Dakotah's Reading

CHAPTER 9

“Even Victor Hale’s allies don’t trust him with their lives,” Fane said as soon as Domino answered the phone. “They didn’t allow him a choice. They elected to throw him into the ring with you. The padralls accepted on your behalf and agreed to a challenge after sunset—tonight. I could have changed it but then thought better of it.” There was a hint of amusement in Fane’s voice that immediately grated on Domino’s nerves. “It gives you the choice as to whether or not you want to make the third exchange with Dakotah before fighting her enemy. After all, her life would be forfeit as well should you bind her to you and then lose.”

Domino’s nostril flared. “Perhaps I will rip out two throats tonight.”

Fane laughed. “I see you still harbor delusions that you could best me.”

“It’s no delusion,” Domino growled.

“Dementia then. But on a serious note, I have asked Cable to assist with the arrangements and ensure there is no opportunity for mischief or deceit—though the presence of so many dhampirs and vampires will drive the point home to the wolves that we are prepared to slaughter them all.”

“It’s no less than the truth.”

“And it’s good they’re reminded of it. For the sake of my bride, who claims we are on our honeymoon and begs for my attention, I hope we’re not delayed here any longer. I’ll see you tonight.”

Domino closed the phone and dropped it onto the pile of clothing next to the bed before repositioning himself beside Dakotah and pulling her into his arms. She was tense and he could feel the wild mix of her emotions. “Don’t think to leave me,” he said. “Don’t think to take Victor Hale on by yourself.”

“It’s not your fight.”

He laughed. Warmed despite the way her heart raced against his chest and her body vibrated with concern. He didn’t need the third exchange to know what she was thinking. What she was contemplating.

“It will hardly be a fight at all. Do you have so little faith in my abilities?” He rolled, trapping her underneath him. Her gaze caught in his. “From the time we are children we are trained in the use of restraints. Will you force me to bind you in order to keep you from doing something foolish? Or would you rather I simply command you not to leave the bed during the day?”

Dakotah opened her mouth to challenge him, to dare him, to insist he let her fight her own battles, but the words didn’t come. The wolf held them back until they dissolved on her tongue, replaced by a different demand. “I want to be there when you fight.”

He snarled in response. A gut reaction. A need to know she was safe. That her enemy couldn’t reach her.

Her face tightened. The eyes that moments before had been soft and yielding became polished stones, reflections of the wall she was prepared to build between them.

“Only if you stand with Fane,” Domino said, forcing the words out, hating that his heart thrilled at the sight of her satisfaction, at the way her body relaxed underneath his. He tightened his grip on her, wanting to meld them into one being. “Do I tether you to the bed or command you? Or will you give me your promise to stay by my side while The Sleep holds me? To be next to me when I wake?”

Her eyebrow lifted in amused challenge and happiness uncurled in his chest and belly. “I assume any promise will exclude bathroom breaks and trips to the kitchen?”

He growled softly. “Say the words, Dakotah.”

“I’ll stay.”

He resettled them, spooning her back to his chest and curling his arm around her, holding her tightly to him in a gesture that made her feel cherished rather than imprisoned.

Outside, beyond the heavy drapes, the sun rose higher. She was aware of it though she couldn’t see it. Just as she was acutely aware of Domino’s skin pressed to hers, his heart beating, slowing as a heavy lethargy descended, pulling her under, The Sleep taking her as it took him.

Domino knew the moment she left the bed. It was nearing sunset. The lethargy clung to him, but because of the wolf, The Sleep didn’t hold him as mercilessly as it did other vampires. He followed her movements by sound, smiled when she went into the bathroom and filled the old-fashioned tub Matteo had insisted be installed.

When she slid into the water, Domino forced himself to stand, the wolf aiding him against The Sleep. The Heat and Hunger also rising, allies instead of adversaries. Wanting him to be close to Dakotah in order to make the third exchange.

He halted in the bathroom doorway, his cock going to rigid attention at the sight of her in the tub, her head thrown back, her eyes closed as her hands smoothed soap over slick female curves.

The scent of her filled his nostrils. The desire for her filled his soul.

She tilted her head and opened eyes dark with need and lust. “Join me?”

His cock led the way, jutting out in front of him as he moved to the tub.

She laughed, a husky sound that added to his torment. He groaned when she took his shaft in her hand and brushed her thumb over the engorged head, stroking until the tip was wet. Then she used his cock to guide him into the tub and position him where she wanted him, at the other end, so that she could rise onto her knees and straddle him.

The blood burned through Dakotah’s veins. Whispered and hinted of an ecstasy yet to be experienced, an ecstasy beyond what she’d already had with Domino.

