Take Me (28 page)

Dom laid a kiss on Julianna’s pale cheek.

“I hope you had a nice trip out.” Dom stiffened as he strained, listening for Felicity. Where had she gone? She couldn’t leave him now, not with unfinished business standing between them.

“It was fine.”

Dom gave Julianna a stiff smile then took a step towards the garage door. “If you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.”

“Business with Felicity Shaw?”

Dom froze, then slowly faced the woman he had to mate with. “What of her?”

“I can smell you both in the air. Just a few minutes ago you were inside her body.”

A flush marked his face. “That is very inappropriate to speak about.” For someone like Julianna, Dom thought.

She shrugged, her face still unreadable but pleasant to look upon. “I’m afraid I have a problem.”

“And what might that be?” His fists clenched.
Felicity was getting away!

Her clear blue eyes flew to his. “I don’t want to mate with you.”

A heavy silence filled the room. Dom sucked in a slow breath as he processed this. “Excuse me?”

“I said I don’t wish to mate with you.”

“Yes, I heard that,” he snapped. Dom ran a hand through his hair. His body had sweat from taking Felicity and drops of perspiration licked at his skin. In jerky movements, he whipped off his suit jacket and gripped it in a fist lest he do something childish like tear it in half. “Why?”

She lifted a honey colored eyebrow. “You have no feelings for me. You have not attempted whatsoever to endear yourself to me. You have ignored me from the moment our engagement was announced. You care for another woman. Even after I tried to end the engagement by simply leaving, you didn’t fetch me yourself but sent your brother. You care nothing for me and I care nothing for you. Let’s end this amicably, Mr. Blackmoore.”

“Call me Dominic,” he said automatically.

“I do not feel comfortable speaking to you so familiarly, Mr. Blackmoore.”

Dom reeled back in shock. Then, slowly, he laughed. The heavy weight that had been crushing his chest and shoulders lifted. He couldn’t mate with this woman. She couldn’t even call him by his first name. She was too traditional, too proper, too prim. Simply put, she was not Felicity Shaw. A strange, overwhelming joy grew inside him. Nothing would stand in his way of her now. Nothing. He would have Felicity Shaw. She would be his.

“I am sorry,” he found himself saying.

She nodded. “I will break off the engagement publicly.”

Dom frowned. “Your father will not like this.” Mr. Greenwich had been looking forward to the union of the two families with more gusto than anyone else. “If you break the engagement, there will be consequences to your reputation. I’ll do it and spare you. I will speak with your father.”

Julianna smiled a soft, pretty smile and nodded. “Perfect, but he must truly believe that we will not suit and it cannot be made my fault. If it is then I’ll tell people the truth. I’ll hold no blame for this.”

If she told people the truth then her father could take Dom to the council and force the marriage on him.

Dom laughed. “You have some guts, Julianna.”

Her smile grew into something that resembled a grin. “I will pack my belongings and leave. Goodbye, Mr. Blackmoore.”

As soon as Julianna left the room, Dom had his phone out and Vas on the other line. “Yeah?” his brother said.

“The engagement’s off. Get word out that Felicity Shaw will be my
bruid
. She’s young, smart, and fresh. Make sure everyone sees that pure innocence. I want everyone to know that she comes from a poor background and that she represents the average woman whether vampire or
were
. You got that?”

Dominic could hear Vas take a long drag on a cigarette. “Yeah, you know this might work.”

“Yeah, I know. She’s been the answer all along. Run it to every magazine, newspaper, and spread the word to every bigwig we know and do it now. I want everyone who can vote to have heard of her before morning. I expect to see that fifteen per cent gap closed by tomorrow night.”

Dominic hung up as he stepped outside. Immediately he noticed his SUV was gone. Yussef, the young valet, sprinted from the side entrance. “My apologies sir, she took the vehicle. What would you like me to do about it?”

Dom didn’t hesitate to answer. “Get me a car. I’m going after her.”

* * * * *

Felicity sat on a cozy suede sofa in Beth’s house. She was tired down to her bones. She tried to think back to when she ever had a day such as this one and couldn’t think of one. It was quite unique by her standards. Yet as she sat in Beth’s house, she found she didn’t want to talk about herself—at all—she wanted to talk about Beth.

