“She said her jaguar made the conversion difficult, but she feels her cat with her, yet not in the same way.”

“Your blood is different from your cousin’s?”

She nodded. “Her mother was a royal, but not her father. The lineage is all but wiped out now. There is only Brodrick and me. I know I am the last of my kind. I can’t save our people. I’ve known that for some time, and as sad as that is, it is the truth. Our time is over.” She took a breath. “I want to protect my jaguar. She’s as much me as the warrior and the woman. Is there a way to ease in to the Carpathian world and see if she is accepting?”

“Once I am able to gather the information we need, we can try one blood exchange to see how she takes it. Right now, if I took your blood, it would kill the remaining parasites in my body, and I need them to gain entrance into the vampire conclave taking place this next rising.”

She tried to breathe evenly, to keep her heart from pounding. “We should test how far I have to be away from you in order for the parasites not to react to my presence. I’m a good marksman and can make shots over a good distance, but not with the crossbow. I need that to kill the vampires.”

He nodded. “I thought your crossbow was ingenious.”

“I’d like to take credit, but Riordan, Juliette’s lifemate, helped me come up with it. He mixed this great accelerant for me because vampires seemed to be showing up more and more in this area. We knew Brodrick had made some kind of an alliance with them. It took a while to figure out why. Everyone thought he was controlled by the vampires, but I knew differently. I knew they couldn’t influence him.”

“I have a difficult time fathoming why a man would sell out his entire species without a vampire controlling his mind, because he has to know the vampires are influencing his fellow jaguar-men who do not have his particular brand of protection.”

“He’s wholly evil,” Solange said, unconsciously lowering her voice. She shivered, remembering the look in Brodrick’s eyes as he slashed the throat of her six-year-old friend because she couldn’t shift. “He enjoys his power over women. My aunt told me how he dragged my mother out of the house by her hair after he killed her parents, then held her captive for months. She was very broken when he let her go. She was only seventeen at the time, and he was terribly cruel. He enjoys hurting women, and in his position as leader of the people, the men embraced his philosophy that the women were to serve their every desire and they could treat them however they wanted. Brodrick believes all women are less than he is, and that he has every right to hurt them for his own entertainment.”

Dominic took a slice of mango and held it to her mouth until she took a bite. She knew he was worried about her not eating enough; she could read it in his mind. So she ate the fruit and felt a silly little glow when the sheen of approval lit his eyes.

“His father before him was the same way, as was his father. Something happened long ago to prompt this, whether he was born sick and twisted, or whether some event made him that way, we will probably never know, but Brodrick was raised by his father to enjoy hurting women.

“He didn’t have to follow what went before. In the end, we’re all responsible for the choices we make,” she argued. “He’s allowed the extinction of an entire species in order to pursue his depraved proclivities. I hate that his blood flows in my veins.”

He stroked his hand down her hair, to comfort her. “You are an incredible woman, Solange, and not any part of him.”

She felt the flutter in her heart and looked up at him, uncaring that he would see the stars in her eyes. He made her feel like a fairy-tale princess, beautiful when she knew she wasn’t, special when she was ordinary, sexy when she hadn’t the first clue about being a woman. Dominic was her Prince Charming and always would be. Every day with him seemed a gift to her, a fantasy she could never have conjured up on her own.

All those days when she made up a fantasy companion, her “perfect, ideal man,” she had never realized just how perfect he could be for her. He was a man, and she had never been able to bring herself to trust a man. After meeting Riordan and Manolito De La Cruz, watching the two men with her cousins and her friend MaryAnn, she had wanted to trust in them and come to love them for who they were, but . . . She sighed. It had been Dominic who had allowed her to find faith in men again.

“He wants the database of psychic women the vampires have compiled,” Solange said. “They are finding every woman who tests high for psychic ability, and by asking questions about their backgrounds, they’re able to provide enough information to trace those who are descendents of the jaguar people. Essentially, Brodrick uses the database as a hit list to kill those he thinks can’t produce a shifter and breed those who can.”

“We will get the data, Solange, protect the women and destroy the laboratory and all of their computers,” he assured.

It sounded like an impossible task. She’d tried for several years to figure out how to do it, but had been unable to come up with a plan.

“I’m not good with computers,” she admitted. “I have no idea how to copy the information. In the end, I just figured it was better to blow the entire thing up and hope the data went up as well. I mapped out a blueprint of the building so I could plant explosives and bring it down.”

Dominic leaned over and licked the mango juice from her lips. Her womb clenched and her stomach muscles bunched. “I think we can get the information. I have a friend standing by to help with the computer problem. He gave me very precise instructions.”

That sensuous lick had caused her temperature to soar, and she became acutely aware of her body all over again. He seemed all too aware of her, too.

“What friend?” she asked, trying to stay on task.

The pad of his thumb traced a slow line from her collarbone to the tip of her breast. She sucked in her breath sharply. His thumb continued to smooth over her bare stomach to slide lower.

A small smile tugged at Dominic’s mouth. “He is considered a punk kid, although he is not much younger in human years than you are, but he is very gifted with computers. He wanted to come, but I could not take a chance that he might think himself capable of fighting a vampire. His name is Josef, and at times I think most male Carpathians, myself included, have considered sending him to the vampires just to stop his antics. The boy is very modern and runs a little wild. He is waiting by his computer to take over the ones in the laboratory as well as their network.”