There was no fighting the call of blood to blood. Of body to body. The yearning of the soul and heart.

There was no denying the truth of what they were to each other. The wolf’s truth. The truth revealed in the tarot cards. The truth she and Domino had both come to accept.

They belonged together.

Her fingers speared through his hair, holding him still for her kiss, an exploration of lips and tongue, a savoring, a taste of desire found in wet heated darkness and the smooth glide of female against male. He let her control the kiss though his hands moved to her back, his fingers traced her spine and sent shivers of delight along her nerve endings, then moved to her sides, her hips as his cock stroked her folds, her clit. Sending heat spiraling through her.

She groaned and rose higher in the tub, rubbed her nipple back and forth across his lips. Taunting him by not allowing him to latch on and feast despite his growls of frustration.

He retaliated by filling her channel with his cock, by securing her so she couldn’t fuck herself on him as his fingers went to her clit, stroking, teasing, making her sheath fist and unfist around a thick, pulsing shaft that remained stationary.

Dakotah relented, stilled, brought him to her breast and held him there as he suckled, the pull of his mouth sending ice-hot shards of need straight to her engorged knob so that it strained against his fingers, jerked under his caress. So that she whispered, “Please.”

He took control then. Shifting, plundering her body with his cock as his fangs sank into her breast. Dark urges filling him, whispering for him to take her to the edge of human death, to the point where her heart stuttered in warning. But he resisted, wanting more than a single fuck in the tub before finishing what they had started.

And so he fed, holding her tightly to him, their thrashing sending water cascading over the edge of the tub. Her scream of release echoing off the walls of the bathroom. His own muffled against her flesh.

Domino rose from the tub, his mouth still pressed to her breast, his cock still embedded in her cunt. The strength he’d gained from his alien ancestors allowed him to take her to the bedroom, to settle them both on the thick pile of rugs in front of the fireplace.

Only then did he lift his head, sealing the puncture marks above her nipple with his tongue before kissing up her body, stopping when his mouth was above hers, his eyes locked with hers. There wasn’t much time left before they’d have to leave. Fane or Cable or both of them would arrive shortly to escort them to the place where the challenge would be met and answered in death.

Victor Hale’s death.

Domino didn’t doubt for an instant that Dakotah’s enemy would die tonight.

He understood her need to be present. And was reconciled to it.

It was his own reluctance to make the third exchange without ensuring himself that she understood what it meant that surprised him.

The Heat and Hunger, the alien stamp of his ancestors, had no conscience when it came to the taking of a kadine. Even the wolf felt nothing beyond the rightness of its claim to Dakotah’s wolf as its mate.

But the man needed more.

Domino brushed his lips against Dakotah’s, groaning when the movement slid his cock deeper into her body and her slick muscles clamped down on him, tightened as though afraid he would try to leave.

Dakotah could feel his hesitation, his uncertainty and if she’d been in doubt as to where her future lay, then his delay, his desire that she accept him without the thrall of pheromones or the instinct of the wolf, would have allayed her fears. His concern was a wedge driven into a heart that had been locked shut, forcing it open, so the love held there for the future could finally be freed.

“We’ll have to leave soon,” he said, but made no attempt to escape from her body or her arms.

“Then we’ll have to hurry and finish what we started.”

He settled more heavily on her. “There’ll be pain.”

“I assumed there would be.”

“My death would trigger your own.”

She laughed. “What happened to your assertion that taking on Victor Hale would hardly be a fight at all?”

Domino growled, a playful sound echoing the joy cascading through him, flooding him with happiness before The Heat and The Hunger moved in, asserting its claim.

With a groan he pulled from her body and flipped her to her stomach. His hands and mouth, the sharp nip of his teeth driving her to her elbows and knees, positioning her so that her nipples pressed against the heavy fiber of the carpet. Her thighs spread, exposing wet pubic hair and folds pulled back to reveal a rosy cleft, flushed and parted, seeping with desire. He traced the glistening skin with his tongue, rubbed over her erect clit, tortured them both with the brush of fangs against the flesh of her inner thigh.

She whimpered, a nearly wolf-like sound that made his cock jerk and leak. That made him taste her arousal again, growl with frustration. The urge to lick and suck, to bathe his face in her need warring with the necessity of finishing what they’d started.

He lingered between her thighs as long as he could. Until his cock was flexing, bobbing, smearing liquid heat on his abdomen. Until his balls burned and ached. Then he mounted her in a smooth motion, shoved all the way into her in one thrust, stopping only when his testicles were pressed tightly to her body, trapped between her hot mound and his muscled thighs.

There was no thought beyond that point. There was only The Hunger and The Heat. Driving him to slash his wrist and press it to her mouth. To pierce her shoulder with his fangs and feed. To fuck. Endless moments of dark ecstasy. Of sharing so profound that life and death blended into exquisite release.