Beth whose concert posters of LBB no longer hung on the walls, who CD of LBB didn’t play on the stereo, and who had a hardness to her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Even her limp looked exaggerated as if stress weighed her down.

“Tell me what happened,” she told Beth.

Beth finished pouring a cup of tea then limped into the living room and took a seat across from Felicity. She curled her legs under her, stirring her tea in idle circles and watching the swirling brown liquid. “He asked me out. I went with him.”

“You went out with Lucas Blackmoore?”

“Yeah.” Beth took a sip of her tea.

“Where’d he take you?”

“We went to the most expensive restaurant I’ve ever been in. There weren’t even prices next to the food, no kidding. I only found out how much everything cost because I got a peek at the bill before we left.”

“I take it you aren’t distraught because Lucas Blackmoore ran after you at one of his concerts. Or because he took you to his house, kissed you, and then took you out on a nice date.”

Beth smiled, it was a small one, but Felicity would take what she could get. “Nope, that was the good stuff. A few days after the impromptu kiss, I received a letter in the mail with a single ticket, upper balcony seats near the stage for one of his concerts. Not only that, they came with a VIP backstage pass.”

Felicity heard an ache in Beth’s voice as if talking about this hurt. Felicity didn’t know what the problem was yet, but she’d make sure Lucas Blackmoore paid for what he did to her friend.

“So what happened?” Felicity found her hands interlacing in a fierce grip as waited for the bad news. Something had hurt her friend terribly to make her abandon her love for LBB. A love she’d carried for years.

Beth threw back the last of her tea then slammed the teacup onto the coffee table in one violent clatter. The porcelain clanged against the spoon and Felicity waited to see it break, but it didn’t. Beth stood and paced. Her right knee sagged lower with each step she took and Felicity knew it must hurt to walk on, but she never stopped.

“So, I slowly make my way downstairs toward the back of the theater after the concert. I’m nervous, right? I’m there alone and I have a backstage pass. The concert’s packed so it’s slow moving, but I finally get there, flash my VIP pass to some burly man, and get let through a series of rooms,” she paused and dragged in a deep breath. When she leveled her eyes on Felicity they were raw, not with pain, but anger. “You wanna know how I found him?”

Not really. Wherever this was going had to be bad, bad, for Beth to give up her obsession over Lucas Blackmoore. “What’d you see, honey?”

In her mind, Felicity conjured up horrible images of a vampire orgy. Some still had them, but usually in private by the wealthy. A mixture of humans,
weres
, and vampires would get together to have sex while sharing each other’s blood and bodies in the most intimate way vampires could. Some orgies were rumored to go on for days.

“I walked in there and froze. He was completely naked. Some woman was sucking his cock like it was her job, and another was draped over him. He was kissing her like he was trying to swallow her tongue. The girls were butt-ass naked. That’s what I walked in on.”

Felicity’s stomach plummeted. What Beth described was not quite a vampire orgy but close. “Oh, Beth I’m so sorry. I had no idea he was like that.”

Beth grunted, her strong legs pacing and with each step, her bad leg wobbled. “What’s worse, what’s actually
worse
, Fel, is that he looks up at me, right? He sees me standing there like a damned idiot and he looks all surprised to me.
He invited me there!
Then he throws the girls off him and starts coming after me. I bolted the fuck out of there.”

“Did he catch up with you?”

“He tried to, but I went through the theater so all the other fans saw him wearing nothing. They surrounded him like a pack of rabid animals. I was just so mad, so hurt. It felt like he betrayed me. I know it’s stupid but it did. Before I left, I looked him in the eyes over the hundreds of faces surrounding him and told him I hated him. I know he heard me because his jaw clenched like
he
was pissed. He ain’t got anything to be pissed about. That was the last I’ve seen of him. The last I want to see.”

Felicity let out a low whistle as her eyes searched Beth’s empty looking house again. “I take it you’re off the LBB bandwagon then, for sure?”

Beth sat down and her shoulders sagged. Her hands covered her face as she shook her head. “Yeah, I’m done. He played me or was trying to play me. I’m glad I saw what I saw, Fel, because if I hadn’t then I might have gotten hurt. Hurt bad. I don’t want a man who needs dozens of other women in his life to please him. I want a man who needs just me. For a few dumb days there, I thought maybe it’d be him.”

