A small thrill danced along Dakotah’s spine at his show of dominance. At the desire she saw in his face and the way his penis was engorged and leaking, his balls heavy and full underneath it.
Wolf or man, he was a magnificent specimen of masculinity. An incredible example of a male in his prime.
He trigged memories from her past. Dreams and fantasies she’d once held as possibilities. Until she’d learned differently. Until those dreams and fantasies had become too painful a contrast to her reality. To what her life had become. A horror-show where only the strongest and the luckiest emerged alive. Where few emerged unbroken.
Only the flip of a coin had put her under dominatrix supervision and training. Had saved her from repeated rape, from becoming a cheap disposable commodity to the man her self-righteous grandmother and worthless father had turned her over to in order to wipe out her father’s debt. If Victor Hale hadn’t murdered them in retaliation for Dakotah killing his son, she might have returned one day to kill them herself.
A low growl sounded in her throat, threatening even to her own ears, and she forced her thoughts away from the past and back to the man who was stalking her, who’d tensed at the warning he heard, perhaps understanding there were places inside her so dark and full of fury that it would be a fight to the death if he stumbled into them.
“I want the night with you,” Domino said, his voice stroking over her like a wolf’s tongue. “Then I’ll see to the bodies while you go on your way.”
“Why?”
“A test of will.” He smiled, a flash of white teeth, of mocking humor that intrigued her. “And because I don’t believe in tarot readings given by meddling old fortune-tellers.” He moved closer, the smile widening, his scent swirling around Dakotah along with his heat. “What about you? Do you believe?”
She thought about the reading Helki had forced on her. About The Emperor.
The time will come when you will face the enemy who wants you dead, but you will not do so alone. Another change awaits you. This time at the hands of a man unlike any you have known before. A man who wants your life, not your death.
And then her thoughts flashed to the day Helki had insisted on giving Sarael a reading. The day Matteo Cabrelli had come to claim her friend.
“I can feel the truth in them,” Sarael had said, looking down at the three cards representing her past, her present and her future.
“You can change that truth,” Dakotah had claimed, reaching over, flipping the cards so they lay facedown.
The lessons of Dakotah’s past urged her to turn away from Domino and leave now. The wolf told her to stay.
She studied Domino for a long moment, wondering if it was only because their wolves had mated that she craved his touch, had allowed him to pin her down and take her roughly when she might have seriously injured or killed another man for trying it. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter.
In the end it was her secret heart, the place that still harbored forgotten dreams of happy-ever-after that held her in place. It was the knowledge that she couldn’t run forever and that ultimately Victor Hale’s wolves would find her and she would die in a savage fight, refusing to be hauled back to Atlantic City alive.
Why shouldn’t she take what rare pleasure she could find that didn’t involve her own hands and fingers or cheap toy substitutes? She couldn’t afford to lose the entire night, but she would fuck him again and then walk away.
Dakotah shrugged. “I don’t care what the tarot cards say. Once more and then I’m out of here. Take it or leave it.”
Domino’s nostrils flared as fire burned though his veins. The Heat responding to her challenge. Her taunt.
In his world, females were valued, treasured, cared for, loved, protected. But men ruled. Had always ruled. Would always rule, because only they were nearly indestructible.
The natural order of things was woven into the ancient fabric of vampire cells and Dakotah’s words scraped over his nerve endings like sandpaper. Made him want to prove to her how wrong she was, how helpless she was.
It would take no effort at all to swamp her with the pheromones of his kind, to hypnotize her and command that she stay with him until he tired of her. Until he sent her on her way as he had so many other women. As he intended to do to so many more. She was a passing temptation, a fascination brought on by the nearness of The Transformation.
Domino moved into her, his cock straining to brush against her flat belly, to mark her with some of the seed coating its tip. His testicles were already heavy again, full, though until he became fully vampire there was no possibility of impregnating any female, and even afterward, only a kadine could carry his child, and he would not lose his freedom in such a manner.
Raw pleasure coursed through him at her boldness, the way she met his eyes, held her position, only stepping away from him as he crowded into her, physically forcing her to take one step and then another until her back was pressed against the smooth bark of a birch tree.
“I’ll take it. I’ll take you,” he said, answering her challenge, his voice silky and dangerous, The Heat and The Hunger an incessant hum in his veins, feeding the desire to claim and dominate so that Domino knew a moment of real fear, worried that he was about to step into a carefully laid trap.
He shook it off. Told himself that if he intended to stay free of the responsibility of a mate, if he intended to avoid sexually bonding himself to one female, then he might as well strengthen his control and his will with this one, where the risk was reduced. He hadn’t yet been through The Transformation, hadn’t given her his blood. But even so, he wouldn’t gamble by taking her blood, by leaving her unrestrained.
He took the clothing she’d collected but hadn’t yet put on away from her, dropping everything but the bra to the ground before gathering her wrists. She immediately guessed what he was planning, and he read the intention to resist him in her eyes.
Domino had no choice but to swamp her with pheromones. He couldn’t allow her to fight him. Couldn’t allow her to become afraid.
Fear was a heady aphrodisiac to his kind. The lure of it, the ease with which it became an addiction in itself was part of the reason laws existed forbidding full vampires from killing their prey by draining them of life, from feeding on both their blood and their fear.
Only the dhampirs, the soldiers, were allowed to drain their enemies completely—a compensation woven into their design perhaps, for the years of service they gave before they became fully vampire. Or maybe it was because they retained their human shape, their ability to be out in the sun. Because The Hunger didn’t whisper as loudly in them, wasn’t yet as dangerous to them. Still, none of them could afford for their existence to become widely known, especially now, in a world with advanced technology.
If he weren’t so close to The Transformation, so close to being ruled by The Heat and Hunger, then he wouldn’t feel the need to partially restrain her. But her challenge, the wolf’s claim that she was his mate, his own obsession with her—one that had started when he’d arrived in the previous town to hunt the Believers and assist in guarding Sarael—all converged in an emotional flashpoint that put both her life and his freedom at risk.
Domino ruthlessly captured her in obsidian eyes, pushed into her mind and spoke the thoughts he forced on her. “You will allow me to bind you.”
The wolf rose within him and insisted that its mate not be treated as prey, insisted that she know the tethering was for her own protection, and Domino added, “You will not fight the restraints. They are for your own safety.”
And unbidden, he said, “They are for your pleasure.”
He used her bra to lash her unresisting wrists together before lifting her arms over her head and securing them to a limb. Desire rushed through him at the sight of her naked and tethered, a swirl of uneasiness following in its wake at how much it satisfied something inside of him to see her like that when he’d never done it to another female, never thought to do it.