Followed by pain so searing that it seemed to last an eternity. A physical pain for Dakotah. An agony of the heart and soul, the mind for Domino, who could only hold her, his strength keeping her from hurting herself as her cells attacked one another, savagely and forever altering what she was, turning her into something not human or wolf, or completely alien, but the perfect blending of the three.

She was panting, exhausted, shaking by the time it was over. But it was the sight of her tears that very nearly undid Domino. “It’s over now,” he whispered, kissing her, nuzzling her as a wolf comforts its mate. Absorbing her tears, sharing them. Baring his throat and pressing it to her mouth. A promise. A show of trust.

Take my blood, Dakotah , he said, the command so clear that for a moment she thought he’d spoken it out loud. But when he repeated the words in her mind, she knew she hadn’t imagined them. And then he shifted, spearing his fingers through her hair, controlling the range of her movement as he rubbed his neck against her mouth.

In an instant the pain and trauma of the transformation was forgotten. Her sole reality became the beat of his pulse against her lips. She cried out, arched as her canine teeth elongated into fangs.

She burned.

With Heat. With Hunger.

A scorching wave that made her struggle wildly in his arms until it passed. Then he once again offered his throat. This time as his penis slid into her channel in a gentle homecoming.

Now, Dakotah.

And she bit. Fed as they made love. Both of them gaining strength from the intimacy of their joining. The sacredness of the mixing and sharing of blood.

When it was done they lay together, limbs entangled. Two still joined into one. Content. Until the first tendril of doubt, the first tug of a heartstring, the first brush of mind against mind. A tentative exploration. Domino wanting to know what she felt for him, why she’d made the second and third exchanges—even though he knew he should accept her gift without question. Domino seeing glimpses of her past. Of the men. Of the things she’d been forced to do and endure.

She jerked as though he’d slapped her and tried to close her mind. He tightened his grip on her, rolled so she was trapped underneath him, captured by his body and his eyes. “I will kill all of them,” he said, letting her feel the extent of his rage at what had been done to her, his desire for revenge and retribution. Letting her feel too his awe at her courage, her endurance, her intelligence. His amazement that she’d survived where few would have, grown stronger where others would have been broken and crushed.

That she’d been willing to trust and give herself to him nearly reduced him to tears, and he allowed her to feel that as well, though he repeated his comment, not holding back his lethal nature, what he was capable of. “I will kill all of them.”

Dakotah’s heart stuttered in her chest, not from a brush with death this time but from the immensity of the life now shimmering in front of her. There is little separation between a kadine and the one who claims her. There are no secrets between a male and his kadine.

Domino had told her as much and she’d believed him, and yet the reality was so much more. It was very nearly overwhelming.

With a thought she could know anything about him. See anything of his past. Read his intentions for the future.

But it was his emotions that held her enthralled. The intensity of what he felt for her. Admiration and respect where a part of her had feared there would be disgust, contempt. A turning away. The banquet replaced by famine.

“Forget about them,” Dakotah said as she tugged, freeing her wrists from where he held them pinned to the thick rugs, tangling her fingers in his hair, and guiding his mouth to hers, pressing her lips to him, kissing him. Letting her actions speak for her, letting the carefully guarded secret place in her heart open, letting him see how he’d become the dream she’d locked away and not dared to look at again until he’d come into her life.

The kiss was like the sharing of their blood. A primitive and sacred communion. A starting point.

Soon tenderness gave way to desire. The past to the present. And Domino rose above her, but not before he’d stumbled upon a cold shiver of fear over his gaining control to the point where he could freeze her in place with a thought.

He sent a warning in the instant before he commanded her body, pinning her wrists to her sides and her ankles to the carpet, her legs spread so that he could kneel between them.

Her heart raced in reaction, her pulse jumped and made him fight to keep his fangs from descending. And even though she fought the restraint, she didn’t demand that he let her go as he lowered his mouth and captured a dark nipple. Pulling and sucking on it until the thundering in her veins was a molten fire fueled by The Heat.

He took her to the edge with his lips at her breast, his fingers on her clit, tugging and stroking, gripping and releasing. Brought her close to climax repeatedly but didn’t allow her a release.

Dakotah thrashed and arched, held in place by his thoughts alone. She felt the full measure of his power over her but also his desire to do what was right, to never abuse her. She felt his need to dominate, to protect, to possess. To be everything to her. And she accepted it. Even reveled in it. Though it didn’t make her submissive.

“Now,” she demanded, meeting his gaze in challenge, watching as his face tightened and his nostrils flared. As something alien moved through his eyes.

