Dearly Beloved Read Online Free PDF

really—!”
    Apollo/Dominick reached over and put two fingers against her lips, stopping her tirade in mid-stream with a solid jolt of sensation clear to her toes. And back. Courtney’s eyes went huge, probably mirroring the look of shock coming from him.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    He shouldn’t have touched her. He shouldn’t be anywhere near her. Realization hit as the oddest roiling motion altered the elements about him. He didn’t know what to say or do. She wasn’t just a new weapon of some kind. She was something else. Something so huge, he didn’t think he had the ability to grasp it at the moment. This woman awakened something massive within him. Fully. Indefatigably. Completely. Shifting him completely off his axis. The closest match he had was an earthquake.
    Dominick had experienced enough of those. He’d had to rebuild the villa more than once, the last following the great quake of 1953. That one destroyed most of this wing as well as the kitchens. It hadn’t the effect of this thing.
    “What…just happened?”
    The whisper touched his fingers, sending a tremor through him. All the way through him. Dominick blinked. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.
    He didn’t subscribe to the theory of mating. He’d heard of it, every vampire did. Scoffed at it. There was no such thing as a person slated as his one true mate. The one being capable of making him whole. Fusing with him. Bonding with him. Making this entire immortal existence an eternity of pleasure rather than a constant repetition of nothingness. Such a thing was too fantastic to exist outside of fairytales. He didn’t believe it, and he refused to start now. Not to him. Not now.
    And not…
her
.
    Dominick moved his hand, cradling it about her neck in order to lift her right to his nose, ignoring each whiff of air on his face as he narrowed his eyes and studied every facet of this woman. She wasn’t exceptional. Nothing to take a second look over. She kept her honey-colored hair at shoulder-length, shorter than his. Light brown lashes encircled greenish-shaded eyes that stared wide-eyed at him. A light sprinkling of freckles crossed her nose. There was that perfect mouth, though, shaped for kissing. And there was a definite smell about her. Something indefinable that whispered of longings and needs he’d thought long lost and forgotten.
    Dominick tilted his head, inhaling perfect woman scent as something shuddered into existence in the depth of his chest, radiating through every dead cell. Everything male in him responded. It wasn’t an earthquake. It was solid, amazing, perfect, unmitigated wonder. If he believed in deities, he’d set out offerings, pen volumes of psalms, commit sacrifices in honor. Instead he went to his feet, melding her to him with his free arm. Then he went higher, hovering above the marble floor with the overwhelming volume of emotion he was trying to deal with. He couldn’t stop any of it. His spirit was soaring. Physical movement was simply a manifestation of it.
    “This is not a good idea, Dominick.”
    She might be saying it, but the way her body stayed pinned to his, the quickness of each breath, and the swift lick she’d made on her bottom lip, plumping it even more for him, weren’t demonstrating anything like it. The aura wrapped about them seemed to radiate from within. He’d never felt so light. His head was spinning with it and then his body joined in.
    “You can just stop right there, Mister. I mean, no. This is so not happening. And you can just set me down, too.”
    If she hadn’t been panting through it, cursing him with more perfect breaths, and if he wasn’t hovering in a plane of existence that defied physics…well, maybe he could do what she requested. Maybe.
    “You need to say something. I can’t carry on a complete one-sided conversation. I mean, I can, and usually do, but I’m usually alone, too.”
    Say something?
If he tried, it might be a sob. Emotion of this level and this magnitude