Felicity didn’t voice her concern that he’d already managed to hurt her pretty badly or that she’d held on to the thought of him being the “one” for years, not days. “What a dick,” Felicity said.

Beth snorted then snorted again until she slowly started to laugh. Smiling, Felicity sat next to her friend. She wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her.

“I’m sorry, Beth. Seriously, what an asshole. I’m glad you found out early on.”

“Yeah, me too,” Beth said, her voice hollow. “Well, you said you wanted to go out. Let’s go out. I’m putting him behind me, for real.”

Nodding, Felicity looked down at her skirt and heels. She’d dressed up tonight because she and Beth were going to a club for some much needed girl time. That was before things had taken an unexpected turn. Now she felt a tight soreness between her legs where Dominic had taken her. She’d never be able to look at this skirt again and not think of him. She’d have to burn it.

Beth grabbed a cream leather jacket and pulled on some sexy calf-high boots with buckles over the top of the foot.
Midnight Smoke
was their club of choice. It had a good atmosphere with people around Beth’s age, which worked out perfectly for Felicity too. Since vampires aged slowly she still looked like she was in her early twenties.

 However, when Beth opened the door to leave, a large, irritated male blocked their way. His dark eyes blazed with anger and he trained them right on Felicity.

Felicity unfroze herself from shock. Surprise gripped her, making her voice a shout. “What are you doing here? Did you
follow
me?”

Beth wisely stepped out of the way so Felicity could march up to Dominic Blackmoore. A man whose car she had “borrowed” to get away from him, but she’d wisely left in a block down the street and had walked to Beth’s. The arrogant bastard lifted his chin a notch. As if to say,
what of it, babe?

“As soon as possible I did, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re mine and tonight that became official.”

Mortification reddened her cheeks. “As if I need to be reminded in front of my friend of what we, I mean
you
, did tonight.”

He shook his head. “No, I mean after that. I’m no longer mating with Julianna Greenwich.”

Beth sucked in a breath making both Felicity and Dom send her a sharp look. Beth threw her hands up and slowly backed away. “This sounds private. I’ll just be...in the bedroom.”

After the bedroom door closed, Felicity realized she should have made Beth stay. As soon as the bedroom door closed he was in her space, wrapping his arms around her and bringing his mouth down to hers. Luckily her senses came back rather fast and she broke the kiss.

“Remember the part where I said I hate you.”

He lifted his head enough to grin, just one corner of his mouth lifting in that sexy way. “I remember that. I also remember telling you I love you. That negates your hate.”

Her heart stuttered like a jackhammer in her chest. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

Suddenly, he turned very serious. His eyes grew hard, lips flattened and even his arms tightened around her. “Love conquers all.”

Oh god. He just said that. She couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing, and when his low, slow laughter met hers, something melted inside her.

“You can’t love me,” she said when her laughter died.

“Why can’t I?”

She looked around even as her hands curled into his suit shirt. “Because—because we’re from two different kinds of stock. It’d be a waste of your good genes. It’s like...mixing a thorough-bred with a mutt.”

One dark eyebrow cocked as he gave her a stern expression. “Are you comparing yourself to a thorough-bred?”

“Well, actually you were supposed to be the thorough-bred in that example, but I appreciate the compliment.”

Slowly his stern expression dissolved into
the look
and she melted. Her body grew warm and hyperaware of him; hyperaware of the fact that not too long ago he’d been inside her giving her rough, exquisite pleasure that she’d love to repeat again and again in a variety of styles, ways, and locations.

“Sweets, I don’t compare to you,” he said.

She pushed against him and strode away. “Seriously? Save the ridiculous compliments for someone who’ll believe them. You’re from, like, kings. You have tons of money, a great house, great clothes, hell even your hair is great. My mother and I don’t even speak anymore. Last I heard she and her lover whose
way
too young for her were living on the last of her money in a tropical climate somewhere. I am a designer who can’t get a job. I have a crappy car, a tiny, crappy home, and I’m poor. So, I’ll tell you Dominic Blackmoore I am no thorough-bred.”