He hissed, letting her see his fangs, but she saw it as a victory, an acknowledgement of her own power, an indication of how aroused he was that some of his control had slipped.

The wild urges of his ancestors screamed in Domino’s cock. Demanding that he subdue her, answer her challenge in a way that would prove his mastery. That would make her as submissive as the kadines created and raised for his race.

But as quickly as the thought came, the wolf bristled and the man laughed silently—all in the second before The Heat made it impossible to delay, to play, even to tease.

With a thought he freed one of her hands, erotic images pressing in on him as he said, “Pleasure yourself. Let me see you come from the touch of your own hand.”

And satisfaction rushed through him when her fingers went to her slit, her clit—not because he’d commanded it of her, but because he’d asked it, because she could read his fantasies and was willing to make them his reality.

He had to take his cock in hand in order to stave off orgasm as she manipulated her engorged knob and drove her fingers into her channel, sliding in and out as the smell of her arousal invaded his senses, enflamed him. Made him want to cover her and thrust into her. To surround himself with her wet heat and slick feminine flesh.

He resisted the temptation. Hissed when he saw her knowing smile. Waited until she jerked under her own hand, her cunt burning against her fingers, clenching and unclenching. And then he fell on her. Freed her so that she could wrap her arms and legs around him and hold him tight as he fucked her, loved her, became one with her.

They were still naked in front of the fire when Fane arrived. His amusement as he plopped down in a chair as though he intended to watch them grated over Domino’s nerves and made Dakotah smile.

Domino rose to his feet, flashing his fangs when Fane’s gaze traveled over Dakotah’s body as she stood.

She slipped her arm through Domino’s, laughing, her heart light, the bond with Domino allowing her to see that beneath their outward sparring, the two men had a history, a deep loyalty to one another. “Don’t waste yourself on him,” she joked, leading Domino back to the bedroom. “You can’t afford to let him weaken you before the challenge.”

Her comment earned her a flash of fangs and a growl while Fane laughed in the other room. But all too soon the humor was gone, replaced by somber watchfulness as they left the house and arrived at the site of the challenge. The lightheartedness replaced by the unmistakable smell of nervousness as a handful of wolves gathered at the edge of a small moonlit patch of bare earth surrounded by a dense forest of trees.

Even without the deepening of her senses that Dakotah had gained with Domino’s blood, she was aware of vampires and dhampirs in the woods around them. The cold, alien presence they projected made chill bumps rise along her arms. And though she couldn’t see them or count them, she knew they greatly outnumbered the wolves.

The wolves knew it too. They huddled together in a defensive pack. Separating themselves from the naked man who waited at the center of the clearing. Their positioning a silent statement that Victor Hale stood on his own. That his fate was his own.

Dakotah squeezed Domino’s hand. A thousand thoughts tumbling through her mind. Including the belief that it should be her going into the clearing.

Don’t even consider it, Dakotah, he said. Obsidian eyes meeting hers, warning her with a look that he would take complete control if she pushed him.

Hurry up and get it over with then, she said. Confident he would win, though her heart raced with the fear that something would go wrong and he would die because of her.

Domino pulled her to him, poured love and the promise of a future together into her with a kiss, then set her aside. His gaze meeting Fane’s in a silent communication that had Fane moving closer, his shoulder against Dakotah’s, as Domino stripped and entered the clearing.

The wolves moved forward in a tight knot and Dakotah tensed. Fane took her arm and said, “Don’t worry. The pack elders are only going to state the terms agreed on by the padralls and hear Domino’s formal acceptance of them before the challenge begins.”

It was done in a second and the wolves retreated. Then Victor Hale shifted into a grey wolf. Attacked. No doubt hoping to catch Domino as he changed form.

But where Domino had been, the black wolf shimmered into existence. Its bulk larger than the grey wolf’s. Its speed and savagery stunning. The product of an evolution far more intricate and ruthless than the one that had created Victor Hale.

It was over in a fury of movement, of breaking bones and torn flesh, of blood loss and spilled internal organs. The grey wolf’s life pouring into the dirt, its body changing for a final time, becoming a human corpse to be disposed of.

Domino trotted over to where Dakotah stood. The wolf not wanting to relinquish its form when the moon was out and the forest called. Run with me. And Dakotah’s wolf shivered with joy, pressed against her skin in remembered pleasure.

She laughed, thinking about what had happened the last time they ran. You mean mate with you.

He play-bowed, obsidian eyes dancing with joy. That too.

Next to her Fane laughed and said, “Oh how the mighty have fallen.” But Dakotah couldn’t resist Domino’s call. She stripped and handed her clothes to Fane, then changed and darted for the trees, the black wolf bounding after her.